Kay Smith-Blum

A few weeks ago we got a visit from our school board representative, Kay Smith-Blum, who won the seat over Mary Bass in the last election. I had the chance to sit in on the Q&A session, which happened at 9 o’clock in the morning. The meeting went as most Nova meetings go: students and staff gave heartfelt speeches about their learning and teaching but left with the feeling that their pleas were not really heard. Director Smith-Blum listened intently to all our questions and testimonies but many of her answers were the same: I am not the one to talk to about this; here is the person you should contact. From what I gathered at the meeting Kay Smith-Blum does approve of the way we do things and understands how much we want to protect it. This is great and we need to keep her approval, because without it we don’t stand a chance if we want to be keep out great program the way it is. She has the power to represent us in any way she wants. Aside from that power I don’t think a lot of us at Nova know what else she can do. It seemed at the meeting that a lot of students and staff were overestimating her ability to do exactly what we wanted her to do. So in order to clear things up I emailed Pamela Oaks, the senior administrative assistant to the school board about what school board members could do. Ms. Oaks promptly emailed me back including answers to specific questions that seemed to come up in our meeting with Director Smith-Blum.

Her reply was as follows:

In a very general sense the Board of Directors has three overarching responsibilities; 1) To make policy, 2) Select a superintendent and 3) Annually adopt a balanced budget. They are not employees of the district and they have no direct jurisdiction over personnel, curriculum, or student assignment. These issues would fall under the authority of the Superintendent and her staff (i.e.: HR Executive, Chief Financial and Operations Officer, Chief Academic Office, etc.)

The Seattle Public School Board of Directors has adopted procedure B061.00 which delineates the division of responsibilities between the Board and the Superintendent: Here is a link for your reference: http://www.seattleschools.org/area/policies/b/B61.00.pdf

Ultimately, the duties of the board of directors is governed by the state legislature. For your reference here is a link to the statute in the Revised Code of Washington (RCW) governing the Board of Directors for Public Schools in Washington: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=28A.150.230

In answer to your specific inquiries:

Q: Can they bring issues to the board?

A: Yes, if the issue falls within the purview of their duties and responsibilities. Otherwise it is more appropriate for the relevant staff person to bring issues to the board.

Q: Can they write of plans or exceptions to rules for schools and bring them to whomever it may concern?

A: Yes, if the plans and exceptions fall within the purview of their duties and responsibilities. More than likely, school rules are under the jurisdiction of the Superintendent and her staff. It would be more appropriate for the relevant staff person to bring a plan or exception to the board – not the other way around.

With these answers in mind I think we can safely say that Director Smith-Blum was giving us the right answers to the questions we asked. What I took away from this was that we need to talk to the people she recommended and reference the places where exceptions have already been made. She can help us get to where we want to be, but not in the way that I think most of us want. We need to write the plan, we need to contact the right people and she needs to represent us well enough to get this exception. Directors may not be able to do a lot, but what they can do for us and against us is very powerful, once we have made our plan to be immune from curriculum alignment, she can vote for it, or against it. She can say no, these people do not deserve to be excluded from alignment, or she can say yes, I’ve seen the amazing things they do in their classrooms, and I am convinced that curricular alignment would devastate  the great learning environment they have worked so hard to build. It is up to us to make sure she see the latter in us, and that should be easy right? We do it every day.

Today is Hitler’s birthday, it’s also the anniversary of the Columbine travesty, it also is a day for high school kids to skip school and smoke marijuana. The latter has many origins, from the code number that police used to identify someone in possession of weed to the most popular time of day to get high. No matter where it started, Nova teachers and the students who showed up today noticed a severe lack of their peers. In one of my classes more than half of the twenty eight students were nowhere to be found. This does not mean all of them were out celebrating, but they couldn’t all have been sick or had a dentist appointment. Having never smoked pot, I cannot talk from that experience; I’ve never even seen anyone smoke it. I can, however express opinions that have not been influenced by such an experience.

To me it all comes down as a matter of priority, what does someone care about most and what is he or she willing to do to reach that something. Some people value their education over family, or friends over education and some people value getting high. It doesn’t really matter to where getting high comes into your priority list but it must be pretty close to the top if you are deciding to skip school in order to do it. This might seem severe to a lot of people, “it’s only for one day you might say, so it’s not that big of a deal.” To the people who would respond this way I would ask this: is it really for one day? It’s really hard for me to believe that someone who smokes pot on 4/20 doesn’t touch it for the other 364 days of the year. I think that if someone is willing to skip school to get high, they are probably smoking pot at other times, whether at parties or just hanging out with friends. Marijuana should not interfere with your education. Being educated, whether through schooling or experience is much more important to me than making weird observations and giggling a lot or whatever it is you do when you’re high.

