I’m happy to report that in just one year and 10 months, DM has achieved an inconceivable milestone: one million page views!

Not too shabby for a blog that asks “What’s your favorite park/building?”, “How much trash do you throw out?”, yells at various post-modern buildings, and writes fictional posts about cross-dressing city-lovers and cantaloupe.

Thanks to all the clickers out there, both stoic readers and verbose commenters, who make this site so personally rewarding and endlessly interesting to me.  Without you, I would just be one more crazy yahoo, sitting in my proverbial underwear, posting ignorant observations for everyone (and no one) to read.  Also, continued thanks to all the Decatur/Atlanta bloggers and Creative Loafing journalists who guided me through those first, tough months with support and encouragement and remain dear friends to this day.

And finally, a huge thanks to my wife, who has always been supportive of this crackpot endeavor, but stands alone as the only person that can prevent me from becoming a bit too obsessive about “feeding-the-beast” and monitoring comment threads.  All it takes is a look.  THE look.

OK, so what’s next?  Good question!

Well, for better or worse, I have a few ideas in the works for DM, so keep your eyes and minds open in the coming weeks and months.  Should be interesting to say the least.

Here’s to the next one million!

The AJC reports this morning that 79.1% of Georgia public schools made “Adequate Yearly Progress” this year, up from 68.8% last year.  That’s a whole 11 points more learning!   That bit of good news for the state was mixed with the more sobering tidbit that only 47% of high schools passed the federal government’s benchmarks.

However, Decatur is no longer part of that 47%.

After failing last year, both DHS and Glennwood passed AYP benchmarks this year.  The lone problem child  now is Renfroe, which passed all “test participation” and “academic performance” indicators, but failed it’s second indicator, attendance.

According to the GA Dept of Education’s website, absence rates of 15 days or more at Renfore jumped from 2.8% in 2008 to 17.7% (101 of 572 students) in 2009.  The trend is the same across the two largest ethnic groups at the school, with black absence rates up from 1.6% to 21.8% and white absent rates up from 4% to 14.2%.

It’s very odd that the number of absences would spike like that in a single year.  Something seems off.

Anyone know what gives?