Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Day One
When your day is done, come post on how it went. Don't use an IPS computer. Our spies in the Central Office tell us the administration is really trying to track who comes here. You can post with your Blackberry or iPhone. This post was done last night and set on a timer to go off right now so the administration can't complain.
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I'm not an IPS teacher, so I can post here with ho worries. I wish you all the best of luck. I hope you all have good students, and those of you who are working in a building with no air conditioning, I hope you stay cool.
ReplyDeleteJust remember the head pimp, Eugene, doesn't go anywhere unless there is air conditioning.
ReplyDeleteAs an IPS parent, I can tell you the busing was a mess this morning. The kids' bus didn't come and you couldn't get through on the transportation line at all, so obviously it wasn't just one or two buses. Ours finally came about 45 minutes late. Everyone at IPS acts like this is normal first day stuff, but nobody outside of IPS has ever heard of such craziness.
ReplyDelete@As an IPS parent...
ReplyDeleteYou're correct. I've taught school in three different districts outside of Indiana. NEVER, never did I witness the pervasive incompetence of a central office administration that I witnessed for 11 years in IPS. Between the Ed Center administrators and the building administrators there is a gross lack of clear communication. The Ed Center people fail to put things in writing. They are big into 'oral communication' but not 'written communication'. Simply put, there are far too many Ed Center administrators telling different stories to different people. I've often wondered who's in charge.
I am not an IPS employee nor a resident of the IPS district. I am just a person who loves children.
ReplyDeleteI suffer from asthma and severe allergies. So do many children. The fact that there are children (and their teachers) in IPS who are suffering in this hot/humid weather without air conditioning is terrible.
I'm not here to talk about blame - I am sure there is plenty to go around - but I am saying that this is crazy! Is it going to take a child being rushed to a hospital emergency room before this is changed?
I see in the newspaper and on TV so many in education and in politics proclaiming that education should be "all about the children."
How is threatening their health and well-being "about the children"?
If I had a child in one of those un-air conditioned IPS buildings, I would not send he/she to school on days when the temperature is higher than the mid-80s. My child would stay home even if I had to go to jail.
I am not an IPS employee nor a resident of the IPS district, and cannot understand why the teachers, students and other employees are going without while the central office pays over $100,000 in many salaries. The superintendent has sooo many monetary perks and yet his leadership is failing.
ReplyDeleteI've read the super's contract and the board meeting records and it seems they keep making additional positions and changing the titles of the central office's employees to validate raises. What is a compliance monitor for transportation?
Everyone has had to cut back; other school systems have made personal cutbacks, not IPS.
Just saying ...
Bus pickups were chaos today.....apparently the compliance monitor for transportation is not doing his job.......I wonder how many students were never picked up, wait for close to an hour and then went home or were taken to the wrong school. Evidence seems to be the fact that it was impossible to get anything but a busy signal in the bus transportation office.
ReplyDelete@"What is a compliance monitor for transportation?"
ReplyDeleteThat position was filled recently, at the Superintendent's recommendation, by the son of Prudence Bridgwaters, a long, long, long-time Ed Center administrator who has a long, long, long-time questionable past within the IPS district. I'm unsure what a transportation monitor actually does, but it sounds like we know what he does not do.
It is a make believe job to keep Prudence Bridgewaters happy. Another big waste of money.
ReplyDeleteSo, how'd that mandatory early registration thingie work out for all the high schools?
ReplyDeleteOnly 179 more days of putting up with Dr. White this year left.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't stop laughing this morning when the media on Channel 8 reported that our kids in our uncool building would be cycled through the cafeteria, library, and computer lab to cool bodies.
ReplyDeleteOur cafeteria is an oven even in the winter. Put 4th, 5th, and 6th in there, and kids cook. Our library is inaccessible because of tons and tons of books, and the two window air conditioners in our lab just operate in the fan mode, acting more like a convection oven. We have two classrooms with air. One held two classes all day, the other had 34 kids show up, then had other classes come to visit. We have kids upstairs lugging chairs through rain-forest conditions to cool for a bit, then drag them back to their furnace-like rooms.
I am curious as to the number of students who will attend Saturday school. Part of the Channel 8 report mentioned IPS's importance of attendance, then the next sentence pointed out that unregistered kids get three unexcused absences. Wow. Three more days of summer!
