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Telling Tales Out of School

with Nick Martin

  • U of M's distinguished man of minerals turns 90

    Here's The Buzz for Friday, Feb. 5.

    Prof. (emeritus) Robert B. Ferguson, PhD, Royal Society of Canada, turns 90 today.

    View Full Post | 5/02/2010 12:37 PM | 2

  • Ranking the high schools

    It’s not news that Manitoba does not compile and make public a school-by-school breakdown of Grade 12 marks in each subject, graduation rates, dropout rates, attendance, and postsecondary participation and success.

    We’ve known that for years.

    View Full Post | 3/02/2010 12:04 PM | 9

  • Which trustees are out of control?

    Bartley Kives reported earlier this week in our pages that Mayor Sam says some school boards are out of control.

    Alas, His Worship wouldn't name them.

    View Full Post | 28/01/2010 11:18 AM | 8

  • School taxes cash grab 101

    So before I get an email from Oliver Stone about conspiracy theories, let's expand on my story in today's paper and talk about how a school board might use the confusion over reassessment to pull off a cash grab.

    Everyone understands assessment bases and mill rates and special levies, right? Come on now, if you don't understand, just put your hand up, like an empowered adult.

    View Full Post | 27/01/2010 1:23 PM | 3

  • I apologize, like, I'm so totally sorry

     

    I have to apologize for not giving some of my readers what they've come to expect last week.

    View Full Post | 26/01/2010 10:34 AM | 0

  • I needed no-fail policy in Grade 7

    I should have failed Grade 7, even though I had an average in the 90s.

    All the talk about no-fail and social promotion has me remembering back in the day. One of the things I’ve been writing recently is that there is a widespread but unwritten rule that kids in Manitoba don’t fail, that they move on to the next grade with their peer group regardless of academic performance and achievement.

    View Full Post | 20/01/2010 4:24 PM | 9

  • My federal vote is up for bids

    Steve, Iggy, Jacko, Elizabeth: here's the deal.

    You want my vote in the next federal election, you have to promise to give the CBC whatever amount of money its little heart desires, as long as it promises to bring back The Border.

    View Full Post | 18/01/2010 2:43 PM | 0

  • I dropped my WSD season ticket

    I've had people asking me why I no longer spend my Monday evenings going to Winnipeg School Division board meetings.

    It was a ritual at least twice a month: start my shift in mid-afternoon, arrive at the board room around 6:50 p.m., hustle back to the office by 9 p.m. or so, and bang out several stories for deadline.

    View Full Post | 14/01/2010 11:46 AM | 4

  • School volleyball coaches deserve this kind of money

    I was watching the late stages of the bowl game on the telly Thursday night, and nearly choked on my red pepper hummus when they said that the University of Texas football coach is paid $5 million a year and the coach of the University of Alabama $3.9 million.

    And they were in line for bonuses of $400,000 if their team won, which leads one to wonder if the five mil is for just making it to the office on a semi-regular basis.

    View Full Post | 13/01/2010 9:52 AM | 2

  • Lord Stanley and 200 avenue de la Cathédrale

    College universitaire de Saint-Boniface -- educator of choice for Stanley Cup-winning students.

    Who knew?

    View Full Post | 8/01/2010 10:56 AM | 1

  • How raises above inflation fuel education costs

    Manitoba's public school teachers are making four or five times the current rate of inflation.

    Statistics Canada reports that the inflation rate between November of 2008 and November of 2009 was 0.8 per cent.

    View Full Post | 6/01/2010 1:25 PM | 28

  • What the trustees spend on themselves

    Hands up if I didn’t get around to getting you miffed in the school-related stories that ran over the holiday period.

    Specifically, apart from trustees and teachers.

    View Full Post | 4/01/2010 2:37 PM | 4

  • Using a water fountain 101

    I was in the Duckworth Centre the other day for an interview, and noticed a spiffy large sign above the drinking fountain in the lobby.

    Yes, my life is such that things like this pique my interest.

    View Full Post | 21/12/2009 3:44 PM | 4

  • Decisions can have fallout

    I expect we’ll be hearing more soon about the proposal to establish an aboriginal public school division in the city, but meanwhile, I’m wondering if a seemingly unrelated situation in Winnipeg School Division will play a role.

    Governance is one of the major rationales in the plans to establish a new aboriginal public division in the city, and governance is an issue that WSD has done a great job of stonewalling.

