govern point

What is a Charter School?

Charter schools aren’t new and have proven to be effective over time, they are just hard to get into. These schools are commonly held as innovative public schools that are accountable for results. They are designed to deliver programs tailored to the needs of the communities they serve. Charter schools are nonsectarian public schools of choice that operate with freedom from many of the regulations that apply to traditional public schools. The “charter” establishing each such school is a performance contract detailing the school’s mission, program, goals, students served, methods of assessment, and ways to measure success.

Charter schools are one of the fastest and most successful growing educational reforms in the country. The first charter school opened its doors in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1992.

How Do Charter Schools Differ From Traditional District Public Schools?

Two key things jump out –

Choice: Charter schools give families an opportunity to pick the school most suitable for their child’s educational well-being. Teachers choose to create and work at schools where they directly shape the best working and learning environment for their students and themselves. Likewise, charter sponsors choose to authorize schools that are likely to best serve the needs of the students in a particular community.

Accountability: Charter schools are judged on how well they meet the student achievement goals established by their charter contract. Charter schools must also show that they can perform according to rigorous fiscal and managerial standards. If a charter school cannot perform up to the established standards, the charter will not be renewed.

Some charter school programs focus on the basics — reading, writing and the traditional school subjects that some children struggle with. Some schools focus on the arts or music programs. Some are science and math focused – essentially what was ever approved on the charter. You can even have a language school such as the Hebrew Language charter school proposed in New York.

What is the Quality of Education?

The primary reason for charter schools is to get a quality education. Charter schools typically set higher standards in their defined charter. This is not the case in public schools which are just there and open regardless of performance.

We all know someone who is a mason, but I’ll be darned if I really know what that means.  Most of us are like:

I think my pappa was one, not sure what it means though.

My uncle used to go to Masonic meetings I remember him picking up Dad a couple of times. That’s about all I know.

So What is Freemasonry?

Masonry (or Freemasonry) is a fraternity. The actual origins have been lost over time. Often thought to have grown out of the guilds of stonemasons who built cathedrals in the Middle Ages.  Stretches exist to the Knights Templar.

A Fraternity or a Religion?

It ultimately a little of both.  Freemasonry refers to the principles, institutions, and practices of the fraternal order of the Free and Accepted Masons.  Freemasonry is an organization of men based on the “fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man”.   The religion comes with the belief in a Supreme Being and in the immortality of the soul as two key requirements for membership.

Core Tenants?

Take care of yourself, do good and be honorable.  Masonry teaches each person has a responsibility to make things just a little better in the world.  Masonry is deeply involved with helping people through non-profits — it spends more than $1.4 million dollars every day in the United States, just to make life a little easier.

The lodge and the brotherhood lets men associate with other men of honor and integrity.  In some ways, Masonry is a support group for men who are trying to make the right decisions.  A collaborative life coaching group if you will.

Paranoia and conspiracy theories are just good fun. What some folks say on TV sermons, write in books and generally blog about is most interesting when it comes to religion. Here are some right wing “conspiracies”, not necessarily all religious, but religion plays a part in each one:

• Christian Evangelist Jack Van Impe claimed the United Nations was placing secret codes on the back of national highway signs to reveal the locations of believers so the new world order could persecute them.
• Jerry Falwell cited Lucifer as behind the Supreme Court ruling in Topeka, Kansas regarding school integration.
• The “American Mercury” carried a piece about the secret 1913 Federal Reserve Act that set into motion a process begun in l819 to benefit secret bankers who rule the United States. Perhaps they are responsible for the latest collapse of free markets – hmmm…
• Lutheran minister Gerald Winrod,known as the Jayhawk Nazi, believed all these conspiracies can be traced to Adam Weishaupt. Adam was a Jew who worked with the Masonic Lodge in Europe to set up the Illuminati. We can rest easy in the states because Winrod did not beleive the American Lodge was infected.
• Robert Snow’s book on Christian militias. He noted that many militias believed that on the back of a 1993 box of Kix Cereal was a map teaching children about how the U.N. will divide up the United States.
• In 1959, the John Birch Society issued an urgent alert: Christmas was under attack.  “One of the techniques now being applied by the Reds to weaken the pillar of religion in our country is the drive to take Christ out of Christmas — to denude the event of its religious meaning.” The central front in this perfidious assault was American department stores.  The “Godless UN” was schemed to displace religious decorations with internationalist celebrations of universal brotherhood.

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With the recent sting around a catholic group and sex, I thought it might be worth a post.  Robert Eric McFadden, who helped co-found the group Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, was arrested Wednesday in suburban Dublin, Ohio. Police believe McFadden was the man they have been looking for in connection with an online prostitution ring on craigslist.com, according to a report on the website of  WCMH.  Police cracked the ring when men involved in a website that posts reviews of prostitutes held a raffle for sex.  Reviews online isn’t that bright.

The police noticed over time a man involved in prostitute discussion boards under the names of Sullivant Guy, Broad Street Guy and Toby, per the Columbus Dispatch. They now believe it is McFadden. Two others were also arrested in connection with the ring.

He has been charged with seven felonies, including pandering obscenities involving a minor, promoting prostitution and compelling prostitution, according to a Columbus Police Department spokesman.

Sex and Religion doesn’t stop there.  More and more training and study is needed.  Recently, The Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice and Healing released a study called: Sex and the Seminary: Preparing Ministers for Sexual Health and Justice.  Are we living in a national state of emergency when it comes to the lack of connection between sexuality and religion?

In January 2008, NSRC partnered with the Center for Sexuality and Religion to create one of the first sexual literacy trainings ever for seminarians, administrators, staff & students in the U.S. labeled “21st Century Challenges to Religion and Sexuality”. The Center for Sexuality and Religion is currently focused on training seminarians nation wide around sexuality.

So education is apparently not just needed for priests, looks like everyday folk need some help. Since it appears that abstinence pledges are a little weak too.   I guess in the end , sex and religion are two different things which are forever connected by dogma and the public’s fascination.

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