Acquara Independent School

Went to Hillsboro Celebration Days where we again were a part of the Guinness Book of World Records for most people playing air guitar. They were a lot more organized than last year, but that meant that we had to stand in line for a long time just to play air guitar. Did the usual inflate ably sliding and games with park and rec. Saw some acrobats and music, etc. Also got fairly thorough pediatric eye clinic screenings for the kids which they all passed.

And then the usual talking to fire department, city clean up workers, police, etc. I am always amazed at how ill-equipped those people are to answer questions. We talked to TriMet about reinstating the buses 47 and 48 on weekends. Of course I don’t expect them to say “OK! Done!” but they acted like they didn’t even know what we were talking about. Talked to the streetlight people (whatever you call them) about the horrible inconsistencies with the audible traffic signals and about how that makes them virtually useless in most cases. They didn’t know what we were talking about either, but then came around and were understanding and sympathetic, and did give us some advice about who controls what and who to call to complain.

Talked to the principal of the new virtual Hillsboro Online School, and she was in the frame of mind to just talk about saving potential drop-outs with the online model. Which is legit, of course, but she was being bombarded at the time I was there, with homeschoolers. It was as if she never thought of homeschoolers before, and kept saying, “some people do good job homeschooling” as if she was trying to convince herself that we were ok to talk to. She was not familiar at all with the Vancouver Distributed learning model, which shocked me a tiny bit. She did not understand my question when I asked whether it was going to be a cafeteria plan or whether you have to sign up for the whole thing. She thought I meant all online or all brick and mortar, when there are some electives like band and choir where you can go to brick and mortar. My question was, can my kid JUST sign up for calculus? But she didn’t seem to understand why you would want to do that. It was funny because she was just so unprepared for the level of sophistication that the homeschooling questions came at her with (not only mine, but others that were there.) I seriously think some public school administrators just think parents are so dumb and homeschooling parents can’t possibly talk educational theory (and at a higher level than she was operating at the time.) But, to be fair, I do think they are operating this think to catch some of the dreadful dropout rate they have (40%) and that is the model she is operating on. The homeschoolers seemed to catch her from left field. But if she did educate herself on homeschooling, and perhaps look at the DL models, she might learn a helluva lot of useful things. They want to expand it to K-12 within a few years. Hmmm. If she does that, she is going to have to learn about homeschool philosophies. That goes beyond drop out prevention when you are talking about kindergarteners whose parents don’t see fit to send them to school in the first place.

Anyway, pictures:

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