VOLUME 50, ISSUE 11
Leadership teacher Little is leaving
WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2007
CASTRO VALLEY, CA 94546
Baseball Grease wows the experiences tough game crowd
Pg. 4
Pg. 5
Pg. 7
By Candace Wong Business Manager
Chris (Hongzhe) Qian / Staff Writer
Girls are practicing on the field for the Powder Puff football game.
By Julianne Burnette Staff Writer
CVHS goes green! The Environmental Awareness and Key Clubs brightened up the campus with plants in honor of Earth Day while some AP Environmental Science students toured several classes to give educate people about recycling and other ways to help the environment. “We had a lot of fun collaborating with the Environmental Aw a re n e s s Club and Honors Chemistry students,” said Key Club President senior Christina Chao of the planting project headed by science teacher Carol Dixon. The group beautified the grounds with plants native to California, and even planted a redwood tree outside of the science building. “All the plants are adapted to our climate,” said Dixon, a science teacher and Environmental Awareness club advi-
sor. “So, once they get started, they won’t require much water.” On the first weekend, there
were six participants, from Key Club and the AP Environmental Science class. On the second work day, two teachers and around 20 students toiled for three hours to improve our campus. Nearly $200 worth of plants and mulch were provided each weekend through private and
public donations. The Castro Valley Sanitary District helped by giving money as part of a program to help clean up our schools. The AP Env i ro n m e n t a l Science class helped out, too. As part of an Earth Day project, students traveled around to various classrooms in pairs and taught others what and how to recycle. They also placed recycling bins around the school to raise awareness and promote recycling on campus. “We looked at the contents of the recycling and trash bins in the classrooms to show examples of [recyclables that were thrown away] and garbage that is put in with recycling,” explained AP Environmental Science student Alphonse Teng. “For me, it is a way to learn about our responsibility to the environment. It belongs to everyone and [we all] need to get involved.”
After the administration announced changes in the schedule for the 2007-2008 school year, the teachers demanded a vote. As a result, they made their decision from the four possible schedule choices. In the end, the majority (68 out of 94) of the staff members voted on the semi-block schedule without an advisory period. This new schedule that the staff voted on will be handed to the district to see if it will be approved. Although the staff voted on this final schedule, there will still be modifications made to it. The staff was able to choose one out of four options the administration provided; it was either “traditional bell schedule with advisory,” “traditional bell schedule without advisory,” “semi-block without advisory,” or “semi-block with advisory.” The choices of the schedule for next school year were based upon the request of students, parents, and staff members of CVHS. The possible schedule was chosen af-
By Laura Mitchell Staff Writer
The future of CVHS’ Advanced Placement Chemistry class is up in the air, as it remains to be seen whether the class will be approved through the College Board AP Audit process to count for college credit. The AP Audit, described as “the process through which schools may request authorization to label their 2007-2008 courses AP,” is something that AP teachers have to apply to by turning in examples of the curriculum used in their AP classes. The College Board then reviews this to see whether or not the classes are meeting AP requirements and are rigorous enough to be called AP. Colleges can then see if students’ AP classes are officially recognized as meeting the AP standards. Ordinarily, this would not be a big problem, but the AP Chemistry program at CVHS has run into some difficulties involving the number of hours a week spent doing labs in the classroom. “[The College Board] expects AP Chemistry to simulate the first year of a college chemistry class, which often has two-hour, threehour labs…something which obviously takes lots of time that we don’t have,” said AP Chemistry teacher Richard Schneck.
ter the votes of 94 staff members were tallied. The administration was first faced with this problem when it realized that there was a lack of minutes with the current schedule. Although the administration was reluctant to change the schedule again after working so hard on getting it to the block schedule, they finally made the decision that was best for the student body and the school. After hearing about Tennyson High being fined a large sum of money for having a lack of minutes, the administration was even more determined to fix our minutes. “The administration had to change the schedule because we were short minutes and they are doing what is best for the school. Tennyson was fined a couple million dollars for being short minutes and if we don’t fix our schedule the same will happen to us. There’s going to be change,” explained secretary Jennifer Tica. It is hoped that next year ’s schedule will be known before the school year ends, however, there are no guarantees.
Although the College Board requires a minimum of 90 minutes of lab time a week for AP authorization, instead of two or three hours a week, CVHS is still hard pressed to fit in the required time for AP Chemistry since the current schedule does not provide enough minutes to do so. According to Schneck, other high schools have resorted to “double blocking” the class so that students would take two periods of AP Chemistry back to back. Some schools even have students come in extra early once a week to have enough time to complete the labs in order to have their schools’ AP Chemistry programs certified and count for college credit. What CVHS will do to meet the College Board requirements, however, is still yet to be determined. “The current status of AP Chemistry [at CVHS] is that [I’m] waiting for our school to decide what the schedule will be next year before I send off the syllabus [to the College Board by June 1],” said Schneck. Even if the CVHS AP Chemistry class is not authorized through this year’s AP Course Audit, there will still be a second year, advanced chemistry class next year, which will technically still cover the same material as this year’s AP Chemistry class, just without being an “official” AP course.