Saturday Thumbs
Saturday, June 14, 2008 12:30 AM PDT
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E-mail this articleJune 14 Daily News editorial
Looking ahead with confidence
(Thumbs up) Thumbs up to the graduating high school Class of 2008. Area high school graduates profiled over the past couple of weeks in The Daily News’ “Standout Grads 2008” series bear witness to the quality of this diverse, hard-working senior class.
These graduates are society’s future nurses, pilots, pharmacists, mechanics, medical doctors, musicians, office workers, dental hygienists, police officers and members of the armed forces. Many overcame difficult circumstances to rise to the top of their class. All demonstrated a work ethic that gives us confidence in the future. It’s in good hands.
One great lesson
(Thumbs up) Thumbs up to students and staff at Monticello Middle School and Robert Gray Elementary for all their work on two Mini Relays this spring. Together, the two schools raised $14,000 for the American Cancer Society. As regional pioneers of the student version of Relay for Life, these local youths are learning about health issues, the power of community organization, and last but not least, inventiveness. One 7th-grade Monticello class, frustrated in their fund-raising, dreamed up a pie-in-the-face booth for their Relay carnival and raked in big bucks.
Kudos to the kids who ran and walked the track — many did 5- and 10-mile stints — and to their immensely supportive teachers and parents. To learn you can make a life-and-death difference: what a lesson!
Educator is clueless
(Thumbs down) It’s too bad we can’t send some educators back to high school for civics 101. The principal at Shasta High School in Sacramento, Calif., could use a crash course on the importance of free expression in this democracy. Principal Milan Woollard is truly clueless.
Wollard disbanded the school’s student-run newspaper when its editors published a front-page photo of a student burning an American flag, accompanied by an editorial defending flag burning as political speech protected by the First Amendment. “The paper’s done,” he told the Record Searchlight newspaper of nearby Redding. “There is not going to be a school newspaper next year.”
The principal needs to crack a history book. The students had it right. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled nearly 20 years ago that flag burning was constitutionally protected speech.
Standouts on and off the field
(Thumbs up) Congratulations to Mark Morris seniors Kasey Lambert and T.J. Suek, who will be playing football for two outstanding college programs next year. Lambert is headed to Whitworth College in Spokane to play linebacker and Suek will play defensive back at Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland. Daily News sports writer Ben Zimmerman reports that the two schools are Northwest Conference powerhouses. Whitworth is defending two conference championships and PLU has four national championships.
The schools are getting a couple of young men who are standouts both on and off the field. Lambert has a 3.96 grade point average and Suek is a 3.70 student.
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