Comments for Save Grade 2

Comment on Comments by Andrew Gilmour

Andrew Gilmour — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:17:18 +0000

Want to properly fund public schools without a higher cost?
Rethink the foolish school board system.
Keep the elected boards. Assign a number of schools to each board member and make him/her responsible/accountable for those schools. He/she will have to face the taxpayers in the next school board elections.
Give principals adequate funding to manage/administer their schools and let them do it. That’s their job. Evaluate them on job performance anually and replace those who fall short.
Do the same with classroom teachers reporting to the principal – he’s the school manager.
Ensure kids are actually ready for school when they start school. It isn’t the teacher who should be showing them how to wipe their bums.
Ensure students are ready to progress to the next level and stop shoving them through the system. It isn’t working.
Dump the “education careerists”. They aren’t needed and are detrimental.

Just a few thoughts.

Comment on Comments by Andrew Gilmour

Andrew Gilmour — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:46:23 +0000

Here is the perfect tool for our educational careerists.

http://www.sciencegeek.net/lingo.html

Comment on Comments by Andrew Gilmour

Andrew Gilmour — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:19:04 +0000

Here is the perfect too for our educational careerists.

http://www.sciencegeek.net/lingo.html

Comment on Comments by Andrew Gilmour

Andrew Gilmour — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:19:33 +0000

Roy says: just do not ask any questions.

There are never any straight answers anyway – only the talking points.

Comment on Comments by Roy

Roy — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:47:30 +0000

This is evidence of the “cloak and dagger” template commonly used in Education. It was used in Lunenburg when 4 area schools were closed in favour of a monster P-9. Town Council approved the closure of its own schools before the local School Advisory Committee even considered fully the impact assesments, pertinent data/information etc. They made their decision 6 months before the recommended deadline. The SAC caved in and recommended closure of the Junior /Senior High. The local school board spin doctors said “It was either a P-9 or lose all Lunenburg schools”
As usual, and in this case also, the support of parents is demanded – just do not ask any questions.

Comment on Comments by Peggy Chisholm

Peggy Chisholm — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:21:50 +0000

Andrew, I assumed there was collaboration going on. Then ,when a School Board member creates a FB site for people to give extra support for the cause and the PR person for the NSTU doesn’t even know who create it and obviously never even looked at it, it clearly shows there is no collaboration.

Comment on Comments by Andrew Gilmour

Andrew Gilmour — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:16:09 +0000

Peggy Chisholm says: “in small ,closed groups, with a a very narrow focus and narrowminded thinking.”

There’s an interesting observation. If one goes to board websites and reads the minutes to meetings, most of the decisions are made “in camera”, that is, in secrecy. The public is explicitly excluded from observing the pros and cons on which board decisions are based.
Then there are the directives to all that discussions should not be held outside the school groups using “confidentiality” as the cover for secrecy. These directives are endemic to the NSTU, school boards, NSSBA, Department of Education and the rest of the “Education Partners”
As usual, the public is excluded from pretty much everything other than the attempts at PR damage control.

Comment on Comments by Peggy Chisholm

Peggy Chisholm — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:57:14 +0000

Here is my response :
Ms. Murray,
Thank you for your response to my e-mail regarding my concern that e-mails to the “Save Grade 2″ movement were not being answered. I feel, from here on in, these discussions should not be left to office assistants, or PR people for that matter. The leaders of the Education Partners should be e-mailing the people directly and responding to concerns directly. A good assistant can surely receive e-mails and alert you to the ones you need to respond to immediately. A triage, if you will.This will lend much more credibility to this movement.
As far as the facebook site goes, it was started by David Finlaysin, HRSB member for Bedford. The Nova Scotia School Board Association is first on the list of Education Partners on the Save Grade 2 website. There are 991 members this group that has your logo prominently displayed at the top. I’m not sure why this would be completely overlooked, at a time when you need all the support you can get. I know for a fact that there are teachers in that group.
I would like to express my observation that this is working as the Education System does now; in small ,closed groups, with a a very narrow focus and narrowminded thinking. I urge you to talk with the other partners about this e-mail and it’s contents and come up with a better way to share information, work together and respond to the concerns of the parents out there. This is not the job of an office assistants.
Please, pass this message to the leaders of the Education Partners. It’s bad PR for them to leave it to there PR persons office assistant to be on the front lines of this.
Thank you for your time,
Peggy chisholm.

Comment on Comments by Peggy Chisholm

Peggy Chisholm — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:52:56 +0000

E-mail Correspondence between myself and NSTU PR person:

Hi Peggy,

You received an email from my assistant Marcie Hirtle, who is charged with
sending out the weekly emails for subscribers to the Save Grade 2 website. I
work for the Nova Scotia Teachers Union, one of the member organizations of
the Education Partners.

The Facebook site that you have mentioned was not created by the Education
Partners. I believe it was created by someone interested in our campaign. We
would not have received anything from an outside source¹s Facebook site.

–
Angela Murray, BA, BPR
Public Relations Coordinator
Nova Scotia Teachers Union
3106 Joseph Howe Drive
Halifax, N.S. B3L 4L7
(902) 477-5621
Direct: (902) 479-4708
Cell: (902) 497-0194
fax: (902) 477-3517
amurray@nstu.ca
http://www.nstu.ca

Please consider the environment before printing this email

The contents of this e-mail are confidential. If you have received this
message in error please contact the sender and delete the email immediately.

> On 2/26/10 2:53 PM, “ronpeggy@eastlink.ca” wrote:
>
>> Just wondering what your job titles are? Curiosity. Also, how willing are the
>> school boards to find ways to save money? Not talking job cuts, just
>> improving effiencies,etc. A man named neil Mcneil posted on the facebook site
>> that he would offer his consultation services for free. I e-mailed to ask him
>> if he was contacted by anyone. He said that he was not. This concerns me that
>> he wasn’t even at the very least thanked for his offer. It makes me wonder if
>> we can really do this.
>> Peggy Chisholm.

Comment on Comments by Andrew Gilmour

Andrew Gilmour — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:30:24 +0000

If one looks at our university attendance I think we’d find that the most popular courses lead to government or pera-government employment. There’s very little else to do.