Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Public-Funded Special Education

Near and dear in my heart; my Hunter (a very special boy) attends a very special school. The school is quite effective, and I’m pleased with the results, but it doesn’t come cheap.

This, after his K-through-5 years in our local public school system, in which he was simply not challenged enough for his intellect .. he was bringing assignments home that his younger sister was completing easily. After numerous attempts to get him moved into peer-level mainstream classes in various subjects, we gave up on the public school district for him and enrolled him in APL.

From the article:

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the nation’s special education students are entitled to a "free and appropriate public education." Federal law calls for school districts to reimburse students or their families for education costs when public schools do not have services that address or fulfill the students’ needs.

…

The court ruled 6-3 in favor of a teenage boy from Oregon whose parents sought to force their local public school district to pay the $5,200 a month it cost to send their son to a private school.

Granted, there isn’t a program against which I can seek reimbursement .. at the moment, all I can do is call my attorney; not a pleasant (or rapid resolution) prospect.

New York Times:”Court Affirms Reimbursement for Special Education”.

In an attention-starved world ..

.. shorten your name by reducing it to one syllable(?).

Case in point: “Windows Live Search” becomes “Bing”. I get this: with Google appearing as a verb in popular culture, it’s easier to “Google it” than it was to “Live Search it”.

The branding folks get it.

Now, if for attention starvation or because they sell much more than pizza, Pizza Hut is shortening their name to “the Hut”.

I notice a domain squatter is holding www.hut.com hostage at the moment .. perhaps there are some negotiations in progress. http://www.thehut.com is taken too (at the time of this posting; there is now a legitimate ‘the hut’ that sells stuff).

Note that Yum Brands (the world’s largest restaurant company) also owns the chicken place formerly known as “Kentucky Fried Chicken”.

Yum renamed the chicken franchise to KFC a few years back, and is now adding references to the brand to highlight their grilled offerings (“KGC”). This is all part of their “unthink” marketing campaign (URL removed as out-of-date) that includes a $9.99 bucket of grilled chicken. Not a bad option, actually.

Anyhow, back to shorter and shorter names. MSN Money posts: “Pizza Hut to change its name?”.

(the original story of this post: the rename is out of date. However, I’m keeping the reference post as other bits are relevant).

How Much Does a Troubled IT Project Cost?

Added costs, sure .. but it’s more than dollars. There are also human costs that are hard to estimate:

• Wear and tear on your employees; those working on the project, as well as those in the organizations into which the project is upgrading / integrating.
• Friction between managers, through escalations, downtime and defects.
• Added stress to YOU .. even if you’re not hands on, or in the line of fire.

What happens?

• Lack of QC at the project level.
• Project management that, well, doesn’t.
• Runaway scope (aka ‘feature creep’) or increasing complexity within projects.

What can you do?

• Focus on project management: this is critical to completing projects on time and within budget .. it’s important to spot (and early) if things are going wrong.
• Stress requirements and collecting use cases collection prior to cutting code.
• Engage your integration teams early in the project; ensure that your output reflects the required input for current systems and that your required inputs can be acquired without disrupting existing systems beyond reason.

Yes: I used to do big projects. Now, I just remember the good old days.

Baseline provides us a great look into challenges like these in “The Cost of Troubled IT Projects”.