Of Carrots and Sticks

I promised SB 136 update so here is one. But before I do, here is what may seem like an aside.

The Brookfield Zoo of Brookfield (Go Figure!), Illinois had a program. They allowed public and private schooled children as well as home schooled children as well as their teachers/chaperone's to attend the zoo on field trips at no cost. Last Summer the field trip policy changed. Only Public and Private schools were listed as field trip eligible on the zoo's website and Home Schoolers were listed as ineligible. One exception was given on the website, stating that home educators who registered their students at the Illinois Board of Education would be able to attend field trips free of charge.

This change was not received warmly by the home school community. I remember my reaction was that since Illinois Home schools are considered by Illinois law as private school's they should already be field trip eligible and not have to do anything else. Other's saw it as a way to try to force home educators to register with the state when they were not legally obligated to do so. The reaction was a surprise to Agnes Kovacs, Manager of School Groups and Teacher Programs at the zoo. She told me that the zoo was just wanting to make sure that only school groups were getting in and just wanted to get some proof that the students were homeschoolers. The zoo now accepts proof of home education from H.S.L.D.A, and other home school advocacy groups as well as registration with the IBOE. She advised me yesterday that other advocacy groups have been recently added besides the ones at the website.

Not 6 months after this zoo issue was resolved State Senator Maloney
introduced SB 136 to make all Illinois Home Schoolers register with the IBOE. Now I understand the zoo's interest. They want to make sure that their free field trips for Illinois students is not abused and can be maintained. I can understand that as I went on such a field trip almost 40 years ago and that trip had a great impact on my life.

What I don't understand is Maloney's interest. He offers no incentives to home schoolers for registration. His motives are explained a little more in this e-mail I received from HSLDA . . .

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From the HSLDA E-lert Service...
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Illinois--SB 136 Epilogue

Dear HSLDA Members and Friends:

Following up on his decision to table SB 136, Senator Maloney asked
several of us involved in the SB 136 hearing to meet with him.

Yesterday Sen. Maloney reiterated to us his belief that the government
needs to know the names and addresses of all homeschooled children. We
reiterated that this was neither necessary nor useful. After all, if
merely knowing a child's name and address could produce a quality
education, a quarter of Illinois public school students would not
still be without a diploma after four years of high school.

Sen. Maloney reiterated his concern about homeschooled children
"falling through the cracks." We reiterated that according to
published figures from State Superintendent Dr. Christopher Kock (who
was also present at the meeting), three-fourths of a million public
school children (765,989 to be exact) were truant for 2008-2009--so
that is where the state should focus its efforts concerning children
"falling through cracks."

Sen. Maloney reiterated his worry that nothing could be done to those
who violate the law while asserting they are homeschooling. We handed
him a copy of the State Board of Education's own webpage that points
to the Levisen case and describes exactly what procedure should be
followed.

While it was obvious that Senator Maloney still wants to increase
government control over homeschoolers, he said he would not move
forward on anything of this nature without first talking to us.

Before filing SB 136, he never asked for the input of those who would
be affected--the thousands of homeschool families in Illinois. We
welcome his new willingness to talk.

We are not asking families to take any action at this time. We will
continue to watch the situation carefully and let you know if and when
it's time to put down the books and drive to Springfield.

Sincerely,

Scott Woodruff
HSLDA Senior Counsel

Maloney needs to realize that home educators in Illinois aren't going to accept registration for registrations sake. I won't register for incentives like field trips. I will register if the law demands it. However, I will actively oppose any bill that even smells like SB 136. I still have not been given a good answer to how the state will pay for making sure home educated children don't fall through the cracks when they already can't fund the ones seeking public education. While this post may truly be an epilogue for SB136, I am sure it is not the end of the registration issue in the state of Illinois. I wonder what is next, more carrots or more sticks?

Thanks to the folks at Life Nurturing Education for putting this in the recent carnival of Homeschooling. Click here to go back to that carnival.

Write a song for someone

A few weeks ago I posted a song here about Allen Levi, one of my favorite musicians/bloggers/people. I e-mailed him the link and received this response:





i'm honored by your creative gift. i've written lots of songs but not been written ABOUT in any before (that i can recall anyway). ... i posted two new blogs this week. i still have to make myself do it, but the writing is a good discipline for me. ... Hope y'all are good. You're a good man. every blessing, allen





I thought it was really cool that I could impress such a prolific song write like Allen just by writing a song about him. I also found it strange that no one had ever written a song about him before. So, my challenge for any of you would be song writers out there. Write a song for someone, it might be the only one they ever get.





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I was working on some phonics work with Spider Droid and we were coding some words together. I wrote a few words down on a dry erase board and asked what he would do with them. His reply: draw a black hole near them and it would suck them all away.





It was funny and poignant thing to say because reading may not be his thing, but he sure has his science down.





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A few weeks ago one of my former pastors who is now pastoring a Church near San Diego, CA had a massive heart attack. It is a miracle that he survived. His heart stopped around 30 times when they were putting a stent in. Each time they had to stop the surgery and start his heart again. After the surgery, he was in a coma like state for almost a week. All of a sudden, He was out of the coma like state and just days later he was at home with his family.





On Sunday my sister told me that a former pastor of ours had died that morning. He was substantially older than the first pastor I mentioned but still younger than all the kids grandparents. I will be at the wake at the same time that many of you checking in from Friday Fragments will be reading this.





