So I'm a little late to this one as I was pretty busy last week and on vacation but over at 281 exposed we have some more "humor" about the number of employees the district has.  So the claim is that with 2000 district employees why are we seeing such "huge" claims of student enrollment.  Here is what 281 Exposed says:

Now I'm no math genius but does that mean we have six students per employee? OK now before someone comments that not all these employees are teachers, we already know that. But let's say for conversations sake that half of the employees are teachers. That still gives us a 12 to 1 ratio.

So a quick look at the district web site and we had (in 2007-08 - before the big round of cuts) the following:

Teachers * - 856
EA's - 329
Cust/Drivers - 193
Other - 450
Total: 1827

* includes social workers, psychologists, nurses, counselors, occupational therapist

So the first question is, what are the "other number".  This seems like a pretty big number at first but a quick review of the online staff directory shows the following groups missing from these numbers: Administration (33 principals/IA's - 6 cabinet - 30 or so secretaries), Media Services (15 in school + another 5 at central media), Technology (14), Food Service (15 + other cooks - I would guess close to 80 most of which are part time), Print Shop (6), Finance (6), Payroll (3), Testing Services (2), HR (4), Community Ed (30 or so), Communications Department (2) and a bunch more employees who are part-time/seasonal.

So now that we have the answer to the 450 question let's take a peak back at the real question of "doing the math".  In 08-09 we had 59 teachers let go.  So going into last year we had 797 teachers.  So now we are up to 15.6 per teacher.  Then we need to chop off the * who aren't in the classrooms.  We have about 42 people who make up the * above.  So now we have 755 in classroom teachers (16.5).  Now where does the number go from 16.5 to 1 up to the closer 28 to 1 numbers.  There are two places where the numbers skew.  Elementary school (where there are more teachers to keep numbers low - remember the district targets 24 to 1) and special education.  Spec Ed is where the numbers start to float up.  There is currently 13% of students in RAS are special ed.  Now, not all of those numbers fit into this category, but in many special ed. class rooms it is typical to see a teacher to student ratio of 1 to 7 or so.  There are about 135 special ed teachers in the district and again, not all of them are in this same category.  Let's say that 2/3 of them are (or about 88 teachers representing about 616 students).  So now we have 11884 students and 667 teachers or a 17.9 ratio.  Now there are other target areas that require low class sizes including skills reading classes, math skills and a bunch of others that like Spec. Ed could drive up the numbers.

So can I explain for certain where the district comes up with the average class size numbers?  No, I'm sure there is a really pretty and complex formula used for it that my former boss has.  But what we should note is that simply taking a raw number and dividing by the total number of students is a simplistic formula and there is much more to it than that.

So I've been working on incorporating Windows Live Writer blogging software into my web site.  This has some nice advantages including the ability to post pictures, manage the site and a bunch of other stuff directly from the Windows Client.  Of course, the challenge has been getting it to work.

So we have had posting and editing of messages working for a while.  I decided it was time to revisit the picture uploading of files.  Why?  Because this opens up the world to many different possibilities when it comes to posting all sorts of information to the web site.  Although I have believed the future was the web and posting on the web I've never found a good way to effectively post all of my content to the web through something like FCKEditor.  Well, now you don't have to anymore!

So this is just a sample picture taken from Windows 7.  All I had to do was select it and up it went with the post.  So what is left to figure out for Windows Live Writer? Deleting posts, gathering all posts already on a site, categories and themes (for preview purposes).  So I'm now onto one of those items in addition to the many other things I'm working on all the time.

Update #2: Deleting Posts is done!  Working on categories now.

Update #3 - 6/15: Categories are all working now.  Onto gathering all posts next.

Update #4 - 6/15: Get all posts now works also.  I'm not sure themes will ever work but we will see what happens.

I'm going to try to start responding on a weekly basis to the absolute insanity that is making it ways into the paper and onto the blogs.  I have one goal in life and that is to make sure that my kids have a better education than I did.  We all know that it starts at home but a big part of that is the quality and type of education that occurs at the school.  Without supporting our teachers and administrators nothing will ever change.  This doesn't mean we give them a blank check - all need to be held accountable in the process - and that includes holding parents responsible to. 

I have lots to say but little time in my crazy busy life to write it down but I'm going to be more focused and dedicated to writing.  So I'm going to start modest and try to fit three things into my writings - Debate, School and Work.  You may ask - why no family - I will from time to time but I for the most part live a pretty boring life.  So here goes for the first one:

Response To Todd/281 Exposed:

In a recent Sun Post article we got some interesting comments from Todd from Plymouth and reposted over at 281 Exposed. 

We heard for the longest time that Robbinsdale Area Schools needed money to reduce class size to enhance the learning experience. It's now apparent that Robbinsdale needed money to fund Stan Mack's "retirement" package.

