Elections board investigates school bond activities
By Jennifer Garlesky • Staff Writer
A complaint filed against the Macon County School Board over questionable campaign actions has the school district in hot water with the North Carolina Board of Elections.
What is wrong with teaching in the US?
In 1991, 30-year veteran and master teacher John Taylor Gatto resigned immediately after being named “Teacher of the Year” in New York. A number of educators and concerned parents took note — especially after the disillusioned teacher’s reasons for resigning appeared in the Wall Street Journal, under the caption, “I Quit, I Think.”
Time to fix NCLB to better reflect the real world
Congress is likely to re-authorize the No Child Left Behind Act sometime this fall. If that is indeed the case, then we can only hope it makes some significant changes in this flawed bill that will help school systems use their resources to educate children instead of turning out students whose most memorable public school lessons will be a useless ability to ace bubble tests.
School gets scant attention out in the jungle
By David Curtis
As a teacher in the public school system I have often heard teachers express their frustrations by using the famous middle school axiom, “How do they expect us to train a wild animal if each night we send it back to the jungle?”
Making the grade: Schools strain under pressure of misguided expectations
By Julia Merchant • Staff Writer
Much like a band-aid on a kid’s scraped elbow, No Child Left Behind was put in place to mend an educational system many claimed was in disrepair. An increasing number of critics, however, are questioning the effectiveness of the act as a permanent fix for the problems plaguing America’s schools.
For teachers, success is in smell
By David Curtis
As a schoolteacher you always wonder how your students will remember you.
“She was a good teacher, but she smelled like garlic,” was my daughter’s comment when the name of a former teacher came up in conversation.
Counties struggle to recruit teachers
By Julia Merchant • Staff Writer
Paula Ledford is getting worried.
With a little over a month to go before school starts in Macon County, the school human resources director still has to find 15 people to fill vacant positions. The list includes assistant principals, elementary school faculty, teachers of exceptional children, and more. She’s digging deep — calling universities to ask about recent graduates that still might be looking for jobs, posting notices on as many Web sites as she can think of, even calling retired teachers to see if they’ll come back as a sub on a short-term basis. After all, Ledford says, “sometimes people will graduate in December,” which means she might be able to lure someone to Macon County by the winter.
The school board, economics and political insight
By the time we hit the streets with this edition and this column is read, the election that has been dominating the news will be behind us. Talking heads and columnists will be digesting and spinning the results, givingtheir take on what it all means. As of this writing, though, we don’t know who will win.
Old instruments sing again: Community band effort provides new homes for neglected instruments
By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer
Jacob Clark, a sixth-grader at Waynesville Middle School, likes the trumpet.
“It’s easy to play,” he says.
Playing with the numbers: School board accused of arbitrarily deflating cost estimates
Bond numbers
Haywood County voters approved a $25 million school bond in May 2005 intended to pay for a host of projects. The list of cost estimates presented to the public is as follows: