Meetings, We've Got Meetings

Busy night this Thursday the 19th.  Sustainability Commission meets at 6 p.m. at the Civic Center. On the agenda, a review of the proposed chicken ordinance (yet again.  I figure it will get OKed by about 2014), bike paths and recycling.

Then, for more local political fun, the CCHS (that's Carbondale Community High School, for those who don't speak acronym) School District #165 Board meets in the high school cafeteria at 7.

Then you only have a week to wait until the Carbondale Elementary School District #95 meeting at 7 p.m. on the 26.

Art Tiles

Don't know if they are quite masterpieces but I'm sure people, especially their parents , will enjoy seeing them for years to come.

Mayor Brad Cole is pleased to announce the completion and installation of Phase II of the City Hall Tile Project, a thirty foot tile mosaic that lines both sides of the first floor corridor of Carbondale’s City Hall and features miniature masterpieces created by hundreds of students from Carbondale Elementary School District #95.

The Tile Project was inspired during Mayor Cole’s 2005 Sister City Tour, where he saw a similar “homage to the imagination of community children” at Chong-Ming Elementary School in Tainan City, Taiwan. The first phase of the Tile Project was completed in 2007, when a 16 foot tile mosaic was installed on the second floor corridor of City Hall.

The new tiles were painted by first through eight graders at Parrish, Thomas, Lewis and Carbondale Middle School during the fall of 2009. They were then fired at the SIUC School of Art and Design and installed in the first floor corridor under the supervision of City staff.

For visiting officials, members of the public doing business with the City and for City employees who work in the building, the mosaic mural offers a warm and vibrant setting. For the hundreds of students whose works of art now hang permanently in City Hall, the mural offers a source of pride and ownership in their local government.

Elementary School Cuts

Fourteen non-tenured teachers have been cut from the rolls of the Carbondale Elementary School District. This makes a heck of a lot of sense (that's sarcasm, by the way). Cut back on the people who are actually doing the wsork of theaching the students. That's the purpose of a school district. If you have to cut someplace, how about looking at staff as well, instead of the people who are performing the job for which the school district exists. Spread the pain around, instead of making the teachers absorb all of it.