Happy Mother's Day! Both of our children were born in May, and I made sure to get some flowers for my wonderful spouse. For those with an historical bent, I recommend last year's Backstory Radio podcast on Mother's Day. For my present to my own mother, I decided not to call her when I got up: I figured she didn't need me to bug her at 6 am her time. Maybe in another hour or so. For the changing face of adoption in Florida, see the St Pete Times feature this morning about a 15-year-old child stuck for 12 years in foster care who was adopted recently.
I'm still swamped by metastasized work obligations, but I'm finishing up grading this weekend and seeing what I need to prepare to teach a summer course that we're switching major assignments on (in this case, from one largish and somewhat awkward paper to several shorter papers). The Florida legislative session ended in chaos early Friday morning, and I have had absolutely no time to follow the quickly-morphing bills related to education. If you live outside Florida, you may have heard of Senate Bill 736, dubbed the "Student Success Act," that promises/threatens to change a bunch of teachers' working conditions. But there's a lot more, including a very weird change in charter-school law that may violate the state's constitution and may authorize the creation of a bunch of charter schools that face effectively no accountability–I don't know whether the bill will in fact create conditions ripe for "mushroom charters" (that propagate and then grow in the dark), but it's something to watch carefully. If you have time.
The one thing I know from the state budget is that USF-Tampa's finances next year are in the middle of the pack if you look at the state university system. If the assumptions on the budget hold (including the tuition hikes built into the state lines), the recurring revenues don't take much of a hit beyond what happened in the last few years, but we lose the federal stimulus dollars in terms of nonrecurring revenues. We will all be paying into retirement, which worries me far more about the lower-paid staff than about myself. (I'm in the "Optional Retirement Program," which is akin to a 403(b), but all employees are treated alike in several pension-program changes.)
In the meantime, there are loads of people hurting in the state. A longtime neighbor is moving out of her foreclosed house as I type, and while she has an apartment to live in, the downsizing of people's homes (in her case, from house to apartment) means Florida is very far from a full recovery. There are plenty of strip malls with >50% vacancy, and while the primary problem right now is idle capacity, the legislature and governor think differently. They have the quaint idea that if we just water down our fairly tepid business regulations so that "growth" (i.e., speculative development) doesn't have to pay for itself in infrastructure, there will be developers banging down the doors to create a new real-estate boom. Or, rather, one could see it as quaint if the consequences weren't going to be destructive to our state's fragile environment and useless for the economy. (That's the Florida "solution": build more strip malls and subdivisions while there are dozens of half-empty ones within a few miles?)
At least we have a surprisingly cool day today. Time to head out with my spouse for some weekly shopping at a store that's still open.
Happy Mother’s Day! and some random thoughts
By Sherman Dorn on May 8, 2011
Happy Mother's Day! Both of our children were born in May, and I made sure to get some flowers for my wonderful spouse. For those with an historical bent, I recommend last year's Backstory Radio podcast on Mother's Day. For my present to my own mother, I decided not to call her when I got up: I figured she didn't need me to bug her at 6 am her time. Maybe in another hour or so. For the changing face of adoption in Florida, see the St Pete Times feature this morning about a 15-year-old child stuck for 12 years in foster care who was adopted recently.
I'm still swamped by metastasized work obligations, but I'm finishing up grading this weekend and seeing what I need to prepare to teach a summer course that we're switching major assignments on (in this case, from one largish and somewhat awkward paper to several shorter papers). The Florida legislative session ended in chaos early Friday morning, and I have had absolutely no time to follow the quickly-morphing bills related to education. If you live outside Florida, you may have heard of Senate Bill 736, dubbed the "Student Success Act," that promises/threatens to change a bunch of teachers' working conditions. But there's a lot more, including a very weird change in charter-school law that may violate the state's constitution and may authorize the creation of a bunch of charter schools that face effectively no accountability–I don't know whether the bill will in fact create conditions ripe for "mushroom charters" (that propagate and then grow in the dark), but it's something to watch carefully. If you have time.
The one thing I know from the state budget is that USF-Tampa's finances next year are in the middle of the pack if you look at the state university system. If the assumptions on the budget hold (including the tuition hikes built into the state lines), the recurring revenues don't take much of a hit beyond what happened in the last few years, but we lose the federal stimulus dollars in terms of nonrecurring revenues. We will all be paying into retirement, which worries me far more about the lower-paid staff than about myself. (I'm in the "Optional Retirement Program," which is akin to a 403(b), but all employees are treated alike in several pension-program changes.)
In the meantime, there are loads of people hurting in the state. A longtime neighbor is moving out of her foreclosed house as I type, and while she has an apartment to live in, the downsizing of people's homes (in her case, from house to apartment) means Florida is very far from a full recovery. There are plenty of strip malls with >50% vacancy, and while the primary problem right now is idle capacity, the legislature and governor think differently. They have the quaint idea that if we just water down our fairly tepid business regulations so that "growth" (i.e., speculative development) doesn't have to pay for itself in infrastructure, there will be developers banging down the doors to create a new real-estate boom. Or, rather, one could see it as quaint if the consequences weren't going to be destructive to our state's fragile environment and useless for the economy. (That's the Florida "solution": build more strip malls and subdivisions while there are dozens of half-empty ones within a few miles?)
At least we have a surprisingly cool day today. Time to head out with my spouse for some weekly shopping at a store that's still open.
Posted in History, Personal, Politics, Random comments