May 25, 2008 - May 31, 2008 Archives

I remember those nights very well. Like most reporters, I had to cover a city government at one time or another, and one of my many stints, about 15 years ago, was writing about the city council meetings of a medium-sized Delaware city for the state’s biggest newspaper.

On those nights, just as surely as the chairman would call the meeting to order and the council members would rise and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, a skinny, dour-faced man would approach the microphone during the “Public Comment Period” and begin -- or rather, continue -- his rant.

Sound familiar?

It was a rant of many, many years: Something about a long-ago parking ticket. Nefarious doings in the police department. Corruption at the highest levels of this sleepy little city.

Finally, after he had berated the ever-so-patient council chairman for several minutes, he would turn to the Press Table, hold up his latest “document” and announce: “I have made copies for the press.”

Whereupon he would approach me and hand me the missive; I would invariably reply: “Thank you, Mr. Crazy Person [maybe not those exact words] I shall file this forthwith.”

That seemed to satisfy him, and he would leave me alone.

I thought about those meetings last week when I read two stories in the Washington Post that chanced to appear on the same day. One was a column about a tenacious Montgomery County, Md., woman who has been on a single-minded quest to stop people from taking their dogs along when they walk their children to school. Actually, dogs are banned from school grounds, but some readers wondered why this was such a big deal that the woman had to visit 36 county elementary schools to monitor their compliance.

The Montgomery County School Board was wise: It proclaimed the existing rules and signage “more than adequate” and referred the matter to animal control. Solomonic.

But how do you know when to punt and when to act? Another story that same day told about residents of a neighborhood not far from my home demanding action from the Arlington (Va.) County Council on a house filled with apparently dozens of exotic snakes, many of them poisonous. The county board immediately banned “venomous snakes and other poisonous reptiles,” the newspaper said.

Board members: I don’t envy your job. People come to you with all manner of complaints and concerns, most of them heartfelt. You must decide when to act, when to refer, when to ignore.

Correction: Last week, in a story about children’s literature, I implied that David Shannon was the author of How I Became a Pirate. Shannon, who did the wonderful pictures for this cleverly written book, collaborated with author Melinda Long.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

If your school district is planning to hire a new food service director, good luck: There’s lots of competition and well-qualified candidates are scarce.

Many food service directors are retiring just as the job is getting more complex—schools are facing tougher regulations and more food safety inspections, food prices are rising, budgets are dropping, and there’s a big push to offer healthier, but still tasty, fare.

And a career as school lunch lady doesn’t get enough respect.

“The image of school nutrition has always been a struggle,” says Katie Wilson, the school nutrition director for the Onalaska, Wis., school district. “It’s not as prestigious as other positions in food service field, and people don’t see it as a viable career.”

While the job might once have been relegated to the head cook or an administrative assistant, districts need to hire food management professionals who have a unique combination of skills, she says. An ideal candidate would be part dietician and part business manager, someone who can design a nutritious and palatable menu, negotiate contracts, and balance a budget.

It’s getting tough to find these people, and it’s even harder to persuade them to work in school districts. But Wilson, who currently serves as the president of the School Nutrition Association, is hoping to change the image from the matronly lunch lady to a savvy business professional and recruit more college students to the field. Schools must help, she says, by elevating the job to a professional administrative position.

Want more advice on running your food services division? Wilson and others from the field give their thoughts in the June issue of American School Board Journal.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

“The name is Bond, James Bond. And I’m your new principal.”

Sounds like a bad movie, doesn’t it? Still, this is the 21st century, and anything is possible. For instance, there are a lot of people in the education world who appear to be giving Mr. Bond a run for his money.

That’s particularly true in Britain, the home of the world’s most famous fictional superspy. Here, where the government has spent nearly half a billion dollars putting surveillance cameras on every street corner, there’s a move to use James Bond-style gadgets to stop cheating on high-stakes tests.

So reports the Telegraph News. Exams, it says, have been “tagged with radio transmitters and microscopic identification to ensure they reach the right school.” There also are plans to add high-tech locks to exam shipping boxes, which school personnel could open only with secret codes transmitted from mobile phones.

No word yet if exams will self-destruct five seconds after grading.

More personal spying tactics also are being used across the Pond. One local government council near the southern coast of Britain, okayed spying on a family suspected of lying about their place of residence in order to get their child into a popular school. The News reported spies even observed the family home at night and took “copious” notes of the movements of family members who were referred to as “targets” as they were followed.

Officials justified their actions as allowed by the country’s Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, passed by Parliament to allow law enforcement agencies to fight organized crime and terrorism. After all, you can’t be too careful about those pesky 3-year-olds.

Will we soon see similar stories pop up in the U.S.? We have already. Indeed, my favorite is a decade-old one from the New York Times, involving a diligent California school official who staked out a biology room window and relied on a shoulder-held video camera with a zoom lens in hopes of catching the wayward souls dropping cigarette butts on the school baseball field.

Wait for it: Spying 101, the latest college course prerequisite for aspiring educators.

Del Stover, Senior Editor

I guess you could say I’m a health nut. After years of regularly sipping lattes, cappuccinos, and café au laits (I grew up in the Seattle-area after all), I eliminated my caffeine consumption a few years back, relying on good old-fashioned sleep and exercise for my morning rush.

I must admit, however, that sleep and exercise can be hard commodities to come by, especially during business trips and busy work weeks. So, every once in awhile, I’ve chugged an energy drink to get the body and the mind moving … and boy do they work!

Too well, it seems, particularly for the growing number of teens who have become hooked on the powerful surge they get after downing highly-caffeinated energy drinks, like Red Bull, Full Throttle, and Amp.

In March, four Florida middle school students were rushed to the ER after drinking an energy drink and experiencing sweating and heart palpitations. Last year, a Colorado principal banned the beverages, after a handful of high school students got sick after shooting the drink.

And earlier this year, a study published in The Journal of American College Health, suggested that regular consumption of these super-caffeinated drinks among athletes could be linked to risk-taking behavior like substance abuse, unprotected sex, and aggression. About a third of 12- to 24-year-olds profess to drinking energy drinks on a regular basis.

I’m not a frequent consumer of energy drinks, hence the only risky behavior I ever engage in is maybe burning the midnight oil to meet a deadline or competing in a race on minimal sleep. Energy in a can certainly has its time and place in my life, but maybe for teens and younger kids, it should have no time or place just yet.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor