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Show D6 Wednesday, August 25, 2004 Vernal Express Uintah School District Update October 2004 FYl from Uintah Nigh Safety First - A Closed Campus Lapoint Elementary returns with Olympic Fever! by AJ Pease, UHS principal '?-:$- .... Athens, Greece, is not the only place in the world with 'Olympic Fever'! Lapoint Elementary School began the first week of school with an Olympic focus. Each day students brought Olympic articles and reports to share with the school. An Olympic trivia question was given and prizes awarded to those who knew the answer. Some of their questions were: Name five events in the Olympics. What are a biathlon, decathlon and heptathlon? What is different in a steeplechase race than in any other race? Name one thing that athletes do with their flag after winning a race? Every day the school had a short event celebrating the Olympics, one day students and staff got to wear their Olympic clothing from the Salt Lake Olympics in 2002. Thursday students wore track and field clothing for races at recess. Friday ; school began with a Parade of Nations and a long distance run. Parents and students participated in the Lapoint Elementary School Olympics in the afternoon with events such as: swimming, relays, long jump, hurdles and a 100 m race. Student winners were awarded laurel wreaths at an award ceremony which followed the races. Finally students tasted a real Greek snack. Children in Greece eat plain unflavored yogurt with honey and chopped walnuts or almonds on top. ockxxxxxox Uintah High School Greenhouse Uintah High School Agricultural program's greenhouse will be completed by the end of this month. It is 30' X 60' in sie. It was made possible by grants from the State Office of Education and Uintah School District. The new facility will be used as a class lab for agricultural science courses and as a production facility. Students w ill manage the greenhouse and get hands on training in greenhouse plant production and management. 1 Ooxxxcxc David Wilson was awarded The National Association of Agricultural Educators (NAAE) Outstanding Young Teacher in Utah. David was notified that he was this years NAAE Region One winner of outstanding young teacher with six regions in the U.S., Region one is the West coast. He will recive recognition at the NAAE National conference in Las Vegas this December. The recognition will include all expenses for the trip to the national conference, a cash award, and a plaque. This award is based upon evaluation of eight areas: overall Agricultural program, professional growth, teaching philosophy, partnerships, experiential learning, instruction, marketing, and student organizations (FFA). Annette Reynolds Distinguished Teaching Award David Wilson -Young Agricultural Teacher of the Year The National Council for Geographic Education recently awarded Annette! Reynolds from Discovery Elementary School, its annual Distinguished Teaching Achievement Award for 2004. Awards were given to thirty K-l 2 teachers and six universitycollegd professors from the United States and Canada. The DTA Awards recognize outstanding contributions to geographic education. Colleagues submitted nominations for the awards, and the awardees were chosen by a judging panel at the elementary, middle junior high, senior high and post secondary level. Ann Reynolds has been actively involved in Geographic education as al teacher for Discovery Elementary and as a representative for the district and the state. She has co-sponsored several Geography Alliance programs within our district and represented the state at several national conferences. NCCiE President. Gwenda H. Rice, Western Oregon University, Monmouth, Oregon will present a"placue to Ann at the awards banquet during the NCGE annual meeting October 20-23 in Kansas City, Missouri. Awardees receive free registration to the conference and a one-year membership to the National Council for Geographic Education. The National Council for Geographic Education was chartered in 1915 to promote geographic education at all levels of instruction. It currently has 3,200 members worldwide. The Vernal Utah's Indian Summer Storytelling Festival is now just a memory. For those fortunate enough to go, the stories were unforgettable. There were sad tales, fairv t;ilt;s. tall l;iles short tales lonp tales and hilarinnslv funnv tales fl. Inuring the day on Friday, fourth grade students from Uintah, Duchesne, and Daggett Schixils were bused to the site and were excellent participants at the festival. Students were well mannered, polite, and attentive to the stories told by our visiting storytellers. They were a credit to their schools. Although the Friday and Saturday evening performances were not overflowing they were well attended by patrons from as far away as St. George. Both the daytime and evening performances were standards that will be hard to meet for future Vernal festivals. The Uintah Schools Foundation is to be complimented on the event and encouraged to continue to support the festival in Vernal. Let's hope this is the first in a long line of Indian Summer Storytelling Festivals to be. Davis Elementary Thanks to Dennis Spackman, one of our dedicated Special Education teachers, several y classrooms were able to watch three of the four stages of the Monarch Butterfly "up close and personal." Mr. Spackman brought several caterpillars to give to the teachers K-2 at Davis. In Mrs. Foley's 2nd grade class, we recorded three of the stages and read about the egg stage. Our caterpillar (larva) ate the leaves of the Milkweed for about a week and a half. We had fun finding his special food hy searching the field beside our school. He grew and grew from one inch long to two inches long. By the ninth day he was three times as fat as when we got him. On the twelfth day, after a weekend, we returned to find him in his pupa stage called a chrysalis. We recorded all of this in our journals and then waited. We waited and waited. The books we read said he would need two weeks for the pupa stage, however, two weeks later nothing had happened. By the end of the day we noticed the light green chrysalis looked a little darker on the ends. The next morning we noticed it was much darker-almost black. This was a good sign. We went to lunch thinking we would watch him emerge as a butterfly when we got back. Boy, were we surprised to come back in 45 minutes and find a butterfly in our cage, holding onto the shell of his chrysalis just like the pictures in the books! We were sorry we missed seeing him wiggle out of his chrysalis but we did get to watch his wings expand and dry out. This is the adult stage. We have sugar water and are planning to feed him for a day or two before letting him fly to Mexico. We w ill also finish recording our observations in our journals. Thank you Mr. Spackman for a great learning experience! CONNECTIONS UPDATE About a year ago, the county commissioners became aware of some alarming statistics supplied by the Utah Association of Counties, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Utah Department of Public Safety, that present a rather negative picture of Uintah County. They found out that, in 2002, Uintah County had the highest rate of juvenile arrests and the 2nd highest rate of adult arrests in Utah. In addition, court referrals in Uintah County had increased by 32 in the 7 years prior to 2003, while referrals in the w hole state decreased by 1 during that time. They also discovered that only 79.8 of Uintah County adults, age 25 or over, have graduated from high school (second lowest percentage in Utah), while 87.7 of all Utah adults, age 25 or over, have received a high school diploma. Furthermore, only 13.2 of Uintah County residents, age 25 or over, have earned a bachelor's degree, compared to 26. 1 for the entire state. As might be expected, the median household income in Uintah County was reported as $34,518, compared to $45,726 for the state. It is not surprising, then, to see that 14.5 of the residents in Uintah County live below the poverty level, compared to 9.4 for all of Utah. Our commissioners felt compelled to look into the situation to see if something could be done to address these issues and to improve the image of our county and the quality of life of its citizens. A community task force was called together to review the facts and look for solutions. They knew that "an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure," or that "a stitch in time, saves nine". Several good ideas emerged from the deliberations of the task force. The program designated by that group as the one most capable of making a significant difference to reverse these trends was the Connections After-School Program. ; ; This finding is no surprise to parents of students who participate in Connections. They have seen what happens to their children as they get involved in the purposeful academic, enrichment, and recreational activities that the program provides. Their grades and test scores go up and their school behaviors improve. It is also of no surprise to local law enforcement and juvenile court officials, who refer juvenile offenders to Connections when they need a good place to go where they can do productive things. A top level law enforcement official in Uintah County recently said "When we send kids to Connections, they don't come back to us." Congratulations to Connections -The New Grant for Davis, Maeser and Myton has been funded! XWW fJVTTES AND SCWOLV Wouldn't it be great to claim learning as our first priority at school. Sorry folks. It's not. Our first concern is the safety of your children! You send your kids off to us at some point in the day and expect them to return in at least as good a condition as when they left. Well, you aren't alone in this desire. The Feds, the Utah State Legislature, the Utah State Office of Education, the Uintah School District Board of Education, and those employed by the district dis-trict agree with you. In fact, this is one reason Uintah County residents agreed a long time ago to support closed campuses. This means that the school will not knowingly allow a student stu-dent to leave campus without following policy and supporting safety. It includes others things I will discuss in future articles. District policy 007.0805.3 specifically states, "No person shall be allowed to remove a student stu-dent from school during the school day unless that person reports first to the principal or the school's Administrative Office and one of the following circumstances is true: 3.1. The person positively identifies him or herself as the student's custodial parent or legal guardian, including identification of the person as well as documentation sufficient suffi-cient to establish custodial rights to the child if