Free Republic

Have you met teenage girls? They can be the worst bullies. Bullies don’t equate to the old fashioned physical kind these days.

Have you looked at the expiration dates on those? Not as long as you might think.

They aren’t the only one. Memorial Hermann has put an October 1 deadline on their nurses. My daughter in law is one and is refusing the vax. She quit and is working for a travel nursing contractor making 4x the money and will work as much as possible until October 1 and then wait for the wheels to fall off and the nurses to be allowed back as there won’t be any or at least very few.

Could not agree more!

Where this home was located is actually about 40 minutes from the airport. Spring is a big area.

What part of, it was engulfed in flames and neighbors reported an explosion leads you to believe that they can just jump in and turn the flashers on to kill the battery?

No this was not in a big city. This happened about 15 minutes from my house in a neighborhood close to The Woodlands. Considered a suburb and this particular neighborhood is really in between The Woodlands and the Cypress/Tomball area. While there are some Teslas in the area we really don’t have many. There are likely no trucks in the greater Conroe/Woodlands/Spring/Cypress?/Tomball ( north Houston suburbs) with a foam truck.

SO they were coming from a cul-de-sac in the neighborhood. They were actually likely leaving home. Here in Houston, leaving a cup-de-sac means you are leaving home. Doesn’t discount that they could be drunk leaving home however. Your point still stands.

It would be absolutely impossible to prove that you got Covid from being at any particular business.

Just to put it in perspective, those with locked in rates are fine which is the majority of consumers. My bill actually went down $10 this month. I owe $91.35. The people that got hit mainly were from a company called Griddy. They(the consumers) were buying wholesale electricity so it was about 1/2 most of the time with some variance. It is also charged weekly which is why bills went out so fast. The wholesale price went clearly out of control. It was a cheap way to pay electricity but the gamble did not pay off.

Well logic would tell you that is because Alberta experiences this type of weather for months every year and always has. Houston has not experienced this level of code in 80 years and likely won’t again for the next 80 years.

She is talking about QUARTERBACK positions not players. She clearly doesn’t keep up with current players in that position.

You have no idea how red some of those areas actually are. Houston proper (Harris county) is blue but just north of Houston is Montgomery County and it is considered one of the most red counties in America. Home to 607,000 citizens. Every single county surrounding this cities are just as red. The longer this continues the more determined and red we will get. 51% wouldn’t be hard to get at all. The counties surrounding downtown Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio are the same. Don’t be afraid of the “big” cities. When they brag about their size they often include those in the “greater Houston area”. Most of the “greater” is deep red.

They aren’t the only state doing this. My parents live in a small Arkansas town and won’t have access to the vaccine in their town for a while yet. Come to find out, one can drive across the border to Oklahoma and get the vaccine there.

I am a big Trump supporter and conservative. Two thoughts come to mind.

1. I don’t know that I am in support of using this method. I just can’t get my head around it. I do think what most of you think about Biden and company and the end of our country. I also know that we are likely to not ever have a free election again. This just seems like a big move with no good ending. Maybe the ending to come with status quo is worse. I don’t know. God help us all.

2. Why I don’t think he will do this... If it ends badly for Trump it will also at that point end badly for his children. He also has grandchildren to think about. If this fails, he will be in prison at best as will anyone who participated including his family. After he is out of office, his children have the means to make a good life for their children anywhere in the world and above some of the coming democratic chaos. Would Trump chance the lives of his children? I don’t know....

Rambling thoughts of course. My heart is broken for our country. I am hopeful if this card is plaid that we as his supporters are ready for what is to come. I hope we are more than keyboard warriors. I hope we are ready to fight.

I am a private school teacher in Texas. We are going back in August with precautions. 90% of our parents want in school instruction. We can’t keep up with the calls right now from public school parents wanting a place at our school. They are fed up.

I have never been part of a union and will never be. I am disgusted at the behavior of most educators. They have demanded to be considered important and essential for years. Teachers ARE important and essential. Now that they are, they are crying foul. They can’t have it both ways. I am sick of the “had to create a will just to go back to work” mentality. The checkers at the grocery store working for a lot less than most teachers either went back to work or lost their jobs. That is life. Quit whining and be an adult.

The public school system I do think will forever be changed by this. It had become a cesspool and needed a change for years.

Sorry for the rant but my disgust grows each day.

I am excited to see my students. We all learn better in person. Relationships are the key to a successful year and you can’t zoom that. I am not afraid for them or for myself. Not one of our teachers had a concern about coming back.
We can’t wait to contribute to the normalcy for these children. We are ready to provide excellent education.

