Leaving Your Mark?

Does seeing vandalism in your school bother you? We posed this question to a sampling of high school students during their lunch period, and across the board, we got one general result: apathy. Answers included: “No, not really,” “A little bit,” “Not at all,” “Sometimes it’s kinda funny,” just plain “No,” “It’s not really affecting me in any way,” and, “Not entirely, I’ve kind of gotten used to it.” You might think that with these answers the students had not encountered the vandalism that has, unfortunately, become a trend within the school, but in reality, almost everyone we asked answered that they see it just about every day. My initial reaction was one of shock and horror.  Over the past week or two, I have learned a lot about the vandalism within the school, and just how damaging it can be on a number of levels. How could they not care about this issue? But when I thought about it a little bit, I realized that if you had asked me any time before two weeks ago, my answer would not differ much from those of the students at their lunch tables. Yeah, I’d seen words on the bathroom walls. I’d heard distant rumors about things being taken from lockers, and other cruel acts widely regarded as bad jokes. But I had never really taken the time to think about the impact of these acts. After consideration though, the issue is now stuck at the front of my mind, as I expect it should be for others, if we can take the time to look at the impact of this vandalism.

As high school students, most of us try to get through each day on our own, without paying too much attention to things we don’t need to. We take it one class period at a time, trying to remember during first period exactly what we have due second period. There isn’t a whole lot of extra room in our brains for things that don’t seem imminent. And I understand this. I do it too. High school is stressful. It’s tough to think about things we don’t have to. At the same time though, our school is our community. In many ways, it serves as a home. Would you allow this to go on in your bathrooms and walls? Mr. Ham, elementary school assistant principal, agreed with us on this one.

This is your home away from home. We spend eight and a half hours a day here together, and some of us see each other more than we see our families. If you take this type of action to your house where you had friends over and they defaced the walls of your bathroom where you live than that reaction would be, ‘Why are you doing that to my house? Why are you doing that to where I live?’ Students, high school, middle school, elementary, should have that same mentality here, saying, ‘Why would you want to do that where I’m coming to school, where I live during my school day?

Like we said, Mr. Ham is an elementary school administrator dealing with this. Yes, this means that the vandalism you see, is the same vandalism the third graders have to see. Think about the little kids that go to school here. Is it fair that they have to see these images? And then consider that people’s actual property is being destroyed. It may not be yours, but it belongs to someone within your school. How would you feel if it were yours? So, when you’re not the one committing- or directly affected by- these acts, it’s very easy to not give them a second thought. But I urge you to take a minute and think of everything your school and the people in it do for you. Consider the ways vandalism hurts the community here. If someone ever asks you if vandalism within your school bothers you, consider standing up and saying yes. If we all begin expressing our disgust at these acts, hopefully people will stop committing them. And if you don’t trust us, listen to your teachers who have been dealing with the issue. They had a lot to say about it- and definitely do not harbor the same apathy as students.

As one of the art teachers here at Avon Grove Charter School, Mrs. Biedrzycki has spoken about what other students are doing to their peers art work, saying, "They are damaging other peoples projects and writing things or scratching on other pieces of artwork, they are creating a lack of trust between peers."

Mr. Barber, a high school art teacher, has spoken his opinion about this as well, "I'm very concerned. I haven't been teaching for awhile, but I’ve never seen anything personally harming another persons project. Teachers are having to lock up things now, we can’t even let anyone go to certain bathrooms anymore. This is a big deal." Our school is an educational place where we house third through twelfth graders.

The younger students here should not be exposed by the different slurs written by the older students. Ms.Grimes, a fifth grade teacher, spoke aloud and said

This is happening after school hours, and if they are willing to destroy school property, then what else are they willing to do to our school? It was the talk of 5th graders the next morning. They don't need to be seeing this.

Mr. Barr, a math teacher in the 500 trailers, says, "I'm very concerned because they were in the trailer with 5th graders. It's not cool for them to see that kind of stuff. It's a level of maturity. It affects children because they aren't ready to see this."

Mr. Cotter, a drama teacher at Avon Grove Charter, said

It's annoying and disgusting; it's not very charter like.

Vandalism is an issue that is nearly impossible to stop, and many who vandalize do not understand the significant impact that they have on their surrounding areas. Have you ever wondered how much time goes into your administrator’s day when vandalism is reported? Do you know how out of control it has gotten? When the Student News Team met with Mr. Delfin we asked these questions, and his response goes as follows, “In the recent weeks it has been really bad. I’ve been here ten years and I haven’t seen as much of a problem with graffiti or vandalism in the school than I have in the past two weeks. I would say half an hour to an hour depending on my day is spent hearing about vandalism. This is too much.”

