Stephen's Untold Stories

Some very helpful information for those in need.

• http://docs.google.com/View?id=afpvcm3jcc7_23dgq7kjcv

Here are some other photos of the flooding we experienced earlier this week. Click each image for a larger version.

Here is the entire gallery.

We’ve had an unbelievable amount of rain the last week or so down here. Most area schools will be closed on Tuesday, and many roads are impassable.

Story from the AJC

This first shot is of some tennis courts in the area.

And these next three were taken from my parents’ back yard.

That car was washed down the hill.

Nice work by our state school superintendent.

A very interesting story involving the State School Superintendent in Georgia and a million dollars she won and pledged to schools for children with special needs. I hope they get it.

The drama in U.S. Bankruptcy Court began in an unusual place: On a television game show called “Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?” with a chance to win $1 million.

State schools Superintendent Kathy Cox proved last August that she was indeed smarter and claimed the $1 million prize. Then, before a national broadcast audience, she pledged the money to scores of blind and deaf children who attend three state-run schools.

But three months later Cox and her husband, John Cox, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, leaving in its wake a slew of creditors embroiled in a tug-of-war with the state, which insists the cash should go to the schools. And, proponents for the students plan a protest Wednesday to demand the money.

“The state Board of Education contends Ms. Cox would not have been invited to the program other than in a position of playing for a charitable interest,” said Russell Willard, a spokesman for the Georgia Attorney General’s office, which is representing the Department of Education. “The monies won on that program should go to the charitable interests designated by Ms. Cox.”

Cox promised if she won, she would give the $1 million to Georgia Academy for the Blind in Macon; the Georgia School for the Deaf in Cave Spring; and the Atlanta Area School for the Deaf in Clarkston.

Those three institutions are state-run and, unlike most public schools, don’t rely on local funding.

But Gary W. Brown, the Chapter 7 trustee assigned to the case, doesn’t see it that way. On July 31, he filed suit against Kathy Cox and Fox Broadcasting Corp., which airs the game show, to claim the money for the creditors.

Read the rest here.

Many districts in Georgia have started furloughs for teachers. Naturally, many of them still come to work on their unpaid furlough days.

At Webb Bridge Middle School in Alpharetta most teachers will be working the last of three furlough days Friday.

Yes, working — without pay.

If the roll were taken, teacher attendance would be classified as “very good,” Webb Bridge principal Elizabeth Fogartie said Thursday. “They’re booked solid every minute.”

The teacher furloughs — believed to be a first for Georgia — are altering the schedules and paychecks of the majority of the state’s 120,000 school teachers. Some teachers are philosophical about the unpaid days. Others are plainly unhappy.

Michael Witt, a fourth-grade teacher at Alpharetta Elementary, is in the latter camp.

“They’re unpaid work days,” Witt said. “It’s horrible. That’s like telling parents you can’t go Christmas shopping, but you’ve got to get presents under the tree.”

He said he worked two of the three furlough days this week, only because he had so much to do.

“People worked, and they wanted us to work,” Witt said.

The furloughs are expected to save the state about $33 million a day and to cost the average teacher about $200 a day. They’re just part of the belt-tightening that educators are enduring.

Roy Sams, who teaches art and yearbook at the new Twin Rivers Middle School in Gwinnett, says “we don’t have the budgets that we used to.”

Sams spent part of this week hanging paintings and pencil art drawings he did over the summer to give an artistic feel to the shiny walls and “to kind of lead by example.”

“I’m going to have to do projects that are a lot cheaper and with supplies I get for free,” he said.

In Fulton County, school administrators weren’t purposely trying to get the dreaded days out of the way before school starts Monday.

“We didn’t really have a lot of options,” said Susan Hale, the district’s spokeswoman. “We were told they had to be on contracted work days that are non-student days.”

Read the rest here.

And I was lucky enough to be there!

Shared with me by a friend.

This is the last ride of an American hero to his home town. Watch and consider and reflect what an incredible privilege that you are able to be part of it.

Killed in action the week before, the body of Sergeant First Class John C. Beale was returned to Falcon Field in Peachtree City, Georgia, just south of Atlanta, on June 11, 2009.

