Information about Gregoire’s visit has been updated.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi will be in Silverdale today at the community center at 11:45 a.m. The local party is saying a reporter from the Washington Post might be there. That’s a reflection of how close this race appears to be.
Democrat Gov. Chris Gregoire will be at a Veterans event at the VFW Post 239 in Bremerton at 2:15 p.m. Then, she’ll be in downtown Poulsbo at 3:30 at Poulsbo City Hall. Afterward she’s driving to the Bainbridge Ferry to go over to Seattle.
Ick..why does it need to be Poulsbo! Thanks for the update Steven, This means I will need to run the daily business errands for my employer in the morning so I don’t get caught up in what will be a large mess of liberals and pastry boxes on Front Street in the afternoon.
Keep us posted.
Ok, I’m confused. Pastry boxes?
Regards,
Kathryn Simpson
By the way,
I was at the Rossi Rally yesterday and did a little sign waving too. There were a lot of thumbs-up from drivers out there. A few thumbs-down, but one has to expect that. I was pleasantly surprised by the far higher percentage of thumbs-up as we saw.
Regards,
Kathryn Simpson
I like Governor Gregiore, I think she understands how important early childhood education is and possibly even understands that it shouldn’t be government’s responsibility to create and run a program.
I can’t figure out why she continues to avoid South Kitsap on her campaign visits. She’s been so close so many times. Has she ever visited South Kitsap? Did she visit here during her 2004 campaign? I don’t even have a guess. Is it because it’s already a Democratic stronghold or is it because it’s already a Democratic stronghold?
Kathryn…it’s an inside Poulsbo joke for those of us that work here and observe the phenominom on a daily basis.
Karen, I attended the Washington State PTA Convention in 2006. Gregiore was the Key Note Speaker. At that time her message was more government and more taxes to solve the education problem. She did not in any way address the true problem which is a broken, outdated, poorly administrated system. She used a lot of generalities and few specifics. Her message may have changed since then. Personally, I enjoyed Rob McKenna’s presentation, at the convention, on increased targeted parental involvement at home and in the school to be more of a realistic and achievable approach to real improvement in children’s lives and education as a whole.
I’m speaking specifically about early childhood education and viewed her visit to the Kingston Cooperative Preschool as something of an endorsement. I know from personal experience and everything I’ve read and heard from people I consider experts, that the 0-5 years are the most important years in a child’s education. The cooperative preschool is a nonprofit, self-supporting, local organization run by the parents. As it should be.
You should like the idea. No government, except perhaps minimal rent on a slighty used empty government building or the affiliation with the NYEA. Or the tax-exempt status.
I think we share similar ideas on this subject, I’m just suggesting local parents take the bull by the horns. You have to start somewhere.
We get dependent on government, don’t we? To tell us when and how to do things? It kills creativity, ambition, and passion.
You are right, we agree about early childhood education. I was just calling into question Gregiores stance on it. She talks well about it, but others are actually accomplishing it.
I also agree that there needs to be insistence for more parent involvement. But we should not assume that early childhood education cannot also have a certain amount of success at the public school level. My personal experience with Naval Avenue Early Learning Center has proven that to me. While it was the Bremerton School District that laid the groundwork by restructuring the classes at the school (now Pre-K through 3rd), offering all day kindergarten and a growing Spanish Immersion program, it has been parents and educators who have expanded upon that initial groundwork to find additional success. This year we now have a much larger PTA than in the past several years. We have also reaped local and national recognition for our Partnership in Science Program with the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Also it was just announced at one of our last PTA meetings that a nationally recognized Foundation for Childhood Development (the actual official name escapes me right now) chose Naval Avenue because of its success to visit and study the students who were in the first group of all day kindergarteners and are now in 2nd grade. The annual report will be coming soon and we have heard that a link to it will be offered through the District website.
It sounds like you’re doing really good work over there. I used to be on the PTA board of en elementary school that was 1/3 recent Russsian immigrants. Neither those students nor their parents spoke English, and yet, it was an excellent school.
It’s all good, I just think the cooperative preschool model is preferable. The parents do it. They hire the teachers, they assist the teachers in the classroom, pay the bills, decide on the cirriculum. No mandates, no running out of funding, minimal testing. Preschoolers are still pretty little and they can get “institutionalized” earlier than they need to be.