11/28/98
The Auburn Bulletin11/28/98
Letter: Offer of airtime for YRS appreciated
An open letter to Mike Hubbard and Russell Baty:
Your offer of free air time for a panel discussion with Auburn City Schools Superintendent Martin and Assistant Superintendent Freeman and myself was a very good idea. I want to thank you and WANI publicly for offering to help the citizens of Auburn learn more about the year round school (YRS) issue.
It is most unfortunate that Auburn City Schools officials changed their mind and declined to participate. The community desperately needs more YRS information, and WANI's offer to provide a forum would have been perfect. Instead, another golden opportunity has been passed by.
Drs. Martin and Freeman have publicly stated many times that there is a lot of misinformation available on YRS. This would have been a perfect opportunity to get the facts out to the community.
Many people in Auburn still know little of the facts of the YRS issue, especially since the distribution of two conflicting fact sheets by ACS has caused so much confusion. Even more confusion will result from the introduction of what appears to be a third set of facts in the "Perspectives" insert in the O-A News. Clarification of many of the points made in these documents has been repeatedly requested by members of the community through letters to the editors of the newspapers and in all of the public meetings held thus far.
As co-chairs, of the Alternative Calendar Committee, surely Drs. Martin and Freeman could help disseminate the facts about YRS in a WANI forum, like the suggested panel discussion.
Thanks again for your offer to participate in the panel discussion. Your public-spiritedne3s is much appreciated. Thanks for your willingness to help inform the public and WANI's dedication to the citizens of Auburn by offering to donate air time for this exchange of information.
Please do not hesitate to call on me if ACS has a change of heart and wishes to participate in providing information to the community,
David EltonAuburn
Letter: Look for the good, praise it
After reading O-A News editorial of Nov. 12, on the importance of "play in a child's day," I found that it is the "child" in me who desired the present day school kids also to relax and play a lot at the end of every quarter, as I did, that made me write 90 many letters in sup port of YRS. I grew up in India as a poor child, but rich with playtime with my friends everyday. We played several games in creative ways just for fun at home, on trees, and around paddy fields of the village and yet had enough time to memorize the prose and poetry for the next day. In fact play-time and school-time complemented each other 90 well for me, that I became the valedictorian for the class of '58, with least effort, though I was an at-risk student initially.
I looked at the YRS "survey" as a child, a Ph.D. whose thesis was on the analysis of motion, and a designer of mechanisms in PCs, ATMs and other actuators. I move an object, like a rocking horse, between two given positions, we can come up with infinite number of four-link mechanisms. But a good designer picks the one with "the transmission angle close to 90 degrees" during its range of motion, since such a device requires the lowest horse-power motor, compared to other designs. However, we have also to note that even the choice of the best mechanism does not guarantee economy and long life unless it is frequently lubricated.
I studied the calendar options from the above considerations of design and maintainability. Of the calendars, the traditional calendar with its second quarter extending beyond the Christmas holiday sea son and into the new year with no good 'brakes,' is the one with least efficiency and hardest to maintain during the year. But with a powerful motor it can be run as it is now, with several middle and high school kids, going to bed only after midnight almost everyday.
Hence it is not surprising that more than 85 percent of the ACS teachers informally chose the alternative calendars instead of the traditional. I also gather that only a third of the Auburn University faculty are in favor of "STOP YRS," that, too, with the assumption that YRS means only four weeks of summer vacation. I am not surprised to learn that with two sum mer se3sions, several extension, outreach, research and develop mental programs during summer, only about 5 percent of the AU faculty will not have summer con tracts with the university. Hence YRS has no major effect on the university community, or the rest, contrary to what we were repeatedly told to believe by a few.
Considering the uniform and all-round robustness, the best pick would be alternative calendar C . Compared to the traditional, it has half a week more Christmas vacation after the two-quarter, one week more of spring vacation and an additional two weeks of fall vacation. That means a total of three and half weeks more vacation during the year. Yet its sum mer vacation (nine weeks) is only two weeks short of traditional sum mer (11 weeks). Hence there is a net gain of one and one-half weeks of vacation with a new fall vacation. It is a very good design indeed with good maintainability and opportunities to lubricate the system in the form of remedial action and relaxation. I sincerely congratulate the designers for a very fine job done.
The close-up of calendar C, looks even better. For example, holidays for Labor Day and Thanks giving are during the middle of first and second quarters. Thus calendar C's 'transmission angles for both teaching and learning' are almost perfect. If we lubricate the mechanism of this alternative calendar frequently, it will give us long, reliable and economical service.
Let us look for the good and praise it. And remember to vote for
N. S. MalladiAuhurn