The Henry County Police Department escorted the procession to the funeral home in McDonough, Georgia. A simple notice in local papers indicated the road route to be taken and the approximate time. Nowadays one can be led to believe that America no longer respects honor and no longer honors sacrifice of the military.

Be it known that there are many places in this land where people still recognize the courage and impact of total self-sacrifice. Georgia remains one of those graceful places.

Below is a short travelogue of that day’s remarkable and painful journey.

http://blip.tv/file/2246058/

It’s true!

Atlanta is embracing Facebook faster than any other major metropolitan area, a new study shows.

The number of Facebook users in the Atlanta area rose 142 percent the last six months, from 535,000 to nearly 1.3 million, according to a digital marketing firm called iStrategyLabs.

Los Angeles (97 percent) and Houston (71 percent) saw the next highest increases.

Peter Corbett, a 2003 Emory grad who founded iStrategyLabs, said he has no solid theories to explain the Atlanta surge. He’s analyzed Facebook usage for two years using data Facebook publicly supplies to its advertisers.

A Facebook spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the last half of 2008, Facebook usage in the Atlanta area rose just 6.5 percent.

Overall, nearly 72 million Americans now use the social networking site, and Facebook’s demographics keep getting older.

People ages 35 to 54 comprise the biggest group, followed by those 25 to 34.

Link to article.

High school students in Georgia have long feared the science and social studies portions of the High School Graduation Test. This new program has helped a lot more of them pass this year.

Nearly 1,400 students are a big step closer to graduation thanks to an innovative partnership between the state and local school districts.

The Exam Preparation for Science and Social Studies (ExPreSS) program was a state-funded effort aimed at students who had not passed the Georgia High School Graduation Tests (GHSGT) in Science or Social Studies. More than 2,000 students received two weeks of intensive instruction June 8-18 and then had the opportunity to retest on June 19.

The overall pass rate on this retest was 68 percent; more than double last year’s pass rate on GHSGT retests in science and social studies.

There were 2,043 students from over 100 school districts that attended the ExPreSS program – 1,072 for social studies and 971 for science. The instruction took place at 29 sites around the state. The classes were led by 180 educators: 89 science teachers and 91 social studies teachers.

In social studies, 73 percent of the ExPreSS participants passed the retest. By comparison, the 2008 summer retest pass rate on the Social Studies GHSGT was 27 percent.

In science, 63 percent of the ExPreSS participants passed the retest. By comparison, the 2008 summer retest pass rate on the Science GHSGT was 29 percent.

Read the rest here.

Link to video

I was fortunate enough to get in on this early, and I can say that this is one of my favorite Google services. I encourage everyone to sign up and try it.

(click for larger version)

This happened in the county where I grew up.

It was June 28, 1959. A normal summer Sunday afternoon in rural Georgia.

The first hint Saturday had that something was wrong came from the wooden train trestle.

Falling rail cars came down next, 16 in all – two with deadly cargo.

It was 3:40 p.m. and, with the train’s fall, life for scores of families would never be normal again.

At first sight of the derailment, some at the river that day stopped in their tracks, some moved away and some moved closer, natural curiosity taking over.

The danger came from propane gas, which started to seep from one of the ruptured rail cars.

“It settled like a fog,” one witness account from news reports at the time said.

A spark, some said maybe from a nearby barbecue grill, or from the train itself, caused the gas to explode. The second propane car loaded with 10,000 gallons of the gas ignited next.

News reports said the fire created a “raging inferno” within 30 seconds, killing 14 people, injuring dozens and reducing a 5-acre area to a pile of ash in a matter of minutes.

The fire was described as a “great red sheet of flame” that swept across the river and into the woods. Its path destroyed a clubhouse and cars parked nearby, and left a pile of gray ash where trees once stood.

When the dying finally stopped 10 days later, a total of 23 men, women and children had been buried.

Link to article.

Here is what it looks like today.

(click for larger version)

Here is more information, as well as a lot more photos and news clippings.

http://www.meldrim.com

I had the pleasure of  attending the Braves/Yankees game earlier this evening with my father, and we are proud to report that the Good Guys won 4-0!

Chipper Jones at the plate.

The Cows love the Braves.

View from our seats…section 224.

The historic Georgia Theater in Athens was heavily damaged today by a fire.

