Bus bullies

WSOC-TV aired a story last night about a recent bullying incident on a Mooresville High School bus. A video of the incident has been circulating on Facebook, a popular social networking site. Click here for WSOC-TV's story.

Are you cut out for public service?

Are you tired of sitting on the political sidelines, watching others make decisions about your community, your government and your tax dollar?

Perhaps you're cut out for public service.

An upcoming workshop by North Carolina's Institute of Political Leadership promises to answer your questions about public office and how to effectively campaign.

The workshop, planned for March 17 from 6-9 pm. at the Charles Mack Citizens Center, will focus on the skills needed to run for office, how to formulate and execute a campaign strategy, and how to be an effective public officeholder. Cost is $25 and includes training materials and a light dinner.

This year in Mooresville, the mayor's seat and three commissioners' seats are up for election.

Mayor Chris Montgomery says he will not seek re-election. Commissioner Miles Atkins has announced his plans to run for that seat, which means his at-large seat will be open with no incumbent vying for it.

Seats for wards 1 and 2 - currently occupied by Mitch Abraham and Thurman Houston, respectively - are also up for election this year.

The mayor serves a two-year term, while commissioners serve four years.

Meanwhile, three seats on the Mooresville Graded School District Board of Education - all four-year terms - are also up for re-election.

A primary, if needed, will be held Oct. 11, followed by the general election on Nov. 8.

Other county offices to be elected this year can be found by clicking here.

To reserve seats for the Institute of Political Leadership's March 17 workshop, call the Mooresville-South Iredell Chamber of Commerce at 704-664-3898.

The downside to digital conversion

The Report is excited to announce we'll be contributing a commentary to the Mooresville Weekly every other Friday, beginning today. Below is today's article. Have your own opinion regarding Mooresville's laptop program? Share it here or at http://mooresvilleweekly.com/opinion/2010/10/305/

Mooresville Graded School District students are participating in a science experiment of sorts. But in this experiment, they are the mice.

Students in grades 4 to 12 are toting school-issued laptop computers between home and school. The district is on the leading edge of the conversion from textbooks to laptops and is a model for other districts across the country considering the digital change.

But the school district is learning as it goes, cutting its digital teeth on the backs of its students. And that has proven to be both good and bad. Were administrators truly prepared for the underbelly of this digital conversion? Are they capable of controlling it? Are they even acknowledging it?

Unfortunately, a 2-hour meeting this week with district Superintendent Mark Edwards and Chief Technology Officer Scott Smith, while informational, did little to ease my biggest concerns.

The computers certainly open countless windows of opportunity for students. Just recently, Edwards said, a group of students were able to monitor live seismic activity from their laptops, while another group studying the state of Illinois was able to “Skype” (video-call through a computer) a classroom of students in Illinois.

Skyping, Edwards said, is much more interesting than reading a textbook.

But so is playing Solitaire.

Some students say playing games on the laptop is a common pastime in classrooms. Edwards, however, said his teachers would take personal offense to that suggestion. “They would say ‘that reflects poorly on my teaching, and it’s not true,’” he said.

Administrators and teachers apparently tell students not to play games in class. But if they don’t want them tempted in such a way, why include games on the machines in the first place? Why do the laptops have search engines with associated chat rooms and e-mail programs? If the laptops are used strictly for educational purposes, why aren’t they stripped of all the bells and whistles?

Though the district subscribes to “Nettrekker,” an educational search engine, it has not disabled other search engines that have associated e-mail and chat-room programs. Why? Because “there’s a lot of good stuff out there that Nettrekker does not find,” Smith said.

Edwards said the district pays a subscription fee for a service that blocks student access to inappropriate websites. The district can add its own blocks and override the service’s blocks. “It’s not perfect, but it catches almost everything,” Smith said.

“By default,” added Edwards, the filters will block chat rooms but not e-mail programs. The district, he said, “does not endorse ‘outside’ e-mail use by students.”

He admitted that “no filter is perfect, and students find ways around (it).” Indeed, students have learned to access sites like Facebook and YouTube, even though filters supposedly block those sites.

“Parents are the best filter,” Edwards said. But many of the issues are happening in the classroom where parents can’t serve as filters. In fact, Apple Remote Desktop, which allows administrators and technology personnel to remotely peek at students’ computer screens while they’re in the school network, “does not work in student homes or other public locations,” Edwards said, so the district can’t determine if policies are being broken once the laptops leave the school network.

