Baca to the future

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     The news today on the new Maverick football coach maybe could have been better, but it definitely could have been worse. I’m surprised they went with an out-of-towner, although the choice looks better than most of the local applicants.
     Eddie Baca. Coached Del Rio to a 5-5 record in 1999, mediocre, but an improvement over the Rams’ 1998 mark of 0-10 under the previous coach. Then, unless there’s more than one Eddie Baca coaching high school football in Texas, my Google search showed the new Winn coach became a real nomad after lasting only one year with the Rams.
     In the past 10 years, Baca has spent time with 2A, 4A and even 6-man football without terribly impressive winning marks.
     Well, you’re not going to attract a superstar to Eagle Pass to a program that lacks a winning tradition. At least this guy has head coaching experience and probably some exposure to effective strategies used elsewhere around the state. When his full resume gets publicized, probably we’ll see the qualifications that led the athletic staff and school board to choose him over the rest.
     For the sake of the C.C. Winn athletes, I wish Coach Baca the best. I hope that he’s given everyone’s full support and that the board, parents and other EP coaches don’t undermine his efforts. I think the right person could make the Mavericks competitive. Is Baca the guy? I’m going to cross my fingers, hold my breath and wait and see.

Dear Eagle Pass Dropout, Thank You

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
Since EPISD would have a lot to gain by reducing the dropout rate, I’ve often wondered why more effort isn’t put into this cause. The conclusion I’ve reached is that such effort from the school district going it alone would be pointless.
The dropout rate, probably between 30 and 40 percent, cannot be impacted significantly without a massive coordinated effort from the state, parents, schools, the community, business groups, civic organizations, churches and city and county governments.
Can teachers alone reduce the number of dropouts? Some, of course. And the rare teachers who can volunteer their lives to their students 24/7, becoming in essence surrogate parents, are able to make a big difference. Hardly anyone, however, can give that much of themselves.
Generally, we don’t have the influence to turn numerous lives around 180 degrees. So, when students have given up academically and use school as nothing but a hangout place until finally leaving, teachers – if they are honest – would tell you they’re often left feeling like this:
Dear Recent Dropout,
Thank you for your decision to leave our school. Hopefully, you have something better to do now than waste 8 hours a day of your time and ours. My workdays have become more pleasant since you left and the other students have benefitted by receiving more of my attention.
Maybe now you have more peace of mind as you probably spent the past several years resenting every school day because, “My teachers don’t like me.” You’re right. They probably didn’t like you. Your only reasons for attending school were for breakfast and lunch, to scope out the opposite sex, and to socialize. You caused daily disruptions and interfered with those who were trying to do something positive. There’s hardly much to like in that.
Good riddance to you and your kind. Yes, we want students to succeed and graduate. You, however, haven’t developed the maturity required to set goals for yourself. You got to high school and even digressed, acting again like the 1st grader you were many years ago. We have a lot of really great students, and your childishness stood in their way. Therefore, we’re fine with sacrificing you for the betterment of those left behind.
Hasta la vista, you ingrate. Given a fine campus, adequate resources and good teachers, you had the opportunity to prepare for college or a career and a comfortable future. You squandered this opportunity, one which young people in many other countries would die to have. Because your life centers around instant gratification, you couldn’t garner the self-discipline required to finish 2-3 more years of school to make yourself better off for the rest of your life. Maybe you have some lame excuses. Maybe you had some real hardships. I do feel a little sorry for you and wish you had stayed in school. In the end, though, you set the wrong priorities. You took control of your social life and recreation but refused responsibility for anything important.
Go and have your fun now. In a few years, you’ll be raising kids on minimum wage, struggling to keep them in decent clothes, or you’ll be writing them letters from behind bars, absent from every milestone of their young lives. Hopefully, you’ll tell your kids not to be like you. If you get a little smarter with age, you’ll tell them to study hard, stay in school, and graduate.
Sincerely,
An EPISD Teacher
Dear 4th, 5th and 6th graders,
Surely, you recognize the anger expressed in the letter above. You should understand that those who take education seriously, have little patience for those who disregard it. In the future, which type of person are you going to be?
I’m writing to you because in elementary school, many young people have already started down that slippery slope toward total academic failure. Please be determined to graduate from high school no matter what life may throw at you. With a diploma, you can go on to college or a trade school or a career such as law enforcement or the military. Have goals. Even if they change constantly, goals give you a reason to keep trying hard.
Academics might be hard for you. You might be behind. Maybe you’re just now learning English. No matter the circumstances, you must set your mind to working hard and always doing your best. Do you have any of these bad habits below?
*You copy most of your work from other students.
*You have not read more than 3 books (other than textbooks) in the past year.
*On a test, you won’t even attempt to answer a question unless it’s multiple choice, true/false or matching.
*You only do homework one night a week or less.
*You beg for points or extra work at the end of every nine weeks in order to pass.
*You are absent more than twice a month.
**You never give any though to what career you might eventually have.
If you are guilty of even one of the above, you are at risk of someday being a dropout. If you’re guilty of even one of these, you’re behind and getting further behind each day. Some day you’ll be one of those students whom the teachers are glad to see quit because they’re nothing but an annoyance.
Don’t let yourself become that type of person.
Sincerely,
An EPISD Teacher

