Music teacher Beth Brakin, left, and instructional assistant Becky Piper wear warm clothing as they prepare to direct drop-off traffic at Battle Academy during sub-freezing morning temperatures in Chattanooga.For the homeless, it's really cold outside
Old Man Winter has really hit us with the tingle digits. And that's especially true for what must be the largest number of homeless people Chattanooga has seen in years.
The chill has the Salvation Army opening its doors again for overnight emergency shelter. Volunteers have offered a warm place to sleep on six nights this fall -- all before Thanksgiving, according to Salvation Army spokeswoman Kimberly Kyriakidis George. Over the weekend the shelter had 60 or 70 people sleeping over, she said, even though other shelters also had opened their doors early. The usual winter overnight shelter at the Community Kitchen normally doesn't open until Dec. 15, but it, along with the Chattanooga Rescue Mission, made room inside.
"It is stretching us very, very thin," George said of the Salvation Army, which is just beginning its yearly red kettle campaign fundraising (this year's goal is $480,000), along with its customary Christmas collection for an Angel Tree with 4,525 low-income seniors and children "angels."
This earlier and long-lasting cold weather is making the shelters dip into reserve funds and supplies, George said.
"We need the community's help," said George, noting that they could use donations of travel-size toiletry items, coats, gloves, coffee, and snack cakes as well as new space heaters for local low-income residents. George said last week that the group was already completely out of heaters.
Contact the Salvation Army at 423-756-1023 or online at www.csarmy.org. Also the Community Kitchen at www.community-kitchen.org and the Rescue Mission at www.chattanoogarescuemission.com.
A fish tale that keeps growing
If you have a picture of a very colorful fish on a Trout Unlimited Tennessee auto license plate, you've helped raise $10,000 for the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute's effort to raise Brook Trout and restore Tennessee's only native trout species to its historic range.
Institute biologists Dr. Bernie Kuhajda and Kathlina Alford have had a lot of success spawning and raising the fish, but this new money will be vital to what Alford called "the next step" -- studying the survival and growth rates of the reintroduced trout to determine the best path forward for restoration. To do this, scientists like Alford need to carefully track the released fish in the wild over time.
Before being released, each fish is marked with a tiny coded wire tag. The nearly microscopic tags can be read by a special device that indicates where a trout was raised, said Alford. After the fish are released, a graduate student from Tennessee Tech University will survey the release streams to record and measure the trout for critical information about how well the first-released fish are doing.
According to the Tennessee Department of Revenue, there are now 1,446 vehicles registered with the Trout Unlimited specialty tag.
Like all of Tennessee's more than 90 specialty plates, they cost about $35 more than regular tags and a portion of the money is allocated to the group behind the special plate. In this case, $15.62 of the additional $35 collected is allocated to the Tennessee chapter of Trout Unlimited to further the organization's mission to conserve, protect, and restore North America's cold-water fisheries, according to the Tennessee Department of Revenue's website.
Looking toward Huffman's replacement
Both of Tennessee's main teacher advocacy groups want Gov. Bill Haslam to replace the departing Kevin Huffman with a Tennessean from public school ranks.
That may be code for "pay us better, don't tie our evaluations to student test scores, boot Common Core."
In our view, two out of three -- the last two items on that code list -- should not fly.
In almost no other business is an employee's evaluation not based on performance and outcome, and a teacher should be no different. As for Common Core, Tennessee clearly needs higher academic standards, and even just the partial implementation of Common Core is now credited with the beginnings of gains among our students.
We must not abandon these reforms.