NPR Features Wake County School Board $125,000 Run-off

There is a special run-off election on Tuesday for the deciding seat on the Wake County NC School Board.  Whereas all Republicans won in the 2009 elections, which gave them the controlling majority on the Board, this year all Democrats won the formerly nonpartisan election.  However, Democrat Kevin Hill did not win by enough to avoid a run-off election with the next highest-ranking candidate, Republican Heather Losurdo.

Given that this run-off would decide whether the Republicans or Democrats dominate on the school board, I expected that there would be a lot of focus on this race.  However, I never imagined that it would raise so much money.  At this point, nearly $125,000 has been donated to the two candidates, much from people and organization outside Wake County, and even outside North Carolina.

This is such an amazing amount of money to spend on a single school board race that it was the focus of a new article today on the National Public Broadcasting (NPR) program All Things Considered.  To hear their 10 minute segment on the Wake County race, and some other places where national groups are pouring outside money into local elections, visit their website here.

The Republican candidate, Losurdo, has received twice as much money as the incumbent Democrat Hill.  It will be interesting to see if that enables her to beat Hill this time around.

If you happen to live in Wake County's School Board District 3, don't forget to vote on Tuesday.

Curriculum Resource: Another Visualization of 7 Billion People

I found another great visualization to help our students imagine a world population of 7 billion people.  This one goes well with yesterday's video on the significance of 7 billion people because it traces the growth from farther back in time, and gives more specific information about how many people there are in specific areas of the world.

This one was produced by Adam Cole for NPR:

Curriculum Resource: Explaining the Occupy Wall Street Movement

I don't know about you, but I've been having a hard time explaining the Occupy Wall Street movement to my middle schooler because I haven't completely understood it myself.  I don't think the mainstream media has done a great job reporting on what this movement is really all about, preferring to focus on the "sizzle" (growing numbers, celebrity drop-bys, the variety of issues and outfits among participants, etc.) rather than the substance.

However, I found an NPR podcast that I think gives a better background about what is really significant about these protests.  Things may seem disorganized and unfocused to outsiders because while participants disagree about what the MOST egregious problems in modern American policy are, they all agree that we need an entirely different PROCESS to address them.   So while they may all be protesting different specific issues, they are united in not only discussing, but in demonstrating, a different system for making decisions, setting policy, and even allocating resources in a fairer, more democratic, and ultimately better way.

But listen to the enclosed just over 20 minutes podcast to hear a better explanation, including the theory behind a different way to run our entire production system that is known as "participatory economics:"



Plus, come back tomorrow for a teachable moment around this weekend's protest news.