Lunch at School

All California students are fed at school:

California Universal Meals is the first of its kind in the country. Since the start of this meal program last year, children no longer need to pay for their lunches using cash, tickets or punching in their student identification. Breakfast and lunch are free at all California schools — no application is required.

 It’s an important step to ensuring children are healthy, fed and ready to learn. 

Research shows that receiving free or reduced school meals “reduces food insecurity, obesity rates, and poor health,” according to the Food Research and Action Center. Providing healthy options to students also has an impact on what students choose to consume, especially when it comes to fruits and vegetables.

You know who can't get a lunch at school?  Me. 

Because students don't have to pay for lunch anymore, there's no mechanism to collect money anymore.  Therefore, staff cannot buy lunch.  And our person in charge of Food Services is adamant about that.

Can you imagine having a cafeteria at your workplace but being told you can't get a lunch there?  And we get only 35 minutes for lunch, so there's not enough time to leave campus to get something.  It's either bring something or go hungry.

It's just another of those small things that add up to a large quantity of disrespect directed from our district royalty towards the employees.

(Coda:  some time maybe I'll post about the rules for students--for example, they are required to take one of everything.  So many fruits and baby carrots end up in the garbage cans....)

Accountability

From Instapundit:

Merit vs Equity

Merit:

Merit was never a dirty word for Blacks. Competing on merit empowered us to destroy racist stereotypes about our capabilities, shatter color barriers, and pioneer inventions that improved all Americans' quality of life...

Merit-based programs operate as burners lighting a fire under a gifted young person. Kids, especially those from low-income households and struggling minority homes, are pushed to the limits of their abilities in these programs, rather than being held back. Some of them persevere against added obstacles of poverty, unstable homes, cultural assimilation and discrimination...

Social justice bureaucrats are fighting for equality of outcomes by lowering standards and eliminating gifted programming from public schools. Parents are right to push back for the sake of their children’s education. Increasingly, they are winning. 

Equity: 

One California high school has eliminated honors classes for ninth- and 10th-grade students. While school officials claim that the change was necessary to increase "equity," the move has angered students and parents alike.

"We really feel equity means offering opportunities to students of diverse backgrounds, not taking away opportunities for advanced education and study," one parent who opposed the change told The Wall Street Journal...

However, even if some ethnic groups are still underrepresented, nixing advanced courses is not the solution.

"I just don't see how removing something from some kids all of a sudden helps other kids learn faster," one education researcher told The Wall Street Journal.

When schools eliminate educational opportunities for gifted students, those who are most hurt by the change are disadvantaged, academically talented students. While wealthier families can move to a new school district or enroll their children in private school, low-income parents—and their kids—are stuck. While getting rid of honors courses was supposedly designed to help black and Latino students, it will deprive opportunities of many of the same kids it was intended to help.

Race to the bottom.

Adherents of the Church of Global Warming

click to enlarge

Remember When Saying This Got You Labeled A Conspiracy Theorist?

It was always the most logical and likely explanation, which is why lefties had to try to gaslight anyone who believed it:

Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, Energy Department Now Says

New Furniture

Over Christmas break, all the student desks at my school were replaced with small, wheeled desks with separate (and relatively ergonomic) chairs.  We were on break this past week, and all the teacher furniture--desks, filing cabinets, tables, bookshelves, etc--were replaced.  We were told not to go back to school until yesterday, so they had time to replace all the furniture, and I went back today.

It's not what I had, and I'm not convinced it's any "better", but I spent a couple hours today moving furniture and unpacking boxes.  I can make it work.  In what had been my biggest fear, I did in fact get a legal-width filing cabinet, so at least I won't have to re-do all my filing.

I cheated a little bit.  I was supposed to empty my filing cabinet into boxes, and let whoever it was take my filing cabinet.  No way was I going to risk that, though, so I moved my filing cabinet to the library, which won't get a makeover until Spring Break.  Tomorrow, when the library is open, I'll move my old filing cabinet back, transfer all the files, and then get rid of the old filing cabinet.

Why not just keep the old filing cabinet, you ask?  Because, and I'm serious about this, in the name of equity, we all have to have the same furniture!  We were given a spreadsheet of approved furniture to choose from, and were told explicitly that no personal or other equipment in the classroom will be allowed.  In fact, the district people are supposed to come back in a few weeks and check on compliance!  Regarding furniture!  I kid you not!

