April 19th marks the start of Earth Week. What can the average Oakvillian do to help the environment? I feel Oakvillians can do a lot for the environment on a very personal basis. The first I feel is education starting with young children in the home. Even garbage that‘s in the backyard â€" pop cans, whatever, that‘s been blown from the wind â€" a lot of people just leave there. There has to be a real community effort to clean the environment up. I think that recycling should be stressed in the home. Also reusing, I think people really look over reusing and they just look at recycling, but there‘s so many products which can be reused. Geoff Hill Circulation Director Teri Casas Office Manager Tim Coles Production Manager Ian Oliver Publisher Robert Glasbey Advertising Director Norman Alexander Editor Since the board is always looking at ways to cut costs, isn‘t it curiâ€" ous that no one at the board suggested cutting back on PA days and related activities, which result in the board paying millions of dollars for replacement teachers. Last year, for example, the board paid out $2â€"million in lieu of teacher sick leave. When teachers now spend only about 42 per cent of their time actuâ€" ally teaching, we think something is wrong. Better to cut the number of PA days and increase the number of instructional days It‘s apparâ€" ently too late to do that for next year but it should be a priority for the following year. We like Burlington trustee Don Cassidy‘s reading of this strange sitâ€" uation. "I‘m always concerned when I see the minimum number of instructional days and the maximum number of PA days. It‘s a strange anomaly." Really strange Don, really strange. At the same time, we question some comments made by Oakville trustee Penny Siebert on the PA day issue. She told her fellow trustees that when parents are told what PA days are for and that it has a direct impact on their child‘s learning, they‘re "sympathetic and appreciaâ€" tive." Perhaps if they were told that up to half of those days aren‘t used for professional development, they‘d have a different view. At the same time the board supports the maximum number of PA days, it puts forth a school year with the minimum 185 instructional days as dictated by the Education Act. Again, there are no guidelines as to a maximum number of instructional days. This situation is, quite simply, unacceptable. The board puts forâ€" ward a calendar year with PA days scheduled and then doesn‘t used them for the real purposed for which they were designed. Even more interesting is the fact that the number of PA days is at the discretion of the board itself and not tied to any teacher union conâ€" tract. Further, and here‘s an interesting insight into how the board brass thinks, under the Education Act, no minimum number of PA days is specified but there is a maximum number and that number is....nine. Oakville trustee Linda Lane told the board she could support the nine PA days scheduled throughout the year if they were used for proâ€" fessional development. Unfortunately, it seems that this is not the case. Joanne Zywine, an instructional services superintendent, admitted that the days could also be used for other activities as well. In fact, of the nine days, Zywine said two or three of the PA days are NOT used for professional development at the secondary school level. And at the elementary school level four or five of the nine days are NOT used for professional development purposes. up and suggests that it‘s about time something be done about the number of Professional Activity (PA) days in the school year, board management immediately gets defensive. It seems that every time a Halton Board of Education trustee stands Time management 467 Speers Road, Oakville, Ont. L6K 384 845â€"3824 Fax: 845â€"3085 Classified Advertising: 845â€"2809 Circulation: 845â€"9742 or 845â€"9743 \QUESTION OF THE WEEK Do you think the number of PA days should remain at nine or be reduced? A sampling of the best answers will be published in the next Weekend edition of the Oakville Beaver. All callers are allowed 45 seconds to respond and must provide their name, address and phone number for verification. Give us your opinion on this topic by calling 845â€"5585, box 5012. Susan Sabat « It was a takenâ€"forâ€"granted tradition handed down by our parents. I can still remember the day my father (a late bloomer) came back to the apartment we rented and announced that he‘d finally bought a house. My father had promised to pay a grand total of $5,000 for it. We all thought he was out of his mind. I have another suggestion. We could go down in history as the TATTWOFCATBAH Era. The Time After The Time When Ordinary Folks Could Afford To Buy A House. It‘s an odd thing: mention the idea of buying a house to a young married couple these days and they‘ll roll their eyes and look at you like you‘ve come unhinged. Yet when I was a kid home ownership was pretâ€" ty much unquestioned. Of course you‘d settle down, get married, and buy a house. Didn‘t everyone? It was a twoâ€"storey bungalow in the country on fourâ€"andâ€"aâ€" half rolling acres. . "We move in on the first of the month," he crowed. e it ever so humble, there‘s no place like home.In ages to come, sociologists will no doubt look back at our time, and try to encapsulate it in a phrase. What will they call our age, I wonder? The Dawn of Computers? The Nuclear Epoch? The Age of AIDS? When it comes to housing, look on the bright side...you could be in Yokohama Five thousand bucks???? ER EURopE The entertainment tycoon David Geffen doesn‘t have anyâ€" thing like that acreage around his digs. He‘s only got a pidâ€" dling nine acres, which includes gardens, a bunch of fountains, a waterfall, ~a Frenchâ€"style chateau and a threeâ€"hold golf course. Mind you, Geffen‘s little hideaway is in Beverley Hills, California. Price tag: $47.5 milâ€" lion. And it‘s not for sale. Could be worse. There‘s a home on the market down in Asheville, North Carolina right now called the Biltmore House. Price tag on that baby is $5.5 million U.S. I must confess that it‘s a tad more spacious than my folks‘ old place. The Biltmore House has 250 rooms and a back and front lawn that add up to 12,000 acres. Why, that was a fortune! A King‘s ransom! More than a year‘s wages! That was nearly 40 years ago. My parents are gone now, but I see in the paper the old place is on the market again. The house is, frankly, no hell, and nearly half a century older. Plus the lot has been cut in half. But the 1993 asking price is $300,000. But why tease ourselves with P 4 "Not a cent, ma‘am" I told the voice. "But if I do a good job I get to sleep with the lady of the house." I remember one Saturday morning I was out there cutting grass when a long white limo oozed to a stop. The back winâ€" dow hissed down and from somewhere beyond the tinted glass a snooty voice demanded "My man, how much do they pay you here for yard work?" I don‘t know about you, but I‘m not nearly classy enough to live in a house with an 800â€" grand price tag on it. I‘m the slob you see out on the front lawn in my shorts, Tâ€"shirt and moccasins jockeying a push mower. Sounds just like the house Hirokaze Nishide, a middleâ€" aged, middleâ€"class, middleâ€" income clothing store manager bought in the Japanese city of Yokohama this year. The Nishide family‘s house is modâ€" est by Canadian standards â€" spartan, in fact. They don‘t even have a basement or central heatâ€" the unattainable real estate whimsies of the Rich and Famous? We‘re just a couple of working stiffs, you and I â€" let‘s get actual. Let‘s price, say, a twoâ€"storey, threeâ€"bedroom starter home. Forget gardens â€" forget a lawn, even. Just plunk it on a postageâ€"stamp city lot, centimetres away from the houses on either side. Ing. Cost of the Nishide home: $858,000 Canadian. Aletss.‘"