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Monday, August 1, 2005
Cobb’s Laptop Mess
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
UPDATE: This program is as dead as my 2001 Compaq Presario. Here’s the story.
I usually limit posts to one a day, but I feel remiss in not putting the Cobb laptop issue out there. Here’s Kristina Torres’ story about how a judge ruled Friday that the school board could not use sales tax dollars for the project, because they didn’t specify their desire to voters beforehand.
Do you agree with the judge’s decision? What should this mean to the laptop program?
Meet Pat and Pat Lynch
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On Sunday, my colleague Craig Schneider and I reported on the problems with public education and foster kids. Here’s the story.
I wanted to elaborate a bit more on the Lynches and their adoption of 17-year-old Jennifer. Mr. Pat Lynch tells the story this way: He had remarried a woman, also named Pat, who had never had kids. His daughters were almost grown. (They are now in college.) He didn’t want to be a senior citizen dad, so he and his wife decided to look into adopting an older child.
Kathy Colbenson from CHRIS Kids, an organization that operates group homes for foster children in Georgia among other programs, told me that she met Mrs. Lynch at an event. Colbenson matched the Lynches with Jennifer, a teenager living in one of their group homes.
At first, the Lynches, who live in Cobb County, did not have clearance to bring Jennifer to their home, so they tried to come up with different places to go with her on the weekends. The Lynches got to know Jennifer gradually. Eventually, Jennifer started staying at their house every other weekend. “We woke up one morning and realized we liked the weekends better when Jennifer was with us than when she wasn’t,” Mr. Lynch said.
Mrs. Lynch is undergoing treatment for breast cancer. “Jennifer has been a blessing,” Mr. Lynch said.
Jennifer’s adoption should be completed sometime in the next few weeks. The Lynches are spending thousands on a private school so Jennifer, now 17, can get caught up and graduate on time.
Not a lot of families standing in line to adopt foster kids who have been neglected and abused by their parents and trapped in the inefficient child welfare system. I thought the Lynches deserved an extra shout out.
