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Monthly Archives: October 2019

Education, School District

School Board, 9.23.19: Educational Goals

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Whitewater has a public school district, and so she has public schools, and those public schools have goals for the students under their care. On September 23rd, eight days ago, some of the district’s principals (and two administrators) presented the goals for their students. (Other presentations will follow, presumably in October.)

These goals are at the heart of education – the skeleton on which muscles and sinews cling. If these are not important – if these are not prominent at all times – then there is a misunderstanding about the very meaning of importance.

When a woman travels to the Louvre, for example, she goes – if she goes sensibly – to behold the works of human genius within. Her apartment might be sunny, her brioche delicious, and her driver courteous, but it is the exhibits within each wing that rightly mean more to her.

So it is with education: some matters – teaching, notably – are more important than others. What goals does a principal have for his or her teachers and students (and how will these goals – if worthy – be achieved?). That’s what’s important.

In the video above, five people (Mike Lovenberg, Andy Rowland, Kelly Seichter, Tom Grosinske, and Mary Kilar) present their 2019-2020 goals (with written presentations embedded below. They present on the video in the order and timestamps listed below:

Mike Lovenberg, Whitewater High School (beginning at 12:20).

Andy Rowland, Technology (beginning at 19:40).

Kelly Seichter, Curriculum (beginning at 23:37).

Tom Grosinske, Washington School (beginning at 37:50).

Mary Kilar, Lincoln School (beginning at 43:27).

[embeddoc url=”https://freewhitewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019-20-Building-Goals-September.pdf” width=”100%” download=”all” viewer=”google”]

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.1.19

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of seventy-eight.  Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 6:35 PM, for 11h 42m 54s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1890, an act of Congress creates Yosemite National Park.

Recommended for reading in full:

Devlin Barrett, Shane Harris, and Matt Zapotosky report Barr personally asked foreign officials to aid inquiry into CIA, FBI activities in 2016:

Attorney General William P. Barr has held private meetings overseas with foreign intelligence officials seeking their help in a Justice Department inquiry that President Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intelligence agencies’ examination of possible connections between Russia and members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the matter.

Barr’s personal involvement is likely to stoke further criticism from Democrats pursuing impeachment that he is helping the Trump administration use executive branch powers to augment investigations aimed primarily at the president’s adversaries.

….

The direct involvement of the nation’s top law enforcement official shows the priority Barr places on the investigation being conducted by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, who has been assigned the sensitive task of reviewing U.S. intelligence work surrounding the 2016 election and its aftermath.

The attorney general’s active role also underscores the degree to which a nearly three-year-old election still consumes significant resources and attention inside the federal government. Current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials expressed frustration and alarm Monday that the head of the Justice Department was taking such a direct role in reexamining what they view as conspiracy theories and baseless allegations of misconduct.

Reminder: What Attorney General Barr said vs. what the Mueller report said:

Ishaan Tharoor writes China’s 70th anniversary party can’t hide a sense of unease:

The rise of “a true opposition movement would take a systemic crisis — say, a real economic meltdown or a climate-induced catastrophe — that doesn’t yet seem likely,” Beijing-based journalist Ian Johnson noted. “And so, superficially at least, the Communist Party seems to go from strength to strength, relying on China’s capable civil service to make sure the high-speed trains run on time, the highways hum with new cars, and the aircraft carriers get built.”

But there’s a tension burrowed inside this seeming stability, Johnson concluded: “It is precisely this return to prosperity that has given people the opportunity to contemplate a century-old question: what exactly holds their country together other than brute force?”

Tonight’s Sky for October 2019:

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