Swimming in the Pensieve

2005.11.02 - 12:39
OK kids. Phillip’s books came to the door yesterday afternoon, along with a microphone for use in his Elluminate! sessions. Nothing worth much note (CAliVA has already proven themselves competent in my book); which is why I didn’t bother mentioning it last night. Phillip has been using his CAliVA-provided computer since it arrived, and catching up on his school year. The girls are waaaay ahead in their respective studies…life is pretty-much normal.

Then the UPS guy showed-up at the door–I mean literally seconds ago.

It seems that the HP computer chassis which arrived earlier wasn’t for Phillip at all. It was a system chassis intended to replace the HP Vectra that smoked it’s ever-lovin’ power supply. (May it rest in peace.) Phillip’s computer just came through the door on the UPS dude’s hand truck.

Same type of chassis (AMD Sempron, probably 1.8GHz), keyboard, mouse, USB cable, modem (POTS) cable, multifunction printer/scanner/fax/copier, and a 15″ LCD monitor. Everything was shipped straight from HP’s Indiana distribution center, with the standard CAliVA/K-12 instructional documentation in the HP carton. (This implies that K-12 is a very good HP customer. One to be kept happy.) While not a speed deamon–and there are some very good reasons for this being intentional–it is a nicely-styled and very functional system; more than adequate to the needs of Phillip’s studies. (Again, too bad they decided to go with windoze instead of Linux.)

At Robinson Academy, my children were rarely allowed to even touch the school computers. The equipment was there, but there was a pervasive paranoia that the machine would “break” and a teacher would be blamed; so computer use was kept to a minimum by most teachers (notable exceptions acknowledged).

CAliVA, on the other hand, encourages computer use to the point of sending the computers to us–free of charge–as well as paying an Internet access stipend to each family. That’s not everything either…

Workbooks, textbooks, supplementary books (novels, collected poems, art prints, etc.), manipulatives, lab materials, teacher’s manuals & answer keys, computers, monitors, printers, multifunction scan/print/copy/fax machines, cables, microphones, video tapes, DVDs, CDs, musical instruments, atlases, globes, paints, modeling clay, pastels, rock specimens, magnets, wires, light bulbs & light bulb holders (and I know I’m forgetting a host of things here) magnifying glasses, safety goggles, and so on. All of this, sent to our home, for zero out-of-pocket expense on our part; and, what little we do find ourselves paying for (paper, pencils, markers, pens, ink, etc.) will cost us less this AY than we had to pay to send our child to a Long Beach Unified School District campus for even a third of an academic year.

Whenever I dwell on what CAliVA provides or does, in terms of academics, I always come back to the place that is labeled: CAliVA’s FAPE beats LBUSD’s FAPE hands-down. No wonder LBUSD is hemorrhaging prospective student enrollees!

As predicted, the public schools refuse to actually compete with superior alternative forms of education; and have, instead, resorted to fighting a propoganda war. How scummy!