Feb 14
Parents across Wake County are telling the school system that proposed schedule changes this fall will increase their child-care costs and disrupt their children’s activity and sleep schedules.
A repeated theme among the more than 6,200 responses to the school system’s ongoing survey is that shifting when schools start and dismiss will inconvenience families. Wake County school administrators say the changes that would affect most of Wake’s 165 schools will save $10 million in transportation-related costs and make bus service more efficient, but parents say they’re worried they’ll pay the price instead.
“I agree that saving $10 million is a lot of money, but there has to be some other way,” Cyndi Tomblin, a Cary parent facing thousands of dollars in additional child-care costs, said in an interview Tuesday.
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Tags: Schedules
Feb 08
My State is better than your state! (Or Province or District.)
The No Child Left Behind Law, for better or worse, is a Federal program to make states to a better job in education. It is a fairly specific plan. But many states came up with their own plans which are different, yet in some cases, still considered effective. A state can apply for a waiver of the NCLB regulations if they have come up with an alternative that is as good or better.
The Federal government is reported to be prepared to grant waivers to ten states and they are, alphabetically: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. New Mexico also applied for a waiver but will not receive one, but may manage to do so with a few changes that are currently in negotiation. A majority of other states, DC, and Puerto Rico plan to seek waivers as well.
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Tags: Child Left, Left, No Child, No Child Left
Jan 14
Darrell Dawson has only one regret about his stand-up career that he did not start it sooner.
Now living in the Columbus area, the 1992 Richmond Heights High graduate has moved up the comedy ladder and is aiming to get more feature work throughout the Midwest this year.
Dawson, who works in marketing for The Columbus Dispatch in his day job, says he made a New Years resolution in 2008 to get onstage and his comedy career has grown from there. I wish I had started at 22.
He also thinks Ohios state capital is a good place to do stand-up. In Columbus, there a lot of decent shows to get on, he says.
His aim this year, he adds, is to come out of my shell more. I will always be low-key, but Im looking to connect more with the audience.
People can keep up on his activities at darrelldawson.net.
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Tags: Darrell Dawson, Dawson, Richmond Heights
Jan 09
Helping students with their homework, it turns out, can be big business.
That’s how Advanced Instructional Systems has quietly become one of N.C. State University’s largest and fastest-growing spinoffs.
Now the company is making plans to build on its basic online service, using information it learns about each student from answers they get wrong to create a form of instant, customized tutoring that’s available around the clock.
The company, which offers an online assignment and testing service for university and high school students called WebAssign, was started by a small group of academics on campus in the late 1990s. NCSU holds rights to part of the underlying computer coding and company trademark and licenses those to the company, which is owned by a handful of its employees.
AIS moved from the main campus onto the public-private Centennial Campus in 2003 with just a dozen employees, said John S.
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Tags: Homework, Homework Service