There are plenty of rumors about our school. I’ve heard from other people that they think Nova is a place where we do nothing all day, where we just sit on couches and chill, where we don’t really have to show up if we don’t want to and where we get full credit by doing absolutely nothing. The most common rumor I have heard about our school though, is that we like to smoke pot. In class, outside of class, in the hallways, in the bathrooms and everywhere else, we are rolling joints and taking drags. I get very defensive when I hear people telling me or someone else the rumors they hear, and acting like it’s the truth. I try to tell them that this is not the case and explain to them what I think Nova is really about. However, when less than half of my peers show up to class, I start to question whether or not there might be a little truth to the rumors. Nova kids should know that when they decide to skip on 4/20 they are enforcing the biggest stereotype about our school. Although, the way they that they seem to set their priorities tells me that they don’t really care in the first place, so why even bother bringing it up? Because I think we can all do better. I would like you to know that I don’t care what you do outside of school, just don’t let it get in the way of your education, and if you don’t care about that, think about the dark stain you’re leaving on our community’s reputation.

Orca cards, the safe, easy, and convenient way to travel throughout King County and its adjacent counties. Orca cards take away the hassle of finding the correct change in your pockets or fumbling through that stack of bus cards. With this handy driver’s license-sized card you can now go easily from place to place or from transit system to other Western Washington public transit agency.  Orca cards work in one of three ways. The first is a regional pass, which would work much like the bus cards we have now. The second is an agency specific pass that allows unlimited rides on only certain transportation. The final option involves charging your card with a certain amount of money that would be deducted in small amounts as you ride public transportation.

Unfortunately for us, we aren’t going to be getting any Orca cards anytime soon. There were rumors going around that we would be making the switch to Orca cards very soon but Karen Podbela was able to tell me that next year would be the soonest and that there are still discussions going on as to how they will be dealt with for high school students.  For more information, go to orcacard.com

Review of Sherlock Holmes movie

The world of Sherlock Holmes is one of those worlds that are very hard to create seamlessly. There are so many minute details that need to be addressed and because Holmes addresses those, creators of his movies need to as well. The new Sherlock Holmes movie did a great job of making sure that all of Holmes’ unique traits were displayed more than once.

Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, is one of those films where you expect to see certain things, like witty remarks and neat costumes from the 1880s. Guy Ritchie did not disappoint, filling the movie to the brim with awesome costumes and witty remarks, but, he also threw in something that you do not see in Sherlock Holmes literature: explosions. Yes there was quite a bit more action than Sherlock Holmes is used to in this film. The first scene in fact has Holmes and Watson kicking some serious cultist butt. Robert Downey Jr. shows that Holmes knows how to handle himself when he is surrounded by exploding barrels of gunpowder. In fact the only thing Holmes is missing is his witty comments aimed at his sidekick; he never even says his famous phrase. The witty comments are there though; Dr. Watson has buckets of them, and throws them out whenever he talks. Watson even figures out a few things before Holmes does. This isn’t very consistent with the stories but it is a refreshing change from the lovable Watson always being the butt of the joke.

In this film Sherlock Holmes finds himself up against something that logic can’t explain: magic. A violent cultist named Lord Blackwood has been using his black magic to murder women through rituals where the women, under a spell, would stab themselves in the chest with a dagger. But when, after his execution, Lord Blackwood rises from the grave, the game is afoot.  I give full marks to Lionel Wigram’s story and to the people who adapted it into screenplay. Pitting logic against as mystical a force as magic in a time when most people didn’t believe in its existence and then throwing Sherlock Holmes into the fray to bring Lord Blackwood to light. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law do an excellent job at bringing their characters to life while they’re fighting bad guys and finding clues. The CGI is also stunning, great skylines and structures do an excellent job of looking bleak and crime ridden, and giant spools of chains look fantastic while flying through the air and breaking things.

Over all it was quite the movie. There were some strange parts that seemed to take away from the film–the fighting ring scene seemed to be only added for the sake of having action and there was a female version of Moriarty that I had never heard of before. The acting was great, the costumes were good and the effects were stunning. If you’re a fan of Sherlock Holmes, mysteries, 1880s London, or witty British humor this is the movie for you.