Swine flu hogwash

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
During the April-May swine flu scare, local yokels statewide, including EP’s own, acted more intelligently than the planet’s most far-reaching disease monitoring group – WHO.
Who? No, not Who, the rock band -- WHO – the World Health Organization.
After the first news of this new flu, schools closed as needed, groups canceled meetings and most government officials simply just prepared in case the outbreak got worse.
Meanwhile WHO director-general Dr. Margaret Chan, stirred up a worldwide panic by declaring during the early stages that “all of humanity is under threat.”
Thanks to quotes like this and thanks to constant reminders that WHO ranked the swine flu a scary 5 out of 6 on the pandemic scale, individuals worldwide needlessly wore masks in public, visited emergency rooms fearful that they had the disease, and avoided eating pork thinking that even cooked pig meat could be a threat.
While school districts shut down around San Antonio, in Brownsville and in Laredo, in Eagle Pass, the school doors stayed open. Most people supported this decision, but some did disagree. These people, I think, just felt that other schools were closing, so maybe we should, too, just to be safe.
To me, all of the districts made the right decision, except Laredo. From what I heard, Laredo only had “suspected” cases that never were confirmed. Plus, by the time the Laredo schools made their closings, it was apparent that this swine flu would rarely caused severe illness.
Even WHO now says that it will reassess its warning system for contagious illnesses. The current system rates the threat only on the geographic spread of a disease without considering its severity. So, the swine flu and the lethal ebola virus would receive the same threat level if they spread the same geographic distance. WHO’s threat system got everyone worked up far too much for something that’s mostly causing just a little fever and sore throat.
Another group that messed up in handling this outbreak was U.I.L. First, the regional track meets were canceled, then two days later rescheduled. Then, all sports were suspended for two weeks before a reversal was made and they resumed one week later. It seems like U.I.L. wanted to rush out announcements before thoroughly considering all of its options, and the frequent reversals really caused havoc with the planning of coaches, players, parents and fans.
Finally, Time magazine comes out saying the swine flu didn’t turn out so bad, but “just wait until next winter.” Yeah. I’m not scared. Here in Eagle Pass I’m more concerned about surviving the upcoming summer without having a heat stroke!

EPISD Board Members Get Schooled

The EPISD board elections (May 9) pretty much went as expected. One liar and cheater got voted out. One liar and cheater stayed in. One incumbent fell victim to being an associate of these two liars and cheaters.
As the old saying goes, “Two out of three ain’t bad.”
Actually, it is a slight surprise, because Eagle Pass election results usually aren’t so rational.
Lupita Fuentes survived, I guess partly due to a weak opponent. Rex McBeath and Tom Cary, I think felt the backlash from two recent issues – the poor handling of the C.C. Winn head football coaching vacancy, and the public’s realization that the board duped everyone about the proposed fine arts complex.
Adding these mistakes to a cartload of personal shortcomings, McBeath dealt himself a fatal blow through his lack of professional status. What the hell does he even do for a living nowadays? Does anybody know?
I saw comments made that the personal lives of our politicians don’t matter as long as they perform their duties well. I think it does matter, and matters more for the school board than any other elected position. We shouldn’t allow any school employee or school administrator to be a drunk, an adulterer, or a wife beater because the people around our children need to show by example how to live healthy lives -- emotionally, physically and mentally.
This triumvirate of McBeath, Cary and Fuentes might have been well-intentioned concerning the Winn coaching job, but they way they handled it created the perception of back room dealing or undue meddling. Furthermore, almost anytime the board rejects a hiring recommendation from its professional school employees (as it did twice in this case), it shows disrespect toward the administrators and other employees who made the recommendation. It says, “Your choice isn’t good enough, try again.”
It’s only human to wonder whether these three had a specific individual in mind that they wanted hired and whether they would reject anyone except their preferred applicant. If so, that level of meddling from the school board is unethical and can even be illegal. Hopefully, the board can now make a good decision on a coach for the Mavericks and hopefully he will have a strong recommendation from the athletic director and the full support of other district employees.
About the fine arts complex, the school board tricked some people who voted for the bond for the athletic complex thinking that it also would include an auditorium for band and drama performances and other uses. I knew prior to the bond election that the fine arts complex was just a ruse. To begin with, the board never proposed adequate funding to build what the fine arts backers requested. Secondly, the idea got tacked on to the bond package at the very end of the debate, obviously just to cast a wider net to garner more votes.
Every major construction project experiences cost overruns, and in this case, when a shortage of funds causes cutbacks, the first thing to go will be the last thing that was added – fine arts.
It won’t be due to the bond package, but we’ll have an EPISD fine arts center some day. Other districts similar to ours have them, and although our administrators and board don’t often lead the way, they are pretty good at following others.
Actually, our school district leadership lately has been effective, stable and almost scandal free. The new school board must realize that if they screw that up, they will pay come the next election. The board members should also each consider what happened to McBeath and Cary. Hard effort and good intentions can be offset by one or two instances of dishonesty and secrecy.
Oh yes, morals also matter.