The administrators at the charter school find this to be ridiculous, and quite frankly, appalling. Vandalism is a huge issue, and has repercussions far greater than a member on staff to clean an ignorant student’s mess. When speaking with Mr. Brutto we discussed possible punishments for students caught defacing property and he said,

If you’re caught vandalizing a part of the school, an out of school suspension is almost automatic. It’s not just you being disruptive during the day, but it’s you destroying school property. Sometimes it can end up in that student, or their parents, paying for the costs of what was broken. I’m sure that a lot of student’s don’t think of those unintended consequences, but it can be very persuasive to stop when they realize that this wall will cost hundreds of dollars to be replaced or repainted.

If you go to school at the charter school than you have made that choice, no one forces you to come here. If you do not have enough respect for where you go to school everyday that you feel the need to deface property, than maybe it is best that you spend your time elsewhere. Take pride in your school.

The legislation problem here at Charter

Image credit to Pennlive

Last week, I interviewed Dr.Brady and Mrs.Raike about the big issue we were and still are having about the legislative problem here at Avon Grove Charter School. I asked both Dr.Brady the head board of Charter, and Mrs.Raike a Learning Support staff a couple of important questions that I thought we should all know about this issue as a student and staff members attend Charter. I asked both teachers “what was your reaction when charter was going to get a 20% cut”? “Can you explain to me what would happen if the bills had passed”? “Where do we stand with these students”? “I asked those questions to both staff to get a different understanding of opinions. I asked each staff a spate question. Dr.Bradys question was “Is there anything the students can do to help”? Mrs. Raikes question this problem affect there learning center”? I hope you receive a lot of information about the problem were dealing with at Charter school.

What was your reaction when charter was going to get a 20% cut?

Brady-- Let me edit that first. I was shocked. I was surprised that our legislators didn’t see the kind of impact that sort of legislation was going to have on charter schools as a whole. Because in the previous two years, charter school funding and education funding in general had dropped substantially. So the current governor so far, Corbett, had cut education in a way that was shocking to everyone. And now for us, it hurt higher education colleges and universities but certainly hurt K-12 education, so both charter schools and traditional public schools. Why that is? I think it had a lot to do that when we had the recession and when the recession hit PA, there was a lot of desire among politicians to try to balance budgets and, unfortunately, the first place they tend to go is schools. I don’t know why that is.

Raike-- I was very upset, because it’s not fair that all schools are not treated based on their needs of what each school can give each student.

                                                             Photo credit to Kevin Brady

Can you explain to me what would happen if the bills had passed?

Brady-- Well, one did. But it didn’t pass in the form of a bill. What happened is—this is where politics gets really confusing –there’s a bill and the bill will be written usually by a legislator and it will go through either the senate or the house, but ultimately both. So if it starts in the senate, it will need to go through the house. And if it starts in the house, it will need to go through the senate. Both parts of the legislator need to approve it. What happened with us, though, is the part that related to teacher’s pensions (What’s a pension? If the teacher has been in education for a certain number of years in PA – 30 years—they get a yearly payment after they retire. And it’s a pretty good system in PA, and the charter school has to participate in the pension system and contribute to it.) What one of those pieces of legislation did was get rid of the state’s contribution to the employee pensions and that hurt us very, very badly. And that didn’t go through as a bill. Some legislators put a stop to it.  Some senators really helped us out. Senator Dinnimin and Representative Lawrence, our local congressmen helped a lot. So we were able to slow the passage of that bill down in the PA legislature. But then the Governor took the exact same language in that bill and put it into his state budget, which is another way that things can get through. So at the end of the year, he had that in his budget and we ended up losing 1.25 million dollars as a result. And it’s hard when I try to explain this to anyone. It’s so hard to “follow the ball” on this one. There’s a bunch of different ways that things can move politically. And so it’s hard for you guys, as students, bright students, to understand or get a sense of legislation and how that affects you.  But the system is so complicated that’s hard to do. The other thing that could have hurt us – the second piece of legislation – was a bill that could have changed the way that special education is funded in charter schools. But it would also leave alone the way special education is funded for traditional public schools. So it would just be us as charter schools getting hit. Which is really scary. If we were hit with pension reimbursement problem and then hit with the second piece, the special education funding piece, I don’t know if we’d be sitting here now, seriously. I was terrified. And I am really  happy that second shoe didn’t drop, and that was through you guys and parents and our representatives making a fuss. Had that second part hit, I don’t believe we would have been able to keep it together. Even with the pension piece, some of the things that happened because of it – custodial staff that were full time and had benefits, are not here anymore. We now go through an outside service. And that was really hard to do because these were people who had been here for years (some almost 10 years). And we had to lay them off because there was no way to fill the gap and we didn’t want to go into curriculum and hurt teachers. Sometimes the folks that do really important work everyday end up feeling the pain for everyone else. And that’s what happened. I’d like to see that not happen again. The other thing is that we are a “bricks and mortar” charter school. So we have this building and Kembelsville and both of those buildings cost money to maintain, like your house at home. We have to pay money to maintain electric bills, etc. to maintain both of our buildings. The cyber charters don’t have that and they have the same funding. That seems pretty unfair to a lot of us and we’ve had discussions with the PA Charter Coalition that we feel as if we’re underfunded. Sometimes the discussion on this is particularly unethical, but we feel like we’re doing the right thing.

