New Connections Awards Night

New Connections Academy where my son attends school in Palatine had its inaugural Awards Night on May 29. The kids all really got into the evening and had a wonderful time. It was so great to see them all enjoy celebrating their year and it was very special for me as a parent.

The folks at New Connections Academy are doing a wonderful job with these children who suffer from “high functioning” Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome. Higher functioning autistic spectrum kids are very difficult to place in general education or even special education. Their academic capabilities are high, extremely high in many cases, but understanding of their disorder is not.

To be honest, I was almost in tears when my son came home after his first day with a reading book for his grade level. These kids have enormous potential and can do very well in the right environment and with the right instruction. New Connections Academy is paving new ground in this regard with their comprehensive program and I highly encourage it for any student on the higher end of the spectrum.

The 305

Who needs Saturday Night Live (not funny in a decade or so now) when you have YouTube?

“Shooter” Was The Real Deal

Sad news came out today that Rod Beck, the lock solid closer of the 1998 Cubs that won the wild card after a one game playoff at the end of the season, has passed away. If you’re a guy like me you always liked a guy like Rod Beck, known by his nickname “Shooter”. He had the ambiance of an everyday Joe who just so happened to make it to the big leagues. He was the type of guy that caters to the boyhood dreams of baseball stardom that just about any man who played baseball as a kid has had. He was just that down to earth and genuine.

He had the appearance of an old school closer — the odd facial hair, the intense gaze, the mammoth frame from which he hurled the ball. But that Rod Beck had a hard time living up to the real Rod Beck — a down to earth and modest man from what everyone who has known him has said. In 2003 when he was trying to make a comeback with the Iowa Cubs he would park his RV outside the stadium and invite anyone, fans included, to come join him for a beer and to sit and talk about baseball.

Old school, we will not see his like again.

In this day and age of multi-million dollar contracts, marketing, agents, licensing and a dollar sign attached to virtually everything that is baseball Rod Beck was an anachronism. His teammates have spoken about how he’s been in the clubhouse with a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other — just sitting back, talking about the game, and passing on what he had learned.

The Cubs disappointed me with how quickly they rid themselves of Shooter. Despite his problems I always felt the guy deserved more than what he got from the organization. He was a class act, a memorable Cub among many memorable Cubs and baseball just feels a bit more disconnected now that the Shooter is gone.

Rest in peace Rod, we’ll miss you.

Round Lake Area Schools Update

Look, a blog post!! I realized I haven’t posted anything here in some time so I will do an update here. I haven’t seen a reporter at one of our meetings in some time so either we’re boring now or they have something else better to do! Here’s what’s going on.

Board Reorganization

Tammie Hanna and Denny Driscoll were sworn in on the board in May along with Nanci Radford, Tonesha Baker, Annette Negrete McGinley and myself who were all re-elected to the board. After swearing in officers were elected and it was decided that I will be president of the Board of Education for the next two years. I wished my very heart-felt thanks to Ann Welk my good friend and predecessor for her hard work during her tenure as president. Nanci was elected vice president and Annette was elected secretary.

It’s been exciting to serve as the board president, it is a lot of additional responsibility but I have confidence my past experience on the board and my past leadership experience in other organizations will serve me well in the job.

Building Principals

At the Middle School the district hired Brian Minarcik and Kurt Sinclair was hired for Round Lake High School. They both start in July although both have already been hard at work getting ready for their new positions. Mr. Minarcik comes to us from Schiller Park School District where he was a middle school principal. In his introduction to the board he stated his training and experience had been in urban school districts and he felt Round Lake was a close match for those experiences. Mr. Sinclair comes to us from Kenosha Unified School District where he was principal of an alternative high school and middle school and served in other administrative capacities as well. He came to Round Lake to fulfill the dream of becoming a high school principal and he’s looking forward to continuing the progress we’ve made at RLHS under Dr. Brierton, his predecessor.

Other Administrative Changes

Dr. Ben Martindale is all set to take over as CEO the 1st of July, he already has me on speed dial and has been very active with the district in the past few months while still holding down his job at Gurnee SD 56. Ben is a veteran superintendent and a superb administrator, I can’t wait for him to be in the position full-time.

We have also filled almost all of our other vacancies in upper administration. We recently lost our human resources director to another district and we are looking at options for filling that position presently.