Please pray for the families of these two men of God as they deal with the the two different outcomes to illness: recovery and death.





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I was at Old Navy a few months ago and would you believe: They have a mannequin that looks exactly like Princess Puppy? That's just weird!

For more fragments head over to Half Past Kissing Time.

Fitness Center Alpha (Hopefully not Omega)

This may be my first blog post that contains the word treadmill. This is probably because today was one of the first times in the 2+ year history of this blog that I have been on one. Amy and I both joined a fitness center yesterday. It was a pretty cool deal actually. $19.95 a month for me and $15.00 for Amy (plus 1 month free for me for referring her). The best thing is that there were no contracts or cancellation fees. So this morning I woke up at about 6 a.m. drove to the center and spent 35 minutes on the treadmill and watched live t.v.! I hadn't watched live t.v. since the Oscars. The workout went pretty well, I went a little more than 2 miles. Next time I may try some of the other machines. Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Amy and I grew up in the Catholic faith and since embracing an Evangelical Protestant Christianity we have not really observed Lent in the same way. This reminds me of a joke I told in the early early eighties. I gave up Catholicism for Lent, and once it was over, I wasn't Catholic anymore so I didn't have to take it back. (My jokes were much more cerebral back then.) Actually many protestants observe Lent. So each Wednesday during this Lenten Season I will share some observations and activities. This morning I will kick off school with this fun lesson I found about the pretzel and its Lenten origins. Well the nice thing about exercising in the blessed a.m. is being awake and alert to get a post out before the school day commences. But it's that time again to get with it. Have a good day I should be back today or tomorrow with a SB136 epilogue.

One Schoolhouse to go, coming up.

The winner of the Old School House Expo, Expo to Conference MP3 is

Wait for it.

Chick Hatchers.

Congratulations and I'll be in touch soon with your mp3.

Sunday's Cool

I am trying out a new feature today. It's called Sunday's Cool: A Link up and a Look Ahead. Our family has several other blogs here in the blog-o-sphere. The majority of them go untended for and ultimately unread. I have decided that each Sunday I will link up one of those blogs here. This should give me the encouragement I need to have those update more often. That will be the link-up portion of the title. The look-a-head will just be a sneak peek at what may be appearing on this blog in the coming 7 days. As my loyal readers may have noticed, I used to end each post with a sneak peek of what my next post would be about. Sometimes the hardest part of writing a post was simply writing the next time tag. So, I gave up on it. This will give me a chance to give you a warning if I'm starting a six post series on lawn furniture feng-shui.

So with that build up here is the innaugural episode . . .

Sunday's Cool

A Link Up and a Look Ahead

A link up: A few weeks ago our family went to Springfield to indicate our disapproval with proposed Senate Bill SB136. It was tabled so we must have done some good. At our home school web site : Izola Becker Home School, I put up a few pictures from our time there. We chose this picture because past Puppy and the Liberty Bell replica you can see the lines of people waiting to enter the Capitol building and attend the discussion on the bill. Click on the picture to see the entire post.



A Look Ahead: Speaking of SB 136. I plan to post this week parts of an epilogue to SB 136 I saw at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). I will give it a HSD twist and plan to call it "Of Carrots and Sticks." On Monday, I will be announcing the winner of the home school conference mp3 give-a-way. This is your last chance to enter. Click here to do so. Hopefully the week won't get away from me and there will be loads of interesting tidbits here. Enjoy your Sunday and have a great week!.

I Always Have My Camera With Me, Except . . .

When I walk by Jim McMahon

Yes you guessed it. It's Six word Saturday time at Show my face dot com and I just played my six.





Here's a bit of an explanation. Actually there are 2 explanations. If this was a t.v. show the first explanation would start with these words imposed on the screen:

25 years ago




The Chicago Bears won Super Bowl XX. There were many leaders on the team one of which was their punky QB Jim McMahon. Now that Walter Payton is no longer alive, McMahon is the living embodiment of that team (at least on the offensive side of the field).

This leads us to our second explanation. Again if this was a t.v. show and you hadn't already switched the channel you would see these words on your screen:




1 week ago ...


Our family was given free tickets to go see an Arena Football game about 15 minutes from our house. The name of the team is the Chicago Slaughter and they are coached by another Superbowl winning former Bear, Steve McMicheal. It was the opening game of the season and there was a carnival like atmosphere at the stadium. If you have ever been to a minor league baseball game, it was much like that. There were bouncy rides and other games for the kids and even a face painting station.








As the second Half was just beginning I was coming back from the aforementioned face painting station when I walked right past Jim McMahon. This was not so unusual as it was Jim McMahon night. He was posing for a picture and it would have been so easy to snap his picture right there 10 feet away from him. Very easy as I almost always have at least 1 camera around my neck when I'm in public. I am a blogger, after all.


No, I had left both cameras I had brought to the event in the stands so my family members could take pictures like this ...




But in reality they were taking pictures like this . . .

So I rushed back to the stands to get a camera but by then it was too late. McMahon had gone back to his suite and even though I did snap two pics of him there.








The best you could say about these pics was the guy sort of looked like he could possibly maybe look a little like Jim McMahon. But the thing is:

HE WAS JIM MCMAHON !!!

The evening was still a whole bunch of fun. It's not every day you can shout Slaughter the Beef. (The slaughter lost to the Omaha Beef.) I will leave you with some video of the evening.

For more Six Word Saturday click here.