West Cocoa Chat

Would you like to know how to live longer? Ponce de Leon did and he ended up discovering Florida instead of the “Fountain of Youth.” Perhaps this is where the first “Florida Re-count” occurred? Well today on the way to school to get ready for the first day of school that might be interrupted by possibly Category 2 Hurricane Fay, I saw the following sign on the marquee of a Medical Equipment Rental company:

Sleep Apnea?
Want to live longer?
Try one of our CRAP Units.

I don’t know what “C.R.A.P.” stands for but when you read it at 50mph it looks like (no pun intended) “crap.” I called one of my good friends to tell him about the sign and he said, “Imagine how much longer you would live if you had one of their “good” units.”

Speaking of living, I’d like to share something with you that happened yesterday at my school. The State of Florida in their infinite wisdom sponsored a program of “teacher bonuses” tied to test scores called “M.A.P.” Now rewarding “high performing teachers” (HPT) sounds like a good idea, yes? That is until you have so many “HPT’s” that there isn’t enough money to go around. So our District did the most (WARNING – sarcasm approaching!) logical, fair, equitable, and expedient act one can do in such a situation, they put names into an “electronic hat” and chose the lucky recipients by lottery.

BTW – If you’re ever close to someone that mentions the idea of rewarding HPT’s instead of giving all teachers a pay raise, please feel free to slap the silliness right out of them, in love of course. Let me digress and give you one reason why. My lovely wife was a HPT. She had the test scores and the evaluation to qualify her as an HPT. She should have gotten 100 points out of 100 points except for one little detail. Despite the fact she had high test scores and words like excellent, exemplary, and high performing peppered throughout her evaluation, in the final summation paragraph her administrators accidentally left them out and thus, she ended up with 96 our of 100 points.

O.K., now to the good stuff. My Principal called the 23 teachers from our school that qualified up to him during a break in a Faculty Meeting. He told us 18 of us were chosen from the lottery. At that point we in unison asked him not to tell us who was lucky and who wasn’t. The discussion began – how are you going to feel if you’re one of the “unlucky 5?” We then discussed the possibility of pooling our funds after taxes and splitting them evenly 23 ways.

Sin Confession – I must admit that although I was somewhat leading the discussion there was a part of me saying, “May-Day, May-Day, what are you doing!!??”

We held a secret ballot vote with the understanding that unless it was a unanimous decision in the affirmative, we would let the chips fall where they may. The vote was held and family, it was a unanimous “Yes!” I have never been more proud of group of people. When our Principal told us who the unlucky 5 were, I wasn’t one of them but I felt very lucky, no, blessed, to work with a group of teachers such as we have at our school.

Now if we can avoid possible “Hurricane” Fay next week the circle of starting school will be complete.