I asked if I could get my filing cabinet delivered early, as some of the furniture was being pre-positioned before the break, so that I could easily do what I'm now going to do anyway, which is just transfer my files from one cabinet to another.  No, I was told, I'm getting paid to pack the files up, and that was what I needed to do.

Screw that.

Moving all that furniture around, and unboxing all my classroom books and references and supplies, my back is now killing me.  I'm getting too old for this crap.  The pittance they're paying me to box and unbox my stuff is not worth it.

Angela Davis Crawls Out Of Her Hole Again

I despise this woman so much, I admit to taking even just a hint of glee at her discomfort upon learning that she, a Black Panther member, is descended from someone on the Mayflower:

Activist, communist and former fugitive Angela Davis was shocked to learn she is a Mayflower descendent on Tuesday’s “Finding Your Roots” episode. 

Now 79, Davis was the latest to appear on the PBS show where celebrities and public figures learn about their ancestry. 

Near the episode’s end, after discussing multiple members of her family, the former Black Panther learned she’s descended from William Brewster, one of the 101 people who came to the colonies in 1620 aboard the Mayflower. 

“No, I can’t believe this,” Davis replied, laughing. “No, my ancestors did not come here on the Mayflower"...

“Would you ever in your wildest dreams think that you may have been descended from the people who laid the foundation of this country?” he asked. 

“Never, never, never, never, never,” she said.

So is her share of reparations payments to be cut down upon learning this, that she carries the evil oppressor's blood in her?  No, because there's no good argument for reparations:

As horrified as Davis may be at finding out this information about her lineage, she shouldn’t be. Even if she were right about her interpretation of “old America,” she has nothing to do with it and she has nothing to be ashamed of. The sins of the father shouldn’t be paid by the son; likewise, we shouldn’t judge Davis’ grandchildren for having a commie as a grandmother. 

Leftists have a hard time understanding that we shouldn’t encourage people to behave like the communist regime in North Korea, which punishes all descendants with imprisonment for up to three generations for a single action of someone who happens to be in their bloodline whom they may never have met. 

History is complex because people are complex. We should stop being overly critical and simplistic about the behavior of our ancestors, who were people of their time, by comparing it to our present-day norms and social expectations. 

As clean as we think our hands are, in a couple of generations, our descendants could easily look back and shake their heads at some of the barbarism we think is completely normal and remains legal. 

Just because we know how to utilize far more advanced gadgets than our predecessors doesn’t mean that we are any less humanly flawed than them (sic). 

Rather than constantly litigating and debating the past, why don’t we continue to build a better country together? 

Hear hear.

I despise Davis for her actions, not those of her ancestors.  She gets no blame for any wrong they did, and no credit for any good they did.  Evaluated on her own merits, I find her lacking.

Tipping

I'm old enough to remember when 15% was considered an appropriate tip.

ANYway, do food servers still make a sub-minimum wage that is expected to be supplemented by tips?  I don't know, but if not, why is someone making $15-$20/hr expecting to be tipped?  California's minimum wage is $15.50/hr this year, with some local jurisdictions mandating a higher wage; I've seen starting pay at fast food restaurants advertised at $18/hr.  Is there really a need for a tip jar?

I'm not interested in the "living wage" argument, as I don't think people should be paid based on what they need, but rather on the value they bring to a company.  Neither do I think that a minimum wage worker should expect to support a family on that income.  And yes, I know that minimum wage purchasing power peaked in 1968 and is now about 58% of that peak--but compare California's minimum wage to that peak.

I'm fairly generous with tipping at a restaurant, having once dated a "food server", but am far less tolerant of the tipping craze at a place like Starbucks.  I'm clearly not alone in this view:

Let's be clear. The only scenario where I am strictly anti-tipping is in the case of cows. I'm not even remotely tired of tipping my restaurant server who is providing me with a service while probably being paid considerably less than minimum wage per hour. What I am tired of are the ubiquitous tip jars on every countertop of every place I go into. I get it, everyone wants to make a little bit of extra money, but a tip jar in some situations seems, well, not okay...

Again, I am not against tipping. It's just that when a server receives tips, it counts as part of their income, and they're required to report those tips to the IRS so taxes can be paid on them. Tips are to make up for the fact that servers are earning a reduced hourly wage rather than a standard minimum wage. I doubt the employee at the yogurt shop claimed those two dimes and three pennies I begrudgingly left as her tip. I just need a little bit more effort or involvement from someone to feel like a tip is warranted. The hair stylist who spends 90 minutes cutting and coloring the mop on my head? Absolutely. The bellhop who lugs my overstuffed luggage to my hotel room. Of course. The cashier at the deli who talked on their cell phone while I handed them two dollars for a Chapstick? No, I will not be dropping my spare coins into the Styrofoam cup that's taped to the countertop...

