Friday, March 22, 2013
The tower is one of 149 regional airport control towers to close starting next month due to federal budget cuts.
On Friday afternoon, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it will close 149 regional airport control towers starting in April, including the tower at Athens-Ben Epps airport. The closures are a result of budget cuts. The FAA was forced to cut nearly $600 million from its $48 billion budget, according to CNN.com. The FAA plans to begin shutting down control towers nationwide on April 7. It should take four weeks close all of the towers. When the Athens tower closes, off-hours communications procedures that had already been in place will be in effect 24 hours a day, the Athens Banner-Herald reports. Control towers at Lawrenceville's Briscoe Field and at regional airports in Albany, Macon and Cobb County are also slated to close. …
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
She loves her volunteers, but knows there are limits to what they can do.
- OPINION
-
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
By Tanya Hudson I'm the librarian at Chase Street Elementary, where there hasn't been a media parapro for two years. I have a wonderful group of volunteers, some who are parents of my students and some who live in the neighborhood and want to share their time. Many neighborhoods do not have this built-in, fully invested volunteer base to work from. Not only that, but because volunteers aren't paid for their work, there's no way to require them to work particular days or times. If one of my volunteers takes a two-week vacation in October, that's help that I just don't have for those two weeks. A parapro isn't likely to take that kind of time off during the school year. There are some jobs parapros do that can't be done by a volunteer. For…
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
The Clarke County School District is gearing up to fill gaps in first grade classrooms with community volunteers.
The Clarke County School Board has voted not to fund 32 paraprofessionals in the system's first grade classrooms for the coming school year. Superintendent Phil Lanoue has said that funding them this coming year, as a board member suggested, would be just delaying the inevitable. Axing these jobs saves the system $736,000 annually. So how will first grade teachers cope? Some in the community had wondered if University of Georgia student teachers would be assigned to these classrooms to help first grade teachers handle their students. That's not going to happen. Volunteers. Community volunteers, says CCSD spokesperson Anisa Sullivan Jimenez, will take the place of parapros. "We're going to reach out to retirees and work with other local …
Monday, May 14, 2012
An Essay from the Teaching Georgia Writing Collective
- SCHOOLS
-
Monday, May 14, 2012
"If America can increase funding for libraries and librarians, I can only think that America has found one important way to rebuild itself." -Stephen Krashen Stephen Krashen, along with many other educational scholars, insists that investing in our libraries and librarians is crucial to building a strong and just America. Research points to high quality school libraries and librarians as key to high achievement for students, especially those from families struggling economically. But when budgets are tight, libraries (or "media centers"), librarians, and media center paraprofessionals can too frequently be perceived as unnecessary costs in schools. The Clarke County School District joins others across Georgia cutting funding for media …
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Slashed state funds, austerity cuts, unfunded mandates and a declining local tax revenues mean staff reductions, among other measures.
A million here, a milion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money, to quote the late Senator Everett Dirkensen. In the case of the Clarke County School District, you're talking about $8.9 million. That's the amount that Superintendent Philip Lanoue told the school board must be cut from a new adjusted budget for the system. "We need to close the spending revenue gap by the end of the next year," he told the School Board Thursday night. They are expected to vote on the proposed budget in a called meeting on April 19. There will be public hearings on the budget on May 15, 22 and 24. What may be cut from the school district's already bare bones budget? First of all, there will be no raises for teachers or support staff. Lanoue is …
Rebecca McCarthy
11:01 pm on Friday, March 29, 2013
Hey, Gloria, I'm asking the tech guys what's going on. This isn't normal or good. Sorry you are having troubles. more ›