No mention of the Tech teacher we lost. Any news?
There was barely 200 kids who were able to enter a certain eastside high school today. Alot of kids showed up not registered and were sitting outside in the hot sun until a bus came to pick them up.
ReplyDeleteI do not blame the staff, they cannot be the blame for parents ignorance!!!
Transportation problems! Lots and lots!
ReplyDeleteAnd guess who gets to deal with the angry parents who have major transportation issues?? We do! Transportation chose not to answer their phones today - believe me, I called 10 different times. Once I was hung up on, once I was put on hold and forgotten, and the rest were forwarded on. I left four messages - per transportation's request - and not one was returned.
ReplyDeleteI did not blame one of our parents for being as upset as they were. It should not be this difficult to get your child to school!
I don't care how big our district is, there is no reason for it to be this dysfuctional! The dysfuction lies within downtown. There are plenty of large urban school districts that do not have our problems. Why? Because they are ran for the GOOD OF THE CHILDREN. Our Central Office is good at hiring their friends and relatives.
ReplyDeleteDid anyone else hear Eugene call students weak because they couldn't take 100 degree temperatures in a building with no air?
ReplyDeleteI work in a school without air and it is beyond miserable. Kids throwing up, teachers getting sick, etc. It makes no sense at all.
ReplyDeleteI had to stop by #19 today. I couldn't breathe on that second floor. Great big fans just blow heated air down the halls. I was amazed at these troupers, both adult and child. I couldn't wait until I went back to my car. I wanted to take all the kids with me. They don't have a choice.
ReplyDeleteI pity any human there.
Good for a laugh, from one of my former students facebook page "Yes skool tmorr praise the lord I don't have to hear my mom mouth"
ReplyDeleteWe now have Air in our building. I am so sorry for those of you in un air conditioned buildings. I have been there done that and it is beyond horrible.
ReplyDeleteFallen Comrade
ReplyDeleteJeff Scering, a teacher in the Career & Technology Magnet at Arsenal Technical High School, died Aug. 9. Family and friends are invited to gather from 3 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 12, at the Strawmyer & Drury Mortuary, 2400 N. Lebanon St., Lebanon. The funeral service will be 10:30 a.m. Friday, Aug. 13, at the mortuary. To sign an online register, go to www.strawmyerdrury.com.
Hold Jeff and his family in your thoughts and prayers.
Thank you for letting us know about Mr. Scering.
ReplyDeleteWas he still at Tech?
IPS Superintendent Eugene White had little sympathy for those concerned about the heat.
ReplyDelete"We are such a weak country today. We forget when we didn't have any air conditioners in schools. We're so spoiled now," he said.
White said schools are taking precautions, including setting up fans in classrooms and hallways, giving students extra water and ice and taking frequent breaks to rotate to cooler areas of the buildings.
From today's Indianapolis Star.
I don't see him sitting for three hours at any of the listed schools.
"Thank you for letting us know about Mr. Scering.
ReplyDeleteWas he still at Tech?"
My understanding from a fellow Tech staff member was that he had been demoted to part-time at Tech, and felt he was being challenged to quit on his own.
We all went to school after Labor Day, air conditioning or not.
ReplyDeleteI don't see him sitting in a non-air conditioned office!
Many of the schools listed by the news media as not having building air conditioning do have air conditioning in the front office. Apparently the principals are weaker than the students and teachers. Dr. White has air conditioning, also, so I guess he is acknowledging that he is weak.
ReplyDeleteWe don't have air conditioning. The front office does have air conditioning. Our principal did breakfast duty, lunch duty, bus duty, and checked on staff members and students all day. He still had his tie on at dismissal with his soaked shirt. Not a weak principal in my opinion!
ReplyDeleteI work at John Marshall. We didn't have 400 students today.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that most principals offices have air conditioning even in schools without air? Those selfish principals are not going to sit in all of this heat...that is for the lowly teachers and the students.
ReplyDelete@"I work at John Marshall"
ReplyDeleteWhat was the expected enrollment? Were there angry parents outside the school like at Howe? The TV cameras were rolling this AM at Howe. Angry parents and students were showing out because they had not registered their kids when they were supposed to.
The front offices in the non air-conditioned schools have window units. I think it is because IPS is an adult-centered school district. The comfort of the administrators is a priority.