Once again, even with the voter-approved levy, our students suffer. Money that should go into the system to improve student performance and graduation rates is only siphoned by the exiting superintendent.

I believe we need to hold the entire School Board accountable for wasting the levy funds on a false retirement. It's time for an across-the-board change of leadership for Robbinsdale Area Schools.

So our friend here is implying that the school board went and tried for a school referendum because they knew that Stan was about to retire and needed the extra money to help pay his severance.  So let's first try to even accept that notion as fact (and there is no way you can possibly accept that as fact).  Stan's payout represents 0.022% of the total budget for the school district.  And of the referendum money, it's a sheer fraction of the total amount levied for.

Now, could have the district done a better job of negotiating a contract a few years ago, sure they could have.  But they are tied by economics.  Where did those economics come from?  By the resolution of of a 2003 law that limited the cap that a school superintendent salary and benefits could not exceed 110% of the governors salary/benefits.  {At the time, our republican House and Governors office argued that the limited needed to be removed to make school districts act more like businesses.)  In the end now we have a broken system that has created an arms-race with school superintendents salary and benefits.  If only there were people arguing against such a crazy system back in the day and could have forecast the absolutely disarray the system would become because of removing such limits.  Instead of action, we now get complaints as people throw stones against the system they help create.  As we have now created our own mini system of the rich/poor gap as those salaries at the top continue to rise and the salaries of those at the bottom decline we are forced to make decisions of which program to cut or how many teachers to fire.

DJ

Although no one really reads my blog at times it a good therapy to simply write my thoughts down on major decisions.  So here goes - should I run for school board?

Reasons Yes

• There are going to be some people running for school board with the sole intention of killing the referendum renewal.  Remember, the board has to authorize the referendum monies each year and if all four open seats went to those not interested in renewing that - we would have some serious problems.
• Big decisions are on the horizon and I think I would do good to help out.
• I think I could do a really good job and I think I would have some support
• My kids are in the district for some time and I want to see some improvements

Reasons No

• Family - I already don't see them enough and this would be yet another reason I wouldn't see them
• Debate - could I still do it?
• Work - Busy now, what will this commitment do to it

That is the start of my thoughts on if I should run or not.  I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons I'm not thinking of yet and they will come to me.  So best to keep up the good fight.

So it's been one full day since moving my primary machine from Vista to Windows 7.  All and all it's been a great experience. 

So I've been quiet on the blog front for the past two weeks.  Some might wonder what is up - did he give up on the regular blog posting again - but no, I am just busy and trying to make the blog work for me.  So as some know I run a little business on the side called GCM Total Solutions.  We make web applications - this web site is an example of one.

So for the past couple of weeks I've been putting the final touches on an updated version of our membership management tool.  It looks really great and does all sorts of neat new features.  So I'm really excited.  So the next step was to start looking at the management of the web sites and if we wanted to rewrite those, change completely, etc, etc.  There are some things I really like about this current web site and others that I do not.  There has been a push recently to maybe move to DotNetNuke - seems like a 800 pound hammer to me.

But what wanted to comment on is Microsoft's new LiveWriter software.  For those who are not familiar you can head over to Microsoft's web page and check it out.  But basically it is an offline blog writing software.  Pretty fancy stuff.

So I wondered, can I make this work with my web site.  So I started digging into it and found the LiveWriter API's on the CodePlex page.  Long story short, I made them work with my site and now we can blog news items directly to the web site.  Some things are missing, I still need to add auto upload of images and a few other items - but all and all this is some really killer technology at my fingertips.

So I'm guessing we will stay with what we have.  Unless I find an amazing way to import all of the data from my web site, message boards, etc, etc into a new system I think I'm pretty much stuck where we are.

So now I'm just going to try a few things to see if they work.so everything below this line is simply testing:

Insert Virtual Earth Maps - New Twins Ball Park

(removed - need to get picture posting working.sigh.)

Code Plug-in

   1:  public void getinfo()

   2:  {

   3:     string sString = "This is pretty cool!";

   4:  }

And that is just a start.  More blog posts coming now that I can do them offline.

Wow.  I have seen some really sad attempts at making an argument about Apple costing more.  But this one might take the cake.  So the argument is owning a mac desktop and laptop is $3,367 more expensive over a 5 year period.  Now, there are plenty of things the person ignores and makes some seriously strange assumptions along the way so I was curious, how close is it. 

Some things I'm going to change.  First, I'm going to select an iMac as my home machine and not a Mac Pro - since this is a home purchase and not a business purchase.  I'm doing this before I looked up the prices so we will see.  I'm guessing Apple will be more in the end but who knows.

