Tuesday evening I had the opportunity to attend the Siemens Science Teacher Awards Dinner at Fernbank.  Siemens is a world wide company with over 400,000 employees who has created a foundation that provides nearly $4 million annually in support of math, science and technology education from grade school through graduate school in the United States. They were ten winners of this award this year in the metro area and two were from Decatur. I congratulate Susan Brooks of Renfroe Middle School and David Schaar of Decatur High School who are this years winners from Decatur. Congratulations on a job well done. Teaching is the worlds hardest job, lowest paid and yet the most important, and not for everybody. It takes special people to do it right and we don’t thank them enough. We are proud of our school system in Decatur and it is great to see them recognized for there work. THANKS GUYS!!!!!!

I was privileged to join the Atlanta Regional Commission ”links” trip to Denver last week along with several others from the metro Atlanta area. It snowed and was cold, but other than that it was a very informative trip. We had the opportunity to hear of Denver’s public health system (their Grady that actually makes money with out state assistance). We rode the light rail system from downtown Denver to Englewood and back and listened to them tell how they weathered a drought worse than ours. As with any region they certainly have their own issues and problems to deal with, but it does help to see what they have done that has worked for them and see if there are lessons to be learned for the Atlanta area. It became apparent toward the end of the trip that most everyone felt that transportation and water are our greatest challenges here in Atlanta. There were a number of Decatur residents on the trip and all seemed to think it was worthwhile. As one said to me as we were departing Denver “We certainly are not perfect, but we ain’t so bad either”.