Month: February 2021

Community

Trego School Enrollment Soars

Sam

Enrollment at Trego School continues to rise, in defiance of the historical trend. For the last few decades, school enrollment has been fairly steadily dropping. How low did enrollment actually get? The lowest official ANB (Average Number Belonging -i.e. the official state count of students) that I can find is seven, in the spring of the 2018-2019 school year. Enrollment actually continued to decline after that date, but didn’t make the official state count which is used to determine the district’s funding.

The most recent data, using the spring and fall ANB count provided by the state looks like this:

Time PeriodNumber of Students
Fall 201326
Spring 201428
Fall 201425
Spring 201527
Fall 201522
Spring 201622
Fall 201620
Spring 201720
Fall 201715
Spring 201813
Fall 201810
Spring 20197
Fall 201910
Spring 202014
Official ANB for Trego School, data from Montana Office of Public Instruction
In graph form the trend is somewhat clearer.

This data for this school year (2020-2021) isn’t available from the state yet, so the best way to find out about enrollment is to call the school and ask. Back in November, we reported the exciting news that enrollment was up to 23 students and we shared the following graph which incorporated that data.

Trego School enrollment as of November 2020

This January, enrollment reached 26.

Now, enrollment is up from January’s 26, to a total of 31 students. A 35% increase from November of 2020. This fall, Trego school optimistically began with three teachers. Now, with 31 students the average class size is slightly over 10. The school has been working to improve its enrollment, and has seen an amazing turn around. Even if we use the lowest official ANB number (which is decidedly higher than the lowest number the school reached), the school has more than quadrupled enrollment in the past two years.

Trego School enrollment, by year, as of late February, 2021. We’re going to have to consider changing our trend-line….

Well done, Trego School. Where will you go from here?

Community, Plants

A new batch of widowmakers

michaelmccurryphd

The recent windstorms have left new widowmakers in the trees.  I spoke with a young neighbor who was hit by one, and left with a gash in the back of his head – and was reminded that they aren’t all that easy to see when you are dropping a tree.  It is a reminder of the blessings of wearing a hard hat – but even that isn’t a perfect solution.

Still wedged in the tree after nearly sixty years.
A new widowmaker, needles still green.

Not all widowmakers are new.  As I clean up blowdowns, thin crowded trees, and so on, I encounter one widowmaker that Dad warned me about when I was in my early teens.  Nearly sixty years later, it is still wedged into the tree, dried and seasoned, but still large enough to provide a fatal headache.  I can see how to drop the tree safely – but as the tree falls, I can also see where you don’t want to be when the widowmaker finally falls free.

Weird Words

Weird Words: Emoluments

EntomologistJed

Perhaps we should call this “ask the etymologist”…

“Emolument“ comes to us by way of Latin – specifically, ēmŏlŭmentum literally means “something that is produced from work”. Different forms of the Latin word “emolument” meant striving for success and achieving success, but it also referred to profits, gains, or benefits. “Emolument” can be dissected into a couple of word roots to help us remember the meaning of “emolument”.

“Ex-“ or “E-“ means “out/out of” in both Greek and Latin. Think of organ removal surgeries – an appendectomy is when an appendix is taken out, likewise a hysterectomy is when one’s uterus is removed. Alternatively, some Christians believe in creation “ex nihilo”, God’s creation of the universe “out of nothing”.

“Melere” means “to grind” in Latin. This word root has a fine and storied history, older by far than Latin, going all the way back to Proto-Indo-European. Think of all the words we have that come from this today! Our grinding teeth are called “molars”, certain hammer-related crushing tools are called “mauls”, a “miller” crushes things in a “mill” and the resultant “meal” is what has been crushed.

So, if we mash those two word roots together ex-melere → e-melere → emolument would roughly translate as “the outcome of grinding” (money, if you’re the miller).

This word appears prominently in the Foreign Emoluments Clause in the U.S. Constitution. This clause was put in place to limit the amount of governmental corruption, particularly by outside money… A worthy goal, if hard to achieve.

The idea is that we don’t want our officials, either elected or appointed, using their positions to achieve personal gain. Most organizations, whether community, state, or national-level have safeguards to prevent emoluments. One doesn’t want an employee giving preferential treatment to certain people because of secret bargains. It’s also a common word to see in Nepotism laws.

Archives, Community

Blast from the Past: School Board Discusses Nepotism

Sam

Sometimes, even old editions prove timely. Back about this time in 1988 Trego School board found itself discussing nepotism, specifically a school board member with a parent as a substitute cook.

