Singing summer’s praises

Hey, kids. You know that song you’ve been singing the past few days, “School’s out for summer”?

Well, your parents used to sing the same song every June (your teachers probably still do). It was recorded by a guy who called himself Alice Cooper and wore mascara (your grandparents didn’t approve). He still performs, though he’s nearly as ancient as Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger.

So, parents and kids together: “Out for summer/Out till fall/We might not go back at all/ School’s out forever/School’s out for summer/School’s out with fever/School’s out completely.”

Art appreciation

Congratulations, Spokane residents. You own two new works of art, with a third on the way.

Total cost: $88,000, funded mostly by state taxpayers, with Spokane Public Schools chipping in a portion.

Working through the Washington State Arts Commission, Lidgerwood Elementary chose Western Washington artist Robert Purser, who created a display called Whimsical Tree, composed of “cedar poles, branches and abstract shapes representing concepts and ideas that spring from students’ imaginations,” according to a school district press release.

Issaquah artist Tina Hoggatt was inspired by Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge when she created two groupings for Lincoln Heights Elementary School. One’s called “Critter Bounce” and the other is “The Rookery.”

Ridgeview Elementary will have carved characters suspended down a hallway, as though they were coming from a pop-up book made from plywood. The creation, by artist Otto Younger, will be installed this summer, the district says.

The bulk of the money –$75,000 – comes from the Art in Public Places program, which gets one-half of 1 percent of construction budgets for all state-owned buildings. That program was created by the Legislature in 1974.

An additional $13,000 came from the school district budget for construction projects, according to district spokeswoman Kristy Mylroie.

Lost from the crowd

Washington state’s class of ‘08 lost 156 students every day during high school.

There were 89,781 Washington kids who started their freshman year together, and 61,178 are graduating this year, according to numbers from the research arm for the non-profit Editorial Projects in Education, which publishes the trade journal Education Week.

Those aren’t numbers you’ll likely see from the state of Washington (though figures aren’t yet available for the class of ‘08).

Ed Week contends that 49 of the 50 states underestimate their drop-out rates – by 10 percent in Washington and as much as 30 percent in New Mexico. Alaska was the lone exception.

Federal authorities are skeptical of states’ figures, too, prompting proposals to change the reporting requirements.

Talking about you-know-what

As the Valley Voice reported last week, Central Valley School District must rethink the way it teaches s-e-x. A change in state law says that districts like CV that have been teaching an abstinence-only curriculum must add “safe-sex” lessons, like the use of condoms.

For those who were wondering what that portends for Eastern Washington’s biggest school district, the answer is, very little.

Spokane Public Schools already teaches comprehensive sex ed under its “human growth and development” curriculum, said district spokeswoman Kristy Mylroie. So, while officials are checking to make sure it meets the letter of the new law, “there won’t be any huge changes.”

Volunteers extraordinaire

The Spokane Public Schools board last week honored five outstanding volunteers for the second half of the school year. They are:

“ “Papa” Donn Thompson, who for three years has volunteered in Debby Smith’s kindergarten class at Moran Prairie Elementary.

“ Bob Schlim, who for five years has volunteered in teacher Vicki Merrill’s classroom at Regal Elementary.

“ Brian, Lonny and Deborah Viehouser, who volunteer at Willard Elementary several times a week. Brian and Lonny help third-graders with their reading. Their daughter Deborah works in special needs classrooms and in the Math Communities program. Last summer, they created a summer program to support students in reading and math.

Red carpet performances

If there were an Oscar for those who prepare school lunches, it’d be called a Louise. And this year, Diane Hardesty of Rogers High School is a finalist.

Hardesty has already won a Northwest regional Louise Sublette Award of Excellence, the highest honor awarded by the 60,000-member School Nutrition Association. The national winner – selected from winners from each of seven regions – will be announced in July.

The association says Hardesty has introduced ethnic food into the school lunch program as a way of promoting diversity.

In addition, the association has named another Spokane Public Schools employee its national Outstanding Director of the Year. Doug Wordell, district director of nutrition services, was recognized for efforts such as his annual “Dining at the Ritz” event, in which sixth graders are served a three-course candlelight meal with formal china and silverware.

Walking-around money

Most politicians brag about the money they bring back to their districts. Most of them don’t walk to get it there.

Adams Elementary School in Spokane is getting $3,500 because state Sen. Chris Marr did more walking during the legislative session than any other lawmaker. Marr took 361,541 steps, according to Asuris Northwest Health, which provided legislators with pedometers and sponsored the Move It competition.

Rep. John Ahern took 250,698 steps, earning $1,000 for Westview Elementary.

Education acronym of the week

This week’s acronym, selected at random from a list compiled by the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, is ERIC.

We at the Voice immediately thought of rocker Eric Clapton, which made us chug-a-lug and shout.

But then we did some research and found that ERIC stands for the Education Resources Information Center, which is operated by the U.S. Department of Education. The center, found at www.eric.ed.gov, bills itself as “the world’s largest digital library of education literature,” with 1.2 million bibliographic records.

For instance, type in the word “chalk,” and you’ll get a list of 172 scholarly papers with “chalk” as one of its keywords, starting with “A Survey of Hardware and Software Technologies for the Rapid Development of Multimedia Instructional Modules.” You can look at an abstract for each, and ERIC tells you how to get the full report.

Kids can have fun typing in dirty words and seeing how they’ve been used in snooty reports. Or, you can type in “Spokane” and see what they’re saying about us in the ivory towers.

A search on “Alice Cooper” renders two results, one noting that he was a high-school journalist before he became a rock star – a geek-to-god conversion, if ever there was one.