DC TAG - Keeping It Funded

The on going struggle... from Washington Post -

Parents, students praise D.C. TAG in effort to shore up congressional support

By Emma Brown March 19, 2014

D.C. parents, students and college graduates gathered on Capitol Hill this week to share their praise for a federally funded program that helps city students pay for higher education.
“Coming from D.C., it’s just a real assurance, a faith and a belief in you going on to do bigger and better things,” said Channell Autrey, a 2005 graduate of the School Without Walls. Autrey used the money she received from the program to attend Pennsylvania State University and now works as a public defender in Baltimore.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) convened the roundtable discussion at the Rayburn House Office Building on Tuesday night to draw attention to and shore up congressional support for the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant program, known as D.C. TAG.
“I thought it appropriate to have it right here where the appropriators are,” Norton said, adding that she wanted members of Congress to hear how TAG has affected real people’s lives. “I’m trying to say: Well, this is the program you always liked, I hope you continue to like it.”
Since TAG’s inception in 2000, more than $317 million has gone to help more than 20,000 students pay for college. Congress appropriated $30 million this year for the program, which provides up to $10,000 per year for students to attend out-of-state public schools and up to $2,500 for historically black universities and private schools in the Washington area.
But Norton has warned that those funds might be in danger because of the D.C. Council’s move to create a new, locally funded college-aid program known as D.C. Promise, meant to offer students additional funds to meet the rising cost of higher education.
Appropriators would see no need to continue funding TAG, Norton argued, if the city showed the ability to pay for its own scholarship program. “D.C. wants to fool with that,” she said. “It must be crazy.”
Greta Kreuz, a local television news broadcaster whose two children attended private schools in Washington, said at the roundtable that TAG has served as an incentive to stay in the city for many families who might otherwise have moved to the suburbs.
Samuel Cuffee, a Coolidge High graduate attending Bowie State University, said he grew up without a lot of role models who had continued their education after high school. “D.C. TAG was just the push that I needed to get into college,” he said.
President Obama included $40 million for TAG in his proposed budget this year, a move that Norton said should help the program as Congress enters budget negotiations.

 Emma Brown writes about D.C. education and about people with a stake in schools, including teachers, parents and kids.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/parents-students-praise-dc-tag-in-effort-to-shore-up-congressional-support/2014/03/19/e72ee39c-af84-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html

Too Many Curbside Dumpsters!!!

  In my area of Columbia Heights, I see contractors use dumpsters as transfer stations for other projects and leave the dumpsters out for months. There needs to be a time limit and a restriction about using the dumpster no parking area for contractor vehicles.

Georgetown seeks ban on curbside dumpsters

By GRAHAM VYSE

Current Staff Writer

October 1, 2014

Georgetown’s advisory neighborhood commissioners voted unanimously Monday night to request that curbside dumpsters be banned — or at least severely restricted — on residential streets in their community.

Commissioner Tom Birch said he and his colleagues still need to take their proposal to D.C. officials, but they said the time had come to prevent dumpsters used during home renovations from taking up so much space in Georgetown.

“We’re all familiar with the use and the proliferation of dumpsters in our neighborhood,” he said. “They’re available for long periods of time. The permits are cheap. They’re easily renewable.” As a result, Birch said, they are taking up an increasing number of parking spaces and jutting out onto narrow residential streets, frustrating residents.

Moreover, most dumpsters may be unnecessary because contractors working on home renovation projects in the area usually have access to waste removal trucks, he said. One resident told Birch her family had renovated four different houses in Georgetown without ever using a dumpster.

As of now, it costs a contractor only $75 for a permit to keep a dumpster on a D.C. street for a month. Birch said the District should consider emulating Old Town Alexandria, where a contractor would have to pay $1,900 to keep a dumpster out for that amount of time.

Commissioner Dennis Quinn said he supported Birch, but he would have “a very keen eye on making sure that policy outcomes are limited to Georgetown.”

Quinn expressed concern about advocating for higher permit fees in other neighborhoods without first consulting community leaders there.