At school, students are punished via in-school suspension or out-of-school suspension for “misuse of school technology,” which Edwards said includes bullying, viewing inappropriate content and even adding stickers to the laptops. According to data provided by the school district this week, 44 Mooresville Middle students received in-school suspension and two received out-of-school suspension last year for misuse of school technology.

While Edwards and Smith said after-school detention is used only for “excessive tardy offenses,” middle-school students were, in fact, placed in after-school detention last school year for misuse of school technology. The district said this week it would compile that information, but it has not yet released it.

As of Oct. 15, five middle-school students have been sent to in-school suspension for the 2010-11 school year for misuse of school technology. In the same time at the high school, six students have received in-school suspension and two have received out-of-school suspension.

Last school year at the high school, 45 students received in-school suspension and 10 received out-of-school suspension for misuse of school technology.

Edwards said the “information about our filter and its limitations is shared with every parent during the parent training when students first received their laptops.” But parents were also told at Mooresville Intermediate School in August 2008 that students would not be able to access chat rooms or instant messaging on the MacBooks, and the school district, at that time, would not allow student-to-student e-mailing.

In regard to giving students more freedom with their laptops, Edwards said the district is simply trying to create conditions where students make the right choices. “I truly believe the vast majority of our students are responsible with [the laptops],” Edwards said. “They do what they’re supposed to do. They’re conscientious about it and follow the rules.”

While we all wish that were true, it smacks of denial, especially when the chief technology officer acknowledged that monitoring students’ Internet usage “is a constant job, and we’re trying all the time to catch the holes.

“But the kids are smart.”

A Mooresville High School senior who plans to attend a four-year college said she believes the laptops are good for research. However, she said, they’re primarily good for games – and cheating.

Some students say they cheat on homework by downloading it onto USB flash drives and sharing it with others. A 2009 Mooresville High School graduate, now in college, said laptops make cheating on tests easy, too. She and her classmates would e-mail or chat with friends – some who had taken the test earlier in the day – to ask for answers to certain questions.

Students also used search engines to find answers to questions during tests, she said. In a matter of seconds, a simple Google search yields answers to countless questions. An inquiry about the largest desert on earth produced, in less than a second, the answer to that question and the names of the hottest and driest places on earth. How many calories are in a Big Mac? More than 500. What’s 23.62 percent of 4,615.23? 1,090.11733.

Students have also learned to selectively delete certain visited websites from their browsing history so teachers won’t be as suspicious as they would be if an entire browsing history was deleted.

It’s also easier to cheat off a neighbor’s computer screen than a piece of paper on a desk, students say, especially when a teacher is on her laptop or otherwise occupied in class.

Edwards said state tests prohibit the use of any outside aides other than a calculator on certain math assessments, and SATs are conducted outside the school district. He said the numbers speak for themselves: Without the use of laptops, Mooresville’s average SAT score increased by 10 points in 2010 even with an increase in students taking the test.

But some local tests allow use of the laptops. Edwards said the district is testing software that “locks down” the laptops during an online assessment.

“Preliminary testing has been good,” he said. “If this software continues to be successful, it will be deployed to all machines.”

Smith, the technology officer said teachers can digitally arrange questions on the same test, so question 5 on one student’s test may be question 20 on another’s. Edwards added, the district encourages alternate layouts of classrooms so teachers can keep a better eye on laptop screens, but that’s been difficult in some of the smaller high-school classrooms. Administrators are also stressing to teachers the importance of walking around instead of teaching in one place, Edwards said.

The laptops offer a wide new world to students – one that could certainly prove beneficial to them in the long run. But in all the hoopla of the digital conversion, it seems students are becoming secondary to technology. To suggest parents are the best filter to the risks, when the issues are happening in the classroom, is dismissive and unfair.

When teachers are stretched too thin – especially with the added burden of “constantly” staying on top of kids’ computer use – and when administrators live in a rose-colored world where 1,500 hormonal high-schoolers “do the right thing,” it makes it natural for parents to speculate if the adults responsible for our children Monday through Friday are actually able to protect our kids while they’re being educated by Mr. World Wide Web.

Getting Back to Basics

Wednesday night’s “town hall meeting” was an eye opening experience – in many ways.

