Tag Archives: humor

A Letter From The Superintendent

23 Dec

This was published in Funny Times, December 2013  (www.funnytimes.com)

Dear Parents:

All of us in the District are eager and excited to begin what promises to be our most successful year to date.

First, we are proud to announce that the entire District is now dedicated to serving only Gifted and Special Needs students. This change comes after a review of last year’s student records revealed that there were no “Regular-Ed” students left.

The District’s Food Service Department has unveiled our new Culinarily Correct Cafeteria. We are now able to accommodate students with food allergies and sensitivities, as well as our athletes, and our obese and anorexic students. The cafeterias no longer serve any foods containing wheat, eggs, nuts, dairy, meat, or soy products. We now offer organic versions of Slim Fast, Ensure and Muscle Milk.

Thanks to the PTA’s tremendous efforts, all playground equipment has finally been removed. The playgrounds are now equipped with Wi-Fi, cable and virtual playground goggles that will allow students to visualize that they are playing in a safe, supportive, and healthy environment.

Our Parent Peep-Hole Portal is up and running and can be accessed from the District’s website, www.veritasdistrictschools.com. You can review your student’s attendance record, assignments, grades, contact teachers and/or watch live school action on the 72 newly installed security cameras in and around our school. If you have cable, you can watch us on Channel 112!

We are also pleased to announce that despite all the budget cuts, we have added three new staff positions at each school. An on-site Pharmacist will handle the ever increasing pharmaceutical needs of our students with ADD/ADHD, diabetes, anxiety, bipolar, depression and any other disorders. A new Grief Counselor and a Good Guy with a Gun will also set up offices where the art and music rooms used to be.

Please be sure to check the updated calendar, available on our website, as we have added 32 new teacher in-service days (no school for students on these days) to continue training our teachers on compliance with the 422 new federal and state guidelines for curriculum, administering tests and, of course, the latest teacher and student evaluation criteria.

We are striving for excellence, and we are optimistic that we can bring you this excellence within our new budget (28 percent of last year’s budget, 32 percent of the previous year’s).  Additionally, we are confident that we can do this effectively, even while welcoming the 1,300 new students that are joining us from a neighboring District’s school that was closed last year due to non-adherence to their District’s dress code.

We are relentless in our effort to improve your child’s educational experience and we will continue to try to find out just why our schools keep “failing” despite the massive amounts of time and money we are applying at the local, state and national levels.

We are rigorously evaluating our teachers, teaching techniques and student performance. In addition to those evaluations, we are conducting union effectiveness evaluations, procurement audits, administrative evaluations, interior and exterior security audits, emergency planning audits, parking lot safety studies, length of grass near buildings audits, and how the sun shines on our schools evaluations.

The only input to your child’s education that has not been thoroughly scrutinized to date is … you, the parent.

Although it sounds silly, there is some evidence that suggests that you and your expectations of your child could be the most influential factor in their educational experience. Toward that end, we have enclosed a District-wide Parent Evaluation Survey that we’d like to you fill out and send back to us.

If you don’t return the survey, don’t worry; we know how taxing all this seemingly unnecessary paperwork can be. Happily, Mr. McCarthy, our Engineering and Technology teacher, has offered to have his senior class fill in the blanks on any non-returned surveys as part of their research project in his class: Hacking, Tracking, and Tapping – Information Gathering in the Modern World.

Again, we welcome you and hope you and all our students are as excited as we are to have a successful year.

Yours in Learning,

Dr. Will Botch, Ph.D.

Proudly serving as Superintendent

Anita B. Veritas School District

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Sorry, I’ve just got to vandalize this bench

8 Dec
Hats off to the Denver Water Department for the very effective “Use Only What You Need” public relations campaign.

It is pure genius.

That’s why it makes me so sad to have to vandalize it.

I’m not prone to vandalism; as a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve ever committed an act of vandalism. Of course I’ve fantasized an act or two. I envision myself heaving my coffee pot through the window of the Mr. Coffee​ headquarters (a la the Discount Tire ad), because it drips on the counter every time I pour a cup. And I have a recurring dream of breaking into government computers and putting all of Congress on Medicare and Social Security instead of their bountiful salaries and fabulous benefits, the ones that inure them from any hope of ever helping their constituents.

But now I find myself plotting and planning an actual crime. I’m obsessed with a humongous orange bench that appeared recently on the corner of 1st and University in Cherry Creek and reads, “This is what you use,” next to a little orange bench that reads, “This is what you need.”