    View Full Post | 17/12/2009 10:54 AM | 0

  • Tough kindergarten justice in Texas

    Having signed up for a bunch of education-related news services, I received an email item about a complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, a group with which I’d probably be BFF if I was living in the 13 Colonies.

    Anyway, the ACLU has come to the defence of a student in Texas banned by his school district for refusing to cut his hair......a kindergarten student....a native American kindergarten student whose family was following its heritage and tradition in letting his hair grow......and these educators in Texas booted him out of school until he gets a haircut.

    View Full Post | 7/12/2009 6:42 AM | 5

  • A week away on campus

    I’m just back from a wonderful time in Upper Canada and FOOF country (which, of course, you know means fine old Ontario families).

    Three university volleyball doubleheaders, and Excalibur swept them all.

    View Full Post | 2/12/2009 3:53 PM | 0

  • Away for a bit, and lots of other stuff

    I don’t know how you’ll ever survive, and it’s really callous to just spring this on you suddenly, but I won’t be posting for a few days — we’re off to Upper Canada to visit the kids and watch some university volleyball.

    Meanwhile.......

    View Full Post | 18/11/2009 4:10 PM | 0

  • No Allan insights looming

    I hope you haven’t been holding your breath until you read my first interview with new Education Minister Nancy Allan — it won’t be happening.

    An aide to the minister says Allan’s much too busy to give media interviews, and plans to spend the next few weeks meeting with stakeholders — that awful word that suggests that the pod people already have her, and implies that Allan is out and about dialoguing with stakeholders about achieving consensus on positive learning outcomes.

    View Full Post | 10/11/2009 1:50 PM | 3

  • Free advice for the new minister

    I’m sitting by the phone eagerly awaiting a return call from the spin doctors on my request for an initial sitdown with Education Minister Nancy Allan.

    It’s not as though Allan is walking into an easy job that has no issues on the table.

    View Full Post | 5/11/2009 12:25 PM | 6

  • Take your kids to the fair

    If you’ve got a kid in Grade 11 or Grade 12, do the whole family a favour and get over to St. John’s-Ravenscourt Wednesday evening or Balmoral Hall Thursday evening.

    The city’s 12th annual universities recruiting fair is way down in numbers, to about 30 schools from the 48 or so of three or four years ago, but it’s still so, so valuable to go.

    View Full Post | 3/11/2009 4:01 PM | 0

  • Scary, scary university nights

    One of the neatest memories I have of university — at least, of the ones I’m willing to share with strangers — was the night a bunch of us tossed cushions and sleeping bags on the floor of Glendon Hall to watch scary movies.

    There were huge windows looking out on the thick, leafless forest that wound down to the athletic complex and Don River way below, and the atmosphere was appropriately spooky.

    View Full Post | 29/10/2009 4:27 PM | 1

  • Some schools just prefer to be left alone

    I watched quite the nifty DVD the other day and then talked at length to the parent who’d sent it, the short documentary extolling the benefits that her child and other kids had gained from enrolling in the Laureate Academy.

    The mother wanted a feature article on the private school, currently located in St. Norbert after shifting around a bit over the years. She wanted the article to include an upcoming fundraiser for the school’s endowment fund, without which, she said, her family and others could not possibly afford the tuition.

    View Full Post | 27/10/2009 4:00 PM | 1

  • So close to a blockbuster story

    I was this close — THIS CLOSE — to a National Newspaper Award.

    The message on my voice mail was a career-maker.....the caller self-identified as a U of M employee and told me that the root of the University of Manitoba’s financial challenges is that all the employees sit around in the campus coffee shops all day, or play solitaire on their university computers, and don’t actually do any work, and would tell me all about it.

    View Full Post | 22/10/2009 3:15 PM | 4

  • Private school students, public school jocks?

    I found some pretty interesting stuff on the MHSAA website, especially a bid by some unnamed faith-based private schools to get their kids places on nearby public high school football, hockey and rugby teams.

    The bid was defeated by the MHSAA directors.

    View Full Post | 15/10/2009 3:07 PM | 12

  • What if the Tories had won in 1999?

    I got asked a pretty intriguing question last night, when I was speaking to a graduate students’ seminar at the Univeristy of Manitoba faculty of education.

    One grad student wondered how things in public education might have been different had the Tories won the 1999 election.

    View Full Post | 6/10/2009 2:28 PM | 16

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