The Village, Community & Disappearing Schools

Importance of Community, Public Education

I was reading about the Village Building Convergence (http://www.cityrepair.org/wiki.php/projects/vbc) sponsored event at my daughter's elementary school ( Lewis Elementary): a neighborhood school project that integrates garden-based education and village-building, place-based education. I'm hoping to get involved with that.

In the last month, I and my family have had the opportunity and privilege to participate in our immediate, local community and neighborhood school:

• Talent Show
• Lews Earth Day event where parents, teachers and volunteers from PSU.
• An Art Night celebrating the fantastic artwork of our children and the inspiration they receive from local examples of art and nature.
• Run for the Arts event where my daughter earned money for school art programs by running (walking laps around the school)

In 2007, This May All Go Away

Our local neighborhoods and the concept of community are being slowly whittled away and compromised by well-intended administrators that are creating centralized and impersonal solutions for public school funding challenges:

• One SE elementary school will be closed: our SE neighborhoods are now competing against each other - neighbor pitted against neighbor - to make sure their school is not the one to close.

Parents & Neighbors of SE Districts 6 & 7: Say NO

Wouldn't it be nice if all of Public School districts 6 & 7 stood before the School Board, arms linked together, and said: "No, None of our schools will close. We do not accept that solution. We live here because of the empowering of local community; we will not participate in compromising our children's education nor will we give up our control over that local choice -- we care for our local community."

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Everyone in Portland should be focused, concerned and active in empowering local economy, education and choices. While Portland as a whole seems to be comprehending this, certain parts of our city and branches of government are missing the point: you cannot measure everything in short-term return on dollars....

....Or if you think you or we can, then at least give us the facts by which you are making this business decisions: it's our money, our neighbors and our children.

E-Mail "Best Practices in the Work Place

Please share some of your email "Best Practices" or email "Core Competencies".

I am one of the most serious offenders of poor email styles. My problem? I like to hear myself write.

After 28 years of talking with software, visualizing what I want to create and communicating in 1's and 0's, my verbal communication skills have shriveled up to "Hi...gotta go code now...". I have 528 words allocated to me daily for verbal use.

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Here are my TOP 3 EMAIL "BEST PRACTICES":

1. "No Scroll Bar" rule. If the scroll bar shows up while composing an email, you might as well throw it away now and start over. Your boss is not going to read it. His or her patience is 1 short paragraph long. Scroll bar? Guaranteed: your email is overwhelming and probably not important.

• This is my new rule for controlling my love for watching myself type on and on and on....
• Sometimes short is too short: My friend Ted drives me crazy on short emails like:
• 
  --> "Jim. call me. Not important."
  --> "Dow: what's wrong with you? Coffee some time."
  --> "Jim. Graphic Designers want noses on smiley characters: your emails. Can't read emails until you fix.."

2. Only use the subject line if possible and terminate the subject with (end of message). This is a good tip from the Stephen Covey & Franklin folks.

• I prefer to start with "" then terminate the subject with "" -- it makes me feel more validated.
• It's more fun to make up new subject line terminaters; really freaking people out on what the acronymns might mean and where I am physcially as I send these emails: WFH (working from home), NLH (never left home), etc...

3. Please no Slang. This is fine in the work place when you are communicating in person. But very dangerous in email. This really happened to me and made me feel very old. I sent a meeting request to a younger work mate. I got back a response "I'm Down With That!".

• I was rather anxious that my young peer was down on meeting that day.
• Then he called me up later and wondered why I was not at the meeting that I invited him to.
• I was so embarrassed. I thought he was "Down On That"...not "Down With That".

"I'm Jiggy-With-It" was so much easier to understand. But my 26 year old daughter won't let me use that anymore: "That's soo 80's, Dad...you are an embarrassment!!".