Friday, February 27, 2009

Ghost at the high school!

So my English teacher doesn't live in Logandale. He lives in mesquite and drives here every day. Today in class someone accidentally shut off the light, and then left it off. My teacher said "it's the ghost of the school" we all got interested and he told us that the school was haunted. Not believing him I went and got on the computer and of course if you type in official ghost of Nevada, it lives at our high school. This is what it says. Info says that when the Indians died they would bury their loved one's under their homes. (yes, that is true. There is a lot next to the school that say's "government property, Indian artifacts" and stuff) Houses being built near the school have dug up corpses when laying their foundation. So at the school on a quiet night when few people are there a dark shadowy figure is often said to appear. It has a tendency to follow people around (even through fences) and suddenly disappears. After everyone heard that they all freaked out. Haha....but what I want to know, is what people are doing walking through fences? :)

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Comments made in 1955

I found these and thought they were funny....
'I'll tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are, it's going to be impossible to buy a week's groceries for $20.00.'

'Have you seen the new cars coming out next year? It won't be long before $2,000.00 will only buy a used one.'

'Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging a dime just to mail a letter?'

'When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would someday cost 29 cents a gallon. Guess we'd be better off leaving the car in the garage.'

'Kids today are impossible. Those duck tail hair cuts make it impossible to stay groomed.. Next thing you know, boys will be wearing their hair as long as the girls.'

'I'm afraid to send my kids to the movies any more. Ever since they let Clark Gable get by with saying DAMN in GONE WITH THE WIND, it seems every new movie has either HELL of DAMN in it.'

'If they think I'll pay 50 cents for a hair cut, forget it.'

Hope it made you smile!

Thursday, February 12, 2009

CHOIR

So, at my school our choir class is being cut, do to school budget cuts. I, simply won't stand for it. I have gone in and talked to the principal about it, we pretty much had a 45 minute discussion about him choosing to cut our choir class. He won't change his mind just from that meeting. I'm sending in an opinion paper to be put in the opinion column of our newspaper. Here is the paper I wrote.

School Budget cuts
Based on a recent article in the Moapa Valley Progress by Doctor Sam Moses characterizing the current reductions in school funding as a reduction is really a misrepresentation designed to garner public sympathy. The truth of the matter is that Clark County School district is being asked to live with a smaller budget increase of approximately fifty million over last year’s existing budget. In an economy where many are losing their jobs and homes, a fifty million dollar increase over last year’s spending does not rise to my definition of a crisis.
My opinion is first…More money spent on education does not always increase the quality of education. An example is, is that the state of Utah spends one thousand dollars per pupil less than the state of Nevada for education. At the same time Utah’s quality of education far surpasses Nevada in national rankings. On the other end of the spectrum Washington D.C. spends the most per student and is only ranked two spaces above Nevada in quality of education based on national rankings.
More important than the gross amount spent per student on education is where the money is spent. Clark County School district is installing GPS’ into school buses, they think nothing about spending twenty thousand dollars on landscaping we don’t need, and the school building designs are big and inefficient. Our school sends a full size school bus to Echo Bay six times a day to pick up somewhere around 30 kids. Also our school has just spent thousands of dollars painting a mural on the wall of a pirate ship and bought a whole new set of furniture to match…yes FURNITURE! Why do we need couches at school? We go to school to learn. We don’t even have a lunch time to go sit on the couches. The only logical time that we would actually have to spend sitting on those couches is during class time. This means we would be ditching class to sit on new couches the school just paid for. Is there any logic to that? At Moapa Valley High School the school district has approved tearing up and rebuilding the tennis courts, and replacing the fences in the baseball fields. What is the difference between playing on worn tennis courts compared to brand new courts, how many tennis and/or baseball professionals has Moapa Valley High School produced? What is more important the quality of our tennis courts, and our 4 foot fences, or the quality of our education?
Teachers deserve to be paid more. There is a saying “You get what you pay for.” Teachers should be paid based on merit, in essence teachers should be rewarded to excel. My understanding is that currently advanced degrees result in higher income. However, superior teaching skills if unaccompanied by an advanced degree result in no pay increase. So why should teachers try to do a better job? In my opinion this is a defect in the current compensation system that needs to be addressed if we are to improve the quality of our education.
The School district complains they need to make budget cuts, but in reality they need to prioritize where they spend their money based on obtaining the greatest educational opportunity for each dollar spent. In my opinion once they make providing the best education possible their number one priority and eliminate or reduce any spending that is not in line with the school our budget issues will resolve themselves and no longer be an issue.