Raike-- A lot of students would end up losing services and they will be able to give students free and appropriate education will defiantly be hurt.   

Where do we stand with the bills?

Brady-- So the special Ed bill could come back in another form and the last time I checked, last week, there seems like there’s another version of that special education bill that could come at us, which is really scary. What could happen is that there could be a focus group created within the congress just to discuss charter school funding. If that happened, that could be the best thing for us. If you look at the way that charter school are funded, it used to be 68% of the funding public school received. And now we’re at about 62-65%. We can do a whole lot with less, but we can’t do a whole lot with nothing. So what would be really wonderful is if the people that represent us and PA congress could sit down and say “what is a fair formula?” So I’m hoping what happens is that movement catches up to speed before the special Ed bills get voted upon. You never know which one will move more quickly. One of the frustrating things about politics.

Raike-- I don’t know there is always a threat to charter schools because most school districts do not like them for the simple reason that they see us as a threat and they don’t understand the fact that every student is not made for every school.

Photo Credit to Patrick Orlando

Is there anything that students can do to help?

Brady--For right now, and this is hard to swallow for me, too, is probably just to wait and see. Because if we’re going to do something significant, we have to wait to see what battle we’re fighting. And right now, that’s not really clear. So it’s either we throw all of our weight and influence behind the funding and reform or throw all of our weight behind fighting the resurrection of the Special Ed bill. Right now it’s not clear which path is best. But I think things should start to heat up by early December. I’m tired of this. I’m tired of all of this political nonsense. It seems like every single year we have something to deal with. Hopefully, something will happen within the legislators to stop this cycle. We should be able to focus on educating kids and making this place a place where they feel comfortable and safe, getting a valued education. But that’s hard to do when we’re under attack all of the time.

How would this problem affect the learning center?

Raike--It will greatly affect our school because it would make it harder for us to do our job and to be able to give the students all their educational needs and to make sure their education is complete.

5 Reasons You Should Go See The Fall Play.

For the Fall Play this year, Charter is putting on the Sophoclean tragedy, Antigone. I had the chance to speak with the play's director, our English teacher, Mr. Parente, along with a couple of the cast members, and from what I found out, this play is a must-see. Here’s why:

1.  Girl Power.

When asked why he chose Antigone for this year, Mr. Parente’s first answer was all of the female actors he had lined up to participate. Antigone definitely has a focus on the female characters, separating it from many others of its kind, and young rebel Antigone makes it completely worth watching. According to Mattie Cichosz, who plays Euridice in the play, the female characters are “strong, fierce, and sassy.” Could you ask for anything more?

2. The Audience Gets A Say.

Doing a Greek play means including a chorus- a group of characters who are meant to represent the audience’s perspective. Mr. Parente says that this is the part of the play he’s most excited for, and that they are working to find a unique way to incorporate the chorus into the show.

3. Universal Themes.

The play may be from Ancient Greece, but the beauty of Greek plays is that they are always relatable. Mr. Parente promises the audience will be captured by the central dilemma- should one obey the laws of man, or god? Even better, Charter’s version is being set present day, putting a new twist on a classic. Anthony Zunino, who plays Teiresias, thinks that the new setting appeals to viewers in a new, postmodern, digital world. We’ll take his word on that.

 4. A Lot of Hard Work is Being Put Into It.

Mr. Parente says that they are making sure to stay true to the text, and to emphasize the clarity of the lines actors are speaking. Between cast and crew there are somewhere around twenty people working on the play, and they are rehearsing nearly every day to bring this play to life.

5. Awesome One-Liners.

Mr. Parente’s personal favorite is

“If a man could sing his own dirge before he dies, he’d never finish.”

From Mattie Cichosz,

“You foul thing, you’re worse than any woman.”

And from Claire Natale, the stage manager,

“By yourself you’d make an excellent king but in a desert.”

So, if nothing else, come for the wit.

The play is taking place on November 22nd, and it is sure to be worth your time to come check it out.