Back from Spring Break - what did I miss?

I'll post again in a few days, once I catch up with the stack of newspapers I have waiting here for me. Meantime, here's your blogger nowhere near here.



California's great, but it's not home. It's good to be back. What did I miss?

300 posts on this blog

And this will be one of the shortest!

No challengers for LISD incumbents

Reference the Camp Classen post just below. A little surprising to see no one challenge the 3 LISD incumbents who are running for re-election this spring, especially considering the outcry (which I share) over this being the last year our 5th-graders will go to camnp.

Check out RoundTheMound.com now!

It's been a good week for our fledgling community news site. The elections (with 3 challengers facing off against 3 incumbents) ought to be good for business. RoundTheMound.com is the only local site where you can read the news, create your own news, and talk about all things Flower Mound in the same place. We now have well over a hundred registered users. It's free and it's fun.

The last trip to Camp Classen

It was one of the highlights of my life (and my son's too, as evidenced by the photo above). Last week I served as a parent-counselor on the (sadly) last-annual trip of the Old Settlers Elementary 5th-grade to Camp Classen in Oklahoma. A year ago, the LISD board of trustees voted to stop allowing this trip, which has been an institution in the district for decades.

This was by far the hottest topic among the co-counselor parents and teachers on the trip. I admit I did not participate in the LISD board deliberations on this matter, and that's my own fault. But now that I've experienced this trip for myself, I wish that I had done then what I could to save this opportunity for my daughter (in Kindergarten now) and for other 5th-graders to follow.

The biggest question that parents were asking is - why? No one had a single answer as to why the Board of Trustees voted to kill the camp tradition. One counselor colleague of mine was very involved in the political process relating to the Board's vote, and even he says he doesn't fully understand why the Board did what it did.

What can I do now? Perhaps not much, but I'll try. Tonight I filed an open records request with LISD to retrieve the minutes from the pertinent LISD Board meetings in 2005 and 2006. Wonder why LISD doesn't put these minutes online like the Town of Flower Mound (and pretty much every other forward-thinking public entity in this state)? I'll write more about this soon.