Second Redistricting Committee Meeting

Tazewell County's redistricting committee met for a second time on Thursday night (Feb. 24). The meeting was largely informational. Members received data on precinct populations in 2000 and on voter turnout by precinct over the last decade.

District population totals are available for the 2010 Census, but not for individual precincts within those districts yet.

Here are the 2010 population totals:

District	2010 population
Northern	9,157
Eastern	9,128
Southern	9,123
Northwestern	8,875
Western	8,795

The redistrict committee has been given an ideal population that each district should be: 9,015. But there is an allowable margin of plus or minus five percent. So district populations must be between 8,565 and 9,465 by the end of the redistrict process. While a five percent margin is allowable, the Federal courts are more comfortable with a three percent maximum variation from the ideal population number. That would mean keeping district populations between 8,744 and 9,285. All five Tazewell County districts are within that range.

With the districts all within the Federal "comfort margin," any redrawing of the count's district lines would have to be motivated by political concerns, not legal issues.

When the committee meets again the focus will likely be on individual voting precincts. A number of concerns have been raised that could impact precinct lines. Some current voting locations are developing issues with handicapped access; compliance with handicapped accessibility laws can impact federal funding for election costs. At least one precinct was mentioned where some voters have asked to be relocated to another precinct because they have to drive across a mountain to reach their voting location. The county's implementation of the 911 system has resulted in the relocation of some voters from one precinct to another as GPS mapping data created more precise maps of where those voters lived.

The committee will meet again in late March. Below you can view video of Thursday's meeting.

Redistricting Starts in Tazewell County

Redistricting always has the potential to become a political fight. With last year’s census numbers now becoming available, the process has started in Tazewell County. Tazewell County’s redistricting committee met Thursday night, February 10, for an organizational meeting. The committee will eventually make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors (as I understand the process) and the BOS will vote on new district and voting precinct boundaries in the county.

The meeting was relatively uneventful. As Chairman of the Board of Supervisor, Seth White was chair when the meeting opened. Philip Horton was elected to serve as chair and White turned the meeting over to him. Sandra Warden was elected recording secretary. There was some discussion about when meetings should be held; WVVA’s Greg Carter is on the committee but has to be on-air until 6:30pm in Bluefield. There was some talk about what data was available (2010 numbers for individual precincts were yet available on the 10th) and on where to find old data for comparison purposes.

Tazewell County has actually seen a small increase in population. Unless there has been major movement within the county, there may be little practical reason to move many precinct or district lines. Tazewell County’s five districts are supposed to come out of this process with a relatively equal population: a margin of 5% difference is evidently legal, but not optimal if it can be avoided. Precinct populations are more a matter of tradition and geographic convenience.

A number of issues were left undiscussed Thursday night (mostly because there was no reason to bring them up yet). The biggest movement within the county will almost certainly be the growth in population in the Pocahontas area of the Northern District. That growth is due to the new prison there, and the inmates count as part of the population. I will be surprised if the Northern District doesn’t lose a precinct to a neighboring district as a way of compensating for this growth. Which precinct? Your guess is as good as mine.

Another issue not yet discussed is precinct consolidation. Tazewell County has 24 voting locations and 10 of them are in the more rural Northern District. It is in the best interest of the county and its residents to keep those precinct locations open. But finding election official to work inside each of those locations can be hard to do. I suspect that the voter registrar’s office harbors a secret desire to consolidate some of those precincts into a single location. Of course, the few locations there are to vote on election day, the farther people have to travel in order to vote and the lower the voter turn on. While the current member of the Board of Supervisors for the Northern District is a Republican, the district has traditionally voted for the Democrat. In a year when Republicans hold the Board of Supervisors, the temptation to close some of the Northern District’s precinct locations will be tempting. Seth White and Shea Cook are likely to see that as part of the fruits of victory from last year’s election. We’ll see at the end of this process whether the board is more interested in a political agenda or in what’s good for voters.

