Category Archives: Alameda

Wireless ISP Issues

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Those who have followed here for a while might recall that back in 2017 we switched our internet service from Comcast to a local wireless service through a company called Common Networks. They set up their network as a mesh network, with a couple of different locations at that time with Internet access (the Alameda movie theatre on the east end of the island, and the Digital Realty data center just over the estuary from us in Oakland providing a primary connection for the west end). If a node went down, no problem – traffic was routed around it automatically.

Monkey Brains

Fast forward a few years, and they were struggling and ended up being bought by a San Francisco based outfit called Monkey Brains who operate wireless networks in SF, and a few other locations around the bay area.

They came along and ripped out the little PC that we had on site managing the routing, and replaced the dishes on the roof. There were lots of outages and a lot of our neighbors left and switched to AT&T fiber, which was just starting to offer service around Alameda at the time. We had not had any serious outages, so we stayed.

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Target No Longer Family Friendly

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Armed men at Target in Alameda

Not sure exactly when this started, but several of the Target stores we have visited recently, including our local one here in Alameda, now have groups of armed men in military-style uniforms, and body armour at the entrance.

This is an odd decision for Target, which claims to be a family-friendly shop, and has a stated policy of asking people not to carry weapons into their stores to help them “create an
atmosphere of family-friendly shopping that’s safe and inviting for our
guests and team members.” Having these armed men at the door does the exact opposite of that, for a number of reasons.

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Modified Quarantine

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When the elementary schools went back to full day, in-person this autumn, they obviously had to have a plan for what would happen when a student tested positive for COVID-19. In our case, that first happened less than a week into the year. Other schools here in Alameda also saw cases in the first few weeks of school. Previous guidelines for those who may have been exposed were to quarantine at home for 10-14 days, and get tested at the end of that period (and, of course, should any symptoms appear during the quarantine). However, for this school year the state has created a new scheme called modified quarantine, which is not really quarantine at all in my opinion.

Modified quarantine allows the children exposed to somebody who tested positive to remain at school, and even to commute to and from school on public transit, if necessary. The only thing they cannot do is activities outside of school, as if, somehow, doing activities at school makes them safer.

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Fairy Doors

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Not sure where the idea of fairy doors came from, but there are lots of them on Alameda. On Bay Farm Island, there are twenty-six, one for each letter of the alphabet, around the shoreline trail. Start just past the intersection of Adelphian Way and Sweet Way if you want to start at ‘A’.

We took scooters, but to be honest the path was a little too bumpy for them and in several places we just ended up walking them. It is a couple of miles from A to Z, the end being just before the bridge back to the main island, alongside the Harbor Bay Club fence.

We took an alternative route back, initially to check out another door (called Park Tree on the handy map you can find here). Zipping along the much smoother paths, past the school.

Now, even more than before, my daughter wants to put up some fairy doors. Time to fire up the 3D printer and make her some she can paint!

Alameda Parks & Rec Aquatics

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July 11 Update

Each summer we sign our 7 year old up for the Alameda Parks and Rec summer aquatics program at the Encinal High School pool. Usually he does two of the three sessions, covering 6 weeks, with lessons four nights a week. At the end of each session they issue a report card and let the kids know the level they are on.

The Pool

There are actually two pools at Encinal High, a fairly shallow one and one that is set up for lap swimming and diving (it has a spring board in one corner where the depth increases to 12′).The shallower one is heated, and is where most of the classes happen. The deeper one is used by the groups on the higher levels and for treading water by the lower groups (it has a shallow side).

The Lessons

The lessons are relatively small groups (five or six kids per group), and the instructors look like college or high school kids. There seems to be quite a bit of variation in what they actually do between instructors, but they do spend the entire time working with the kids. The last five minutes of each class are a free swim / play time for the kids too which they like.

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Alameda Library Dated Policies

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For the most part, the Alameda City library serves its purpose well, but today I encountered something that surprised me given all the other technology the library has deployed. The reality though is that it was not a limitation of the technology at all. It was a dated policy being enforced by librarians with little interest in serving customers. Given the technology already deployed, the experience I had picking up a book reserved in my daughter’s name should never have happened.

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Public EV Spaces

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One of the things about driving an EV that I noticed very quickly is that the ideal locations for “refueling” infrastructure are totally different to ICE cars. Gas stations are just not the best places for charging stations, and even with the very high speed chargers that some car manufacturers are talking about, I don’t think they ever will be. Instead, the best places are the places (apart from at home), seem to be public parking lots. These are places where EVs spend enough time to pick up meaningful charge, while their drivers are doing something else.

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Smartmeters: Radiation & Other FUD

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Our local, city owned, electricity utility has been working on a project to upgrade all our electricity meters to smart meters. For those that have not heard of these before, a smart meter is essentially the same as a modern digital electricity meter (so none of the moving parts of the classic electricity meter) with the addition of a radio that allows it to send data back to the utility periodically.

In most cases, they record the meter’s value every 15 minutes and then upload blocks of data to the utility periodically.

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Alameda Unified School District (Enrollment Process)

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I don’t know if all school districts are this bad (I have a feeling it might be a common thing, if not universal), but my experience with the Alameda Unified School District doesn’t fill me with hope for future.

Online Registration

My first attempt to start the online registration was stymied by the insistence that I use Internet Explorer (impossible since I have only a Mac and an iPad). This is frankly ridiculous as a requirement too; it was bad enough a decade ago, but today there should be absolutely no need for something as basic a web based school enrollment system to require a specific browser or platform.