We mentioned nepotism briefly last week, when we discussed the upcoming school board election. The state laws on nepotism can be found here.

Trego school board trustees discussed nepotism at their regular meeting February 10. The question of nepotism arose between school board trustee Sam Chaney, and substitute cook Donnajo Chaney, Sam’s mother. Sam Chaney received letters concerning nepotism from Bob Stockton, Office of Public Instruction and Cindy Middag, LC superintendent. The board took no action. The question of nepotism was again addressed concerning Sam Chaney and Trego election judge Goldie Calvert, his mother-in-law. The opinion of Jim Lear, attorney for the Legislative Council, Secretary of State’s office was that it is not legal for the Board of Trustees to appoint a relative to an election board because of the nepotism law. By doing so, the election could be challenged.

Trego Mountain Ear, February 22, 1988

Appointment of relative to office of trust or emolument unlawful — exceptions — publication of notice. (1) Except as provided in subsection (2), it is unlawful for a person or member of any board, bureau, or commission or employee at the head of a department of this state or any political subdivision of this state to appoint to any position of trust or emolument any person related or connected by consanguinity within the fourth degree or by affinity within the second degree.

Montana Code Annotated 2-2-302

Is it legal for a board member to appoint a relative as a substitute? Well, looking at the current laws, substitute teacher is a bit complicated, but if the time requirements (no more than 30 consecutive days) are met, it’s possible. What about substitutes for other roles? If the person was hired for that role before the relative joined the board, the situation is an exception. Additionally, while the language is a bit cluttered, 2(b) suggests that if certain conditions are met, it could be done legally.

school district trustees if all the trustees, with the exception of any trustee who is related to the person being appointed and who must abstain from voting for the appointment, approve the appointment of a person related to a trustee;

Montana Code Annotated 2-2-302. 2(b)

There’s also an accompanying requirement for the position to be posted in the newspaper in advance of the appointment.

As a side note, there are also rules governing election judges. Provided that the election judge isn’t a relative of a trustee running for reelection, having the relative of a school board trustee as the election judge wouldn’t be a problem. Of course, having one of your relatives judge the election your running in? That’s still a problem. Additionally, since election judges are paid, appointing your relatives is still bad form, even if it is an exception in Montana Code Annotated 2-2-302.

But read the whole issue:

Community

On trusting the experts

michaelmccurryphd

I have changed the trapdoor into the crawlspace under my house.  The builder was, is, a better carpenter than I.  Yet over the past 4 years, I have never been satisfied by the trapdoor he built.  He has built many houses – but I have gone into the crawlspace many times, as I worked with the water lines.  Sometime during those trips below the main floor, my expertise on that particular part of the house surpassed his – and this winter, I realized that in order to do things right, I had to strip the trapdoor out, then rebuild it so that things would work better.  The fact that his skills in carpentry exceeded mine was irrelevant.  My understanding of the requirements of this particular trapdoor exceeded his.

In my last job, I was accepted as an expert in demography.  And I can confidently state that expertise in demography requires understanding three things – births, deaths, and migration.  From those three inputs, I created models that projected future populations.  I’m looking forward to the publication of the 2020 Census, so I can see how closely my models matched reality.  Time was that demography needed a University’s library to find the data you need – now, an internet connection makes it possible to be an expert almost anywhere.

P.O. Ackley, who started the gunsmithing program at Trinidad State always denied being a gun expert – and he basically wrote the book on the topic.  I’ve encountered several experts on guns, but never one with credentials equal to Ackley.  Perhaps one of the most important aspects of expertise is knowing how much you don’t know.   

The covid pandemic has brushed alongside my expertise – disease has a definite correlation with death, and some relationship with migration.  Likewise, it brushes alongside the expertise of the medical doctor.  I’ve watched a pandemic handled by politicians and MDs (and there isn’t always a difference) with the implication that we need to follow the science and the experts.  The problem is, it’s easy to evaluate past data.  When it’s a new topic, and you’re looking at partial and fragmented data, it’s more of a challenge,

At the onset of the pandemic, Fauci wasn’t recommending masks – by June he was.  He’s changed his numbers several times on herd immunity and vaccinations.  I would prefer experts who were consistent and correct – but I have built a better trap door that works with the data I have. 

A Science for Everyone, Demography

Death Rates by Country

michaelmccurryphd

One of the more useful publications to compare nations is the CIA World Factbook.  While we tend to think of the CIA as secret agents, a lot of them are data geeks crunching numbers.  The data they develop about each country is impressive, and like the US Census, the CIA sets the standard for the most accessible and reliable information.  When I started using it, I needed a land-grant college library.  Now, I click World Factbook.

