8 MAY 2007 • VOLUME 22 ISSUE 6 BULIMIA AND ANOREXIA You know what an eating disorder is but do you know how to help someone who has one? Check out the health facts and help • 8-9
• Find out what ELL is all about and hear some of the amazing stories these students have to tell • 10–11
HAWKEYE
M O U N T L A K E T E R R AC E H I G H S C H O O L • M O U N T L A K E T E R R AC E , W AS H I N GTO N
TO IRON HAWK AND BEYOND Did you know two MTHS students placed first in the District’s hotly contested cook-off? • 13
PHONE 425.431.7770 • FAX 425.431.7773 • E·MAIL MTHS.HAWKEYE@GMAIL.COM
Students step out against war
Terrace takes unavoidable budget cuts By Kathryn Goddard and Joslyn Ching HAWKEYE staff
Maria DeMiero/HAWKEYE
MTHS students joined over 800 of their peers April 18 to protest the war in Iraq and military recruitment in schools. Some signs said, “Money for jobs and education, not for wars and occupation.”
AP classes hit the chopping block By Jacob Tupper HAWKEYE staff
Several Advanced Placement (AP) classes will not be on the class register next year due to budget cuts. These include AP Statistics, AP Calculus and AP Biology. These classes, along with others, were cut for various reasons. AP Biology did not have a teacher and AP Statistics and AP Calculus did not have a big enough projected enrollment. The district said each class would need to have 34 students.
Not long after the class cuts, a sign on the AP Stats teacher’s door, Nancy Paine, read, “AP STATS IS BACK!” Paine said that the class could be restored because “the district gave the building a little bit more FTE (Full Time Equivalency).” The number of teachers is dependent on the school’s FTE allotment. Also, the school recognized that any student who took Algebra II their freshman year would not have a math class to take at the school their senior year. AP Stats is set to run next year but there is still a chance that it could be cut in the
years following. If it is cut, Terrace will lose status as a college preparatory school. Terrace is already behind: next year Meadowdale High School is offering two AP Stats classes, two AP Calculus classes and an Advanced Calculus class. Paine pointed out that “when you look at college entrance requirements, while most require a minimum of three years of high school math, most want their students to have four years. I believe we would be doing our students a grave disservice if we didn’t even offer what most universities desire.”
Student rights bill croaks in legislature By Kathryn Goddard HAWKEYE staff
House Bill 1307 (HB 1307), created in order to further protect and enhance students’ First Amendment rights, was rejected April 13 in the state senate. Democrat Dave Upthegrove introduced the bill for both college and high school students. The bill passed the House of Representatives in March with a vote of 58 to 37. HB 1307 was originally applied to high school as well as college students. Last month however, the Senate Judiciary committee eliminated the high school student portion from the bill. Strong Republican opposition along with the elimination of the
high school component, added to the bill’s unpopularity. The bill never reached the Senate floor for a vote. HB 1307 states that student journalists have the right to produce content without being subject to prior review, making censorship illegal. The administrators of a school and advisers of a student run organization (such as the Hawkeye or HBN) cannot decide what should or should not go in the publication or alter the content. Students cannot produce content that violates the law, such as content that is slanderous or obscene. The bill would also have ensured that an administrator or adviser would not be liable for the content produced in the publication, See HB 1307 on page 3
The Edmonds School District (ESD) has made unavoidable budget cuts for next year. The cuts are taking place in order to sustain the amount of money needed for the necessities of schools. According to Principal Greg Schwab, the dis- ■ Several trict has been dipping factors, into its reserve fund (a including a pool of funds saved for rising cost a “rainy day”) for too of living long. This has resulted in and fewer the threat of not havincoming ing enough money. ESD students, cannot use money from contributed the reserve fund much to the longer, due to the fact that they have a minibudget cuts mum required balance that must stay in the reserve fund. This, along with an anticipated increase in teachers’ salaries, lower enrollment, and overall lack of funds from the state government have contributed to the budget problems the school district is facing. The cost of living has gone up in recent years, such as rent, utilities, food, etc. Therefore teachers’ salaries need to be raised in order to meet the new standard under a cost of living agreement. Additionally, fewer students are entering school next year and more are exiting. In other words, the ratio of graduating seniors to incoming kindergarteners is rising. That means that the fewer students there are in school, the fewer people there are living in the area to pay taxes, the less amount of money the district has, the less amount of money the school gets to keep up the same curriculum. In order to not have one department carry the weight of MTHS’s allotted budget cuts, the school has come up with multiple ways to to mitigate the impact of the cuts. One way was to be more efficient with each teacher’s schedule. There were some inefficiencies in the desire to maintain autonomy in each small school in some course areas, such as math. It’s also possible that some teachers won’t be at MTHS full time. The teachers who end up teaching fewer periods are put into a pool that the district has of teachers who can work at another school. This is called surplusing. For example, one teacher can teach three periods of English at MTHS and then one or two more at another high school in the district. This saves money by lowering the amount of new teachers that the district hires. If the school uses part time teachers from the surplus pool, job voids are filled instead of paying for a whole new teacher. Although budget cuts are necessary, those that take place next year are designed to be minimal, according to school officials.