Jim McLaughlin's Blog

Timeless Stories for My Brain and Yours

Blog

  • 2010 National Volunteer Week…a late post

    This is a delayed post.  Work and umpiring has limited my blogging, but I don’t want to miss sending this one, late though it may be. National Volunteer Week for 2010 ran from April 18th to the 24th and I just wanted to send out a note to all the volunteers who help our school Read more

  • It’s Inputs That Matter

    One of my passions is economics.  Not just because I’m heavy into math, but because economics collects together under one umbrella the measures of both benefit and cost, demand and supply, output and input. The recent Newsweek article that ranked Cheltenham high school among the top 1600 schools in America (that’s the top 6% for Read more

  • Ownership and Local Coalitions…or Whence the School Board (Part II)

    Continuing from where I left off, I read many articles these days about the impending demise of school boards. Uniformly, the authors lament the increasing amount of state and federal legislation that is imposing direction onto school districts through a systematic linking of funding to specific actions by boards and district administrations.  The federal Race-to-the Top competition and No Read more

  • An Open Challenge…Come Race Me in the Run for Jake

    The Run for Jake, which memorializes the life of Jake Berkowitz, a Cheltenham student and cross country runner who battled cancer until November 2005 as well as being a faithful supporter of our area’s homeless residents, takes place in just two weeks on April 18th. This race, in its third year, benefits the Physical Education Department Read more

  • Discussing #Transparency…Transparently

    I keep coming up against this issue in learning this new position, so I’m going to open the can of worms a crack and see what happens. I’m not even sure this is possible, but let’s try to discuss transparency…transparently. Sunshine and Open Records laws set a standard, but by setting quorum requirements on meetings Read more

  • Potential Primary Process Change…Survey Results

    As near as I can tell, 14 folks participated in my recent survey on the primary process.  While certainly not a scientific sampling, here are the results: It was nice, but not really surprising, that visitors were almost all aware of the issue.  I suspect the general population is less so.  The legislation is still Read more