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Since everyone is speculating, I am going to guess it is going to be a Sterling-Lindner Co. building... :evil:

Thanks for all the replies. I am not looking downtown (proper). I have always lived in the Old Brooklyn or the Clark Metro area. Those neighborhoods have been good to me, but I want to explore other hoods. I guess it doesn't have to be an apartment building, I am open to duplex / quads / anything else interesting. I have a motorcycle, so the garage would be nice, but it isn't a deal breaker and I have done it for 2 years without one. I can also live with a 1 bedroom, but I real want an office.

Did you try compressing the files before you sent them?

There is a reason why one is considered public and the other private, other than tax dollars. One example is that as an educator until last year you were mandated to have a masters degree in your field and have to be considered "highly qualified" in your subject area (which means you technically still need a masters to renew your license). My issue is that why mandate someone to that level of education and not let them have a say on how best to administer education in that school. A typical teacher contract is around 90 pages, only about 10 of those pages deal with traditional "union" issues (i.e. pay, time off, retirement). Another reason is the systems set in place is fundamentally different in regards to oversight. If I have an issue with time warner I can take them to court. If you have a problem with a school, minus sex and abuse, you cannot do that. It is all handled through a separate system (SERB, ERB, Ethics Board). I would hate to see our court system if every parent could sue their teacher. As someone who has worked a while in both sectors, trust me when I say they are COMPLETELY different fields. I hope that helps to start answer your questions. I would be happy to provide more examples if you like.

Thank you, I will do that!

I wanted to update my previous Review: After a year I can say the other residents are very nice, respectful, and very quiet. The building and area around it is completely safe and individual units are nice for the price. The location is awesome and really cannot be beat, but I cannot over emphasize how poorly this building is managed. The building has had several "last notices" regarding water being turned off and trash not being picked up. As of today, it has been over a month since the last garbage collection. Getting anything fixed/replaced in the individual apartments is next to impossible (my stove caught on fire 3 MONTHS ago and still hasn't been replaced). This a common theme with most other tenets. Though probably the most annoying part is the fire suppression system. It is hardwired in (not battery powered) and is always in "reset" mode. This means every two minutes it beeps. I am unsure how this is happening because I have tripped their breakers AND taken any back up batteries out, yet it keeps beeping. I hate to give the place a negative review, but it should be out there for people who are looking at the Metro Lofts. Be cautious of the lofts due to management of this building!

My lease is up in July and I will not be staying at my current location. I would like some ideas on apartment/duplexes/other crazy living places on the westside or very near east side of Cleveland (city proper please, maybe Lakewood if it is GREAT). I would like to stay around $700 a month. I Need: Washer and Dryer In Unit/Building 2 Bedrooms I Want: A garage (I know) A city view So UO, have you lived or know of a place I should check out?

Kasich will be on Triv today at 4:30 to talk about his budget. Also, a link to the budget and summary, good read: http://obm.ohio.gov/SectionPages/Budget/FY1213/ExecutiveBudget.aspx

Some random facts I heard from a house member last night: 12% of the state is public employees The above group makes up 9% of the entire budget. This includes the Governor all the way down (legislators, state workers, police and fire, teachers ect...) If you fired the entire group above you would save 2 billion towards the 8 billion dollar gap. The average teacher salary decreased 3.6% last year. This one I found the most interesting, Ohio, while being the 7 largest state, has the smallest government (state AND local) of all 50 states. Also, is there a separate sb5 thread? I could not find one...

It really is bad for not just the employees of the state, but all of the states citizens. It's much worse than people realize. In education it does say you can bargain all you want for salaries, but working conditions are off the table and in the end we don't have to accept any of your proposals and if you strike we can fire all of you. It works essential the same for every other public employee. Why is that significant? Obviously the public sector is not run anything like the private sector. Most people don't understand that it is much more complex than that. What you have is separate system of oversight and I assure you there is A LOT of oversight. The public sector has in a very general sense its own "legal system" it goes through for pretty much everything (firing, disputes, even changes in how services are administrated). What this bill truly does, is take a system that is as neutral as can be (which is good), and push the control to one side, which are the legislators. Like I have said before, salaries and health care are a small part of collective bargaining. The average CB for teachers is around 60 pages, roughly 5 pages of that deal with salary, health care and sick days. So what's the other 55? An agreement between the teachers AND administrators AND the local community (school board) on how education should be administered for that individual school. CB agreements are a guide for how the job should be done. Most items are included because all parties think they are important; think for example class sizes and class offerings. The state currently has very loose guidelines how specifically education should be delivered, that is the job of the community and schools. This takes all of that control away. Now legislation will guide solely what happens in our schools. I am sure a one size fits all education system will work out for everyone…

Not technically, salaries can be collectively bargained for. What it does is increase the amount employees pay into their health care system. For the record this ultimately is leading to a NEW state wide public health care COMPANY. You are probably referring to an old provision in the bill that had minimum salaries for teachers and a stipulation were teachers could not bargain salaries. Both of those items were amended out. The other reduction in pay part you might have heard about, depending if you’re in the profession or not, deals with provision for binding arbitration, under the current bill technically teachers can still bargaining, but in the end the board, city, state doesn’t have to except any offer made by the union. It gives us power to do something and takes it away in the end. Most people don’t understand that part.

Speaking from the teacher union stand point, we had pretty low member turn out, and also were 60/40 for Strickland. I wouldn't say that is heavy. Want to take a guess why most teachers were against Strickland? So you think a referendum will fail, which I agree with. What do you think about a constitutional amendment guaranteeing Ohioans the right to bargaining collectively?