Here is my table:

* So there is a instant rebate right now $300 so the price is actually $1949.98.  I have also selected Windows Vista Ultimate since there is only one "ultimate" version of OSX.  Memory and processor is the same as the iMac.  Same graphics card in the HP but it has 1GB of memory vs 512MB.  23 Inch Monitor for HP / 24 for iMac.

So there we go.  Only a difference $1,198.  So why is my number so damn different?  First, I'm using an iMac which is a consumer model and not a pro machine.  Second, I'm actually including the cost of anti-virus that is needed on the PC.  Third, I'm dropping software on his list that he doesn't include on the PC list.

Other things to keep in mine.  Video card in the MacBook is better than the Dell and it also has a newer processor.  Apple's machines also include iLife which there isn't anything close to compare to on the PC side of the world included.  So that number goes down when you take into account those items.  There are tons of other intangables but at least we try to be more accurate.

So there we go a slighty more accurate "apple tax" argument. 

So I've been trying to dig into this a little bit because I'm really confused about what appears to be a budget crisis that is about to his the Robbinsdale Area Schools next year.  I know the economy is down and it's sending everything down in terms of where a school district gets it money but if you dig into one of the presentation's from a recent board there is reason to be even more concerned.

So according to the district, by the 2010-11 school year the district will again be running in the red and facing upwards of 2.1 million in cuts.  This comes after the successful referendum in November 2008 (for seven years).  Because of the recent passing of the referendum it would make sense that the board could not even think about going back to the voters for another one.

(see page 36 of the attached power point presentation for more details)

So how did we get into this mess?  Are we even in a mess?

The answer to this question is very complicated but one thing you might be able to take out of this is that the district may have financially been better off to wait another one or two years before asking for the referendum.  A little history.  2007 referendum failed by a close margin.  The board decided that it would take another stab at a second one the following year but ask for significantly less money.  Was this the best decision - only time will tell - but since it would be absolute craziness to ask for another one next year - they are now in a tough spot.  Waiting an extra one to two years could have actually allowed the school district to ask for the full money they were seeking in the first place.

According to the district at the end of the 2011 school year the district would be operating about 1.3 to 2.5 million in the red.  Both years would have seen a fund balance still in the black - but admittedly it would have been a very small amount.  What we do know is that regardless of a school closing, the district is in the hole for 2.4 to 5.9 million dollars.  (Since they decided to close schools - its a mere 2.4 million that needs to come off the books by the start of 2011.)

How will the voters react?  My guess is that with 4 open seats we are about to see a massive influx of new members.  I would have said Walsh would most likely be the only person to retain his seat after being the only person to initially vote against the PLE/SHE closing.  However, the change of vote will most likely doom his chances of being re-elected.

So what will the new board make up be?  And will they have any chance of change?  My guess is we will see some fiscal watchdogs make their way to the board this year.  Although I don't see them taking all 4 spots - they won't have a majority of the votes so it may not make a difference.  At best the watchdogs will get two of the seats.  The problem is incumbents have the advantage during a primary.  So with only two likely changes to the board I would guess we don't see any major shifts in the board.

What I will do over the next few days is write about what I think the board should be doing to help streamline costs and provide leadership that they are expected to provide.

So I've been poking around with IE 8 now for months during the beta and rc process and been noting some changes out in how IE8 on a deeper level for some of my applications.  There are a few worth noting:

• ASP.NET
  • So Microsoft has broken some items in the .NET framework and AJAX through the IE process.  The first and most notable thing that is broken is the ASP.NET menu system.  If you use IE8 with a menu you will notice that the menu will appear as a white box instead of the normal box.  This is due to some changes in CSS and the zIndex not working correctly.  You can this by checking out this post:
    
    http://blogs.msdn.com/giorgio/archive/2009/02/01/asp-net-menu-and-ie8-rendering-white-issue.aspx
• Concurrent Open Windows
  • This has been a tough cookie to crack in IE 6/7 with windows opening pop-up windows with update/panels.  The two current download/concurrent processes in IE 6/7 causes your browser to hang while the process in the background closes.  In IE8 that has changed from 2 to 6 so the problem still exists just not as badly.

More to come as I find more of the problems.

So I finally found a solution to my problem.  The basic recap of this was that a pop-up window would cause IE to crash after 3 or 4 popup windows if those items contained an UpdatePanel.  So I finally found this page:

http://sivasakki.blogspot.com/2007/07/ie-hangs-in-ajax-update-panel-pages.html

That described the problem and how to fix it.  Three easy steps:

1. Make sure the close button is not inside the update panel.

2. Do a return false with the close javascript

3. Close the ajax process.  Easiest way of doing this is to add this to your javascript code on the page:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
    //
    function stopAPOSTBACK() {
        Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager.getInstance().abortPostBack();
    }
    </script>

And then make sure that you call that before your self.close() and all of your problems should go away.  YEAH!!!!