It’s bee a tough couple of years, with some recent school funding disappointments from New Jersey’s elected officials. There is a lot of anger and uncertainty out there and many have taken a personal stance against school spending. Most know that their property values and the quality of our town is based on its best asset – our schools. The problem is trying to get them out to vote ‘Yes’. We need everyone’s help to get folks out to vote for our schools and our town.

We need to prevent school district consolidation, which would just lower our schools to a common denominator. If this happens, our township, our schools and our property values will be hurt even more during these tough times.

VOTE YES!

Back in the mid-1980’s, my father used to work for the largest data processing outsourcing company. A company owned by Ross Perot. He can identify if, when and how a company can be outsourced and the tasks needed to accomplish this. One of the best criteria for a successful takeover is how normalized that facility is to the receiving site. Companies that have many unique and complicated systems makes for difficult outsourcing ventures; however, the task of outsourcing is greatly minimized when there are few differences.

When a company is acquired or scheduled to be outsourced, one of the first things that is done is to normalize the acquired site to that of its future host.  This reduces the host’s costs and support requirements as the old shop is easily absorbed into their pre-existing infrastructure. Many times, the receiving company will make that site go through all the hard work of standardizing itself to the new company’s standards before they are eventually absorbed and their employees furloughed.

In many respects, the governor’s actions to punish the suburban school systems, in favor of the Abbott districts, will force many of suburban districts to strip away the programs that make their school systems unique and attractable to home buyers. Besides directly impacting property sales, home values and their associated property taxes, this sets up the school districts to become easily merged with neighboring districts. The more districts that do this make the concept of county-level school districts more of a reality. Since all the schools will become effectively the same, the task of centralizing is greatly minimized.

Here is a link to Governor Christie’s desire to merge local services and the accompanying Quinnipiac University poll showing that voters approve merging school districts:

NJ.com Article, dated November 26, 2009

Before our town cuts the core programs that make our school district unique and attractable, such as AM Beck, AVID, Campus Police, Elementary Spanish Teachers, Guidance Counselors, IB PYP Coordinators, ISS, Mt. Misery, Music Programs, Sports Programs, Student Advisory Counselors, TAG, consider that these acts may forever alter CHPS in the near future.

Before class sizes are increased to other school district levels, including Camden City, consider that this may ease a county-level merger.

Addressing what is roughly a 7% cut in funding may trigger future events that will become impossible to alter. Once a site is outsourced or merged into another facility, there is virtually no coming back.

THERE WILL BE NO DO-OVERS OR MULLIGANS!

Mount Misery has been an institution in Cherry Hill for 40 years! My brother and I enjoyed this Cherry Hill tradition in a similar way that my father and his brother did. Mt. Misery was our best memory of school, bar none. My two younger sisters may never get a chance to experience this environmental program, that not only teaches ecology in a hands-on fashion, but would be their first and possibly only experience living away from home in a camp-like setting. Many students who have divorced parents, like myself, or come from a lower-income housing situation may be unable to experience an actual camp. The Mount Misery Program provides us the closest thing to one of the joys of childhood. Please help keep the memories alive for the children in Cherry Hill. 

The Mt. Misery Ecology Program costs far less than what seems to be presented. We need to demand proof of this program’s true costs! There are two major benefactors that offset the lion’s share of these expenses, making the school portion less than 1/6,000ths of the school budget;

IF THERE EVEN IS ANY SCHOOL EXPENSE. 

Please click here to join the Save Mt. Misery! campaign. 

Many different programs are facing the block right now in attempt to save around 1% of the school budget. These cuts are as follows: 

The Elementary Schools- They proposed cuts including: The TAG program, IB PYP Coordinators, Instructional Support Specialists (ISS), Instrumental Music, Spanish Teachers, and increase class size maximums to between 22 and 26 students. 

Middle Schools- They proposed cuts including: Vocal Music, Athletics – interscholastic to intramural, Mount Misery, Student Advisory Counselors, Eliminate Advisory period (i.e. AM Beck), and possibly the award winning AVID program.  

High Schools- They proposed cuts including: Assistant Principals, Student Advocates, Eliminating late bus runs, Campus Police/Security, Athletic/Co-Curricular cuts such as deleting all freshman sports and removing Swimming, Lacrosse, Golf and Bowling, and Guidance Counselors.

