Students, start your vacations
Congratulations to East Valley School District students, for whom school lets out today. You now have 81 days of freedom (including weekends) before the bell calls you back to classes on Sept. 3.
Gonzaga Prep students are on their sixth day of freedom, and get 76 more.
Spokane and Central Valley students get 79 school-less days, starting Saturday. In Mead, there are 74 free days from the time this year ends (Wednesday) until next year begins.
West Valley students also have 74 free days. Like students at G-Prep, they return to classes the Thursday before Labor Day weekend.
From time to time, we’ll remind you how many vacation days are left – just so you don’t waste a single one.
District data
A “workforce diversity” report recently compiled by Spokane Public Schools shows that among district employees, women outnumber men by about a 3:1 ratio.
The biggest disparities are among classified and certified staff, which includes teachers. There are 890 men in those jobs, and 2,679 women. The gap is narrower among administrators, with 79 women (including superintendent Nancy Stowell) and 68 men.
Other tidbits:
The district is a microcosm of Spokane, as far as ethnicity, meaning more than 90 percent of employees are white.
80 percent of administrators and classified staff are older than 40.
Among administrators, classified and certified staff, only about 1 percent (38 out of 3,716) identify themselves as military veterans. That compares to about 12 percent of adults nationwide, based to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2000.
And the winner is…
As the Voice reported last week, the Lewis and Clark High School production of “Miss Saigon” was nominated for several awards at the 5th Avenue Theater’s High School Musical Theatre Awards.
There was good news when the winners were announced during a Tony Awards-style ceremony Monday in Seattle. LC’s Mia Yoshida won top honors for outstanding performance by an actress in a leading role. And the school won for best lighting design.
The other NFL
Spokane-area high schools are sending 24 orators and debaters to the National Championship Tournament next week in Las Vegas.
About 3,000 teens from throughout the country will compete in the tournament, which is sponsored by the National Forensic League (which has used the initials NFL almost as long as they’ve been used by the National Football League). Central Valley High School debate coach Roberta Rice is the adviser for the national league’s Inland Empire District.
With the exception of the years during World War II, the national tournament has been held continuously since 1931. Past NFL members include the likes of President Lyndon Johnson and Vice President Hubert Humphrey; Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer; Senators Richard Lugar and William Frist; actors Patricia Neal, Don Ameche, Kelsey Grammar and Shelly Long; and media goddess Oprah Winfrey.
This isn’t lightweight stuff. Here’s a sampling of topic up for debate at this year’s tournament: “Resolved: Limiting economic inequality ought to be a more important social goal than maximizing economic freedom.”
Representing the Inland Empire District in the tournament will be:
• Public forum debate: The teams of Isaiah Peterson and Joseph Abate, of Gonzaga Prep; and David Smentek and Melanie Weigand, also of G-Prep.
• Policy debate: The teams of Joe LeDuc and John Gunn ,of St. George’s; and Thomas Wolfe and Andrew Myers, of Mead.
• Lincoln-Douglas Debate: August Faller, of G-Prep; and Jeremy Dietz, of Lewis and Clark.
• Duo interpretation: The teams of Allie Campbell and Danielle Dunbrasky, of University High School; and Ashley Kelley and Rachel Raeon, of Lake City High School.
• Original oratory: Lindsay Oden of Lake City; and Heather Fried of U-Hi.
• U.S. Extemporaneous: Theora Rice, of Central Valley; and Genevieve Cummings of G-Prep.
• Congressional debate: Adam Bernbaum, of CV, and Tori Head, of U-Hi; and Derrick Skaug and Kiersten Black, both of Mead.
• Foreign Extemporaneous: James Ganas, of CV; and David Smentek, of G-Prep
• Dramatic interpretation: Andrea Brown, of Mead; Caitlin Johnson, of Lake City;
• Humorous Interpretation: Ross Miewald, of Lake City; and Leslie Krueger, of CV.
Summer travels
Diane Rowen Garmire is one of 20 U.S. teachers awarded a summer fellowship in South Korea, where she’ll spend 17 days studying history, culture, politics, economics, arts and language. She’ll also teach one class session on Northwest coastal peoples and their art to a group of Korean high school students.
Garmire teaches third- through sixth-graders in the Tessera gifted-education program at Spokane Public Schools’ Libby Center.
Last year, she was awarded a Japan Fulbright scholarship to travel with a group of 200 U.S. teachers to Tokyo and other cities. That fueled her interest in Asia, Garmire said, and prompted her to apply for the Korean fellowship.
“Teaching about these things with firsthand knowledge is so much better than studying it from afar,” said Garmire, who plans to incorporate such things as Korean puppets and folk tales into her lessons at Libby.
The all-expenses-paid fellowship is offered through the New York-based Korean Society and the Freeman Foundation.
Education acronym of the week
This week, your Voice education column starts a new feature, explaining the meaning of some of the hundreds of acronyms educators throw around.
The first one: CFS.
Health officials use it as shorthand for “chronic fatigue syndrome” and to NOAA meteorologists it means “seasonal climate forecasts” (never mind that the initials are in the wrong order).
But to anyone wanting to begin a teaching career, CFS means “character and fitness supplement.”
Not “fitness” as in the ability to do 50 pushups. This supplement to the application to become a certified teacher is a list of questions designed to gauge an applicant’s suitability.
A few of the questions: “Have you ever been found… to have sexually assaulted or exploited any minor?” “Have you used illegal drugs in the last year?” “Have you ever been convicted of any felony crime?”