jackiedoherty.org

News, schools, and views from a uniquely Lowell perspective
13th May 2010

Excuses, excuses

posted in Just life |

Since Jackie relayed the story of the family wedding at her house as a reason for not writing, I thought I would offer my excuse for being a lax blogger. Not that excuses mean much in the blogosphere – as in academia, it is strictly “publish or perish,” but we’re hoping that we can be more dedicated going forward. My excuse is that I decided to try to resolve my ongoing midlife crisis (what do I want to do with myself?) and go back to school by taking two challenging and radically different classes – one, an online course in Legal Research Methods which involved many hours at the law library and the other a graduate class in Literary Theory which was literally the most difficult and challenging class I’ve ever taken. (I’m actually not quite done with the theory class as I’m still writing my final paper and am only about a third into it.) Between reading cases at the law library and reading dense, scholarly journal articles three or four times each, plus writing law memoranda and theoretical response papers, I’ve been putting in a good 6-10 hours a day, including weekends. So, all of my blogging had to be put aside, along with house cleaning, yard work, socializing, etc. Well, I hope I don’t sound like I’m complaining – I love taking classes and feel rather lucky to be doing so. If nothing else, I’m too busy to worry about what I “should” be doing. Okay, back to that paper….

There are currently 4 responses to “Excuses, excuses”

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  1. 1 On May 13th, 2010, kpemscott said:

    Welcome back! I look forward to your posts on the school budget meetings and I have been looking for them on a regular basis. I am hoping that the parents and school community take an active role in the budget hearings.

  2. 2 On May 14th, 2010, Jackie said:

    Thanks and as you may know, the school committee will receive the superintendent’s budget recommendations at its meeting this Wednesday. Tough times for the schools as resources continue to dwindle while student needs increase, so please do stay involved!

  3. 3 On May 14th, 2010, kpemscott said:

    Unfortunately I spoke with a group of parents at my daughters school and they said, “they always say there will be cuts and then it never happens they come up with funding through grants or something.” I am not sure that the message has gotten out there that the situation is bad!

  4. 4 On May 14th, 2010, Jackie said:

    Since 2002, we have eliminated 500 positions from the schools. Perhaps they haven’t noticed? When my son, who is now a junior at LHS, was in the first grade, he had a paraprofessional in his class all day, another adult helping students learn to read; he also had science, art, and music teachers as well as librarians. Our elementary students do not have science as a special these days, and paras are shared between several classes. One of the proposed cuts in this year’s budget is to eliminate 38 paras from the elementary grades, all library media specialists, as well as several art and music teachers. I’m hoping the cuts don’t have to go that deep, and without exact numbers, we don’t know for sure, but based on the information we have, significant cuts are inevitable.

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