Your job sounds like it is important. I don’t know the details but it sounds like it is hugely important. Sadly, we don’t pay people in our country according to how life changing their work is. A football player just got a $450 MILLION contract for playing a game. Your problem really isn’t with teachers. It is with a society that says policemen, firemen, nurses, teachers, nursing home staff, social workers, and countless other life impacting jobs aren’t as important as someone who can hit, carry, bounce or kick a ball.

It is a great question actually and as a teacher, I can answer it. I put in more hours when we went virtual. I put in way more hours. The pay that I am getting now is last years contract for 2019-2020 which is for 187 days worth of work. I chose to spread it out over 365 days.

The week we went virtual, I worked on something even over the weekend pretty much 7 days a week. I would start my day around 8 and often not finish up until 5-6 pm and still have emails to return, or parents to call later than that. Weekends were not quite that bad. I would limit myself to just 2 hours on Saturday because I needed the mental break. I would start around 2 on Sunday afternoon and often not finish until 7-8 in the evening. That lasted until the end of May. My school went the entire planned year. We did not end early.

I assure you, I would give anything not to go back to virtual for so many reasons that is another post altogether. One way down on the list is the time .
commitment.

Thank you for asking that question. It is a fair question to ask. I would rather it be asked than assume the answer.

I am a teacher. I am a private school teacher. I worked just as many hours if not more when we went virtual. I could fill this page with a list of things that changed and the time requirements to accomplish those changes but you would put your time frame to them as opposed to an experienced opinion. I don’t know what you do for a living but turning the entire industry upside down in less than a week was no easy feat. It was so much more time consuming than being in the classroom. I was there, I know.

I would challenge you to sit with a teacher for just ONE day both in person and virtual before you make the assumption that we are online for 1/2 hour and expect full pay. I promise, it is so much more than what you are assuming. Just ONE day and then post. You are talking about something that you know NOTHING about.

The reality is that we get paid for 187 days of work not 365 days. We can choose to divide it over 365 days but we don’t get paid for those days off. Every teacher I know takes work home and most work over the weekend some amount of hours. Most teachers are expected to be at school from 7-4 give or take a few minutes on each side depending on the start of the day. Most teachers have some sort of mandatory meeting, training, parent conferences 2-3 afternoons a week outside of that 7-4. You don’t punch a time card as a teacher or get overtime for those meetings. So.... you are with students all day, when do you suppose the papers get graded, lessons get planned, paperwork turned in to admin, emails returned to parents, phone calls returned to parents? Those would be our evening hours or weekends. Going back to grading papers, most middle and high school teachers have 100-175 students each day. How long do you think those take to grade? Most teachers get a 45 minute planning period during the day. Sound fantastic doesn’t it! When you have lesson plans sometimes for 2-4 different classes, running papers off, grading papers, etc those 45 minutes put a minuscule dent in the workload.

I am not complaining. I love my job so much. I love that I touch the lives of children and their families. I love watching them learn. I love watching their confidence soar when they are successful. I love spending my lunch listening to them cry, vent, laugh, seek advice. It is an amazing occupation that I am blessed to have. I love that I work hard. I love that I go to bed pondering how to make the lesson the next day, even better. I love that I get to meet after school with parents and hear their hearts for their children and encourage them in ways that you can not imagine parents needing encouragement. I love that I spend some of my Saturday grading papers because it means I get to spend a few minutes thinking about that student individually, appreciating who they are in my classroom, what they did to make me smile, wonder why they looked down the day before, figure out a way to encourage them. I am not alone. Those emotions would be echoed by every teacher you ask. It is the job of the heart.

I just want to educate you a little bit about your assumptions that are reasonable if they were based on any sort of fact. But they are not at all based on anything near reality for most teachers. Therefore your assumptions are silly.

By the way, your yearbook is correct. Many teachers do work summer jobs in order to make ends meet. Just as firemen, police officers and other civil servants do. I am not saying I am a hero. I am simply saying that yes, we do work harder than anyone can imagine.

I think no matter what your occupation, you find people who assume it is easy and overpaid for what you actually do. Teachers are not alone in this.

Considering the order already closed the schools until May 4 and most Texas schools get out around May 22-27 we are talking the difference in 3 weeks. So you have many teachers that are 60+ or have someone in their home 60+ as do many many students. There are also bus drivers, resource workers, admin, cafeteria workers, librarians, etc to consider. I think this was a smart move because they aren’t really gaining anything by going back. It keeps a HUGE population at home and the biggest win... it allows other businesses to open that boost this economy. It says “We are concerned about the kids” so that by June, graduations can take place and small businesses continue to come back. I would gladly trade 3 school weeks across the state if it means opening up other things sooner.