I knew immediately when I saw the benches what I needed to do. And it is not my moral compass, nor my fear of getting caught that has kept me, thus far, from my delinquency; both those I would sacrifice, I am so compelled. I’ve even rationalized that my kids might think mommy doing a little jail time is cool — like a tattoo — or it might give them some bragging rights in their world of suburban opulence and entitlement.

No, what has kept me from my crime spree is the fact that I cannot decide which act of vandalism to do. I am truly torn.

Should I write on the big bench, “This is how much money you make,” and on the little bench, “This is how much money you need,” with a little follow-on that says, “Do something good with it”?

Or, “This is how rich you are,” on the big bench, and, “This is how rich you think you are,” on the little bench, with the follow-on “Ninety percent of the top 10 percent don’t think they’re rich enough and therefore have no obligation to society”?

Hmmm, that one’s probably too long.

Or, “This is how much you owe in taxes,” on the big bench and, “This is how much you pay in taxes,” on the little one with, “Using loopholes is the same as stealing,” as the follow-on?

Or perhaps I should dedicate my anarchy to one of the most egregious frivolities to surface in our society, a cause near and dear to my almost-50 ego, a prevalent travesty in Cherry Creek. I could put, on the big bench, “This is how much money, time and effort you spend on your appearance,” and on the small bench, “This is what you should.” Below that it would read, “There’s been enough money spent on plastic surgery and breast enlargements in Cherry Creek to have eradicated malaria from our planet!”

So I have my black mask and my black outfit already set out. I just need to decide which pair of boots to wear and which slogan to use.

 

Read more: Sorry, I’ve just got to vandalize this bench – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_18905973#ixzz1fxTHCyI2
Read The Denver Post’s Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

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Milton Bradley Unveils New Game Called ‘Strife’

19 Jul

Said to be more realistic version of their ‘Life’ game

Milton Bradley Company, maker of the game “Life,” is unveiling a new version of the game called “Strife.”

The new game requires players to spin the wheel to determine an initial educational path: Spin 1-7 and you take the high school path, 8-9 and you go to college, and those lucky few who spin a 10 skip to the Dynastic Wealth or Fame path.

On the high school path, players must avoid landing on the four spaces marked “Pregnancy,” “Addiction,” “Poverty,” or “Wrong Place-Wrong Time”; if they do, they must drop out of high school and chose from careers as welfare recipients, cleaning lady or man, dishwasher, or hobo. In these cases, players collect no salary, since it all goes toward living expenses.

If they’re lucky enough to avoid those spaces, high school educated players choose from career cards for jobs waiting tables, in retail or telemarketing, or as bank tellers and loan officers; salary cards range from $7 to $15 an hour. There are two lucky bonus cards on the high school path: Professional Athlete and Celebrity, where players proceed directly to the Party and Play areas.

The college path now goes two ways: Spin to see if you graduate with no debt and pick from the Upper Middle Class career cards that include CEO, CFO, Lawyer, Banker, Broker or Politician, and pay ranges from $300,000-500,000 per year.

Or, take the Disappearing Middle Class path and graduate with $45,000 of debt and choose from career cards that Include Teacher, Small Business Owner, Nurse, and Sales Person. The pay in this case ranges from $30,000-75,000 per year. Players who go the middle class path must draw from the majority of the tax burden cards and pay the amount shown each time they roll a 5.

Players on the Dynastic Wealth or Fame path proceed directly to the Party and Play area. Career cards include Reality TV Star, Famous Family Screw up or Politician. There is no salary because the makers said they “couldn’t fit that much money in the box.”

There are 20 Bummer squares that include events such as CEO Bankrupts Company, Over-Mortgaged House and Lose It to Foreclosure, and Get Fired for Poorly Worded Tweet. A player that lands on a Bummer square has to give back everything and start over again.

There are 20 Accident and Illness squares that require a player to spin the wheel to see what amount the insurance company will pay, if at all. All players must purchase several insurance policies but only the one with the golden egg on the card actually pays.

When a player’s debt becomes twice their holdings in cash and assets, the player is out and all remaining players give up 10% of everything they own to the banks and credit card companies.

This continues until everyone in the game is bankrupt. No one actually wins, but everyone accumulates a lot of stuff.

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Kate Morrison likes to make up stories, especially ones that could be true, on some level. That’s why she writes fake news articles for the Humor Times! More: Website, Twitter, Facebook (if available).

Humor Times

World’s Funniest News Magazine
Appeared 5/23/2011

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