I had an excellent public school education and ended up getting a score of 5 in three AP tests and a 3 in one more thanks to some great teachers. Some of that was just luck more than resources, just some really great teachers around when I went.

I like our school district for the kids. They are really trying to step things up right now and are getting good support from the community.

It looks like both kids will just miss the G&T program. Emaryn falls just short on IQ testing and Leif falls just short on Academic testing, though he had the disadvantage of having skipped a grade so he was 1-2 years younger than other kids taking the tests.

though he had the disadvantage of having skipped a grade so he was 1-2 years younger than other kids taking the tests.

They ought to factor that in. Leif's kind of obviously a smartypants.

I have saved Casper's mash note for Emmett's future perusal. And will probably send it to his mom.

In retrospect my public school education was only middling, but I did get an AP credit from it. I wasn't really prepared for college, though. I don't think I got the hang of college until my sophomore year.

Watching Emily S. deal with the SFUSD and the particulars of her teaching in a poor school in the Mission I'm not convinced that money alone can solve all problems. But it would make a lot of other options possible.

We're way underfunded since Prop 13. One of the worst things that ever happened in California.

Still, Emmett's district in Albany is well funded and high performing and he's definitely benefited from that. Matilda will probably go to school here in SF and (as java notes) that's a bit of a crapshoot. Though our neighborhood school has risen in the rankings considerably in the last few years. Not that we're guaranteed a spot there but there is a local weighting to the (maddening) lottery system.

We're way underfunded since Prop 13. One of the worst things that ever happened in California.

Hey, you won't have to pay high property taxes. Which sounds fantastic to people when they don't realize what their property taxes pay for.

Honestly I am pretty sure that's what is mostly wrong with people - they want things but they don't want to have to pay for things.

t, Sports Basement in SF next to Chrissie Field has prescription swim goggles in the triathlon section. I prefer the Tyrs. They are wonderful. There are 10 or 15 powers and you just go through their samples until you find the one closest to your correction needs. Mine are still going strong after about three years of use. Not bad for under $20!

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I also wear contacts sometimes for swimming, and always for scuba diving, gas perm hard lenses, and open my eyes underwater with no goggles relatively often - the power of contacts to cling to your eyeballs is way stronger than anything else.

Random Hivemind Question...

CJ and a school friend (yes, a friend. At school. Woot) have been discussing the sale and our potential purchase of a Wii plus some games. The friend and his brother want to buy an XBox.

Anyway, what would be a reasonable price for a used Wii console? And used games? I tried to look at ebay and saw a HUGE range of prices. I'm clueless.

I could be completely talking out of my ass here, but I think part of the problem with high schools/dropout rates, etc is that the kids in less wealthy neighborhoods who in the past might have completed high school but not college don't see any benefit to just completing high school (in terms of jobs/income). And frankly, I am not sure I do either. Without either a 2 year school or a training program, things like office work, hotel/restaurant management, retail or grocery management, auto repair, etc aren't open to people, and other jobs like clerk, waitstaff, cleaning staff tend to be open whether or not you have completed high school. Working your way up seems to happen less and less.

Also, if you don't see behavior modeled, you have no idea how to go about things. I am the first (and only so far) person in my family to have a bachelor's degree. Although my family is very, very smart and well read, and most did fairly well in government or blue collar jobs, I had no idea how to use my college education to my advantage when obtaining jobs, or to use it to obtain a job that was, say entry level management instead of entry level worker. I had no idea that at least some of the vaue in your degree was not the education, but the name of the school. And my family was/is so against self promoting or asking for help that to this day things like networking or using connections to get an interview for a job seem like "cheating" to me.

I wouldn't assume that individual students will automatically thrive in the better-funded schools, either. I went from being a slightly above-average student in the cream of the crop elementary school I attended grades 2-4 to exceling in the older, poorer elementary school and middle school after a move. Competition was somewhat less fierce (the new school didn't have advanced Math, so I re-used the same text I'd had in 4th grade and became the top Math student in my class), but I really think it was a combo of being better suited to less supervised instruction and not having as many friends around to distract me that made me get serious about school and really try hard.

Thanks, Java, I had no idea such a thing was available! I'll have to try to get over there sometime. Good to know that the gas-permeable lenses are hard to shift. That's what I wear, also.

Anyway, what would be a reasonable price for a used Wii console? And used games? I tried to look at ebay and saw a HUGE range of prices. I'm clueless.

Suzi, I just texted Lewis-he says $200 is what GameStop charges for a used Wii console. The range of prices for games goes from about $10-$45.

When I swim, I just leave my glasses in the locker and rely on my goggles to give me decent, if blurry, vision underwater. The old goggles I had had really small "lenses," but my new ones are really big so I can see loads more than before.

Tonight was interesting--power was out in half the building when I came home, so I had to walk up the stairs instead of take the elevator, but when I got into my unit, the tv and light worked fine. However, everything went out after about an hour, after the ComEd truck showed up (I think they shut everything down to restart it all up again). It's all working now.

The last time this happened was the first summer I lived here. Same thing--power out in half the building, the other half having limited power for part of the apartment and full power in other parts. That night was much warmer (having no fans was killing me until ComEd fixed it), but both outages were definitely not due to weather issues, since the problem was only in the complex.