Friday Follies~This & That

Due to illness of just about everyone in the house this will be a fairly lame Friday Follies. With that disclaimer out of the way here is what I have.

Interesting and Informative Blog on local real estate conditions-New Smyrna Real Estate.

Halifax Urban Ministries has opened a new office in New Smyrna Beach. They relocated from the First United Methodist Church to a larger site at 715 Canal St. This office, which is the agency's fifth in Volusia County, is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and serves 800 to 1,000 people a month with food and financial assistance.

The Atlantis Bistro on Flagler Ave will be reviewed quite favorably in the Orlando Sentinel this weekend. You can read it now here. My brother and I have had lunch there several times and it has always been excellent with great service.

Finally, I received a quite nasty email from a local reader who feels I should not talk about our school system. I am not sure why he/she is not outraged by the budget cuts and nonsense that is going on but apparently he/she is not. It states:

"you should shut up about Volusia County Schools, we do not want higher taxes and we don't care about program cuts" (I am guessing they have no children and don't care about the future of our state or country) They go on to say "Your kid does not even attend Volusia County so why do you care?"

Let me tell you why I care, first let me correct you, my daughter attends Coronado Elementary School. My son also went to Coronado, I made the personal decision to send my son to Warner Christian Academy for 6th grade. Mainly because of the quality of education, class size and budget cuts. This was before the additional millions was taken from our children and teachers this year. They are looking at losing music, art, sports, academic programs and in some schools are being forced to sit in a gymnasium when teachers call in sick with no academic instruction. The public education system is in a shambles and no one in our government seems willing to be accountable for the disaster and take steps to fix it. This is why I care. My parents pay for my son to attend private school or he would not be able to attend. This is why I care. His educational experience this year has been excellent and he loves school, even though he gets up 90 minutes earlier than his friends to catch a bus to Daytona at 7am and does not have early release every Wednesday, no teacher work days off of school and it is a fairly strict atmosphere. No complaints from him. Because of all those extra educational hours they have built in they did not have to make up the Tropical Storm Fay days and had the whole week of Thanksgiving off. It is not perfect but it has been an overall positive experience.

So in conclusion to my anonymous reader. I will continue to harp on the school system when appropriate and share information as I come across it. I chose not to publish your entire email in the event that you might be embarrased by some of your grammar and spelling. There is a tool called spellcheck that will help you with that. My children know how to use it...they learned it in school. This is why I care.