But if even I am tired of tipping, then others must be completely drained by it. Could it be that this pervasiveness of gratuities is dulling the senses for tip weary consumers and possibly making them leave less to the people who really depend on it? Hopefully not, because if your restaurant server lives in Texas or one of the other states that only pays $2.13 an hour that server is as dependent on tips as I am to Sondheim musicals.

Learning Is Hard Work

That this article appeared in the leftist LA Times tells you that there are cracks forming in the narrative:

A growing achievement gap between Asian American students and their white classmates is due largely to greater work effort and cultural attitudes, not innate cognitive ability, researchers say.

In a study published Monday in the journal PNAS, two sociology professors found that Asian Americans enter school with no clear academic edge over whites, but that an advantage grows over time.

Even if they come from poorer, less educated families, Asian Americans significantly outperform white students by fifth grade, authors wrote.

“What accounts for Asians’ greater academic effort than whites?” asked study authors Amy Hsin of Queens College in New York and Yu Xie of the University of Michigan.

“Asian and Asian American youth are harder working because of cultural beliefs that emphasize the strong connection between effort and achievement,” the authors wrote. “Studies show that Asian and Asian American students tend to view cognitive abilities as qualities that can be developed through effort, whereas white Americans tend to view cognitive abilities as qualities that are inborn.”

Read the whole thing.

Juxtaposition

As I lie in bed this morning, scrolling through the online versions of many US newspapers (there's an app for that), I happened upon two almost-consecutive articles in the New York Post.  I read them both. 

I put my boyfriend on a Performance Improvement Plan to save our relationship 

Nadeen Hui shared earlier this week on TikTok that she “put (her) boyfriend on probation” early in their relationship, when they were experiencing “a lot of issues.”

“Ultimately I felt like we weren’t compatible, even though we have a lot of love for each other,” she said in the clip, which has been viewed by more than 357,000 people.

“As a last straw, we decided to do a performance improvement plan. For those of you not (working) in tech, a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) … is what you get put on when they’re about to fire you.

“And before you come at me, I know it’s kind of harsh to some of you, but he’s an engineer and sometimes it’s really hard to communicate with him without using something that he can already relate to. Plus, he kind of liked it.”

Hui went on to explain the couple had “a shared note with daily and weekly tasks he needed to do, and set of things that he needed to work on, and it worked out really well.”

So well, in fact, that they continue to use a similar system for “household chores” and “things that he’s responsible for … that has been the only thing that has stuck and works.”

Six out of 10 young men are single — the disturbing reasons why

They’re not getting jerked around by dating anymore.

New Pew Research Center data has found that nowadays, 63% of men under 30 are electively single, up from 51% in 2019 — and experts blame erotic alone time online as a major culprit.

“[Young men] are watching a lot of social media, they’re watching a lot of porn, and I think they’re getting a lot of their needs met without having to go out,” psychologist Fred Rabinowitz told the Hill.

“I think that’s starting to be a habit.” 

Am I the only one who sees a connection?

In Memoriam

The post I wrote when Queen Elizabeth died was brief, almost pithy, but hidden in it was deep sorrow, as someone I respected--and whom my formerly-British grandmother adored--was gone.

The Royal Mint, and mints around the world, started putting out commemorative coins.  I picked out two to purchase, one from the Royal Mint and one from the Royal Canadian Mint.  The one from the Royal Mint arrived today:

This set with the coin and the stamps has a production quantity of 20,000 and, according to the mint's web site, is no longer available.

The Canadian set should arrive in late March and has a mintage of 7,500.

Where Does The Responsibility Lie?

In the last couple months I've had two parents challenge me over their students' grades.  One explicitly states that since grade inflation is everywhere, I should inflate his student's grade; the other claims that I don't teach.

I ran across Joanne's post Learning Is Hard and agree with the following:

Cramming the night before the test with music playing in the background is not effective, says Willingham. Writing down everything the teacher says? Also not effective. Highlighting everything that seems important in the textbook? If you're a beginner, you'll highlight the wrong things.

He tells students how to analyze a lecture, read a complex text and take useful notes and the importance of avoiding distractions (your brain is not good at multi-tasking) and quizzing yourself. Multiple study sessions work best. 