But Birch pushed back, saying “some things will only happen if they’re applied citywide.”

“I would suggest that this problem may be a serious bother to the residents of other neighborhoods across the city,” he said.

Birch also said commissioners would need to be prepared to take on a wide array of dumpster-providing companies in the region that might fight against new regulations.

“I suspect there’s a dumpster lobby out there,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. Concerns about dumpsters in Georgetown have arisen before. Earlier this year, the office of Ward 2 D.C. Council member Jack Evans began working with the community on potential solutions.

http://www.currentnewspapers.com/admin/uploadfiles/NW%2010-01-2014.pdf

School Board Declines To Pay For Lack Of Experience - Teach For America Rejected

Cracks in the empire? And why does a state (Wisconsin) want to pay TFA? What are they getting?

Why one school system is dropping Teach For America

By Valerie Strauss September 1, 2014

The school board in Durham, N.C., has voted 6-1 to end its relationship with Teach For America after the 2015-16 school year, when all of the 12 TFA teachers hired in the past few years will have completed the two years of service they promise to make when joining the organization.
What makes it interesting is what school board members said during a discussion about the issue. The Herald Sun reported that several board members said they did not want to continue a relationship with the organization because TFA corps members are highly inexperienced. (How could they not be? TFA recruits mostly newly graduated college students, gives them five weeks of summer training and places them in high-needs classrooms.) There were also concerns expressed that corps members are required only to promise to stay for two years and though some stay longer, some leave before the two years are up, causing a great deal of turnover in many schools with at-risk students who greatly need stability.
School board member Mike Lee was quoted as saying: “I have a problem with the two years and gone, using it like community service.”

Diane Ravitch, on her blog, noted that Pittsburgh school board had voted late last year not to renew its TFA contract.  In December, I wrote about the decision to drop the $750,000 TFA contract:

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Danielle Montoya, regional communications director for Teach For America, said the new vote was the first time any school board had reversed itself on bringing in TFA corps members into a district. Earlier this year, however, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed a line item inserted into the state’s higher education legislation that would have given $1.5 million to Teach For America over two years.

The newspaper quoted board member Regina Holley as saying she did not understand how TFA corps members could know how to handle tough classroom situations with so little training: “I find that a bit outrageous.”

Valerie Strauss covers education and runs The Answer Sheet blog.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/01/why-one-school-system-is-dropping-teach-for-america/?tid=collaborative_1.0_strip_3

Not Just Your Mother Telling You To Turn That Device Off!

 This beyond DC but very much family and the environment - from The Washington Post -

 

Blue light from electronics disturbs sleep, especially for teenagers

By Meeri Kim September 1 at 6:05 PM

Blue light prevents the release of melatonin, a hormone associated with nighttime and sleep. (BIGSTOCK)

 

 

The pervasive glow of electronic devices may be an impediment to a good night’s sleep. ¶ That’s particularly noticeable now, when families are adjusting to early wake-up times for school. Teenagers can find it especially hard to get started in the morning. ¶ As lamps switch off in teens’ bedrooms across America, the lights from their computer screens, smartphones and tablets often stay on throughout the night. These devices emit light of all colors, but it’s the blues in particular that pose a danger to sleep. Blue light is espec ially good at preventing the release of melatonin, a hormone associated with nighttime.

The pervasive glow of electronic devices may be an impediment to a good night’s sleep. That’s particularly noticeable now, when families are adjusting to early wake-up times for school. Teenagers can find it especially hard to get started in the morning. For nocturnal animals, it spurs activity. For daytime species such as humans, melatonin signals that it’s time to sleep.
As lamps switch off in teens’ bedrooms across America, the lights from their computer screens, smartphones and tablets often stay on throughout the night. These devices emit light of all colors, but it’s the blues in particular that pose a danger to sleep. Blue light is especially good at preventing the release of melatonin, a hormone associated with nighttime.

Ordinarily, the pineal gland, a pea-size organ in the brain, begins to release melatonin a couple of hours before your regular bedtime. The hormone is no sleeping pill, but it does reduce alertness and make sleep more inviting.

