Column
By: Mark Beardsley
Good Things Happening At Commerce High
Few newspapers devote a higher percentage of their space to schools than does The Commerce News — and all of the other MainStreet News publications. We’re a community newspaper, and schools remain the most important institution in the community, so, go figure.
There are a couple of items related to Commerce High School that should excite the CHS base.
The first is the new high school. Getting it built will be interesting, since it’s on the same plot of ground as the existing school, and challenging what with the gym out of commission for a year or two, but Commerce desperately needs a new high school. Hopefully, ways will be found to mitigate the gym situation.
We like to say that bricks and mortar do not make a school, but at the same time, having modern and attractive facilities and state-of-the-art equipment does convey the idea that the community prides itself on the education of its children. East Jackson Comprehensive High School, which opened last fall just four miles away, rightfully became an instant source of pride for students and teachers for just that reason.
Face it. CHS looks shabby, not just in comparison, but no matter how you look at it. Our students and teachers deserve better, and we, as taxpayers, decided to give them something better. Monday, we got our first glimpse at the new facility that will be the city’s flagship school, and if it comes in as the architect designed it, we’ll have done the teachers and kids justice.
But elsewhere comes the news that CHS is adding two new advance placement (AP) courses to be offered next fall. That AP U.S. History and AP Studio Art are being offered is not huge of itself, but since Superintendent Mac McCoy has been on the job, the number of AP offerings has gone from two, both in language arts, to seven — at least one in every core area.
That’s five new courses aimed at motivated college-bound students added in basically two school years, five rigorous courses designed to challenge the best students. With the new high school and the Bill Anderson Center for the Performing Arts, we can also expect new music and drama offerings to be added to the curriculum.
New and better courses; greatly improved facilities: That’s good news and more good news. Neither is eminently as entertaining as the “Let’s All Kill Coach Canup” fan club that made the police report a few weeks ago, but the new course offerings and new facilities will benefit thousands of our kids over the years, and to me they hold out the promise that CHS is in resurgence academically. Time will tell, but good things are definitely happening at the school, and what’s good for CHS is good for Commerce.
By the way, with junior Cat Ball chosen to attend the Governor’s Honors Program this summer, CHS will have sent kids to Valdosta for the summer enrichment two years in a row. Win Blair was last year’s honoree, and before that I can’t remember the last CHS student who was selected and actually chose to go.
Editorial
Let’s Keep Perspective As New CHS Is Built
Already complaints are surfacing about the design of the new Commerce High School — not about the design of the finished product so much as the fact that the school will be without a gym for one to two years.
The school board calls that a trade-off for saving $1.5 to $2 million on the cost of the new school. Some parents and others who attended Monday night’s unveiling wondered if that’s the best the school board and its architects could do.
Such issues were bound to arise once the decision was made to build the new school on the same footprint as the old. It is inconceivable that such a project could take place without a major disruption. But let’s try to keep things in perspective. The disruption is for a limited time and we’ll have a new high school, the need for which is not disputed, and it will be right where it’s always been.
Certainly, parents have the right to expect — and school officials the obligation to deliver — the best possible environment under those difficult circumstances. Can the contractor be encouraged to move more quickly on the gym without sacrificing time on the rest of the school? What arrangements can be made to salvage the basketball seasons for kids and fans? The school board and its architect and contractors must become creative in finding ways to minimize the disruption. The community wants a quality new school, but it does not wish to sacrifice the high school experience for its kids as the construction takes place.
It might have been helpful to have had more community involvement in the planning of what will be the most important building in Commerce. Perhaps the plan is the best under the circumstances, but the community buy-in would have been greater had the public been consulted before the design was finalized. Nonetheless, citizens should also respect the challenges facing the board of education in designing a high school to meet all of the needs and desires of the community on a limited budget. The consensus seems to be that the building is acceptable in both design and function, even if sacrificing the gymnasium for a year or two is a subject of debate.
Let’s not get totally distracted by the gym. Surely officials and parents can work around those issues to build the school all Commerce wants.
Where’s The Concern For The Public’s Privacy?
It is interesting that senators from both of the political parties have urged the Justice Department to investigate the unauthorized searches of passport files of presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama.
Their passport files were apparently compromised by contract workers for the State Department, creating a mini-furor in Washington, DC.
Not that the investigation shouldn’t take place. The breach of privacy is a serious matter, given the underhanded nature of politics these days.
It’s just too bad that both parties can’t also agree to investigate President Bush for the unauthorized wire taps of American citizens who are neither presidential candidates nor U.S. senators.
No administration has worked as hard as this one to erode not just the privacy of the American public, but also its Constitutional rights. Apparently, U.S. senators of both parties can agree that the privacy of U.S. Senators should be respected; they just don’t hold the public’s right of privacy in the same regard. What’s good for the goose, apparently, is not good for the gander — at least in the Senate.
Column
By: Susan Harper
Who’s Afraid Of Uncle Sam?
Michael Moore’s most recent film was a revelation to me. Unquestionably the best of his three films — or so I thought — it managed to strike a balance between fervor, self-deprecating irony, and plain old humor, and this balance kept the movie from veering off into a lecture.
But I’m not sure how many people saw it. Burdened as it was with the unfortunate title “Sicko,” I think it was widely avoided. I know the title would have kept me out of the theater, since it sounds like a film about sexual perversion or homicidal mania — and heaven knows, there are enough of those out there already. My movie-going buddy and I had to stay home last weekend, because we’re a bit too old for spring-break beach movies and neither of us cared to see “Shutter” or “Ripper” or “Eyes” (don’t ask) or “Jumper.”
But I knew that “Sicko” was about health care in America and how it compares with health care in other countries, and I’ve been passionately interested in that issue ever since I lived for a year in a country that had universal health care. In fact, one of my vivid memories about that year was the bewilderment I felt when it ended and I came home and had to re-enter the maze of primary and secondary insurance carriers, pre-existing conditions, co-payments, non-allowed procedures — a maze strewn with paperwork in quadruplicate. When you’re young, and I was, you adapt quickly. You just jump in and swim. But I had a moment of clarity at the water’s edge, so to speak, when I thought, “Wow. We’ve been gypped, we Americans! And here I always thought we were so smart.”
The forty-plus years since then have done nothing to change my mind, but a lot to confirm and expand that moment of clarity. Health care isn’t the only boat we’ve missed. The efforts of lobbyists from the auto, rubber, oil, steel, and airline industries persuaded us to abandon or even tear up our nationwide network of rail lines — at what cost to us, in terms of air quality, health, and energy efficiency? Now rumor has it that the telecommunications industry would like to gain control of the Internet, so that they can charge you for each visit as they now charge you for each phone call. Remember free TV? Remember when cable television was going to be commercial-free because you would already have paid to watch it? What do you pay now to watch all those commercials?
In “Sicko,” Michael Moore sits at one point with a group of young Americans living in France, and listens to them extol the benefits of the health care and social services. “Why,” he asks, “can’t we have something like this in America?” A Frenchwoman later answers his question this way: “Because in France the government is afraid of the people, but in America the people are afraid of the government.”
I’ve been thinking about that ever since. It has the ring of truth, somehow. I’m not sure I’m afraid of Uncle Sam, but I’m pretty sure he’s not afraid of me. I always thought he was really all of us, but I’m not sure about that, either.
Susan Harper is director of the Commerce Public Library.
