My Apple Mail crashed on Tuesday morning. Suddenly it would stall and fail to do anything. I couldn’t read prior messages, send or receive. It froze. I had to “Force Quit” in order to get out of the program. Nothing seemed to work. I tried trashing the relevant preference files, but that just made it worse. I tried several options. None worked. Then I found a suggested solution which involved dumping certain cache files. That finally did the trick.

After following the instructions, I got an invitation to import 33,214 existing messages.

Did I read that right? I guess I need to pare down that stash of messages. Any advice for archiving older messages in Apple’s Mail app?

In any case, for those of you whose Mac mail is slowing down, I went another step, following these instructions. Magic. Mail is restored and now back to (almost) normal speed.

Whew.

Hey, those folks over at the Department of Education really have a sense of humor. They’re in the process of amending various rules and have now announced a series of public hearings on the proposed amendments.

We’re interested because one of the amendments would push communities out of the decision-making over the future of their schools and leave the superintendent with the power to unilaterally propose and advocate school consolidations and closures.

Here in Kaaawa, where there is strong community sentiment to keep our 104-year old school open, this looks like a disaster.

When the superintendent’s office first came up with a proposal to close Kaaawa school late last year, it had the facts all wrong. The superintendent’s description said the school has a two-story building. Nope. Apparently they didn’t know and didn’t really care about the facts. They just wanted to reach a pre-determined conclusion.

Anyway, we’re concerned. So are people in other communities. So back to the hearing notice.

The DOE’s round of hearings doesn’t just include the consolidation powers issue, which alone can be expected to churn up public reaction.

The proposed rules also touch on other hot button issues:

• Student misconduct and discipline, including “substance abuse screening”.

•School busing policies changes, including increasing the distance students will be expected to walk, giving the department to increase bus fares without going through the rule-making process, and deleting the right to appeal the superintendent’s decisions to the Board of Education.

• Changes in the school lunch program to make it easier to change meal prices, along with other changes.

• Changes to the school consolidation procedure to eliminate the requirement for study and recommendations by a community-based task force before a school can be designated for closure or consolidation and to put all the power in the hands of the superintendent.

• And various amendments dealing with policies towards “nondiscrimination on the basis of disability” by repealing the current rules and replacing them with an entirely new section.

Public hearings, which will deal with all these diverse and sensitive topics at once, are scheduled to be held during April, all on week days and all at 3:30 p.m.

That looks to me like a great plan to bury public comments on any one proposal or set of proposals. I hope I’m wrong.

I also hope I’m wrong and talk about merit pay for teachers will end up being uncoupled from student test scores.

The Hawaii State Teachers Association rep quoted in yesterday’s Star-Bulletin had the right of it:

The Hawaii State Teachers Association opposes tying the pay of individual teachers to student test scores. But it is open to a more collaborative version that rewards teachers for schoolwide performance, an idea recently adopted in New York City.

“We’ve talked about schoolwide bonuses,” said Roger Takabayashi, HSTA president. “You don’t want teachers necessarily competing against each other. The goal is for the whole school to achieve. Children go to many different teachers during the day.”

“The question is, how are you going to measure performance?” he said. “We need to have a discussion about it. It’s kind of exciting.”

But there will be a great political temptation to immediately latch on to test scores as the measure of “success” for teachers.

This would naturally push teachers to try to get out of schools in rural areas or challenged neighborhoods where test scores are dragged down by issues of social class, culture and language conflicts, etc. Instead of incentives to attract good teachers into those schools, we would be left with financial disincentives.

So merit pay? Perhaps not a bad idea. But merit=test scores? Disaster.

After the Star-Bulletin’s recent cutbacks, it’s sad to see the exodus of young and very promising journalists out of the news business and into corporate communications, public relations, and other places where they can get steady work. It’s really is a loss for the community. Going forward, it’s a loss that we are all going to feel.

And watch for more departures from the Advertiser as well, where morale remains low despite the recent agreement on a new contract.

Finally, just for the record, the Capitol was busy late yesterday afternoon with McDonalds’ 2009 Legislative Reception. There were lei, food, coupons for freebies, and other gifts for legislators and staff. I stopped to talk with one corporate representative and told him of my concerns about the unreported lobbying expenditures. The glazed look told me that this was an issue far out of his kuleana. Anyway, I just suggested that he pass the concern up the line.

But once again, because of the lax deadlines for reporting by lobbyists, the public won’t have a chance to see whether McDonalds finally fesses up until weeks after the legislative session wraps up. Expenditures during this part of the session won’t have to be disclosed until the report due May 31.

I’ve already put it on my calendar to follow-up then.