| Teachers brace for possibility of layoff notices
Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget in January, which featured cuts of $4.4 billion from K-12 public education for 2008-09 and $360 million this current fiscal year. Statewide, about 5,000 teachers so far are expected to receive layoff notices, according to Mike Myslinski, spokesman for the California Teachers Association in Burlingame. "It's likely to go much higher" as March 15 approaches. Districts have until May 15 to rescind some of those notices, he said. In 2003, during the last major period of state fiscal turmoil, 20,000 teachers got pink slips, he said. However, fewer than 3,000 were actually laid off. "But the damage had been done," Myslinski said. "People who get pink slips start looking for other jobs." Also, laying off instructors and rehiring them at a later time can disrupt "the bond between teachers and students," he said.
POWER WAGON: Volvo's new XC70 is an elegant 'crossover' built for ...
I can't wait for global warming to arrive and heat things up. Make Michigan an oven mitt instead of a frozen one. This current cold spell makes me want to use the remote start before I take a hot shower, rev the engine at traffic lights and drive with the heater on full blast with the windows down. I want a Sasquatch-sized carbon footprint -- something at least half the size of Al Gore's. I've stopped fighting environmentalists; now, I want to prove the doomsayers right. I've seen the emission smoke signals and want their hyperbolic science to make more than just award-winning cinema and catchy bumper sticker slogans. But until the day after tomorrow arrives, we still have the 2008 XC70, Volvo's optimistic view that much of Earth will remain frozen and cold.
Crooked Talk on Iraq Cost
McCain once confessed that he doesn't know much about economics. Even he should be able to comprehend the disastrous fiscal effects of the Iraq war, which its proponents originally promised would cost us almost nothing. Perhaps he should ask an economist to calculate the real cost of occupying Iraq for a hundred years, as he imagines—and how many generations will pay dearly for this mistake. .
Table Talk
But connected local food lovers know they can still buy eggs from Garmon Family Farms there every other Wednesday or so, in the late morning (Corinna Garmon will be there on Wednesday, Feb. 27), and perhaps find a few other farmers and a smattering of produce. (If you want the eggs, go to the market and get on the Garmon mailing list; email's your best shot at reserving a carton, which might be all committed by market day.) The Marietta Square Farmers Market has pegged May 3 as its opening day, and promises to be larger this summer. Meanwhile, if you want to buy directly from a farmer before the spring growing season kicks in, you can head to three markets that operate year-round in metro Atlanta: the Morningside organic market, on Saturday mornings; the Decatur organic market, on Wednesday afternoons; and the produce stall just outside of Star Provisions in west Midtown, on Fridays and Saturdays.
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