Do I believe my students are doing the above?  I believe many do what's in the first quoted paragraph, I'm much less sure about the second paragraph (although I know some try to quiz themselves).

When I was working on my master's degree, I had the option of doing a thesis or taking a cumulative test.  It took me 5 years, one class a semester, to earn that degree, and having to study material I'd learned up to five years before presented a challenge.  The test was scheduled for May, so starting in January I got up early every school day and reviewed for 15-20 minutes.  At best I could review one topic in that time period, and sometimes not even a full topic, but reviewing material every day meant that I didn't have to cram the day or so before the test (although I took the day before the test off work and focused on the big topics).  When I finished all the big topics, I'd start back with the first one and go over them all again.  I don't know what I scored on that test, but I earned the degree, so that's something!  I'm a firm believer in "slow and steady wins the race" if you really want to learn and not just pass a test.

White Kids Don't Deserve To Learn

A couple days ago I posted about a California district that didn't want white people to come to an event, today I'll post about a Massachusetts school that didn't want white students in a math program:

A Massachusetts public school district is facing a federal civil rights complaint over a math program allegedly only available to students of minority backgrounds.

The complaint, filed by advocacy group Parents Defending Education (PDE) Tuesday, accuses Milton Public Schools (MPS) of racial discrimination and political indoctrination. The accusations target "The Calculus Project," a MPS program which allows students who partake to attend workshops and enrichment courses designed to strengthen their understanding of mathematics.

Both PDE and MPS parents argue that "The Calculus Project" is discriminatory due to its mission of increasing "the representation and success of Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, People of Color, and low-income students." They also note several benefits that seemingly only such students would be able to obtain, including leadership opportunities and socialization.

Parents have expressed their concerns over the fairness and legality of "The Calculus Project" to MPS administrators.

"The Calculus Project is a wonderful idea to promote high level mathematics and kudos to those students that take advantage of this program," one parent states in email correspondence obtained by PDE. "My question is WHY is this not a program for all at MPS. It seems to me this program in itself is discriminatory against children that aren’t “African American / Black and Latin X."

The mind boggles that people think this is OK.

Ebert's Best Movies

Of these 10 movies, I've only seen two of them--and only sorta liked one of those.  (I'm not one much for cerebral films, for the most part.)

Which two do you think they are?  What movie do you think should be on this list but isn't?  I've noticed that no blockbusters outside of Casablanca are on the list--does Ebert have something against financially successful films?

Sports

I've said this for years:  if "equity" is so important, especially in schools, then we should apply it to athletics and not just to academics:

Equity is all the rage in public schools. Academic excellence is a sin if it does not occur in proportion to whatever racial categories administrators embrace. Across the country, magnet schools eliminate colorblind entrance exams or Advanced Placement courses if too many Asians or too few African Americans pass...

If schools are to prioritize equity over equality, result over opportunity, and use skin color and sexual orientation as their primary metric of diversity, why not take their crusade further? Why should varsity sports become the sole survivor of their war on merit? If diversity is the prize, shouldn’t football teams prioritize playing Asians and Jews, both underrepresented, in order to achieve athletic equity? Likewise, if one varsity baseball player has a batting average of .300 and another just .100, wouldn’t equity demand that the second player have three times as many at-bats to achieve an equal number of hits?

And if Title IX, despite its original intent, can mandate cuts to some sports teams to ensure the proper proportion of male and female opportunities regardless of individual interest, shouldn’t the Americans with Disability Act be enough reason to cut others? After all, ice hockey inherently discriminates against paraplegics.

It is of course possible to go down a racial and religious rabbit hole. African Americans dominate the NBA today, but just a century ago, Jews dominated professional basketball. Is it antisemitic that the NBA today boasts only one Jewish player ? Or is it possible that for reasons of culture or individual choice, members of other groups simply tried harder and outperformed Jewish players?

We don't apply "equity" to sports because sports is important.

Ski Week

My district gets this upcoming week off work.

I don't feel bad about it.  We started the school year in early August.  It's nice to have a couple more breaks in the school year.  I had planned to go camping this week but some health issues got in the way.  Here's hoping for some camping over Spring Break!

Usually I don't bring schoolwork home.  I try to keep a firm line between my home life and my school life.  If I have work that needs to be done, usually I'll stay late at school to get it done rather than bring it home.  I did bring home a few quizzes from late Friday, though, and some statistics projects to grade.  If I spend 20 min a day over the rest of the break, I'll have it all graded.