Here's video of the meeting:

---

Full disclosure: I was appointed to the redistricting committee before the 2009 election. In Nov. 2009 Jim Campbell was elected to the Board of Supervisors – the first Republican to ever serve for the Northern District, I think. We spoke. He talked a lot about how he was going to try to be non-partisan and that he’d run as a Republican because he had to be in one party or the other. And he told me we could work together. Then he was sworn in and took his seat. And (without speaking to me about it) he had me removed from the committee as one of his first official acts. At the moment Barnes Kidd holds my old seat on the committee. Kidd was busy elsewhere Thursday night and could not attend.

Connectivity: My Problem with Blogging

I haven’t blogged in months, and I think I just identified one major reason: connectivity. I have too much connectivity…

I’m sitting here listening to the radio because the cable is out. I get my Internet over the cable. It’s how I check my email. It’s how I know if someone’s played a word in one of my Scrabble games on Facebook. It’s how I know the weather forecast (which changes rapidly here this time of year). It’s how I farm (on Facebook, of course); I’m at level 101 on FarmVille.

Being connected is how I know whether the other teachers made it home today. We left school early this morning. From what I hear, the kids all made it home safely. Stupid me, I live in a neighboring county. So it’s a half an hour of driving to get from school to my house – through the strip mine across Gary 14 Mountain and then over Stoney Ridge. I had to stop after I got over 14 Mountain and shift to four-wheel low. Then there were wrecks on Stoney Ridge. So I sat about halfway up the north face of that mountain for almost three hours, wishing I was driving down the south face, about a mile away. Oh well, once each year it seems like we play chicken with God. Thirteen months ago we lost. Today I think it was a draw - which is to say that none of my friends went to the hospital as a result (as far as I know) and no one ended up sleeping in their car...

And I’m taking time to blog about it because, well, I’ve lost my connectivity. I’d usually be sitting here checking the school closings on several different websites, half-watching the television, harvesting my FarmVille crops, looking through Google for educational games I can use, and browsing my reader for news and blogs. I really need to see the various responses to last night State of the Union (especially since I watched a rerun of Law and Order). But I can’t, since I’m not connected.

So instead, I’m blogging.

And I’m hoping that the radio gets around to telling me what schools are closed soon. When I’m connected I can get info like that on demand, and this irritating idea of waiting until they decide to tell me is for the birds.

Well, maybe soon my cable company will figure out where in all this snow their line is broken and they’ll restore my connection. Then I can post this blog. Of course, that will happen after I harvest my carrots on FarmVille, check the school closings, and update my status…

The drive back to school

I believe it'd been 76 days since I'd driven the roads through Horsepen and on across Gary 14 Mountain, down through Skygusty to the spot at the golf course near Blackwolf where I can turn right and drive to Anawalt or turn left and head toward Welch. I wondered as I left for work today what it would be like.

I was surprised a little. It seemed the road rose to meet me - as though I'd never stopped making the drive.

I was pleased to find that parts of the road to Horsepen have been repaved. That made for a much smother drive. I saw a wild turkey as I started up the road into the strip mine on the slopes of Gary 14. The road seemed unchained, but some of the mountainsides had been moved around.

On the whole, it was a nice drive. It's a road I enjoy. Maybe sometime soon I'll see a bear on the mountain...

Dennis Taylor: Who Should Shape Technology in WV?

Today was the closing of the West Virginia Statewide Technology Conference. And whatever your preconceived ideas about the state (and about Appalachia in general) you should understand that West Virginia ranks at the top of the heap on any meaningful measure of the use of technology in schools.

Dennis Taylor was the conference's closing speaker. His speech was entitled, “Through the Looking Glass: A Decade of Technology Lessons.” Head of a Charleston law practice, Taylor has a long list of impressive credentials and experience with education policy and technology in West Virginia. So I expected something visionary. I was disappointed.

