Bush funds breathe new life into Family Literacy effort
Debora Gilbert in The Columbia Paper reports that the Barbara Bush Foundation is awarding the Hudson Family Literacy Program (HFLP) $65,000, saving the program that was running out of funding. The program is one of nine the Foundation is funding, out of 400 applicants. "HFLP serves 30 non-English speaking families with young children in Hudson, a total of over 100 clients," Gilbert writes in the story. "Many families are recent immigrants from non-English speaking countries. Bengali families make up the majority of clients in the program, which also serves the Latino and Haitian families." Read the entire story in The Columbia Paper.

Tweets from a school board meeting
Lynn Slonecker of the Unmuffled (which was recently redesigned) blog had these live Tweets from the Hudson School Board meeting Monday, May 9:
# HCSD budget public hearing...six minutes to start, seven people waiting in HHS cafe.
# If you blinked you missed it...five-minute, one comment public hearing...finished at 7:05 p.m.
# Interesting change in admin spin on accountability. No longer 'unfunded mandates;' it's now all about mandated spending.
# 1-hour presentation on state report cards. Just adjourned for ES [Executive Session] #1. Guessing purpose...tenure. Principals followed BoE out.
# Still to come (presumably after ES #2): More than $70K in extracurricular sports appointments.
# Approved: $3500 to transport students from MC Smith to high school for swimming class over a one-month period.
# Also...$8200 for SpEd transport (one month), $2245 for SpEd health svc contract, tax refunds and three field trips.

Slight tremor
The United States Geological Survey reported a small earthquake, measuring 2.5 on the Richter scale, in southern Quebec, Canada at 10:46:44 a.m. Monday, May 9.


From Lissa Harris in The Watershed Post:

Can't tell a beech from a birch? There's an app for that. Last month, scientists from Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian released Leafsnap, a free iPhone and iPad app that promises a simple way to identify Northeastern U.S. tree species from their leaves. Unlike other field guides -- even digital ones -- Leafsnap doesn't rely on users picking from a list of characteristics to puzzle out which species they're looking at. Instead, it relies on visual recognition technology -- a kind of software that's also used to identify faces, and has been advancing rapidly in recent years -- to match a photo of a leaf taken in the field with species in Leafsnap's database.

Read the entire story in The Watershed Post.

From The Daily Freeman, the press release Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand put out today about high-speed rail funding:
Gillibrand Rail Funds 2011-05-09