circumstances warrant it." This means that school personnel, including Uintah High School, are to act responsibly and prudently to verify the identity of a person requesting to check out a student. Think about this. What a difficult task! Some parents want the school staff to accept an unverified phone call to check out a student. stu-dent. That same parent is setting the stage for anyone to call the school and check out their student. Few parents, if any, would want to increase the risk of malicious danger or injury for their child of any age. So what to do? The school's task is to get positive identification of the parent or guardian guard-ian or not honor the request. The parent's challenge is to figure ways to provide positive identification. Some ideas that may help are: 1. Check out your student in person and have proof of relationshipcustody with you. 2. Become acquainted with the attendance secretary in a way that can be recognized in the future. Some parents have provided a code (ie: student number, grandmother's maiden name, etc.) 3. Be patient and courteous both in person and on the phone. Remember, the school person per-son is required to positively identify you in order to increase the safety of your student. That office person is making every attempt to be courteous and serve you while taking as many as 180 checkout calls in a day. Some of the calls are from people who are very demanding and rude. Some of the calls are from a student or student's friend posing as the parent. Some of the calls are from people w ho want to hurt your student. You may have additional, helpful suggestions. sugges-tions. Please share them with me. All of us together are smarter, stronger, and more capable when looking for a best solution. Unfortunately total guaranteed safety in life is never completely achievable but maybe we can find a workable solution between that and reducing stress and burdens on very busy parents. par-ents. You may write me at: Dr. AJ Pease, Principal, Uintah High School, 1880 West 500 North, Vernal, UT, 84078, or e-mail aj.peaseuinah.net. (The Uintah School Community Council is filling vacated member positions. Contact me or Mary Moulton (78 1 -3 1 1 0 ext. 269 1 ) if you wish serve and be nominated for the membership member-ship election.) j w ) r t.-- SjJ ' "Washington Crossing the Delaware", a print of the painting by Emanuel Leutze, is among the famous patriotic artistic works being shown in area schools. The "Freedom Gallery" collection is being scheduled by UBTA-UBET public relations manager Glenda Stewart and marketing event coordinator Stina Ikerd. to sio"si scUnodDDs "The Spirit of 76" is a painting paint-ing that depicts a piper and two drummers, straight faced and boldly playing their instruments instru-ments in the midst of a raging rag-ing battle during the American Revolution. The nation's first symbol of freedom, the American flag, proudly waves in the background, back-ground, standing tall, seeming to urge the soldiers and their accompanists on. It's an image that conjures up patriotism, pride in the United States of America and reminds that freedom free-dom came at a price paid by many brave individuals. "The Spirit of 76" is just one of the five paintings in a collection col-lection of paintings and documents docu-ments known as "The Freedom Gallery". UBTA-UBET Communications has purchased the 21 -piece gallery and is happy to display the beautiful beauti-ful collection in participating local elementary and secondary schools throughout the Uintah Basin. The collection includes other thought-provoking depictions of, among others, the framing and signing of the Constitution and George Washington and his troops crossing the Delaware River. Other images present a copy of the Constitution, The Bill of Rights and several other historic documents that are the groundwork for the organization of today's country. Two schools in the Uintah School District have signed up to be on the tour this school year. West Jr. High was the first school to have the Gallery. The collection is now in Altamont. Lapoint Elementary will have the collection Feb. 22 through March 8. The makers of the gallery, US Constitution Educators, describe the collection. "Not only are the paintings and documents docu-ments rare, but very few people know the story behind each one of them. The Freedom Gallery includes the moving stories and diagrams of each of the paintings paint-ings and documents. They are inspiring, and they are also educational." Glenda Stewart. public relations director for UBTA-UBET Communications, is positive the collection will become a great asset to local teachers. "I think the Freedom Gallery is a perfect compliment to any school and I hope they will promote a level of learning and instill a sense of pride in our country." Stewart stated. The photos will stay at each participating school for a two or three week period. Some educators educa-tors have scheduled the gallery to be hanging during the time the students are studying the American Revolution and the structuring of the United States government. Once the photos have made a tour of all the local schools interested, they will hang throughout the UBTA-UBET building and will be available for the public to view as well. Those wishing to schedule sched-ule the Freedom Gallery for a school or organization, may contact Stina Rae Ikerd at UBTA-UBET Communications, 622-5007. f |