ReplyDeleteThose people in the Ed Center enjoy the refreshingly cool office space in their air-conditioned building during August heat waves. Just think, those people never have to experience any of nature's elements -- they drive into an almost new spacious and covered parking garage, then they walk a few feet to the elevator where they ride up or down to their pleasantly cool office spaces. Nary a drop of rain, a flake of snow, or a ray of sunshine touches those special people on East Walnut Street.
Where are White's PR people? Don't they ever give the man good solid advice about what not to say to television reporters about kids sitting in sweltering hot classrooms while he and his leadership team enjoy air-conditioned work spaces?
Our elementary had been forecasted to have about 350 students. We're up to nearly 450.
ReplyDeleteWe lost days of music, art. p.e. and media specialist.
It sucks.
I am not an IPS employee and I don't live in Marion County.
ReplyDeleteBut, if the following quote is indeed accurate, then the IPS superintendent is a very cruel and calloused man!
"We are such a weak country today. We forget when we didn't have any air conditioners in schools. We're so spoiled now," he said.
He is also sadly uninformed about the scientific reality of global climate change.
Why doesn't he prove how macho he is by spending the next two weeks with the poor little children forced to endure one of the un-air-conditioned IPS buildings?
This is pathetic....absolutely pathetic. I call it what it is: child abuse!
I saw White on the Channel 6 newscast last night. I didn't hear what he said. Is that where he was heard making those comments about the weak people who can't take the heat? I guess those extreme heat warnings are just for sissies. Perfect example of the depth and breadth of the chasm that exists between central office talk and the reality of day to day life in the schools.
ReplyDeleteI am not defending the district. The offices have air because the security systems are located there and they have to be cooled or the alarms go off all day. Libraries have air because the books have to be stored in a certain temp. zone. The computer labs are air conditioned because the equipment doesn't work if it gets hot. Again I think the children are VERY important and should be in a climate controlled environment. Please don't attack me for providing the why on the offices, libraries and labs.
ReplyDeleteThose comments by Dr.White were during an interview with Channel 8 news.
ReplyDelete"I am not defending the district. The offices have air because the security systems are located there and they have to be cooled or the alarms go off all day. Libraries have air because the books have to be stored in a certain temp. zone. The computer labs are air conditioned because the equipment doesn't work if it gets hot. Again I think the children are VERY important and should be in a climate controlled environment. Please don't attack me for providing the why on the offices, libraries and labs."
ReplyDeleteIf the kids all die of heatstroke, who will need the security systems, books, or computers?
Don't any of you remember about 10 years ago when the bond issue to air condition all IPS schools was first proposed and there was a voter outrage? At the same time, there were stories in the paper about how inhumane it was that the animal shelters weren't air conditioned. The blatant racism made my stomach turn then and now. We don't have a huge public outrage that not all our schools are air conditioned because our parents and kids don't have socioeconomic or political power. If Carmel or HSE schools were unairconditioned, there would be a huge uproar that wouldn't stop until the problem was addressed.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, all the animal shelters are now air conditioned.
ReplyDelete"If Carmel or HSE schools were unairconditioned, there would be a huge uproar that wouldn't stop until the problem was addressed."
ReplyDelete---------------
That comment is absolutely true. I am an old white guy who doesn't live in Indianapolis, but I can certainly identify social injustice and racism.
Underneath this casual attention to the mostly minority students in un-air-conditioned classrooms is the attitude: "Well, they are minority children so they don't matter as much."
This sickens me. The African/American and other minority activists in Indianapolis need to be out raising hell.
In the meantime, someone needs to rescue these poor kids from the heat!
Why was the principal at Shortridge unable to report attendance? Shortridge was the only school not to submit a report. There are less than 200 kids there...how hard could it be to count them.....I hope this doesn't mean that one of the administrators has spent his time looking for a new girl friend from among the new faculty members.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that people don't realize is that the jail is air conditioned. The jail. What does it say to children that they don't get the same thing as inmates? I feel sorry about the transportation issues. One thing that the district is trying to do with the new attendance policy is to make parents responsible. How can they be held accountable when the busses don't make it there?
ReplyDeleteThe jail doesn't have windows. Don't get me wrong, the schools should have air. There's plenty of money, it just doesn't get spent on air. But comparing it to windowless jails (or windowless animal shelters) isn't the same at all.
ReplyDelete