Don't get me wrong. Taylor's speech was thought provoking. But I developed the impression early on that Taylor wasn't actually talking to me - that he was talking over my head to (or at) policy makers. A decade ago I was working in another state and hadn't given much thought to teaching in West Virginia. As I looked around the room I had to guess that a quarter of the audience was in high school a decade ago and perhaps half the people listening hadn't gotten their first teaching job yet. Taylor talked about past events in the state's technology history as though they were common knowledge to the people listening. They weren't to me, and I doubt I was alone in that.

A couple of things about the tone of Taylor's speech bothered me. I've already pointed out that I didn't feel like he was there to speak to the audience in front of him. Taylor obviously felt like he was dealing with serious issues that could devastate West Virginia's economy and education system if handled incorrectly. I don't question that analysis because, well, he's right. But his approach was to use Alice in Wonderland as a reference point or allegory for the current situation. As someone not completely familiar with the issues, I thought that was distracting and that it reduced audience’s perception of the seriousness of the issues.

I was uncomfortable with the way that Taylor used the term politician as though it was a derogatory term. He tried to sound like a populist and got a round of applause for saying that technology decisions should be left to the educators and not made by politicians. My problem with that is this: many of the "politicians" in the state legislature are educators (or at least used to be), and I thought they did a damn good job when faced over the last few months with a demand from the Governor to make significant changes to the state's education laws in a big hurry so that we could chase after Race to the Top funding. I'm not honestly convinced that the people at the Higher Education Policy Commission and the West Virginia Department of Education have much more claim to the title of educator than do members of the legislature or of the Governor's office who deal with education law and policy. I'm an educator because I teach kids. The bureaucrats at state agencies who haven't turned in any lesson plans in the last decade aren't much closer to being actual educators than a member of the House of Delegates who serves on the Education Committee.

Taylor wants bureaucrats to make the technology decisions, and for us to think of bureaucrats as educators. After years of state control my county, and after watching the WVDE push for education reform issues in the legislature that I lobbied against, I find it difficult to stand up and clap when someone advocates more power for the bureaucracies.

Dennis Taylor made me think. I like it when someone does that. I'll read his blog now. But today's speech left me feeling a little used, and perhaps patronized. The issues he brought up are of great importance. I worry that many of the real educators in the room may have been sucked into his conclusions about how the issues should be resolved…

Sean Tuohy: Christmas Everyday

Just finished listening to Sean Tuohy, opening speaker for the WV Statewide Technology Conference. Good speaker.

Tuohy and his family are the subject of the movie The Blind Side, and his message was simple: give cheerfully. Christmas (according to Tuohy) is the best time of year because people do just that - they give cheerfully. And if we could just learn to do that constantly, we'd have Christmas everyday...

Tuohy was both enjoyable and inspirational. That's a good combination at the start of a tech conference.

The End of Summer

Summer always seems fleeting, and this year it actually is a little shorter than in years past. In many ways it was typical: we spent some time at the beach, visited Gatlinburg, mowed the grass, took the dog to the park, planted tomatoes and watched them grow, went to see the in-laws...

As a teacher, I suppose I measure summer differently than most people. But maybe not. The concept of summer is shaped by your local school calendar in most of America. I think most of us listen to the local meteorologist announce the coming of the summer solstice (June 20th or 21st) and think of it as trivia. Weather trivia. By that time summer's two weeks old.

And by the time the weather person gets around to talking about the autumn equinox (September 22nd or 23rd) marking an official end to summer, I'm already up to my neck in lesson plans and content standards, and I'm starting to wonder whether we'll have any snow days before Christmas.

Today I'm in Charleston at the West Virginia Statewide Technology Conference. I'll be here until Thursday. Friday starts a four-day weekend, then it's off to my county's teacher academy for four days. And even though we will almost all have been at those training sessions, August 16th is considered the first teacher "work" day.

When I got in my car and left home for Charleston, summer ended...

Dinner at Donnie's Place

Our favorite restaurant is closed for the week. Cheryl and I usually eat at Big Daddy's (a nice little diner about a quarter mile from our house) twice a week. But every July they close for a week. So we decided to try Donnie's Place in town.