From fraternizing with developers to the treatment of the town’s elderly and special-needs population – mingled, of course, with lively discussion about some of the town’s more controversial issues – the meeting offered citizens a rare opportunity to speak casually, yet candidly, with their elected representatives.

Two commissioners – Ward 4 Commissioner Chris Carney and At-Large Commissioner Miles Atkins - turned out for the three-hour-long informal meeting, organized by Rev. Larry Green and attended by about a dozen local residents, including Iredell County Commissioner Ken Robertson. Green said every commissioner except Thurman Houston responded in some way to his invitation. Mitch Abraham and Mac Herring said they had previously-scheduled plans, and Frank Rader didn’t respond to Green but told the Charlotte Observer that he wouldn’t attend. Mayor Bill Thunberg, said Green, didn’t respond to the invitation at all.

And that’s unfortunate because even though I wasn’t sure what to expect from the meeting – or if it would be fruitful or productive at all – the free flow of information and the uninhibited exchange of ideas was unlike anything we have ever witnessed in Mooresville before.

I left the meeting with fresh insight. Perhaps the most compelling impression that the meeting left on me was that our town and its government is headed in the right direction. It is progress, not perfection, that we expect. And as long as elected officials are talking to us, and listening to us, we’ll continue to move in that direction.

The open dialogue that transpired at the meeting reminded me of the original purpose of my blog – and it highlighted for me just how far some have strayed from that purpose.

I am a fervent believer in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and I staunchly defend people’s right to speak freely – even when their speech displeases me, and even when their words stand in opposition to everything in which I believe.

Commissioner Atkins and his wife, Kim, have been heavily criticized in the comments section of my blog since last week when the Mooresville Downtown Commission announced that it had hired Kim Atkins to serve as its executive director. I have no problem with people questioning public officials, doubting their motives and/or intentions, and holding them accountable for their actions.

What I do have a problem with is this: Despite sustained attacks on this blog against Atkins and his wife, when he stepped out of Town Hall and sat down willing to face his critics on Wednesday, only one person confronted him about his potential influence over his wife’s hiring. That one person: local attorney Cliff Homesley.

Homesley pointedly asked Atkins if at any time during the hiring process he had discussed his wife’s candidacy with other government officials or MDC board members.

“I have had no contact even with fellow commissioners,” Atkins said. “I’ve had some talk to me, but I have refrained.”

It appears, however, that at least two elected officials did not “refrain” from attempting to interfere in the process. In fact, those two individuals apparently threatened to withdraw the town’s funding of the MDC if it hired Kim Atkins as the new executive director.

Atkins neither confirmed nor denied the information, but he said that since his wife’s hiring he has heard that some of his fellow elected officials were “really opposed” to her hiring.

Carney, however, stated that members of the MDC board of directors approached him, concerned about their funding from the town. He said they asked him if the funds would be “at risk” if they hired Atkins as the executive director “because they had heard that from other elected officials.”

Carney acknowledged that he warned the MDC board members upon their selection of Atkins that “they better be sure their policies and procedures were in place.”

He told those in attendance at Wednesday night’s meeting that it was improper for commissioners to have spoken for the entire town board and to have threatened to pull an organization’s funding.

Carney explained that town commissioners earlier this year agreed to fund the MDC as long as the organization met certain goals that it spelled out in a three-year business plan that was shared with town commissioners in budget talks this year.

Homesley also pointed out that Carney’s brother, Robby, was recently hired as the existing industry and marketing manager of the Mooresville-South Iredell Economic Development Corporation – an organization that, not unlike the MDC, receives annual funding from the Town of Mooresville.

County Commissioner Ken Robertson chimed in, denying that government agencies “play favorites” with family members of public officials. “They actually get scrutinized more,” he said, because of precisely what is happening right now to the MDC. “The employers are afraid they’ll be accused of cronyism,” Robertson said.

Sometimes, he said, that means the employer will “work twice as hard” to find a reason not to hire the family member.

And the government official, Robertson said, “is scrutinized only because they are related to someone who is trying to maximize their value in this world.”

Said Atkins: “I hope that people will get to know Kim and myself. She is accountable to her board as I am accountable to you as your public servant.

“She has to stand on her own as a professional,” he said.

Simple, straightforward questions. Simple, straightforward answers. A free-flowing exchange of ideas and opinions. That's what Wednesday night’s meeting proved is possible.

It’s also what my blog is about.

Let me make something clear: My reporting is about principles, not personalities. And I expect out of others what I expect out of myself -- that any criticism will be relevant, well-founded and factual. If I ever fail in that, I ask that you hold me accountable for it.

I created my blog just over seven months ago to foster open, uncensored dialogue among and between the residents of Mooresville, southern Iredell County and beyond about issues that are important to us.

At times, certain readers have used my blog as a conduit for outright lies about me and other private citizens. One example: an innocent joke by a reader was turned into an accusation that I was having an extramarital affair … without regard for the fact that my husband, my two young daughters … my mother … all read my blog.

One reader has repeatedly called for investigations of private citizens, including me, accusing us of having “skeletons in our closets,” always stopping short, however, of disclosing just what those skeletons are.

I have even been accused of being “on welfare.” Though I see no shame in human beings who fall on hard times and need a little help, the fact remains that my husband and I chose to make financial sacrifices in order for me to be at home with our children while he earns our living … and pays our taxes.

Many readers who have signed their names to their comments, and others who are simply mentioned in my posts or readers’ comments, have been randomly grouped together despite the fact that some of us would not know each other if we ran into one another in the grocery store.

One reader wrote obscenities and attributed them to me and other community activists. Other readers have gone so far as to ridicule peoples’ appearances, their body shape, their national origin and their religious beliefs. They have stooped so low as to use derogatory and vulgar terms such as “sheep,” “freaks,” and “retarded” to describe readers who have posted statements that are critical of government officials.

I agree with one reader who pointed out that in our system, there is a fundamental distinction between public officials and private citizens. When it comes to criticism, public officials are fair game. Private citizens are not. Why? Because public officials are public officials by choice. If they don’t relish scrutiny and exposure, they can rescind their status, reverting back to being a private citizen. Private citizens don’t have that luxury; they can’t “rescind” their status as a private citizen.

The long and the short of it is this: Like many of you, I have been appalled by the hateful content of some comments that have been posted on my blog. Countless people have contacted me, beseeching me to censor such comments. But I have refused to do so. My loyalty to freedom of speech easily trumps any hurt feelings which may result from someone’s words.

However, I call on those of you who have committed to joining me in my “mission” to refrain from engaging with those whose sole purpose is clearly to personally attack others – that includes private citizens and public officials alike. This does not preclude legitimate, factual and pertinent criticism of public officials.

Let's get back to basics. In the coming days, I plan to post several different topics that were discussed at Wednesday night’s meeting. I will provide a brief synopsis of what was discussed, and, as always, I welcome and encourage your voice in the ensuing discussions and debate.

Among the issues that will be posted:

• Town commissioners and town staff fraternizing with developers
• What ever happened to the town-hall protestors’ demands for the assistant town manager’s firing? Does the town really need an assistant-town-manager position?
• The town’s hiring of engineering firm CH2M Hill for the expansion of the wastewater treatment plant
• The ever-controversial question: Should Iredell County’s two school districts merge?
• Town employees’ use of the municipal golf course

What world are we living in?: Mooresville students begin taking home laptops this week

My youngest daughter is one of the rising sixth graders at Mooresville Intermediate School who is now the proud keeper of a brand-spankin’-new Apple MacBook.

We recently returned from the hour-long training session that accompanied the long-anticipated release of the coveted laptop.

The MacBooks are being sent home this week with MIS students – grades 4 through 6. They will be handed out to Mooresville High School students next week during classes.

Citing the growing usage of iPods and cell phones, MIS Principal Julie Morrow told us tonight that the Mooresville Graded School District is preparing students for the 21st Century.

“We are living in a digital world,” she said.

But all I could hear was Madonna. My mind flashed back to being about 9 years old, donning purple fingerless gloves, non-matching outfits with two different color socks, and a sideways ponytail tied up with a neon-green lace ribbon … parading around my living room, jumping up on chairs, singing “Material Girl” at the top of my lungs. I thought I was cool; I had the album in 12-inch vinyl.

And tonight, 22 short years later, there I was … sitting beside my 10-year-old daughter whose posture and angst during the one-hour “parent training session” resembled that which she holds during family Christmas meals that precede the opening of gifts.

I used to love summer breaks from school – swimming pools, kickball in dirt fields with neighborhood friends, staying up late enough to throw chains at bats and catch lightning bugs. My daughter, on the other hand, spent the better part of this summer looking forward to this week – the week before school starts – because that’s when she would receive her coveted MacBook.