However, light — particularly of the blue variety — can keep the pineal gland from releasing melatonin, thus warding off sleepiness. You don’t have to be staring directly at a television or computer screen: If enough blue light hits the eye, the gland can stop releasing melatonin. So easing into bed with a tablet or a laptop makes it harder to take a long snooze, especially for sleep-deprived teenagers who are more vulnerable to the effects of light than adults.

During adolescence, the circadian rhythm shifts, and teens feel more awake later at night. Switching on a TV show or video game just before bedtime will push off sleepiness even later even if they have to be up by 6 a.m. to get to school on time.

The result? Drowsy students struggling to stay awake, despite the caffeinated drinks many kids now consume.

“Teenagers have all the same risks of light exposure, but they are systematically sleep-deprived because of how society works against their natural clocks,” said sleep researcher Steven Lockley of Harvard Medical School. “Asking a teenager to get up at 7 a.m. is like asking me to get up at 4 a.m.”

In a 2014 poll, the National Sleep Foundation, an advocacy organization, polled parents, asking them to estimate their children’s sleep. More than half said their 15-to-17-year-olds routinely get seven hours or fewer hours of sleep. (The recommended amount for teens is 8¹ / ₂ to 10 hours.) In addition, 68 percent of these teens were also said to keep an electronic device on all night — a television, computer, video game or something similar.

Based on what parents reported, sleep quality was better among children age 6 to 17 who always turned their devices off: 45 percent of them were described as having excellent sleep quality vs. 25 percent of those who sometimes left devices on.

“It is known that teenagers have trouble falling asleep early, and every teenager goes through that,” said light researcher Mariana Figueiro of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

Figueiro investigates how light affects human health, and her recent research focused on finding out which electronics emit blue light intense enough to affect sleep. When comparing melatonin levels of adults and teenagers looking at computer screens, she was astonished by the younger group’s light sensitivity. Even when exposed to just one-tenth as much light as adults were, the teens actually suppressed more melatonin than the older people.

In another experiment, she had adults use iPads at full brightness for two hours and measured their melatonin levels with saliva samples. One hour of use didn’t significantly curtail melatonin release, but two hours’ did.

So although teenagers may be particularly susceptible, we all should be aware that artificial light can affect our circadian rhythms.

“The premise to remember is [that] all light after dusk is unnatural,” Lockley said. “All of us push our sleep later than we actually would if we didn’t have electric light.”

A study from 2013 found that people who spent a week camping in the Rocky Mountains, exposed to only natural light and no electronic devices, had their circadian clocks synchronized with the rise and fall of the sun. Although there were only eight campers, they all reacted in the same way, whether they considered themselves early birds or night owls. 

So light serves as a cue, but how? It has long been known that the retina contains two types of photoreceptors, or light sensors: rods and cones. The cones allow us to see colors, while the ultra-sensitive rods are used for night vision, motion detection and peripheral vision. But surprisingly, neither of them is the body’s primary tool for detecting light and darkness and synchronizing our circadian clocks.

There’s a third kind of sensor in our eyes, officially discovered in 2002. Called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, or ipRGCs, these relatively crude sensors are unable to pick up on low levels of light — from a dim night light, for example — but sluggishly signal light changes.

They are the body’s way of sending ambient light information to the master circadian clock, a huddle of nerve cells in the brain. This clock makes the pineal gland start and stop the secretion of melatonin. The ipRGCs are most sensitive to blue light — that’s why blue light is bad for your sleep.

To counteract the effects of tablets’ blue light, Figueiro and Lockley recommend a free app, F.lux, that automatically warms up the colors on your various screens — more reds and yellows — at sunset and returns them to normal at sunrise.

“The amount of light you need [in order] to see is lower than the amount of light you need to affect your melatonin,” Figueiro said, which means that light-emitting screens can be used at night without disrupting sleep cycles if you put some distance between your eyes and the device. In other words, place the tablet farther away from your face than usual, or watch TV instead. Also, turning the brightness setting down on laptops, tablets and phones should help.

But for teenagers, this doesn’t completely remedy the problem of early school start times. Lockley also blames the early-morning sluggishness of many students on school start times that ignore their changing body clock.

High schools in a handful of cities have shifted their start times to 8:30 a.m. or later. In a University of Minnesota study whose final report was issued in February, researchers who surveyed about 9,000 students at eight high schools found that such a shift correlated with improvements in grades, achievement tests, attendance rates and car accident rates.

In Virginia, Fairfax County has been considering delaying its high school start time until after 8 a.m. In Maryland, Montgomery County has discussed a change but has not decided on one yet.

Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a recommendation that middle and high schools delay the start of classes to 8:30 a.m. or later. Pediatrician Judith Owens, the lead author of this policy statement, said that later start times will help adolescents get the sleep they need and lower their risks of obesity and depression.

“Sleep is important for learning, memory, brain development, health,” Lockley said. “We’re systematically sleep-
depriving kids when their brains are still developing, and you couldn’t design a worse system for learning.”

Many Americans may believe early risers are more successful and that people can learn to live on little sleep, Lockley said, but that notion is neither true nor healthy.

“There’s no training people to live without sleep,” Lockley said. “It’s like trying to train people to live without food.”

Kim is a freelance science journalist in Philadelphia.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/blue-light-from-electronics-disturbs-sleep-especially-for-teenagers/2014/08/29/3edd2726-27a7-11e4-958c-268a320a60ce_story.html?hpid=z4

Energy Harvesting - Footstep Power With Pavegen In DC

From The Washington Business Journal -

Aug 21, 2014, 10:44am EDT Updated: Aug 21, 2014, 5:56pm EDT

Step on it: D.C. plans 850-square-foot, $200K kinetic pocket park at Dupont Circle

Michael Neibauer, Staff Reporter- Washington Business Journal

Sometimes, the littlest improvements can make the biggest differences.
While there may be an opportunity to deck-over the unsightly, pedestrian-unfriendly Connecticut Avenue underpass in the future, as Greater Greater Washington recently reported, and the Dupont underground may become a micro-unit hotel, the District has a shorter term plan to breathe new life, and bring new energy (literally) to 850-square-feet of dull pavement immediately south of Dupont Circle.
The proposed $200,000 "Connecticut Avenue Overlook Parklet," to be funded by Mayor Vincent Gray's Sustainable DC initiative, will replace a 60-foot-by-28 foot concrete semi-circle in the Connecticut Avenue right-of-way, between Sun Trust Bank and the Dupont Circle Metro overlooking the underpass. Work will include the installation of 100 Pavegen kinetic pavers, which use the power of every footstep to create electricity.
Per a description of the project provided by the District to the National Capital Planning Commission, the project "will provide both a new park and an interesting new amenity in pedestrian-rich Dupont Circle that will showcase a fun, innovative way to generate renewable energy."
An 850-square-foot pocket park on a concrete island in the middle of Connecticut Avenue may not sound like much of a park at all, but it is better than what's there now — nothing but Metro bike lockers, which are scheduled to be removed. The space will certainly be used, at least as a stopover for the walk across Connecticut. ZGF Architects LLP, the park's designer, estimates that on average, 30,000 people will pass through daily.
The project will involve the demolition and reconstruction of the sidewalk pavement and curbs, and the installation of below-ground electrical conduit, a mix of London and kinetic energy pavers, seven black granite benches, six bollard-style bicycle racks, two landscaping beds, and a small plaque that includes a link to the project website and agency logos.
Each Pavegen kinetic unit generates electricity with every footstep, via a single cable connected to a battery that can be stored for later use. Pavegen tiles have been, or will be, installed at the Saint-Omer Train Station in Northern France, at Heathrow Airport and on London Bridge, outside the main entrance to London's Westfield Stratform City, as well as in various schools in England and New York.
The kinetic tiles on Connecticut Avenue will power on-site lighting integrated into the park's benches. If each of the projected 30,000 park users steps on 30 Pavegen pavers, the park will generate 456.25 kilowatts of energy annually. The pavers cost $840 each.
The Golden Triangle Business Improvement District has agreed to maintain the site, including the kinetic pavers, and to create a website that provides real time updates on the energy generated.
The NCPC is scheduled to review the pocket park project during its Sept. 4 meeting. D.C. hopes to start construction in October.