Firefighters were called at about 7 a.m. to the theater, located at the corner of North Lumpkin and West Clayton streets, when a man walking home through downtown smelled something burning and found smoke billowing from the theater doors.

Within an hour, the roof on the historic building had collapsed.

Dozens of big-name acts had performed at the Georgia Theatre — musicians such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, John Prine and Jorma Kaukonen, not to mention Athens-based acts like R.E.M., Randall Bramblett and Davis Causey.

The theater originally became a music venue in 1978, when Sheffy McArthur built a stage in the building and opened the venue with Sam Smart and George Fontaine.

Link to article.

In Georgia, grades 1-8 take the CRCT every spring. It is our state standardized test for those grade levels. Here is some good news about this year’s results.

Test scores for Georgia’s elementary and middle school students improved in all areas this year, but most dramatically in the crucial subjects of mathematics and science.

Students posted gains on all 14 of the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT) in mathematics and science, all of which are aligned to Georgia’s more rigorous curriculum.

“The 2009 CRCT results are very encouraging and show that our students are learning more advanced concepts and are able to apply that knowledge properly,” said State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox. “Our elementary and middle school teachers should feel very proud today – they are getting the job done!”

The biggest one-year gain on any of the CRCTs was in eighth-grade math: The pass rate was 70 percent, an increase of eight percentage points.

“Our new grade 8 math curriculum is very rigorous, but our teachers and students are embracing the rigor and are making tremendous progress,” Superintendent Cox said. “Even more encouraging is the rise in the number of students who are scoring at higher levels on the exam.” The percentage of grade 8 students scoring in the “exceeds” category also jumped eight points to 23 percent.

The CRCTs are curriculum-based tests given to students in grades 1-8 in the subjects of reading, English language arts, mathematics and – in grades 3-8 – science and social studies. As Georgia has rolled out its new curriculum, the Georgia Performance Standards, more rigorous tests have been created and administered. This year, for the first time, all the CRCTs are aligned to the new curriculum. The statewide results are reported in three categories – the percentage of students that did not meet standards, met standards or exceeded standards.

Read the rest here.

I got to spend most of the day out at the beach. The weather was perfect!

Click each picture for a larger version.

A lot of hard work has gone into this. Sadly, the Georgia Department of Education does not seem to value the work of the Educational Technology Centers, which are a large part of the reason for this progress.

Georgia is a national leader in the use of educational technology to enhance both teaching and learning, according to a report released today.

Education Week’s annual “Technology Counts” report gave Georgia the highest score when it comes to the use of technology in the classroom and building capacity for the use of technology.

“Georgia realizes that technology is a key component to improving education and preparing our students to be successful,” said State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox. “I am proud that Georgia — even in difficult budget times — invests in technology that helps our students and teachers be the best they can.”

“Technology cannot replace the interaction between a highly-qualified teacher and a student,” Superintendent Cox said, “but it can enhance that interaction and make it available to more students.”

This year, the report ranks states on two criteria: use of technology and capacity to use technology. Georgia was able to answer “yes” to every indicator in both of these categories and was one of only two states to get a score of 100 in both areas. (The state report includes a third criteria — access to technology — but those results were from last year’s report. You can see all of Georgia’s grades at http://tinyurl.com/GaTCGrades).

Georgia has many ongoing statewide technology initiatives, including:

• Georgia Virtual School: The Georgia Virtual School, run by the Georgia Department of Education, offers students all over the state on-line access to rigorous classes, including Advanced Placement, foreign languages and core subjects. The state currently offers 121 on-line courses and this school year alone, nearly 4,000 students have enrolled in Georgia Virtual School classes.
• Credit Recovery: The Georgia Virtual School is also being used for a credit recovery program that allows students to catch up if they have fallen behind. Just since January 2008, over 40,000 students across the state have used the virtual school resources for credit recovery.
• Digital Content: Georgia is increasing access to digital content that can be used to help teachers prepare and supplement classroom learning. Much of this content is available or linked on www.georgiastandards.org.
• Increased Bandwidth: At its March meeting, the State Board of Education approved a contract that doubled the bandwidth available to local school systems, starting July 1.

Link to article

I took a little trip up to Berry College with some friends on Sunday and got some pretty good photos.

Click each one for a larger version.

See the complete set here.