I said on Facebook that Donnie's was an interesting experience. We haven't been there in three or four years. The menu has changed (no more alligator). The name has changed. But it's the same owner, the same basic atmosphere...

Tonight was a Karaoke contest that was slated to start around eight. We didn't know that. Donnie's is a seat-yourself place. Just about every table had a "reserved" sign on it. We found one table. It was five til seven. The waitress was there in about three minutes with our menus.

As far as I could tell there was only one waitress. She was nice enough. She was very busy...

I ordered the special (a 12 ounce NY strip), Cheryl got the seafood plate. We had our drinks and salads in just under five minutes. Iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, shredded cheese. There was also bread and butter.

We ate our salad, talked, waited, watched the place fill up with people, and waited a little more. It took our food just over 40 minutes to arrive. My stake was good. The seafood was okay.

We decided that although the food was okay, people don;t go there primarily for the food. We left just as Karaoke was about to start. $33.50 plus a tip...

A bad year for birds...

Over the past several years we've had the pleasure of watching families of birds get raised in two different cedar bird houses in our yard. Last year our Eastern Bluebirds raised a brood and them lay a second clutch of eggs. It was the first year they’ve laid two clutches. We left for a week at the beach, expecting to find newborns when we returned. We found the eggs gone, instead...

Why do bird's eggs disappear? We suspected a young boy in the neighborhood, but we didn't know for sure. And we forgot about it. This year the bluebirds moved back into the their house and the tree swallows moved into the other house.

The bluebird laid eggs. The eggs disappeared. There'd been a hard frost. We though maybe the eggs froze. More eggs appeared. They also disappeared. It was a puzzle.

The tree swallows had more luck. They hatched babies. Then we got up one morning and the house door was open and little pieces of the nest were scattered across the back yard. A raccoon, perhaps. Or maybe a cat. I can fix that for next year by putting a bungee cord around the house to hold the door shut.

---

Today I think I figured out where my eggs went. We can home from a trip to town and looked out the back door to see a five-foot snake with its head in the house.

Snakes don't generally bother me a great deal. I'd just as soon let one get away as kill it. That one was different. But unfortunately I couldn't get across the yard quick enough. It escaped into the high weeds that border the yard.

So now I have this winter to decide how to keep snakes out of my bird houses...

The Complications of Blogging

I'm preparing at the moment for a conference coming up in Charleston, WV. I somehow managed to get myself invited to present two workshops (concurrent sessions) at the annual West Virginia Statewide Technology Conference. The conference is the first week of August. I get to talk about blogging for two 50-minute sessions. Then a couple of days later I get to speak to a room full of geeks about Twitter.

Ironically, I've neglected my own personal blog over the past couple of months. There are reasons for that...

I wrote a post back in April for this blog. May was a busy month. June was a busy month. Now it's July. But being busy doesn't excuse a blogger from writing. If anything, it's suppose to mean he creates more content. Blogging is based in life experience, after all.

A lot has happened in the last three months. The last month of school was hectic. We have a new kitchen. I've done a lot of writing other places. We spent a week at the beach and a few days in Gatlinburg.

At the point in time that blogging becomes a source of income it starts to get hard to blog for free on your own personal blog. Much of this blog has been about politics in the past. I'm not particularly enthused with local politics at the moment. That makes it harder to write about.

Blogging is supposed to be personal. That creates problems when you can't really talk about the personal issues that affect you most at the moment. The last couple of months have forced that dilemma on me, as well.

I will share this personal tidbit. Every summer a small game of musical chairs takes place in the school system where I work. I turned in a bid sheet for a job working in Title I. I suspect that someone already in Title I will get the job - not because they're already in Title I, but because they have more seniority than I do. And at that point I'll bid on their job.

And I'll try and pick things up this week. Maybe I'll come up with a few pictures of the new kitchen. And perhaps I can talk about how our bird houses did this year...