Submissions to this blog will be added only once or twice per week through May. If the audience develops sufficiently, I will continue regular updates, beginning with three per week through the summer and five entries per week through next school year. If you know others who would like to see these entries, please help out by sending them e-mail or letting them know in person.
Coming next: Swine flu hogwash

TAKS for Parents

Mathematical Applications
1. If beer costs $6.25 a six pack and cigarettes are $4.20 a pack, how much does it cost for you to buy 2 six packs and smokes for yourself and each of your two brothers?
A) $50.10
B) $12.60 -- with a five-finger discount on the beer.
C) $100 after I use my leftover money to buy lottery tickets.
Making Predictions
2. If your daughter has 6 tardies and 3 zeroes in English class, and the teacher says, “I’m going to call your parents,” your daughter’s most likely response would be . . . ?
A) “Please don’t call them, I’ll be grounded.”
B) “My parents don’t care. Here’s my number – 555-5763.”
C) “I live at my boyfriends house.”
Percentages
3. If you have 4 hours of free time each weeknight and you spend 30 minutes of it helping your child with homework, what percent of your free time are you spending helping your child?
A) 12.5%
B) 125%
C) “Are you talking about what’s his name?”
Multiple Meaning Words
4. The location where the two boards met formed a joint. In this sentence “joint” means?
A) A connection point for two objects.
B) A penitentiary.
C) A special type of cigarette smoked only for medicinal purposes.
Estimating
5. Your child is absent 9 days the first nine weeks, 12 days the second nine weeks, 10 days the third nine weeks and 11 days the fourth nine weeks. Estimate the total number of days he or she is absent for the year.
A) 40
B) Still less than the number of days of work that I miss.
C) “Why does it matter?”
Using Context Clues
6. To improve your child’s chances of success, the school principal requests frequent parental involvement. In this sentence, the phrase "parental involvement" means?
A) Attending school functions.
B) Knowing the name of the school that your child attends.
C) Showing up at the school to complain each time your child is punished for misbehavior.
Distinguishing Fact From Opinion
7. Which of the following is a fact?
A) Teachers are overpaid for an easy job with long vacations.
B) The best attitude for a child to have is, “Don’t take crap from anybody.”
C) Video games and books are equally good pastimes for children.
D) All of the above
Making Inferences
8. Mrs. Botello’s 2nd grade daughter Maya has a cough, a runny nose, and a 101 degree fever. Despite Maya’s protests that she feels bad, Mrs. Botello still sends her to school because she has to go to work. You can infer that?
A) Maya is 7 years old.
B) Maya’s teacher is mean.
C) Mrs. Botello makes rational decisions.
Fractions
9. You pay $300 per month in child support. If 2/5 goes to one child with your first wife, how much are you paying for your younger child with your second wife?
A) $180
B) $450,000 pesos
C) Nothing until they come pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
Main Idea
10. Dariela’s parents read many books to her when she was little. In kindergarten she could read second grade books and Clifford the Big Red Dog was her favorite. In 3rd grade, Dariela missed only one question on the TAKS reading test. Once, Dariela was carrying several books to her bedroom and she tripped on a step. The main idea of this paragraph is?
A) Toddlers benefit from being read to.
B) The 3rd grade TAKS is easy.
C) Books are dangerous.

Evaluation
For each answer A, score 0. For each answer B, score 1. For each answer C or D, score 2. If your total score is more than 10, you are required to attend parenting tutorials each Saturday during the summer. In addition, you must re-apply for your position as a parent and you must re-take this exam until you pass.

Author’s Note:
This test, in order to equal the unbearable tedium given to students, needs at least 40 more questions. If you have an additional question or questions you would like to submit, please leave them as a comment or send an email to anon@stx.rr.com

Coming soon: The dire need to improve C.C. Winn Sports
A sincere thank you to this year’s dropouts

School Grades: 50 is the new zero

Schools have a commonly used policy nowadays that I think would infuriate most people were they fully aware of it.