Construction Updates

Elementary HVAC Project

Work is progressing quickly on all the HVAC installations, most buildings are just about ready for the units. Everything is on schedule for them to be online for the start of school though we could certainly hit some snags. Once the units are delivered we’ll have a much better idea if all will be on time. The expectation is that they will be at this time.

Magee Renovation

As you have probably noticed demolition of the sections of Magee being replaced is well underway. We have hit a few small snags but nothing major. We did have some asbestos in an unexpected place and we’re set to get that taken care of so the project isn’t bogged down. The next round of bids were opened but after they came back a bit high Seater Construction thought it would be best to “value engineer” the specifications and see if we can get bids within budget. Value engineering is basically looking at the specifications and seeing if alternative materials or methods can be used to save money. We have a $3 mil surplus in the building fund above the budget for all outstanding projects but obviously we want to preserve that if at all possible.

Work is on target still for the re-opening of Magee for the 2008-2009 school year. During the coming school year the administration and the board will be hard at work preparing for that. There are many things that will need to be done including determining the boundaries for the two middle schools, building names, mascots, athletics, etc. It’s certainly an exciting time but the task is a large one. I’m confident we will be well prepared for it, I expect us to be looking at a timetable for reopening tasks shortly.

Mobile Classrooms

One of the mobiles in in place at the high school and the other will be arriving from Michigan soon. Both should be in place for the start of the new school year. It’s a good thing, we desperately need the space while we hold on for one more school year until Magee is ready for occupancy.

I think that is all of the significant items for now, hope you appreciate the update.

Vonage – Poor Peformance, Poor Service

For a little over a year I was using Vonage for my phone and fax service at my home office. At first things went pretty well but it wasn’t long before I got the calls of people who couldn’t fax me. Time and time again I would get calls from people trying to fax me something and it wouldn’t go through. Then time and time again I would try to fax something to someone else only to get a “poor signal” error from the fax machine. Clearly Vonage wasn’t cutting it for the fax.

Couple this with the regular website outages making me unable to visit my call history, my voicemail online, my phone features, etc and I had a pretty miserable experience with them. They would take the cake when it was time to cancel though.

I did my order with the local phone company, went through the process to get my numbers switched and FCC regulations require a 3rd party administrator even to verify I did, in fact, wish to have my phone numbers switched to the local phone company. So they processed all of that and then my local phone company called a few weeks stating Vonage was claiming I had more lines than that so they were denying the transfer. I told them these were the only two numbers I had with Vonage and have ever had with them, they managed to get it straightened out.

So I have been happily back with my local phone company for a month when I get a charge for Vonage still. Strange since my phone numbers are no longer attached to my Vonage device and obviously I have no way to make or receive calls without a Vonage phone number. Apparently they are happy to keep charging me though. Despite all their online features they make you call in to cancel.

So I call and up front the announced wait is 15-20 minutes so I waited the 20 minutes until my call was taken. They cancel my account and say I should have called them to cancel. I advised them the 3rd party administrator had contacted them to switch my numbers and advise I was canceling my service, that was sufficient notice. I was told I would need to speak to someone in the “credits” department.

I speak to the person in the credits department who asks to call me by my first name and is very polite. I tell her I would like a credit for the month of service they charged me for the single phone call that was on the statement. She said she was unable to do that as their rules require the customer call in to cancel. I said they had been contacted and told the number was switching and they said their policy is that only the customer can cancel to protect my privacy. I told her I had been amply protected by federal regulations and that charging me for service I didn’t use was in violation of that regulation. Apparently that response wasn’t on her script, she said she understood my frustration but she had no authority to give me the credit. I told her I would like to speak to someone who does then. She said she is a supervisor. I reminded her she said she didn’t have authority so I wanted to speak to her manager. She said she didn’t have one. I told her I didn’t think she is the president of the company so I do believe she has a manager and I would like to speak to him. She said he was busy and that he doesn’t have voicemail. I told her that was fine, I can see why Vonage has a wait for 20 minutes to cancel your account.

So, you have been warned, keep my experience in mind when considering your options for phone service.

Michael Bublé’s New Album COOKS

This song has been repeated on the iPod about 100 times since I purchaed the album.