By Barbara Soderlin

I’ve visited both our local university campuses this week and noticed a difference between now and just a decade ago when I was in school. I was a 19-year-old sophomore in the fall of 1996 when I voted for Bill Clinton for president. But I remember all the information I got on voting coming from the news and from my family — not from any organized campaigns on campus. And I was still registered to vote in my hometown — not because of any campus voter drives.

This was the era when the MTV Rock the Vote campaign was really getting going, in response to a lack of young adult participation in voting. But students at BHSU and the School of Mines today seem totally aware of the political campaigns and many said they have already voted. They said there have been booths set up at both campuses where they could get registered to vote.

I’m not sure how the student vote will shake out at these two schools. Maybe future teachers at BHSU are more like to vote for Obama? Maybe future engineers are more likely to support McCain? Maybe those are just stereotypes. Either way it was good to see young people involved.

Here’s an interesting story about how students for McCain feel underrepresented on college campuses across the country, and how they are working to have their voices heard.

By Kayla Gahagan, Journal staff

I volunteer for the Big Brother Big Sister program in town and have been matched with a delightful 10-year-old who is smart and funny and inquisitive.

We talked about the election last night and not only was she able to tell me what presidential candidate she would vote for and why, she knew about several of the initiative measures on the ballot and which ones she would and wouldn’t support.

She’s 10 and I know this couldn’t have been possible without her mother explaining the issues to her, as well as her Robbinsdale Elementary School teacher, who she said has taught them about the electoral college and the presidential candidates this year while staying mum about his personal political views.

I am more than ready for the election to be over, but I was excited to hear that local schools and parents are taking this opportunity to talk to kids, no matter the age, about what choices we are faced with Nov. 4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Kayla Gahagan, Journal staff

I apologize for my lack of posting last week - our election coverage got the better of me.

I’ve been thinking about the last time I was this busy. It was in April, just as news of the Rapid City School District budget crisis broke.

Andrea Cook (who was the education reporter before me), graciously led me through more than a decade worth of school district budgets in a crash-course on how the district spends its money, where its funds come from and how taxpayers are involved.

After a month of community input sessions and heated debate, the district made several million dollars worth of cuts and hinted that it would happen again this year unless things change. It seemed everyone had a stake in the matter - it was the most talked about issue in the community for several weeks.

So I wonder, with the upcoming election, if we have been so bombarded with campaign ads, messages and slogans, that we have forgotten that the topic of education and who is elected could change the landscape of education in this state.

The Rapid City School District’s biggest complaint last year was the lack of legislative support - (give us more funding if you are going to require more of us!) Legislators fought back, saying that they’ve increased education spending every year for the last ten years.

I know we have a lot to decide Nov. 4 - issues about abortion and open government, a new president, but don’t miss out on the opportunity to ask local leaders how they will handle the economic woes of the school district.

Ask: What are your priorities for education? What about technology? What about No Child Left Behind? What is your opinion on opt outs? What is the responsibility of the state in funding education? What is the responsibility of the taxpayers?

Don’t wait until there’s another crisis to start asking who the leaders are and what they believe. They’re available now. Ask the questions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Kayla Gahagan, Journal staff

I read a short story this week about a new Arkansas state law that requires body-mass testing of all public school students. The information, which says whether the students is underweight, healthy or at risk for becomming obese, is sent home to parents.

Some parents - 14 percent - complained that their kids were getting teased because of the new test.

I regret that the test might cause teasing, but it should be dealt with agrresively and the same way other teasing is handled. It’s not a reason to discontinue providing parents with pertinent health information, particularly in a country with a growing obesity rate among youngsters.

Is this test something South Dakota should implement? That, and getting rid of the soda machines in the school hallways, no matter how much money they bring in …. but that’s another blog for another day ….

 

 

 

 

 

By Kayla Gahagan, Journal

I’ve been starting some research on a story about the disappearance of the Lakota language here in the Black Hills and a friend just sent me the link for this story in the New York Times.

It talks about how tribal leaders on the Wind River Indian reservation in Wyoming, the state’s only Indian reservation, have opened a new school to teach the upcoming generation the Arapaho language. According to the Times story, only 200 Arapaho speakers are still alive.

The story talks about boarding schools in the late 1800s that forced Native American students to speak only English and leave their culture - things like braided hair and philosophies of life - at the door.

In the Black Hills, it’s the Lakota language that local scholars and leaders are struggling to preserve, which begs the question - how and where and with what money? Should the language be taught in public schools?

Rapid City is a hot bed for this very topic, with Central High School at the eye of the storm. How does culture, language and philosophy, fit into a school where some students are Native American and some are not? How do you allow students who are often the minority express themselves, develop their identity, while not excluding others and defining an educational experience on something not all students have a background in?

I’m hoping leaders in the community, and maybe those of you reading, will be able to answer some of those questions as I continue to research for my story. This seems to be a pivotal issue in our community. Please feel free to weigh in through this forum, or contact me if you’re interested in this topic.

 

 

 

By Kayla Gahagan, Journal staff

I was appalled last month when my mother told me that my 7-year-old sister rides the bus an hour to school and an hour home back in my hometown in Wyoming. On good days, her grandma picks her up after school, but the rest of the time, she’s on the bus at least two hours a day. What a waste of time.

I read an Education Week story about students in a rural Arkansas district who have long bus rides and the school district has started providing laptops and iPods for the students who have a ride longer than an hour.

Students in elementary school all the way through high school are encouraged to take on-line Advanced Placement courses and complete the work during the bus rides. For those not interested, they can use the laptops and iPods for enrichment games in math and science.