As many of you know, an extremist group will be demonstrating in front of our school Monday morning, December 7th. Following the Harry Potter storyline, this group will only be referenced by the term, “They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named”. This same group will also be demonstrating outside All Time Low’s December 6th concert at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia. This seems to be due to the band’s rejection of intolerant behavior.

The community has been asked not to participate in any type of counter-demonstration, or give their organization any type of acknowledgement at all. This pathetic group desires acknowledgement. They desire a confrontation. They desire press. It appears, by some accounts, that one of their motives is to provoke others into physical confrontations in order to sue. This would just help fund their cause. Though it goes against most of our emotional reactions, we should heed the advice of our school administration and past experts who have dealt with this group. Do not get into a scrap with them. Ignore them, as you would a flea.

In lieu of actively protesting or violating school dress code standards, we the students of East should passively voice our disdain for this group and also show support for the band that they are targeting, All Time Low. Wear shirts or other markings to show support for All Time Low. Some merchandise is available at Hot Topic and other music apparel stores.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed “ December 7th, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy.” Besides remembering the tragedy of that date, let’s make December 7th, 2009 a date that will live in infamy at CHHSE. Say NO H8!

ATL MySpace Page

ATL Merchandise

Taken from the 1984 movie title ‘Romancing the Stone’, starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito, here I am scrubbing off most of the green algae that was on the CHHSE “Home of the Cougars” limestone block. While I did this, my family pulled the weeds from the administrative parking lot to keep themselves busy.

What comedy movie contained the quote: “Everything’s so green”?

PS. The stone needs better cleaning while also being straightened.

Well, it’s time to start putting that button maker we have to good use. It will be used to make pin-backed buttons, magnetic buttons, and pocket mirrors for various school organizations and teams — gratis. I will be making specialty buttons for the individual Athletic, Music, and Theatre departments (and their associated teams) that request them. Any school organization or team can get them made for their members. Please contact the Student Activities director, the Student Government director, or me directly with your team’s artwork and needs.

On request, I can make specialty buttons for individual students — provided that the properly printed artwork is supplied — just ask. The button surface is 2 3/16 inches in diameter, but with the side surface, the actual image should be 2 1/2 inches in diameter printed with a 1/2 inch space between images.

See you next month :)

In a way to try and create a full-featured reference site, I have now added free on-line classifieds. This can be used to help buy or sell things, find work to do, offer study services, or post events. There is a new page bar entry called ‘Free Classifieds’ at the top of the site that links you into it. In order to post an entry, users need to be registered and logged in. Ads can contain up to four 150Kb or less jpg/png files in them. Both the ad and the images are individually moderated, so anything inappropriate will be removed. Ads posted should remain out there for 120 days or until I am notified to remove them. Enjoy!

My Cousin Evan, a former CHHSE grad, joined the rock band Damiera as their bass player last year. They are currently working on a new CD project. Prior to concert tours and the studio, they rehearse here in Cherry Hill. Here’s a video of their latest song, ‘Quiet Mouth, Loud Hands’.

 
">Damiera 

Here is Evan’s latest CD project from his group ‘Into It. Over It.’, now available, called ‘52 Weeks’. He wrote one song per week for a whole year. It was a long project where some weeks he felt inspired to write songs, and on others, he didn’t.  There are random sample songs available on his music player.

Into It. Over It.

This was the band he helped form while living in Cherry Hill, called The Progress.

The Progress

I saw the movie Year One with Jack Black and Michael Cera. It was not as funny as I had expected, though it was OK. Read the movie reviews before watching it. Next time, I should pay more attention to the Fandango fan ratings (So-So). Unfortunately, these reviews are only accurate after the movie has been released. It seems that too many people try to hype movies before they actually come out and that temporarily skews the results.

Well, it’s been almost a week since my last posting and here’s what’s new:

 1)      I almost have this site customized the way I want. There are a few more features I would like to include in it before it is finished and mainstream ready.

 2)      One of my projects involves the design of two websites, which at this point remain undisclosed. Their domain names and servers are secured, the software is installed on them, and they are about twenty percent customized. I’m still debating on whether to install SSL certificates on them. Hopefully, I should be able to debut these sites in early August with mild fanfare.

 3)      I will be volunteering time at various places around the area during the summer, one being the AWA in Voorhees.

 4)      As part of my ninth grade English reading assignment, I am about one-fifth of the way through the book we have to read, called The Alchemist. My father just happened to have The Illustrated Alchemist in his room that he was given as a gift to read to us. It’s the same book, with added pictures in it to aid in visualizations.