About four years ago, the contract between the UMass faculty and administration was signed into law. Unfortunately, when it came time to fund the contacts, the governor vetoed the money. After three years, the raises were finally funded, but the governor has continued to veto our retroactive pay every time they came up. Yesterday, however, the legislature finally overrode the veto on a bill that will provide something like the first third or half of our retro pay. It's long overdue, but we'll take it and call it a victory.
Last night, Alisa participated in a show on the local cable access channel that featured all of the school committee candidates. I had thought she did pretty well and, this morning, Randy agreed. She was in full command of the facts and could provide detailed background on all of the issues that were raised. The others, by contrast, had a range of ideas they were interested in, but obviously weren't well informed about the recent issues before the school committee (or even what the role of the school committee is). One candidate seemed to think the role of the school committee should be to find cost savings in the school budget: even a 1% savings would be a lot of money, he claimed. Maybe so, but my impression is that the role of the school committee should be to set broad policy -- not to comb through the budget and look for places to nickel and dime teachers down. Tonight, Alisa's asked me to go with her to a function sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce. I can't imagine what being a real politician would be like, where campaigns last for months or years. Apropos to Alisa's race, we updated the page about her. I particularly liked the picture: "Re-elect Alisa Brewer -- She has a puppy!"
This morning, I went over to Charlie's school and spoke with his teacher about MuppyZone. Evidently, there had been talk about banning MuppyZone at school because not all of the kids had accounts. So I dropped by and provided a little background and history. She listened and, although she didn't sound particularly enthusiastic or indicate that she wanted to try it out herself, she was at least open to the idea of the kids using it. About as good as we could hope for, I think. As of this afternoon, Charlie has provided the wizard account to other students. By creating a restricted list of what the administrator is supposed to do, they will hopefully not destroy it immediately like they did the last one. We'll see.
StevenBrewer