Ciao, Coles Family

Last night we hosted a good-bye party for Jen & James Coles. We had at least 50 people come through the place during the two hour party, which I hope you recognize says everything about the Coles and nothing about my hosting skills. I now have the good-bye party hangover...sadness.

But, in trying to keep with the spirit of the blog title and not wanting to bring everyone down, I also wanted to share a quick summary of an article I read this morning in The Chronicle on the Opinion page. It was about Berkeley High and how they are trying to fight the requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act to share the personal info with military recruiters of all the junior & senior students enrolled. They have been actively resisting since 2001 - only sharing the info of students that "opted in." Things have finally come to a head this year - the school district will lose $10 million in federal funds if they don't comply. So what do they do? Hold a student assembly for the juniors and seniors and lets them know that they can "opt out" of having their information shared with the military. I think at this point, 90% of the students have said they don't want their information shared and parent volunteers are going to contact the other 10%. Now I'm not against people joining the military if they choose to, or obeying a draft order, but recruiting high school students? making districts share info of minors as a requirement for money? That's what I'm against.

So, hats off to Berkeley High and the Coles Family for making Berkeley a place I love to be.