Eye of the Tiger (Issue 4, Volume 15)

Page 1

TOP NEWS Features

Opinion

A&E

Sports

Junior Bianca Lara fights Lupus with support from family and friends Page 5

Eye of the Tiger endorses school-centric ballot items and school board candidates Page 7

RHS Theatre Co. builds prestige with two-story set for fall production Page 9

Eye of the Tiger’s sports staff lays out fall’s top ten athletes Page 12

EYE OF THE TIGER Roseville High School’s student-produced publication

eyeofthetigernews.com

Eye of the Tiger

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1 Tiger Way, Roseville, CA

NOVEMBER 7, 2016 ISSUE 4, VOLUME 15

IM3 meets Pre-Calc

VOTING BOOTHS OPEN TOMORROW

Early numbers suggest equal levels of success FILE PHOTO MARC CHAPPELLE

FILE PHOTO MARC CHAPPELLE

P FILE PHOTO MARC CHAPPELLE

ANDREW SMITH EYE OF THE TIGER

lacer County will vote on school-related ballot items including the RJUHSD school board, Proposition 55 and Measure D tomorrow. Five candidates are running for three seats on the board alongside Scott Huber (top right) and Linda Park (top left). Measure D aims to fund facility upgrades around the district. Leading into last school year, district admin surveyed RHS facilities (left).  ELECTION | Page 2

Gov students continue weighted credit push Second-quarter weight requires approval of each site, district BY ANILA LIJO

a.lijo@eyeofthetigernews.com

Roseville High School assistant principals Stephanie Malia and Jason Wilson met with the two AP U.S. Government and Politics classes last Wednesday in response to student complaints about not receiving weighted credit in the second quarter. Students said they were unaware that they enrolled in the unweighted social science elective Law and Justice for the second quarter. Prior to the 2015-16 school year, the master schedule coupled one weighted quarter of AP Gov with one unweighted quarter of CP Economics to satisfy both the government and economics graduation requirements.

JOHNNY MULLIGAN EYE OF THE TIGER

Senior Josh Clark listens during the AP Gov meeting where assistant principals Stephanie Malia and Jason Wilson addressed student concerns about second-quarter weight.

For AP Gov students during the 2015-16 school year, admin broke out the economics requirement into one quarter of AP Microeconomics and one quarter of AP Macroeconomics. To replace the nine weeks that were previously CP Econ, students who opted for AP Gov had to enroll in two weighted quarters of the

course rather than one. However, AP Gov had not received district-level approval as a two-quarter, 10-credit weighted course at the time. To comply with district policy, admin swapped in second-quarter AP Gov for Law and Justice during the fall of 2015-16. Law and Justice carried into this school year.

AP Gov teacher Dana Dooley said that the students deserve weighted credit due to the rigor of the work they doing in the second quarter. “If we are doing AP Government work the whole time, we shouldn’t be calling it AP Government and not Law and Justice and give credit that students deserve,” Dooley said. According to RHS assistant principal Stephanie Malia, the process for changing AP Government credits is a long one and requires approval from principals, school site councils, the district-level CILT and the school board. “It really has to start with the teachers who teach the course and [them] being on board, and being on the same page, and coming up with a proposal or rationale for the change,” Malia said. “It doesn’t change in one site, it changes for the whole district.” According to Dooley, the  GOV | Page 3

District grandfathers community college weight Any students graduating after 2017 will not receive intro course weight BY MEGAN ANDERSON

m.anderson@eyeofthetigernews.com

After a meeting among district counselors, the Roseville Joint Union High School District board decided to grant a grade bump to current seniors if they took a college course at either Sierra College or American River. Last October, the RJUHSD school board decided to not award a grade bump from community college enrichment classes for a high school student’s GPA in first-level classes in series such as Psychology, Government, Economics and US History. Any student graduating after the class of 2017 will not

receive the grade bump for these classes. RHS counselor Jason Bradley says students will still receive a grade bump for any course in which there is a “prerequisite” in the same department, as introductory courses weren’t valued as challenging enough to warrant a grade bump. According to RHS counselor Graciela Fernandez, awarding the grade bump to current senior students who took community college classes this summer was the most just approach to the topic. “It was felt that allowing the grade bump through the sum-

MEGAN ANDERSON EYE OF THE TIGER

AP Psychology teacher Mark Andreatta works with a student during his third period. Andreatta believes college credit alone fits the rigor of academic enrichment courses.

mer would be the most fair to all students. For example, if we switched to the new policy immediately, then a student who took Economics this past summer would not receive a grade bump. However, if a classmate of theirs had taken Economics the previ-

ous summer, they would have received a grade bump,” Fernandez said. “Thus, by extending the old policy through the end of this past summer seemed to be the best thing to do given the new board policy.”  WEIGHT | Page 3

INSIDE: UPCOMING EVENTS 2 NEWS 2 - 3 ESPAÑOL 4 FEATURES 5 - 6 OPINION 7 - 8 A&E 9 - 10 SPORTS 11 - 12

BY CARRIE LAFRANCHI c.lafranchi@eyeofthetigernews.com

As the math department phases out Algebra 2 in favor of Common Core based Integrated Math classes, Honors Pre- Calculus welcomed its first batch of IM student this fall. This semester also offers the final Algebra 2 course the school will offer for the foreseeable future. This action is the final step in completing the transition from Algebra 1, Geometry and Algebra 2, to the Common Core math courses Integrated Math 1, 2 and 3. While the sample size is small, just nine students having taken IM3 last year and 30 having taken Algebra 2 last year, grades from quarter one suggest that IM3 and Algebra 2 students are similarly prepared. While Algebra 2 students were more likely to excel, with over half boasting an A, they were also more likely to struggle, as no IM3 students recorded a D or F - compared to three Ds coming from students who had previously taken Algebra 2. Junior Brandon Walker, who took Algebra 2 before enrolling in Honors Pre-Calc, is grateful for his experience in the non-IM curriculum. “I feel that going from a Common Core to a non-Common Core class would be extremely difficult,” Walker said. “So I am very glad I was able to do Algebra 2, instead of having to go through Common Core.” Roseville High School does not offer a Common Core equivalent of Honors Pre-Calc or AP Calc. Still, AP Calc and IM3 teacher Michelle Walton has confidence in specific skillsets that IM students develop. “They’re much better at taking an equation and graphing it,” Walton said. “They’re also better at interpreting math in context, like what it means to represent a problem. But they sometimes are not as strong solving things algebraically.” The difference in curriculum between IM classes and Honors PreCalc does not worry Honors PreCalc teacher David Ray. “It’s an adjustment period for all of us – students and teachers alike,” Ray said. Sophomore Donovan Jones, who took Honors Pre-Calc after IM3, felt more at home in Honors Pre-Calc once Ray began teaching concepts similar to Common Core. “It was pretty difficult in the beginning, because we did a lot of Algebra 2 review, but once we started doing IM3 stuff, it got easier,” Jones said. In Ray’s current Honors PreCalc classes, 56 percent of the IM students got a B in the first quarter, while 50 percent of the Algebra students got an A. According to Schmatjen, the district is working on reconfiguring Pre-Calc so that it is aligned more like IM courses, rather than the traditional algebra classes.  INTEGRATED | Page 2

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