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/2014/08/step-on-it-d-c-plans-850-square-foot-200k-kinetic.html?page=all


And this is the web site for Pavegen -
http://www.pavegen.com/



And about Pavegen from 2013 Scientific American -

Energy-Harvesting Street Tiles Generate Power from Pavement Pounder

Power for the people takes on a whole new meaning, as the largest installation of Pavegen energy-harvesting tiles to date produces 4.7 kilowatt-hours of energy during the Paris marathon, enough to power a laptop for more than two days
 By Dhananjay Khadilkar  
Apr 20, 2013

PARIS—On April 7, 2013, Kenya’s Peter Some won the 37th Paris Marathon with a time of 2:05:38. A surprise winner, Some missed the event record by only 27 seconds, thus depriving him of a place in running history. He need not have worried; unknown to him and thousands of fellow marathoners, they were all nonetheless part of a historic event. As they ran across the Avenue des Champs Élysées and thumped their feet on 176 special tiles laid on a 25-meter stretch, the athletes generated electricity.
These special “energy harvesting tiles” were developed by London-based Pavegen Systems. The power thus generated can be used to run low-voltage equipment such as streetlights and vending machines. The concept is the brainchild of Laurence Kemball-Cook, who founded Pavegen in 2009 to commercialize it. “The Paris Marathon is the first of many such projects that will enable us to realize our goal of taking this technology to retail sites, transport hubs, office blocks and infrastructure spaces,” he says.
Pavegen uses what it calls a hybrid black box technology to convert the energy of a footstep into electricity, which is either stored in a battery or fed directly to devices. A typical tile is made of recycled polymer, with the top surface made from recycled truck tires. A foot stomp that depresses a single tile by five millimeters produces between one and seven watts. These tiles generate electricity with a hybrid solution of mechanisms that include the piezoelectric effect (an electric charge produced when pressure is exerted on crystals such as quartz) and induction, which uses copper coils and magnets. The marathon runners generated 4.7 kilowatt-hours of energy, enough to power a five-watt LED bulb for 940 hours, or 40 days. “We came together for Paris Marathon to highlight how technology is really going to change the way people think about energy,” says Joe Hart, senior vice president of Segment & Solution Marketing at Schneider Electric.
Easy power collection sounds promising, but implementation is challenging. As Kemball-Cook says, “Installing the tiles in the ground is one of the hardest things to do as they have to be very durable, weather resistant and should have high fatigue resistance as well. Also, these tiles could get vandalized.”
Hart says that in a couple of years, Pavegen’s technology could become visible and apparent in a number of areas, not only as power units but also in security applications. “Each of those tiles has wireless capability—using which, we can analyze movement and optimize floor management.”
Pavegen is not alone in harvesting human kinetic energy to generate electricity. Max Donelan, founder of Canada-based Bionic Power, which has developed a wearable knee brace that harvests energy while walking, says the braces “can be useful when you need electricity without having to rely on the power grid. For example, our knee braces are being developed for military use in places like Afghanistan where battery cells are exorbitantly expensive.”
Energy-harvesting tiles may be just one step for man, but taking many such steps may lead to a more powerful and sustainable future.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pavement-pounders-at-paris-marathon-generate-power/

Low Turnout For Primaries Needs Fixing

     A major part of the problem, if not the root problem, of DC politricks is the party based primary system.  An amazingly low percentage of voters determines the outcome of the general election due to the overwhelming majority of Democrats in DC. Winning the primary usually wins the general election. In my view the biggest problem with the primary system is low turnout combined with a large group of candidates to split the vote.  
    In the April 1, 2014, DC primary barely 25% of registered voters participated. Thus while the "winner" of the election is credited to have received 44.24% of the vote, that represents less than 10% of the total number of registered voters.
    There are two solutions - both involve instant run-off in combination with either open primaries or making City offices non-partisan. As I don't expect the local Democrat party to just relinquish the power it has by creating a non-partisan form of governance, open primaries might have more promise in DC.
     The chart below list turnout in all the primary elections in DC since 1982 -

