Thoughts On A Sunday

It looks we’re finally going to be getting some snowfall above a nuisance amount. The Weather Guys^TM have predicted we’ll see between 4 and 8 inches overnight here at the lake, with 8 inches being more likely than 4 inches. At least it will be a light fluffy snow which means we probably won’t have to worry about power outages. It will also be easier to move when the time comes to shovel out tomorrow morning. Not that the snowfall will cause much in the way of disruptions since it is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day tomorrow and quite a few folks have the day off and schools are closed.

This will also be a chance to try out the Toro Power Shovel I purchased at an end-of-winter sale late last winter. It’s been sitting in the attic since then and I pulled it out this morning, plugged it in, and tested it to make sure it worked. (It does!)

One thing I have to say about this snowstorm is that the local TV stations aren’t sowing panic, making it sound as if it could be “The End Of The World As We Know It!” I haven’t seen the ‘Storm Center’ logos or heard the ominous sounding music intro, or at least not as much as is usually seen or heard.

The only downside to this weather is what follows: sub-zero temperatures on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. We will also see sub-zero wind chills on those days as well.

In other words, it’s winter.

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It isn’t as if we need proof that more spending per student doesn’t equate to a better education, but here it is.

NY teachers unions pump school spending to highest in the nation at $36K per kid — yet they rank low in reading and math: report.

New York funnels more money into its schools than any state in the nation — with only mediocre results to show for it, a withering report released Friday reveals.

Spending on education has gone up — to a whopping $89 billion on New York school districts this academic year — even as both enrollment and test scores have plummeted, according to the analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission.

The statewide average of spending per student came to an eye-popping $36,293, a 21% increase since the 2020-21 school year, the report by the budget watchdog group found.

That’s even as the scores of New York schoolkids on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the one common test taken by students from across the US — dipped further than the national average.

In my home state, New Hampshire, the average cost per student is $20,323. Some communities in New Hampshire have much higher costs, but they aren’t so much educational costs as they are transportation costs. One such town is New Castle which has a per student cost of $44,375, but much of that is transportation costs as some students attend school in another town. That’s true of most towns sending students to a regional school or towns with a very small number if students. Yet despite the lower level of student spending, New Hampshire has a pretty good education system.

Too bad New York can’t do likewise.

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I’ve heard TikTok has gone dark in the US.

It’s not like I noticed it all that much before it went dark.

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Just when I think they can’t get any woker stupider, they prove me wrong.

In this case, it looks like the Denver public schools are going to dump Girls bathrooms for “All Gender” bathrooms.

Why is it always women who must sacrifice their rights to accommodate the gender confused?

Female students attending East High School in Denver returned from Winter break to see one of their private spaces demolished. Their girl’s bathroom on the building’s second floor has been converted into an “all gender” restroom.

Now girls will have to share one of their few remaining spaces with men so the virtue-signaling “adults” in charge of Denver’s school district can feel good about themselves.

It’s a self-serving move that “has sacrificed the comfort of these young females for this dubious change,” according to one East High School parent, Lori Ramos.

"We, as adults, should be protecting students at all costs. Not using minors for this social experiment,” she told members of the school board during a recent meeting.

But protecting non-gender-confused students doesn’t fit the narrative and therefore must be ignored, nay, sacrificed to protect the narrative. Maybe those virtue-signaling “adults” have missed the signals that this kind of nonsense isn’t going to be tolerated by the public anymore.

Maybe it’s time for the public school administrators who put forth this discriminatory action to be fired.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the snow will soon start falling, the preparations for the storm are complete, and even though Monday is tomorrow I don’t have to work tomorrow...