National death rates in 2018 ranged from 19.3 per 1000 in South Sudan down to 1.6 per 1000 in Quatar.   The reasons vary – a higher median age (Japan is 48.36) combined with healthy living and good health care can still have relatively low death rates (Japan was 9.9 in 2018).  The explanation is Demographic Transition theory – in the old days we had high birth rates and high infant/youth mortality.  The second stage occurred with health care improvements – birth rates remained high, but death rates dropped.  Stage 3 showed lower birth rates and death rates continuing to drop, but more slowly.  The fourth stage maintains the lower birth rates, but in an aging population the diseases change – in the US, the big killers are heart disease and cancer.

Lesotho, in Southern Africa, has the second highest death rate – high infant mortality (44.6 deaths per 1000 births), the world’s second highest HIV rate.  A dozen years ago, I first encountered https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/ and the website gets increasingly useful.  It isn’t that the covid is so insignificant in Lesotho, it’s that Diarrhea is so much more prevalent.  Click the link – and check out the demographic factors for your own country.  In the US, it shows life expectancy changes since 1960:

US life expectancy from World Life Expectancy

The personal computer has taken demography from being a science that need a major university’s library facilities in my undergraduate days into being a science with the data available to a Fortine resident who has insomnia at 3:00 am. 

Community

Trego School Trustees Positions

Sam

Trego School (School District 53) has scheduled the regular school election for Tuesday, May 4, 2021.  Three trustee positions are up for election – a 1 year term, a 2 year term and a 3 year term.  It’s been a long time since a school election was held – for years, a single candidate for each board position has resulted in election by acclamation. Democracy does seem to work better when people actually run for office and elections actually occur. Folks interested in applying should contact the school clerk (email).

Who can run? According to the school election handbook, published by Montana’s Office of Public Instruction (OPI):

Any person qualified to vote in a district is eligible for the office of trustee. However, there are
restrictions on who may hold office. A trustee may not be employed in any capacity by the
trustee’s own school district (with the exception of officiating athletic competitions under the
auspices of the Montana Officials Association). The trustee candidate may be related to a
school or county employee

No person convicted of a felony is eligible to hold office until final discharge from state supervision.

-School Election handbook

Trustee candidates may be related to a school employee, are there any special considerations if they are? Definitely! State nepotism laws absolutely apply to school boards, this means that a relative of a school employee that is also a board member will need to be well informed in order to avoid violating state law. Especially significant, since the penalty is potentially as hefty as $1000 fine and 6 months jail time.

Can board members be related to one another? Sure, but like the previous case, some research is going to be necessary. In this case, the law to be careful of is the open meeting law. A meeting occurs whenever a quorum is present, and while a Quorum is three members of a five member board, a four member board has a quorum of two. While Trego School has a five member board, any one person stepping down could create a situation in which a husband and wife (or parent and child) couldn’t talk to one another without having an illegal meeting. So, is it possible to have relatives on the school board? Definitely. A good idea? Perhaps not.

Why aren’t the terms all the same length? School board terms are staggered, so that only part of the board is up for election at any given time. If someone steps down from the board, midyear, the board appoints a replacement who serves until the next election. At that point, the person elected serves the rest of the term.

Why haven’t there been elections recently? If there aren’t more candidates running than vacancies, the district isn’t required to have an election, instead, each candidate is appointed, by “acclamation”, since they’ve effectively ran unopposed for the position.

What does being on a school board entail? Monthly meetings, at minimum. Boards can also hold special meetings, as needed, and board members can attend trainings.

A Science for Everyone, Meteorology

Windchill

Sam

It’s not really that cold out, is it?

Are you asking the thermometer? To a chemist or a physicist, temperature is really just a measure of how fast the molecules that make up air are moving, how much energy they have.

To those of us more interested in what the thermometer says outside, temperature has more to do with the rate at which we exchange heat with the environment. At the same temperature, a metal spoon will feel hotter than a wooden one; The metal spoon, being metal and thus more conductive exchanges heat with us at a faster rate, and so feels hotter.

Cold works the same way. The faster we lose heat, the colder it feels, even if the reading on the thermometer hasn’t gone down any.

Windchill, then, has to do with the way wind changes the rate at which we exchange heat with the air around us, specifically the rate at which we lose heat.

It makes an obvious sort of sense. The more wind, the more particles of air move by us, the more opportunities for particles of air to get a little warmer and us to get a little colder. But it’s actually worse. Wind will strip away that nice little layer of air you’ve already exchanged some heat with. It’s slightly warmer (which means its taking slightly less of your heat) and keeping all that really cold air from touching your skin. Insulating. Wind strips away that insulating layer of air.