We're not even allowed on campus this week.  In what is a case of trying to repair the engine while the airplane is in flight, our campus is getting new furniture this week.  I'll probably have to go in next weekend and get my classroom organized so I can teach Monday morning.  Until then, though, it's 20 min/day, and the rest of the time is my own.

Big Boobs

I can't decide if this dude is a sicko or if he's the greatest troll in the history of trolling:

A Canadian teacher who made international headlines for wearing gigantic prosthetic breasts rarely wears them outside of school — raising questions about whether the vulgar costume is just an act.

While parents have raged about transgender teacher Kayla Lemieux being allowed to wear Z-cup prosthetics in front of students, the shop teacher was spotted ditching the controversial fetishistic fashion after work and stepping out in public dressed as a man...

After shopping at a department store and pet supplies shop dressed as a woman, Lemieux headed home to get changed and emerged dressed as a man 30 minutes later. 

Lemieux then spent the afternoon in public wearing men’s sweatpants, trainers, a gray T-shirt and a navy puffer vest without breasts, makeup, glasses or wig.

I guess "and" is a good alternative, too.

Federal Debt

There might be 7 of us left in this country who are concerned about annual deficits and the national debt, and it's strange to see CNN publish an article about the topic:

If it feels like we’re dedicating a lot of recent What Matters editions to the national debt, we are.

It’s a top political story as Republicans and Democrats square off over raising the debt limit and paying the nation’s bills.

But the larger issue of the government spending more than it collects in tax revenue – and whether or when that will become an existential threat to the way Americans live today – should not be so quickly bypassed.

In recent weeks, we’ve:

• Talked to an academic who argues the debt is not as much of a problem as we presume.
• Looked at the looming insolvency of key Medicare and Social Security trust funds.

There’s more this week:

• The annual bottom-line financial report of the US released Thursday by the Treasury Department showed the country’s current path to be “unsustainable.”

• A separate Congressional Budget Office report released Wednesday confirms interest rate hikes will make the ballooning national debt much more expensive to finance. In a matter of years, just paying interest on debt will eat up a significant portion of tax revenue.

  More plainly put, that means the portion of every tax dollar going to interest on the debt will grow from:

  • 13 cents of every tax dollar spent on interest in 2023 to
  • 20 cents of every tax dollar spent on interest in 2033.

  I talked to Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that tries to raise awareness about the debt and spur Congress to act to fix the problem.

  Excerpts of our phone conversation are below....

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." --Chief Justice Roberts

I marvel that in 2023, people think they can get away with crap like this:

A California school district held an event for employees of color but warned educators that they should not invite their White peers because of "feelings of uneasiness and mistrust."

The Acalanes Union High School District (AUHSD), in the Bay Area, hosted an event for all employees of color on February 8, but Dr. Lynnā McPhatter-Harris, the director of Student Support Equity & Inclusion for the district reminded employees their White peers should not be invited to participate, according to an email shared exclusively by Libs of TikTok with Fox News Digital. 

"Hello POCC staff, we are ready for out first coming together in 2023," McPhatter-Harris' email read. "We are looking forward to seeing our people of color in the district. Please invite any employee of color to this event."

"Be reminded that we have avoided inviting people that are not of color as there remains feelings of uneasiness and mistrust and we need this to be a safe space for our people of color," the email continued. "Please reach out to me if you have any questions of concerns."

If I said I needed a so-called safe space from people of color, I'd be crucified.  Yes, it's exactly the same thing.  There are not, or at least there are not supposed to be, different rules based on skin color.  We fought a civil war and had a civil rights movement primarily in support of that simple thesis.

Boy

A few people seem to be trying to make a big deal out of this:

President Biden on Wednesday used the term “boy” while referring to Wes Moore, Maryland’s first Black governor, in a speech about the economy.

Speaking in Maryland, Mr. Biden gave a shout to the governor, recalling Mr. Moore’s days playing wide receiver on Johns Hopkins University’s football team.

“You got a hell of a new governor in Wes Moore. He’s the real deal and the boy looks like he can still play,” the 80-year-old Mr. Biden said. “He’s got some guns on him.”

I’m going to cut Biden some slack here.  Referring to “the boy” as he did was akin to me referring to much younger people as “the kid”.  I don’t see his use of “boy” in this context as having any racial animus or even undertones.

Of course, had a Republican said exactly the same thing, I’m quite sure our “friends” on the left would not be as understanding as I am.  That’s part of what makes them such despicable humans.