Nine deductions out of ten.

Review on Battlestar: Galactica, the Board Game

Battlestar: Galactica the board game is a great adaption from the Galactica universe, having said that you do not need to be familiar with the show to enjoy this game.  I have a very limited knowledge of the series and after my first play-through I was hooked.  This game could have been easily made without the BSG theme and it still would have been fun.

The game has most of the players cooperating against the board and the cylon or cylons. The cylon players try to stop the humans from wining by making them run out of resources, invading the Battlestar or destroying it all together. The human players try to make Faster Than Light, “jumps” in order to reach their destination before any of the cylon objectives are completed.  At the beginning of the game a face down loyalty card is dealt to each player. The loyalty cards determine who will be a cylon and who will be a human. Half way through the game another round of loyalty cards are dealt out. This way you might not even have cylon player for the first half of the game. If you do become a cylon you still play like a human but secretly try and sabotage them. This makes a setting of paranoia that gives the game a great atmosphere.

BSG takes about half an hour to learn and about three hours to play. it supports three to six players although I would recommend having five or six for the best experience. Each player takes on the role of one the characters from the series. Each character has the roll of either pilot, political leader, military leader, or support.  Each player will also have a unique ability that he can use multiple times, an ability that he can use once per game and a weakness. This provides lots of variety and a new experience every time you play.  Pilots fly around the outside the Galactica and shoot at enemy ships, military leaders try and destroy ships from inside the Battlestar, political leaders try and regain resources that have been lost and expose the hidden cylons.

The board is laid out well with a top view of Galactica, in the center surrounded by the different parts of space. On the top of the board are the resource trackers the FTL jump track, and Colonial One. Each location has a certain action that you can perform while there to help the humans in their struggles.

There are elements of luck in the form of die roles and certain cards but they help provide a balance and a sense of suspense and impending doom. The co-op mechanic works very well and most of the characters work well together if you use the right strategies. This is certainly complex and it might take awhile to fully get the hang of it but the rules are easy to learn and turns flow well and don’t take very long.

This game is pretty hard to win for the humans but it’s not impossible. As long as you find the secret cylon quick and work together you stand a very good chance at succeeding. This game provides hours of fun and is great if you have an afternoon or evening to spend. Be sure to work together though, because if you don’t, it’s frakking impossible.

five raptors out of five.
Carter “picarter” Allen
Gaming and entertainment.

Review on Batman: Arkham Asylum

Carter Allen

I have never played a video game starring a superhero and there’s a reason for that. Superheroes are predictable. They have no room for customization or expansion. We know their villains, what powers they have and what their weaknesses are and the same goes for the hero’s.

I picked up Arkham Asylum because I was bored and there was nothing else new. This game has changed my outlook on superhero games in a greatly positive way and I was surprised by how much I liked this game. Arkham Asylum begins with our masked hero driving the Joker to the institute named after Elizabeth Arkham who was subsequently named after H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional town where some of his stories take place. Ultimately the Joker escapes within the asylum and lets all the inmates out of their cells. As Batman, your job is to stop the Joker and get everything under control. After a very long scene where batman walks down a hallway while Joker yells things at him, You get into a fight with a couple of generic inmates.

Fights flow well although you find yourself jumping across an entire room to knock down the next person. Throughout the game you switch between hand to hand combat and stealth which blends very well. The stealth mechanic in the game works very well and gets increasingly challenging as the game progresses. The difference between being stealthy and just punching everyone, is guns. If you come to a room where there are armed goons then your going to have to be sneaky as bullets kill you pretty quickly.

Boss fights aren’t the most intuitive although you do get to see some off the more famous Batman villains in action. For the most part each fight is just rinse and repeat and to make it harder the game just throws more inmates at you so you have to fight them as well. Fighting Killer Croc consists of running on floating planks and throwing tiny shards of metal at him whenever he pops out of the water.

The atmosphere of the game is very nice and the mapping is beautifully dark. There is a lot of attention to detail and an amazing amount of hidden things to find (I beat the game but only completed 50 percent of what there is to do). There is a bunch of lore about the characters that you find in interview tapes and bios. As a non-comic book nerd I can safely say that if you know nothing about batman then you will probably still enjoy this game. Over all I give Batman: Arkham Asylum 8 batarangs out of 10.