More and more often students – by school policy set by the principal and school board – receive a grade of 50 for doing absolutely nothing. In most schools, that’s the lowest average a student can get, while in some schools 50 is the lowest daily grade or test grade that the computer system will accept.

Do nil. Zilch. Nada. Naught. Just show up and you get a 50. Oh, and you don’t even have to show up that much. Be there just so often and you can make up for excessive days missed through “time-in” where 1-hour equals a whole day.

High schools and colleges used to fret about “grade inflation,” but what’s happening now in Eagle Pass and other places, too, equals nothing less than “grade welfare.”

Just the unfairness of it compared to the way we were treated should have parents and community members up in arms. I mean, “back in the day,” when we did nothing for an assignment, the grade showed a big fat nothing. If an assignment or several assignments weren’t done, we expected a grade or an average that reflected that. An average of 50 meant that we did half the work, or we did all of the work, but only got half of it right.

Today, students “earn” a 50 by doing nothing. Why? Because it’s administration’s simple solution to solving the problem of too many students failing. While no work accomplished still SHOULD mean a zero, that might discourage too many students and cause them to give up.

I’ve got news! Making everything easier only makes the students lazier! Lower the standards, and they lower their performance. Lower the standards more, and they lower their performance even more.

The students know the system and know how to take advantage of it to do as little as possible and still get by. Some of them slide by with a C each of the first three nine weeks, and then know they can do absolutely nothing the final nine weeks, that they will receive their free 50, and that they will have a high enough average to earn a full year’s credit.

The freebies are really unfair to the students who are trying to get by without them. Many students put effort into doing their daily work, and spend time studying, but still do poorly on important tests. Such students giving it the ol’ college try often end up with averages in the 60s while those around them doing nothing get an almost equal 50 handed to them.

EPISD’s grade polices compliment several other programs designed to give students second, third and fourth chances. Because of these policies students do not learn that irresponsibility results in serious consequences. They don’t learn if you don’t do your work, you fail, you go to summer school to try again.

What students are learning now is that the system bends to their desires. When they desire less work, they simply have to just do less work. Something will give. They’ll get the grade. They’ll still pass.

It used to be that the teachers were in charge. Now the bureaucrats have taken over, and the product – the students – must keep moving along the conveyor belt. When you have defective final goods, don’t make corrections and improvements, just lower your criteria for what is acceptable. With these attitudes, the students will eventually just be giving themselves whatever grade they want.

Adolescent Sexuality

An eighth grade girl that I saw a few months ago wore a pink shirt to school with large block lettering: "I'm a virgin -- but this shirt is old."
My first reaction, "Damn! Where the hell are this child's parents? Do they check -- or care -- what she's wearing to school?"
My next thought was that she might as well wear a shirt that says,"I'm a sleazy whore, and I'm proud of it."
The Eagle Pass kids over the past few years have gotten very expressive with their sexuality at school, and, of course, everywhere else. Their behavior at school bothers me the worst, though, because it's a place where they should be seeking the respect of the adults around them. Something like church.
Holding hands, touching suggestively, kissing and necking (previously scorned as Public Displays of Affection) seem commonplace in the hallways today. Lesbian relationships are discussed and practiced openly as girls kiss girls in just about any location they please in front of anyone. A small number of boys brazenly reveal femininity with no qualms concerning how homosexuality is received by others.
I saw another shirt at a junior high school this year that made a veiled but easily recognized reference to receiving oral sex. Again, I wondered where the hell the parents were.
Following these sightings, I started wondering just how far coul such messages eventually get if left unchecked. I made a list of possible bad T-shirts for kids. We seriously might be seeing these on young children some day:

1. For a 15-year-old unmarried girl in El Dorado, TX -- "Old Maid"
2. Top 10 reasons beer is better than a juicebox
3. I'm with Stupid (Arrow pointing to parent) -- maybe true, but really ignorant if your child is with you
4. Television is Life
5. Are you my Daddy?
6. Say no to hugs
7. My parents went to San Quentin and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt
8. Will work to feed my mom's habit

Many newspapers, not much news

This is something I came upwith one night when I couldn’t sleep.

Eagle Pass, though already flooded with media for a city this size, could still use a couple more original newspapers. Here are some possible names for new newspapers for us:

(In no particular order.)

The Deaf Mute
La Basura
The Lap Dog
La Mordita
The No News Guide – motto: “No news is good news”
The Follower
The Kilogram – the official newsletter of the area drug trade
El Periodico Que Es Todo En Espanol
The None of Your Business Journal
La Leecha
The Drop Cloth
The Behind the Times or its Spanish version -- La Tortuga