I wasn’t so excited.

Parents have pondered many questions about the laptops, such as: How will $50 of insurance cover all the laptops that might be scratched, dropped or otherwise broken over the course of a school year? Will the students receive “zeroes” or “incompletes” for homework assignments that can’t be turned in if the computers crash? Who’s responsible if a laptop is lost or stolen? And perhaps the most important, at least to me: How will students’ Internet usage be monitored?

Is this “introduction” to the digital world introducing an unwelcome can of worms?

Answers to frequently asked questions can be found here: www.mgsd.k12.nc.us/16231081512531693/site/default.asp

I walked away from tonight’s informational meeting feeling a little more comfortable about the idea that my daughter will possibly forevermore leave in her dust the good ol’ days of paper and pencils … venturing out, instead, into a digital world that is, well, far beyond my world of comprehension.

“Students are digital learners,” Morrow said tonight, explaining that instead of students having to “power down” to go to school (translation: to go from computers at home, to pencils and paper at school), the laptops will help them “power up.”

“Engaging these students and making education relevant is critical for our schools to continue to effectively and fully prepare the citizens and leaders of tomorrow.”

(Quote from tonight’s presentation)

The laptops are wireless compatible and Blue Tooth capable (did I word that right?). Students’ MacBooks – unlike those provided to teachers – will not be able to play DVD movies, Morrow said … adding, however, that the students’ laptops do have the capability to make movies.

The laptops have about a 4.5-hour battery life – or more, depending upon how often the students keep them plugged into an electrical outlet.

Each student is also being provided a bookbag that offers a safe haven for the laptops, as long as the students:

• don’t leave them in extremely hot or bitterly cold cars
• don’t slam them down on the ground like my daughters tend to do once they return home after a long day at school
• don’t pile books or other heavy objects on top of them
• don’t mingle bottles of water or lunch with the laptops in the bookbag
• don’t allow pets or young children around the laptops (a challenge in and of itself for my daughter, who shares a house with two dogs and a two-year-old brother … along with an older sister who’s a little envious that middle-schoolers aren’t being sent home with laptops this year).

But at least the MacBooks feature titanium hinges, which we learned tonight are the strongest on the market. And that makes me feel happy and safe.

What truly did make me feel safe was seeing my daughter’s reaction to a brief, but very powerful, video that Morrow showed, demonstrating just how easily a faceless predator can convince a child to give up personal, identifying information over the computer. Morrow assured us, however, that students will not be able to access chat rooms or instant messaging on the MacBooks – and the only e-mail exchanges that the students can have are those between them and their teachers. At least for the time being, Morrow said, the MGSD isn’t allowing student-to-student e-mailing.

The MacBooks have pre-loaded software, including Pages (which is Word for those of us Windows users); Numbers (Excel); Keynote; iCal (a calendar); iTunes; iPhoto (which allows students to store and play around with photos) and iMovie (allowing students to make movies).

Morrow stressed to students and parents the Internet "code of conduct," insisting that Internet usage at school will be teacher-directed and used only for “educational research and activities.”

The school district strongly encourages parents to memorize their child’s usernames and passwords. Morrow also asked us to keep the MacBooks in a “common room” in the house … to make sure we establish time limits for Internet use … and to regularly check our child’s history of visited web pages.

Though the FAQ page on the school district’s website states that students’ history of visited web pages is “undeletable,” Morrow told us tonight that if we notice our child has no history of visited websites, then that means that s/he has deleted the history … which likely means s/he has been visiting sites that s/he knows better than to visit.

… I guess that also means that the history of visited web pages isn’t so “undeletable,” after all.

Noting that the “most important filter is parental supervision,” Morrow assured us that the laptops have “server-based filtering software” that filters websites based on content/keywords and also blocks specific websites – including “social networking” sites like MySpace and Facebook.

However, the code of conduct instructs students not to try to bypass the filter, which – at least to me – means it can be done. And if we’re teaching our children to live in the digital world, I’d be willing to bet that many of them will learn to bypass the filter – if they don’t already know how – within their first week with the new MacBook.

But, heck, I’m living in the material world, not the digital one, so what do I know?

I wanna know your thoughts on the MacBooks – are they a good idea or not? Why?