Our Great City

A new federal report, released May 6, reveals that art education helps student achievement and is essential to the nation’s future competitiveness. It urges educators to try creative approaches to art education during the school day and for parents to encourage students to get involved in some sort of art education after school. Ideally, students would be exposed to a cross-over program that allows students to learn visually with science and art or math and art.

Article Submitted by: Lois Frazier - Keller Monart 

Compiled by the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH), the report is entitled “Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future Through Creative Schools.” It is the first federal analysis of arts education in over a decade. The report recommends five areas to help schools incorporate the arts into other disciplines:

Many Southlake, Keller and Grapevine/Colleyville parents manage to rearrange their summer schedules with camp, shortened work weeks and the help of neighbors. This demands extraordinary organization and creativity with hopefully no changes to the schedule. The first few weeks the children are excited to be in camps, but after the newness wears off, many children can grow very weary of following the same strict schedules they have during the school year.

Submitted by: Jean Keener, Keener Financial - 817-993-0401

Many employers have reduced or eliminated matching in the past several years. If you're fortunate enough to still have a match, you want to take full advantage of this potentially significant boost to your retirement plans. Every dollar your employer contributes toward your retirement is a dollar you don't have to.

To make the most of employer matching, you need to answer two questions:

1.  What's the formula?
2. How does my employer handle "maxing out" - reaching the federal limits of $16,500 for 401(k) plans for those under 50, and $22,000 for those 50+ - before the end of the year?

The first part - understanding the formula - is usually the easy part.

Once you know the formula, you need to contribute at least as much as they match if at all possible. A common formula is 100% up to 3% and then 50% on the next 2% - so you would need to contribute a minimum of 5% to get the full match. Other times, employers match up to 6%, 10% or more, so your contributions to make the most of the match are higher.

The next part - answering the max out question - can get more complex.

Sometimes the most aggressive and well-intentioned savers actually hurt themselves by completing their full contribution before the end of the year. Companies have several choices in how they approach calculating your match, and it all really depends on your plan's summary plan description.

Here are some of the ways it's handled:

Submitted By: Kweethai Neill & Steve Stork of

iHealth -Center for Integrated Wellness

Wanna gross out your kid on Valentine’s Day? In a public place, with lots of people around, say the three words everyone wants to hear, “Child, I am in love with you.” See how many cell phones speed-dial Child Protective Services.

Submitted by: Lois Frazier, Monart School of Art - Keller

I recently requested a copy of a new Dana Consortium report on Arts and Cognition. Basically, it’s a comprehensive report on the science of how creative arts interplays with our cognitive functions and growth patterns for elementary and middle school students. This interesting report is supported by more than 250 neuroscientists and the progress of brain science.