I think it’s a great idea. 

 

 

By Barbara Soderlin

My mom would never take the car out of the driveway unless we were wearing seat belts, so it always felt weird go to get on the school bus and not have to buckle up, like I was getting away with something naughty. Twenty years later, seat belts still aren’t required on big school buses, though today the government announced a relatively small step toward make school buses safer, as this AP story describes.

Smaller buses will have to be equipped with three-point seat belts instead of the lap belts that have been required in the past. Bigger buses still won’t have to have seat belts, but they will have to have taller seats, to make it harder for big kids to go flying over top the seats in the event of a crash.

The transportation secretary said she didn’t want to require seat belts on big buses because this would make it hard for schools to pack as many little kids on the bus, since sometimes they sit three in a row. I disagree with this reasoning; the law doesn’t say kids have to wear the seat belts, and three little kids could easily fit on a seat equipped with two belts, though the middle guy would have a seat belt poking him in the rear. If we required belts they would be available for the times two kids were riding together on the seat. It would cost a little more to put the belts in but isn’t it worth it for kids’ safety? I imagine it would make life easier for the bus driver, too, to not have kids bouncing all over the place.

Kayla is working on a story today to see how this will affect local school districts. If you have an opinion and want to comment for her story, give her a call at 394-8410.

By Barbara Soderlin

I picked up a Times on my way back to Rapid City this weekend and read this story on the plane, about how a growing number of schools, even pretty good schools, are finding themselves on the wrong side of the No Child Left Behind law.

Some states, including South Dakota, according to the map that went with the story, set up their No Child requirements so that schools would be required to make only modest gains in the first years of the law, followed by big, almost unreasonable gains in later years. States were hoping the law would be changed by the time they actually had to show this much progress. The law took effect in 2001 and asks schools to have all students “proficient” by 2014, so we’re now in a period where we’ll see a big jump in the number of schools not meeting expectations.

We’re pretty busy with covering the election right now but I hope this is a topic the Journal will tackle soon. Anyone who knows more about when South Dakota’s most recent test results will come out or whether we have a steep climb ahead of us, please write in.

UPDATE –

Kayla tells me she wrote on this very subject earlier this year. Folks in South Dakota were surprised to hear our state is being described as one that “backloaded” NCLB proficiency goals. Taking a look at the numbers, I’d have to agree. It seems pretty balanced over the course of the years.

 

By Kayla Gahagan, Journal staff

The Rapid City School District held a surplus auction this morning and I went out of curiousity. It’s an annual event in which schools purge their closets, classrooms, and hallways and the items are sold to the highest bidder at the district’s warehouse.

If I hadn’t been on the job, and freezing, I might have bought a desk or two. (My hands were so cold after three interviews, I hightailed it to my car to sit on them for a while.)

When I went back for a second time, I stopped in surprise in front of one of the copy machines that still had a sign that said something like “Do not place anything on top of machine” and ran my finger through a layer of melting slush. It just looked so wrong - a copy machine for sale that was dripping, soaked, beaten by the wind and rains from the night before.

By the end of the auction, the district made more than $20,000, which is always a help, given their current financial situation. But I have to wonder if they would have sold more if they have bothered to cover things like copy machines, text books, musical equipment, and computers before it snowed and rained and covered everything with a layer of ice.

I asked about why everything was left to fend off nature’s elements, and was told that the district is strapped for cash, time, resources and staff. It was probably an oversight.

Kudos to the district for doing the auction in the first place, but it’s sad that no one took the time to throw a couple of tarps over some of the more obviously-fragile items. If you’re going to do that much work to sell your stuff, you should take care of it until someone takes it off your hands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Kayla Gahagan, Journal staff

As with many of the events in town, large or small, we recieved calls from a handful of concerned parents yesterday about a possible lockdown at Rapid City Central High School.

I reached one school official who told me it was a “secured status,” not a lockdown, and after a quick drive over to the school to confirm, I wrote a couple sentences and we put it up on the web site to let people know what was going on.

With a quick call to the police, we learned it was a routine dog search, so we uploaded the web site, and I sat back in my chair feeling like we did what we were supposed to do - inform the community.

To my surprise, there were others on Rapid Reply (our feedback page to stories) who felt differently. Several of them criticized the Journal for even writing the story in the first place.

NICE JOB JOURNAL wrote, “Making a “story” out of nothing just to stir-up the critics. Unbelievable.”

NOT THERE ANYMORE wrote, ” Why would this even be in the news? It is just standard procedures.”

Without getting into the concepts of journalism and what is news, I’ll make a quick point that the job of a journalist is to inform the public. Rather than having 2,000 nervous parents calling the school and the Rapid City Police Department wondering what’s going on, we can write a story and provide answers. It’s one of the things I love about my job.

Anyway, that’s all beside the point. What was more interesting than that was a conversation I had with an official who said that if the district and the community could afford it someday, they might install an information system that many of the universities use now. After Virginia Tech, some of the local colleges and universities installed a cell phone, e-mail text messaging system that sends out warnings appropriate to an emergency situation, ie if there’s a person with a gun on campus, you are warned through your cell phone.

It seems that after reading the Rapid Replies from parents and students who were unaware of why students were either locked in the school or out of the school, a system like that might be a great thing for the Rapid City School District.

Until we have that kind of a sophisticated system, we’ll try to let you know what’s going on in an accurate, timely way - ALL of the stories, big or small.

Our story yesterday might have seemed ridiculous to the person who said he doesn’t live here, but it might have been reassuring to the worried mother with two kids at Central. Either way, thanks for reading.