Just passed 17-16...on to the house...

I think the republicans would want to push it to 2012. It will be out of the voters minds by then. People have a short attention span. I think they only way it can be repealed if it is on 2011.

To bring this more on topic, for a lot of the reasons from above is why collective bargaining is so important. It is more than salary and health care. CB might not work in every field, but it works in education. You can not mandate (ie. teachers have to obtain a masters within 7 years of entering into the field) that level of education and mastery of their field and then not give them a say in how it is run. Teachers know teaching... I assume a lot of other professions could make a lot of the same arguments. Here is a question to any number uo'ers, I would like to find out the best way to compare tax dollars spent per pupil (say 120K for 13 years of education) vs the amount they will make in a life time and taxes they will pay. Kind of a return taxpayers see in educating their citizens.

Ok, this is were this conversation is debatable. I believe a lot or at least some of these services can be shared or regionalized. I would like to point out that often the schools are the largest employer in a city and operating on a multi-million dollar budget. I work in a large suburban district in Cleveland. We have an annual budget of 25 million dollars (give or take). We have a 8 total people in our district office running everything. Most of them are making comparable private sector wages (low to mid 40k a year) and these jobs are almost never unionized. Most are accountants, shipping and receiving, stuff like that. I think most people would be shocked to see how efficiently most schools really are run with minimal staff. The wasteful or overstaffed myth comes from another complex issue, which is school funding. How the state funds schools can at best be described as a shell game. That is why schools are CONSTANTLY on the levy ballet. The cruel part of it is that if you're in a wealthy district, it is worse for you. I will say that most districts (85%) are like this, but there is always exceptions to the rule.

I can only speak to Ohio. It typically takes a year from start to finish to fire a teacher with tenure, implied or not. Again, this is mostly to due process. Generally the system works, teachers are identified and the problems can be corrected. Sometimes it doesn't and those are the rare cases you hear about. If there is a "rubber room" in Ohio it is because of a terrible, terrible, terrible administrator.

There is always exceptions to the rule. Is the system perfect? No, but it works the majority of the time...

What is your definition of administration? Mine is principals and vice-principals. It is a teachers responsibility to teach, it is a principals job to take care of behavior. It is also their job to monitor and evaluate the teaching staff and run the school. This is also the reason why in poor districts they have a higher rate of ineffective teachers, because they don't monitor the teaching in the classroom, not because their lazy, most of their time is spent on discipline. Now, is reactionary discipline the best use of their time? No, but in the current system there isn't the support in place to do it any different. I would be happy to hear any suggestions in those regards.

I would like to weigh in on this debate. I would like to state clearly that is fairly easy to fire a teacher. This is because not only do we have our administrators watching our performances in the classroom, we also have our own educator standards board that oversees our morality outside of it. This group, through ODE, can revoke any license for a lot of different reasons. This year alone several teachers through out the state have lost their ability to teach because of inappropriate (i.e. drinking) pictures on facebook. Teachers are not given the same "work place" protections as a private employee. From a legal stand point, teachers have the least amount of protection in the school. Students are always placed first (ie freedom of speech for students and not teachers). In regards to free speech this can encompass a wide spectrum, think anything from swearing to teaching creationalism. Most teachers are identified in their first year or second year and non-renewed. These type of firings do not make the news and those mostly go unnoticed in every day life. Again, this happens A LOT more than people realize. Generally the worse the state report card, the higher the teacher turn over rate in that group. What you mostly hear about, and this is where the myth of teachers cannot get fired comes from, are the ones that haven't done anything particularly evil, but just are not doing a good job for whatever reason. This is almost always a case of administration break down. What happens is you have 8,10,15 years of glowing teacher classroom observations. All of a sudden you go from 10's in each category to 2 and 3's. The only protection that is granted to the teacher not doing their job after a couple of years is due process. This can take up to a year, which yes, in a lot of cases is waaaay to long, but more often than not the teaching problem, because ultimately that is the problem, can be corrected. Maybe it was the classes that year, subject matter, group of kids, who knows, but you don't go from being a good or effective teacher to a terrible one for no reason. The administrators have the power to dismiss any teacher, tenure or not, they just have to follow the process. Most of the bad teachers not being fired or identified in schools can be directly attributed to bad or understaffed administration. This argument is a complicated one. It frustrates me to hear people to try and compare private and public sectors. 1 produces something, the other is an investment.

There was, who knows with the new budget, federal money for student loan forgiveness for teaching in urban or Appalachian areas for 5-10 years.

I know it's politics as usually, but I think the "damning" part of this is that one of the kock brothers can just call the gov's office and get an in depth update on what's happening. With that being said, I don't understand why Walker would give someone so much time and an update on whats going if you couldn't even tell if he was talking to the right person on the other end of the phone. The part that scares me most about this "call" is that I now see that Walker truly believe what he is doing is the right thing. People who believe don't back off or down. It's going to be a long fight for the workers of the great state of WI.

I am doing a tour of the this building in early April. It's only going to be an hour, but I would like to do a quick neighborhood tour as well. Any suggestions what a group of 20ish might like in the area or places of interest? For the record who ever Dennis is over there, he is a really nice guy.

Hello UO, I am looking for a book on formal debate and I am having trouble finding one locally. I have went to all the chains (boarders, half price....), but no luck. They have it on amazon, but I want to buy it now (i have the time to read now) and i do not want to wait for it to get shipped. Any ideas?

I would love to see signs saying, "cigarette butts are littler too!"