And what does some pointy-headed educrat in Washington DC know about the needs of students in a much less urban part of SoCal? Nothing! But because of top-down rules, the local school districts cannot respond to local needs even if they wanted to (hint: they don't want to respond to local needs; they just want to pass the next district and campus administration staff pay raises).
#sonOne graduated from a public high school that was also a continuation school. He had gone there for the continuation program after repeated fights and a couple of medical issues in the main public high school, but once he caught up, he transferred to the regular high school program. (I knew the school wasn't responsive to medical issues, because I had a friend [now deceased] who had attended there while dealing with a life-threatening condition which eventually took his life.)
#sonTwo graduated from a charter school that is funded with public dollars. He also attended a medical home school program through the same continuation school that his older brother attended, but as soon as he recovered, he wanted out because that school had too much homework. Two of his elementary school friends moved out of state partly because of the poor quality of the public middle school he attended.
I remember one time, while he was on home schooling, we went to a local McDonald's for the day. We had breakfast and lunch there, while he did his schoolwork. There was a lady doing the same thing with her little boy. The toilets weren't all that clean, so when I needed to go, I left my kid there with the lady (and a long-time employee whom I knew) watching him, while I went to a nearby store. Later on, the lady needed to go, and I watched her kid while she went to the store. (That McD's now has a sign saying that their dining room is for up to 30 minutes use only.)
#Daddy_A graduated from a different charter school that is partially funded with public dollars. He went there after his public middle school experienced several race-related fights that spread from a nearby public high school.
Despite the public schools failing all three of them, the alternatives they used existed because we have public funding for schools. In each case, for different reasons, completely home schooling the child was not a realistic alternative, nor was getting into one of the area's paid and privately funded church schools. Even so, I did know a woman who was able to get grants and part-time on-campus work to send her three sons to a church school instead of the public middle school after her oldest got mononucleosis and the school demanded that he return to campus despite not having recovered.
He had a mild form of skin cancer, so they prescribed a topical chemotherapy drug. For most people, this has no side effects because the tiny bit that gets into the bloodstream gets broken down in the liver pretty quickly. For him, it was like he was on traditional chemo ... nausea and vomiting, diarrhea.
By the time they tested for the genetic issue, they already knew from the symptoms that it was there. The weight loss meant that his back injury symptoms lessened, so his next two surgeries are postponed.
He has been hospitalized multiple times this year for yet another issue, but he's home and says he's looking forward to a better 2023.
(It does mean that if he gets another form of cancer, chemotherapy is probably not an option.)
I even used that ability when #sonTwo and #Daddy_A were teens. They'd be talking and I wasn't listening at all. Then one of them would say a word that piqued my interest, so I'd re-hear part of their conversation ... this time paying attention.
It sounds like BSV had some good ideas, but I think most of those were already in the pipeline before BSV split from BCH. I'm talking about things like increasing the block size, so that more transactions can be processed in each ten minute interval. BSV currently has a market-determined variable block size and BCH has a 32MB block size. The original BTC still uses 1MB ... which causes contention for fewer slots inside the block, and raises both transaction costs and the average wait time for transactions to process. AFAIK, BSV is the only member of the Bitcoin family to give major attention to smart contracts ... including creating a new scripting language ( "sCrypt":{https://scrypt.io/} ) to make them easier.
IMO, "smart contracts" make it easier to create non-financial applications for #blockchains and other ledgers.
There's a lot that I disagree with the Republicans about, but I will always and forever support the charter school concept, even if some such schools should be closed.
Both #sonTwo and #Daddy_A attended charter schools after their public schools were unresponsive to our requests to meet their needs. At the time, I was making very little money, so paying for a private school was out of reach.
Charter schools take from the giant pot of money that our public schools use, but they are schools that parents can choose to apply to send their kids to, or choose to move their kids back to public schools. School choice takes the power away from educrats and gives it back to parents, where it belongs.
In the middle early 1990s, I remember wanting to start a "Desert Launch Project" to build a commercial space launch facility in one of California's desert areas. At the time, I was outside of any urban or even micro-urban municipal boundaries, and the stars were so abundant and so bright that they seemed to be just a little higher than my hands could reach.
I know that #sonTwo, at least, remembers me taking him to have a star night with my mom. #sonOne, being ten years older, had fewer such nights, but he might also remember. (I'm pretty sure that #Daddy_A never got that opportunity.) My mom was a volunteer in a local science program, so she interacted regularly with amateur and professional astronomers. (Years later, I met some people around 1st son's age who told me "Your mom is so cool! She used to teach us about [some aspect of astronomy] and [some software used on Macintosh computers of that time].") Someone even gave her a telescope.
Alas, it was a time of great struggle just to provide basic necessities for myself, so building a team and seeking funding was never going to happen. DLP was an idea that never went beyond "just an idea". I wouldn't even call it still born, as it never even became an embryo.
Major violations could be #cockroach infestation, sewer backup, rodent infestation, employees not handwashing after using the restroom, sick employees coughing and sneezing all over the food, and other such issues.
I still go to "Super Target" instead of #Walmart or the nearest supermarket. Or I go to the cross-town supermarket and stop by the Target in that area.
But I'm not happy with them. If someone opened a clean and well-stocked store within walking distance with the quality products I want, I would switch in a heartbeat.
(I did try to watch “Spongebob Squarepants” with #Daddy_A, but I just never enjoyed the show. Like when I tried to watch “Ren & Stimpy” and “Beavis & Butthead” with #sonOne. Sorry, I just can’t do it.)
I sent a telescope. Well, I sent a telescope for #A1 last year, but it was one of those kids' science kit tabletop telescopes. This year's telescope is an entry level stargazing scope from Celestron. It came with a cellphone mount, so they can watch the screen and take photos of what they see instead of sticking their eyes up to the scope and potentially knocking it down. Oh, and it comes with some sort of astronomy software package.