To further indicate the poor quality of the IT at AUSD, on the morning when enrollment for next year’s kindergarten grade was opened, their system crashed. All appointments issued before that were then canceled and we had to complete the process a second time. Alameda’s entire population is around 75,000 people. I don’t know how many of those would have been trying to enroll their pre-schooler in kindergarten for next year, but I can’t believe it was that many.

Enrollment Appointment

Once the online process was completed, the system generated an appointment for us (which happened to be today for me). The email that they sent out included the time and date, but did not include the address of AUSD’s administration offices.

When I mentioned that at the front desk while signing in, the lady there agreed that was something that should be fixed and asked me to point it out to the “enrollment counsellor.” At the end of the appointment, I mentioned it to her and she just said it has been suggested before but the address is all over their website and it is an IT issue. Or, in other words, “Not her problem.” Apparently no interest in doing a good job; just enough to get by.

Personal Information

As part of the online process we needed to upload copies of a utility bill and this year’s property tax bill. The online FAQ for what we need to bring to the appointment included these bills as well as my ID and the kid’s birth certificate & vaccination record.

I had assumed that she would simply check my ID to make sure I was who I said I was, but no. She wanted to make a copy of it. When I asked why, and how that copy would be secured, she said she didn’t know and if I wanted to find out I would have to contact the school. In the end, she got me a vague statement from the director that the copy would be locked up and not accessible to the public. Not much of a reassurance. I will be pursuing that further.

Printed Copy

Also on the list of documents to bring was a printed copy of the electronic enrollment. That seemed odd to me since they should have the electronic version. When I questioned that, I was told the printed copy was for the school and they didn’t have access to the electronic copy. There are problems I can see with this:

  1. If they need access to the information, why can they not be given access electronically? That seems like a flaw in the system. Far safer to have them access it electronically than keep a paper copy stored somewhere.
  2. If they do need a printed copy, why can the AUSD administration not print them one to put in this paper file. They were able to print copies of the bills I uploaded OK, and print other forms.

    Intradistrict Transfer

    Finally, since we were also interested in the possibility of a transfer to a school other than the one we would be normally assigned, I asked about that. That is also online, but unlike the rest of their site, the transfer request process is implemented using Google Forms and, apart from some of the questions not really handling the case of a transfer request for a pre-K student, it worked well. It is a shame the rest of the application process isn’t handled the same way.

AUSD & Charter Schools

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I was sent an interesting email yesterday that mentioned that an Alameda Unified School District board member, in fact the board President, had made some pretty scathing comments about how she feels about California’s Charter Schools generally. The comments were made as part of the discussions surrounding the renewal of the charter for a school that has moved to Oakland (because it was unable to find a suitable space it could afford in Alameda, but is still authorized by AUSD). The renewal was approved, in a 3-2 split vote, with the president actually voting in favor of the renewal, which makes the comments even more odd.

What Ms Kahn said was:

I oppose Charter Schools generally because I think they’re predatory. I think they’re dishonest. I think they don’t give a hoot for the community that they’re in. I think their self-interest overrides everything that they do. I think they put themselves forward as a free, on the public dime, option for parents that would like to have, remove themselves from a public school into a private school, but they can do that for nothing by buying into a charter.

Obviously, Ms Kahn is entitled to her opinion on whether charter schools are a good idea or not, but as she herself said in an interview with The Alamedan prior to her election, “charter schools are here to stay.” She went on to say “like it or not, by law the district has to cooperate in the development of charters, while exercising oversight to guarantee that they are delivering what they promised.”

Predatory & Dishonest

Her comments at the board meeting on November 10, 2015 do not seem consistent with those pre-election statements. Furthermore, it is disingenuous to label charter schools generally as “predatory” and “dishonest.” From my own research, the charter schools in Alameda are committed to providing a quality education to their students, and are popular with both students and their parents. Like it or not, they are working (and, at least in the case of the Alameda ones, they seem to be working better than most of the district’s schools).

Private Education

I also found it personally offensive that Ms Kahn would imply that parents looking at charter schools are trying to get a private education on the “public dime.” Like most parents, I am looking for the best possible education for my children. If that is a charter school, then so be it. If it is a private school, then we will certainly consider it. I certainly can’t see anything that would suggest that AUSD’s schools stand out as being excellent by any measure! I can also say categorically that the charter schools we have looked at are nothing at all like private schools (I attended private schools from age 7 up, so I have some experience there).

Perhaps, if the AUSD board president feels that private schools offer a better education than the district’s schools (they almost certainly do), she should make it a priority to fix that disparity rather than making disparaging comments about parents looking at charter schools instead of district ones. Furthermore, if she feels that charter schools are able to deliver a better quality education on a public education budget, then perhaps she should look into how they can do that, and what can be improved in the district’s schools to achieve the same results. (To be honest, I don’t think the charter schools are delivering as much as they could

Bylaws

AUSD board members should probably also be aware of the section of the AUSD Board Bylaws that states:

Board members shall hold the education of students above any partisan principle, group interest, or personal interest.

(From BB 9200 – Board Bylaws – Limit of Board Member Authority)

Any attempt by AUSD board members to block a charter school’s existence based purely on a personal opinion about whether charter schools in general should exist, would seem to be contrary to that bylaw (and possibly to California state law). It also seems to me that the AUSD should be celebrating successful schools in its district, whether they are directly run by the district or merely overseen as a charter.