Weekly Parenting News Roundup

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Cross-posted at Daily Kos.

Hello fellow moms, dads and caregivers!

This is the first Saturday morning parenting diary roundup so it is a work in progress. I will attempt to post it every Saturday morning at 8 p.m. PT. Please let me know what I can add or change.

In the meantime, if you are new or wish to “de-lurk,” please introduce yourselves! How many children do you have? Do you care for elderly parents? What are you most interested in discussing?

Here are some topics we have recently discussed here at MotherTalkers:

Bill Gates, whose foundation has awarded $2 billion to U.S. public schools, recently released a letter outlining his education funding priorities. He wants to focus on charter schools with longer school days like the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) in Houston, where almost all their students go on to four-year colleges and universities. He also wants certain restrictions placed on charter schools removed like the limited amount of funding they receive. What say you of Gates’s ideas?

In related schools news, we discussed the ethics of selling Girl Scout cookies and other kid fundraising stuff to co-workers. Due to economic uncertainty and slashed budgets, both public and private schools are having to rely on an unusual number of fundraisers: silent auctions, bake sales, raffle ticket sales and other items from catalogues. How do you manage the barrage of solicitations from schools and fundraising related to extracurricular activities?

Finally, we discussed the twin baby boom due to IVF. Some of you dished on how you manage caring for two babies at once. My tired self reacting: Shudder.

What else is on your mind?

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16 thoughts on “Weekly Parenting News Roundup”

      • Yup

        that’s me!

        I thought it was awesome – it’s fun to see new people commenting on “our” stuff! :-)  It’s also very cool to see front pagers (BarbinMD for one) involved in the conversation…I feel like a groupie!

  4. hey elisa

    Over on dKos you mentioned that you’re making kos registrations work here on MT.  Will it go back the other way?  I’ve been reading there religiously for maybe 3 years but never registered.

    • I hope they are on the…

      exact same platform. So it should work. I will ask our dear programmer to make sure. Poor thing has so much on his plate right now.

    • Me either…

      I’m a bit scared to post over there…the discussions have a tendency to get a bit…ummm…heated. I read occasionally…but the comments lists get seriously long!

      Hopefully having a bunch of DKosers over here (with automatic registration and commenting ability) won’t change the flavour of this place. I’d hate to see it morph too far from the feel that it has now.

  5. homeschooling

    Since I don’t have registration over there, I didn’t join in on the homeschooling comment. But someone could let her know that I “afterschool” two gifted kids and fully expect that full homeschooling is in my future at some point. I’m on lots of homeschooling lists and am friends with plenty of people that homeschool for various reasons. I seriously doubt that anyone here would be at all upset with an educational choice made by a parent…as long as it’s for well-researched and rational reasons! And even if we think you’re crazy, we’ll be nice about it. :)

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