MIKE PIRTLE, Post Contributer
Posted: Sunday, April 11, 2010 10:26 am

School choice took a hit recently when Murfreesboro City Schools voted to end its alternative school calendar, beginning with the 2010-11 school year.

The city board, acting on a recommendation from Director Linda Gilbert, had a number of good reasons to move to one calendar that will match well with the Rutherford County system’s calendar.

Among those reasons were reducing truancy due to students signing up late for alternative calendars, scheduling teacher training and realizing some modest cost savings.

That then may have made the decision the right one but without doubt educational choice for area parents was diminished.

Our traditional school calendar is indeed traditional, reaching all the way back to when most citizens derived not small part of their livelihood from some form of farming.

Last time I checked not many of us are farmers anymore.

For a multitude of reasons the non-traditional calendar was preferable for lots of families. Starting next school term they will no longer have a choice.

One of the biggest pluses the city school system offers this community overall is that for elementary grades it offers most families a choice. Many communities simply cannot afford to provide families such an opportunity, but as many, many parents can attest it is a huge benefit for reasons as numerous as the particular circumstances of each student and each family.

This is not to criticize the city’s decision in its totality, but it is to note the passing of an alternative that worked for many and the diminishment to some degree of educational opportunity in our community.

•••

You just don’t realize how many working parts are to be found in the human body until spring arrives.

Then when you get out and foolishly try to do a week’s work on trees, shrubs, gutters, flower and garden beds, paint-needful surfaces and various other outside home ownership requirements you quickly rediscover parts of the body you had forgotten you even had. (And made much more acute this year when a long, hard winter kept most of us from knocking off a few chores in February or even March for the first two weeks.)

That annual lesson came achingly back to me recently when I performed said outside maintenance chores three times over four days.

Did you know there are muscles at the backs of your arms? Running at 45-degree angles from your neck down your back? In the back of your head for goodness sake (you find these while trimming overhead tree branches)?

Here are a few other spring lessons usually forgotten from year to year:

• If the mower will start, it has a flat tire. If it doesn’t have a flat tire, it won’t start.

• You can get a real cardio workout pulling the starter cord on a piece of lawn equipment.

• No, there’s no gas in that mower gas can.

• Three hours of weedeating will cause you to suffer for three weeks.

• The weedeater will have about five minutes worth of string left. (And does Weedeater still make a Weedeater?)

• If you need ibuprofen to play tennis, you will need it for lawn work.

• Of course, the gutters need cleaning. What were you thinking?

•••

You gotta love the City of Murfreesboro’s free mulch program. Just drive out to the Florence Road facility, pull up and the friendly dude running the loader will come over and fill your truck bed or trailer right up. No fuss, no forms, no cash. That’s true government service.

And, if you are an old treehugger like this writer, how can you not love the fact the mulch is recycled from the city’s limb and brush pickup service?

That’s a Win-Win.

•••

Having been lucky enough to attend last week’s NCAA Men’s Final Four, I can tell you a football stadium does not make a good venue for a basketball game.

And, while Indianapolis’s new football stadium offers a great viewing venue for Colts’ games, whoever designed it did a pitiful job of providing for fan movement from tier to tier.

But, wow, what a finals game Monday night.