CROSS COUNTRY TAKES REGIONALS
Manhattan High School Varsity Boys cross country team heads out to run Regionals at Milford State Park in Junction CIty, on Saturday. The team won first overall and qualifed for State. READ MORE ON PAGE 4.
PHOTO BY CORA ASTIN
Volume 103 // Issue 6 // Oct. 27, 2015
the mentor
School Schedule Reorganization Committee makes progress MADELINE MARSHALL
Print Editor-in-Chief
The district schedule, relatively unchanged for more than a decade, is due for a face lift. Thus, this past Thursday the USD 383 School Schedule Reorganization Committee met for the eighth time this year. Teachers and faculty from across the district once again met to discuss the future of USD 383, this time bringing what Assistant Superintendent and committee co-chair Eric Reid described as “Edutopias” to the table. After some initial discussion of the problems surrounding the current district schedule
as brought to light by a teacher and faculty survey, the committee is now firmly in the idea stage. “The committee determined questions that we believed could help us build some solutions,” Reid said. “The committee worked to narrow down the questions, and we adjusted how we asked those questions in order to get accurate responses. Our district expert on data helped us formulate the questions in the survey form and allowed us to get responses from most of our licensed teachers across the district.” The committee then looked through the responses to find trends and areas where there
was willingness for adjustments. This past week, elementary, middle school and high school faculty members on the committee presented their ideal schedule situations. “We didn’t get too detailed in it,” member Lisa Heller said in reference to the high school “Edutopia.” “We focused more on the amount of professional development and collaboration.” The high school ideal schedule plan keeps the current ratio of content to hours the same, having teachers teach content five of the seven hours of the day. However, it would replace the current plan and collaboration time for two hours with
Debate lands second in Sweeps ELIZABETH UNDERWOOD
Features Editor
Manhattan High School’s Varsity and Junior Varsity debate teams brought recognition to Manhattan. The Varsity team of seniors Nathan McClendon and Cathy Lei and the J.V. team of sophomores Douglas Kim and Lily Colburn competed at Kapaun Mt. Carmel Saturday and placed second in Sweeps, allowing them a closer chance to get a step ahead in their yearly goals. “Sweeps is like, so overall,” senior Cathy Lei said. “Which means we got second out of all of the teams there.” In the J.V. division of the
tournament, Kim and Colburn placed third over the other J.V. teams, gaining experience, confidence and points for the school. “I would say that since they’re both different it’s hard to pick,” sophomore Lily Colburn said. “Varsity’s definitely fun because it’s like ‘I competed in Varsity,’ but J.V.’s good too.” Additionally McClendon and Lei made it into quarterfinals with a 5-1 record of wins to losses, both receiving Bids to qualify them for the Debate Coaches’ Invitational, one of the top tournaments in Kansas. “They dropped in quarterfinals to Shawnee Heights on a really really great debate actually,” coach Ben Suther-
land said. “The folks who were
“The folks who were talking about that round afterwards talked about it being ‘certainly the best debate I saw that tournament.’” -Ben Sutherland talking about that round afterwards talked about it being ‘certainly the best debate I saw
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one hour of plan and one of “Direct Support.” “That hour of Direct Support could be a guided study hall, a regular study hall, an MTSS (Multi-Tiered Support System) team, something in which teachers are working directly with students,” Heller said. The committee plans to continue to gain new perspectives and submit a final plan by Jan. 1 of this upcoming year. If all goes according to plan, the plan will be ratified in February. “My hope is that we can create a framework which will provide guidance and structure for buildings such that buildings can do what they need to do during the week,” co-chair
James Neff said. “We want to create something in which buildings have the freedom to create a daily schedule that works without creating inequities amongst teachers. I know we won’t please everybody, but we’re going to do what we can to make the best schedule possible.” “It’s been a great process to have a great conversation on how we can improve our district and serve our students better,” Reid said. “This is a difficult task, but the committee has been communicating, listening and working to make us better.”
Shannon retiring after fruitful career DAVID FLITER
Staff Writer
Superintendent Robert Shannon announced his retirement last week after over several decades of working for the school district. “I’ll be almost 66 years of age in July, and for a number of years my wife and I have talked about [retiring]. My wife has been retired for a number of years and I’ve decided to join her,” Shannon said. Shannon oversaw the $97.5 million bond issue, hired and mentored the many staff and administrators, and has made sure the schools have maintained good relationships with the communities. Kan-
sas schools have been suffering from the budget cuts that governor Sam Brownback has made -- a significant issue on Shannon’s plate. “In recent years with the state budgetary situation the goal is to maintain continuity for students and staff of the operation of the schools with increasingly difficult financial circumstances, to make those square up has been very challenging,” Shannon said. His community involvement will not end with retirement however. “I am sure I will do more volunteer work in the community then I have been able to do. I like that kind of thing,” Shannon said.
Scholars Bowl places first in Salina meet, prepares for Emporia ANDREA LU
Graphics Editor Competitions. Competitions. And more competitions. That’s exactly what Scholars Bowl
prepares for at the start of October and on Oct. 20, the MHS Scholars Bowl team had their first meet of the season, Salina Central Invitational. “I describe it as team jeop-
GLOBAL NEWS MADELINE MARSHALL Print Editor-in-Chief
Global news is a vital part of news today and can directly affect MHS students. In order to inform our readers, The Mentor has compiled small summaries describing some of the largest happenings in the world today. We encourage the reader to read about these topics, and others, in greater depth.
Seven Black St. Louis churches burned, racial motive suspected
This past Thursday a predominately black church, the Shrine of St. Joseph, was burned down in St. Louis. This was the seventh burning to strike the general area in about two weeks. It is suspected that the motive behind these arsons is racial. The fires have all occurred near Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb that has been the center of many protests against police brutality after the murder of Michael Brown by
ardy,” Scholars Bowl coach Ted Dawdy said. “There were 24 schools yesterday and they broke us up into pools of six and then we went head to head versus the five other teams that
were in a pool. We do head to head matchups and then they take the top two teams out of each of those pools and then advance to a bracket play. And then we bracket out the rest of
the tournament until you get to the top four places.” The team performed reasonably well, taking the first place
white police officer Darren Wilson. “If we ever needed a wake-up call to believe that racism is alive in St. Louis -- if this is not it, I don’t know what it could be,” the Rev. Mike Kinman, an Episcopal priest at St. Louis’ Christ Church Cathedral, said
tive Law and Justice party winning with 39 percent of the vote, enough to govern alone without forming a coalition. A victory by Law and Justice gives the party a chance to implement a brand of politics that is strongly pro-NATO but also somewhat Euroskeptic. The party opposes adopting the euro currency and is strongly anti-migrant. Such positions are expected to have a large impact on the European Union, of which Poland is a member.
and the strongest globally in terms of reliably measured maximum sustained winds. Late on Oct. 23, Patricia became only the second Pacific hurricane on record to make landfall as a Category 5 hurricane. However, by Sunday morning, Mexican officials concluded that while a few thousand homes had been damaged by Hurricane Patricia, there had been no reported deaths or catastrophic loss of property. The dangerous storm’s magnitude and wind speeds of as high as 200 mph had the power to be very detrimental, “and that, fortunately, has not occurred,” President Enrique Peña Nieto said according to The Washington Post.
Right-wing party wins Poland’s parliamentary vote According to BBC News, Poland moved to the right in its parliamentary election Sunday, throwing out the centrist party that had governed for eight years for a socially conservative party that wants to keep migrants out and spend more on Poland’s own poor. An exit poll showed the conserva-
Hurricane Mexico
Patricia
hits
Hurricane Patricia was the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere in terms of barometric pressure,
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