Windchill, while ostensibly a measure of how cold it feels, is really a measure of heat loss. At it turns out, your body cares far more about how cold it feels than how cold the thermometer reads. While your skin temperature isn’t going to drop below ambient temperature, your body will perceive things as colder than they are, and respond accordingly. Frostbite? Hypothermia? The symptoms of those are the result of the body responding to how cold it feels.

Thirty degrees and windy can’t actually drop your skin’s temperature below thirty, but it’ll feel colder, and that is enough to increase the risk of cold related injury such as frostbite. While the equations to calculate windchill vary a bit, windchill warnings are serious business.

It’s not really that cold out, is it? Not if you ask the thermometer. If you’re asking me, however…

A Science for Everyone

Inflation

Sam

Inflation is one of the very basic, very important economic concepts. It is deceptively simple. Increase the supply of money, and it’s like inflating a balloon. The amount of air in the balloon increases, the amount of money in the system increases. This is essentially what happens whenever the government prints more money.

When the amount increases, the value of each individual unit goes down. This becomes more difficult to understand, because a dollar is still a dollar. However, a dollar doesn’t purchase as much.

Think back. Remember. How much was gasoline ten years ago? Twenty? Thirty? But it’s not always the price that increases. Sometimes, the amount goes down. Candy-bars, anyone? They’ve shrunk considerably since I was a child admiring them in the checkout isle. Of course, some things increase in efficiency and decrease in price, even while others do the opposite. Why? Developing technology can really reduce the costs of making something, sometimes enough that the price declines, even as the value of money goes down.

The federal reserve aims for an inflation rate of 2%. But that’s a number with very little meaning to most people. We care more about how much the grocery bill will increase by. For that, we look at the consumer price index. Calculating how much the value of money has changed is as simple as having two reference points. Pick an item. What does it cost today? What did it cost back then? Do a little subtraction, and then a little division.

Of course, you could also use the CPI inflation calculator provided by the government. In that case, it told me that a 100$ in 1920 had the same purchasing power as $1,342.65 in 2020.

Why do we care about inflation? Sure, groceries cost more, gas costs more, electricity costs more, but we’re earning more too, right? Eventually, probably. What’s really concerning is when inflation is high, when you see the kind of chance the US dollar had from 1920 to 2020 over the course of a year. Wages just can’t keep up.

Literally printing more money, while the obvious (and easiest) means of causing inflation, isn’t the only way to go about it, but the alternatives are a bit complex for this summary.

Community

We don’t need more PLUs

michaelmccurryphd

Somewhen about 30 years ago, I listened to a guy say “We need more PLU’s on this board.  We need employees that are PLU’s.”  I didn’t know what a PLU was, so I asked, and got the simple explanation: “People Like Us.”  I thought about it – and having a board filled with people like me would be really good if I had the correct, the perfect answer or proposal.  My clones and I could put it in effect with minimal discussion and disagreement.

I can see where a board’s diversity of opinion, of expertise, may profit by having one Person Like Me on it.  My experience and expertise include surveying (land, snow and polling), research, higher education, statistics, demography and agriculture.  I have solid opinions on those topics – but I defer to others in a lot of other areas.  A board that I’m on needs people who aren’t like me.  Filling a board with PLU’s leads to groupthink.  It gets worse with education – I recognize that a Ph.D. means specialized knowledge – but I’ve served on a bunch of committees filled with Ph.D. holders.  Not sure it ever improved the diversity of thought or opinion..

One of the best job partners I ever had was a woman who couldn’t stand me.  Politics, religion, science – we had nothing in common but a task to perform as efficiently and quickly as possible, ideally with the least exposure to each other possible.  We did it, and went on to promotions in our separate ways.  Don’t get me wrong – I disliked just about everything about her – but we accomplished more working together than either of us would have ever predicted.  PLUs aren’t needed in a productive workplace – and hopefully I’ll get through the rest of my life without seeing her again.

There are times when a board needs team players.  There are times when it needs gadflies.  Thinking back to Nixon and Watergate, I remember one of the White House folks saying, “Nobody ever suggested that there wouldn’t be a coverup.”  I don’t know how many years he served in prison – but the statement was one of the greatest examples of groupthink I’ve ever heard.  A group of PLUs, never thinking of the question that should have been obvious.

I guess it’s simple – I’d rather work with dissension and diversity than risk groupthink from People Like Us.