	Registered	Voted	Turnout
September 14, 1982 Primary	327,874	120,234	36.7%
September 9, 1986 Primary	243,372	85,094	35.0%
September 11, 1990 Primary	262,537	135,635	51.7%
September 13, 1994 Primary	304,387	149,457	49.1%
September 15, 1998 Primary	298,265	95,624	32.1%
September 10, 2002 Primary	301,593	104,001	34.5%
September 12, 2006 Primary	321,087	109,781	34.2%
September 14, 2010 Primary	370,416	137,586	37.1%
April 1, 2014 Primary	369,035

Where There Is Smoke, Is There Fire?

Hmmmmmmmmm.......

E-mails show D.C. schools officials were alerted to cheating at Noyes in 2010

By Emma Brown, Published: January 30

Teachers’ union officials in 2010 directly e-mailed D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson telling her that the principal of a D.C. elementary school had reported seeing employees cheating on a city-issued test, according to e-mails obtained by the Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The e-mails — which offered no specifics about the allegations and said the principal’s claims were uncorroborated — show that Henderson quickly referred the matter to the school system’s then-chief of accountability, Erin McGoldrick, sending an e-mail about the matter less than two hours after she received the report. Henderson asked McGoldrick to be in touch with union leaders about the allegations and wrote to the union official: “Thanks for alerting us.”
McGoldrick replied, writing that the school system had already been informed of allegations at the school, Northeast Washington’s Noyes Elementary, and was in the midst of finalizing an investigation.
It’s not clear from the e-mails — in early November 2010 — whether McGoldrick knew that the allegations the union officials forwarded were new and had occurred only the day before; the union officials’ e-mails don’t specify a date. At the time, the school system was in the midst of investigating older cheating allegations at Noyes.
Adell Cothorne, the principal of Noyes at the time, left the school in 2011 and went on to file a whistleblower lawsuit claiming that school system officials ignored her efforts to raise an alarm about cheating.
Cothorne said that in 2010, she immediately reported the alleged cheating incident by phone to two central office administrators, who never investigated it. Henderson disputed that account at the time, saying there was no record that Cothorne had reported any such incident to school system officials.
The e-mails show instead that union officials contacted Henderson, and that union officials also investigated. Clay White, who was then the union’s chief of staff, said the next day that union leaders directed two field representatives to fully investigate the matter, according to an e-mail White sent to Henderson, McGoldrick and others.
The whistleblower suit prompted an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education, which did not find evidence to support Cothorne’s claims. Cothorne withdrew the case last year.
Cothorne told the Associated Press that the union’s 2010 e-mail exchange with Henderson shows that officials didn’t take cheating seriously because they didn’t follow up with her to ask what she had seen. School system officials said they take every cheating allegation seriously, and pointed out that Noyes has been the subject of multiple investigations during the past several years.
“It is perhaps the most investigated school in the city,” Pete Weber, the school system’s chief of data and strategy, said in an interview Thursday. Weber said that the school system investigated Cothorne’s claims when they became public in 2013 and found no substance to them.
Noyes and its fast-improving test scores became a model for success during the tenure of former Chancellor Michelle Rhee. But the school came under scrutiny after a 2011 USA Today investigation found an unusually high number of wrong-to-right erasures at Noyes and more than 100 other schools in the city.
Educators’ jobs and merit bonuses depended on improving test scores, and between 2007 and 2009, some schools saw huge increases that later reversed after test security was tightened.
Several employees have been fired for cheating at Noyes, but investigators have said they did not find evidence of the widespread cheating suggested by USA Today’s report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/e-mails-show-dc-schools-officials-were-alerted-to-cheating/2014/01/30/26cbc592-89ec-11e3-916e-e01534b1e132_story.html