A percentage of the proceeds from Amazon purchases will go directly to the organization without any additional cost to the consumer.

“In order for the foundation to receive a portion of the Amazon purchase, customers must enter the Amazon website through the newly created BulldogMall.org page,” said Laura Siegel, who is the vice chair of the board of directors of the CHSEF. “A link to this page can be found on our website or by entering BulldogMall.org into your browser.”

The CHSEF is a private association founded in 2002 devoted to enhancing educational opportunities for the CHS cluster.

“The foundation was primarily set up to provide to students and teachers some of the things that MCPS couldn’t provide,” Principal Joan Benz said.

According to Siegel, donations help fund extracurricular activities, educational supplies, grants to teachers and enrichment programs. The Robotics Club, for example, is a student group that uses grants from the CHSEF to help pay for their entrance fees in competitions.

“This year the Foundation provided funds to the math department for a series of materials for Algebra 1 through Calculus,” Siegel said. “These materials can be used by all teachers, thereby benefitting all CHS students.”

Since the Foundation is non-profit and does not receive public funding, all of its revenue comes directly from donations. Though anyone can donate, the primary donors are CHS parents.

The Foundation is also hoping to gain student recognition through the Internet and social media. Students can “like” the new CHSEF page on Facebook and contribute to what the CHSEF does.

“It’s very important to have student input on a board that serves a school full of high CHSEF board member senior Zoe Dobkin said.

 The team is comprised of 11 members and is divided into two sub-teams, the A team and the B team with four students and seven students respectively. The A team consists of those members with the most experience, while the B team is composed mainly of younger students looking to train. The students meet twice a week to practice questions and learn strategies.

 According to senior co-captain Matt Ochs, members of both teams participate in Quiz Bowl, which is the competition between other MCPS schools such as Poolesville and Blair. At the end of the year, MCPS It’s Academic teams have a bracket playoff to determine a champion. The A team then competes on the TV show It’s Academic and in higher-level competitions like the Beltway League. Currently, the members of the A-team include Ochs, senior co-captain Hazard, senior Lyon Chen and junior Prithish David.

 In early November, long-time It’s Academic coach and math teacher Doug Szafran resigned from his sponsor position after 15 years. Although he is no longer the sponsor, Szafran wishes the team the best of luck and encourages other students to support the team.

 ”Everyone should go to all the tapings because they are awesome,” Szafran said.

 Principal Joan Benz has stepped in as temporary sponsor for the team, and Ochs is optimistic about getting a new coach.

 ”We look for someone who has a genuine interest in CHS,” Ochs said. “Whoever it is has to be excited to see us succeed and help us when we lose.”

 The A team is now reviewing their strategies and trivia for its next TV appearance in March and a possible trip to the It’s Academic Super Bowl.

 ”We practice when to buzz and when to make an educated guess,” Hazard said. “Learning is only half the battle; you have to gage your opponent too.”

 According to social studies teacher Joan Zuckerman, the Council’s actions directly affect not only her teaching career, but the rest of her life because her retirement pension is determined by the last three years of her teaching.

 ”I’m retiring in two years,” Zuckerman said. “Since [no salaries are] being raised, my future pensions are completely stagnant. What concerns me is how the county council is deciding to spend money that should go to our pay raises.”

 Last May, the Montgomery County Council, which allocates funding for the county, responded to a tighter budget by not complying with the Maryland Maintenance of Effort (MOE) law.

 According to MCEA co-chair Barbara Hueter, MOE dictates that each year, every Maryland school district must spend at least the same amount of money per student as it did during the previous year. MOE was passed about 25 years ago with the purpose of ensuring that Maryland counties continue to improve their nationally-acclaimed public education systems.

 Although it received $80 million more in state funding for education this year than last year, the Montgomery County Council reduced MCPS funding by $45 million for the current school year, using the state aid designated for MCPS for other purposes, including transportation, thereby violating MOE.

 If a county fails to fulfill MOE, its public schools are penalized by being granted less state funding. According to fliers distributed by the MCEA at the town hall meeting, the state will give the Montgomery County Council $26.5 million less for education next year than planned because they did not meet the per-student spending requirement for MOE.

 According to MCEA vice president and Baker middle school teacher Chris Lloyd, the Council’s actions are unprecedented in Maryland, and the repercussions may be serious. Other counties are already following Montgomery County’s lead in simply ignoring MOE. In addition to a measurable decrease in the quality of Maryland education, ignorance of the law is likely to lead to county fiscal irresponsibility in other areas.

 ”We all know that there are consequences to actions,” Lloyd said. “If I buy a car, I make the car payment. [The Council’s decision] is like me going to the car dealer and saying ‘Well you know what, I’d like you to make some of the payments because I crashed it, and I don’t want it anymore.’”

 With their jobs at stake and their salaries on the line, MCPS teachers are growing frustrated with the Council’s lack of fairness.

 ”The state increased funding for Montgomery County by $80 million, and yet we didn’t see that entire amount,” social studies teacher Adam Field said. “We all wish, if nothing else, to hear the reason why the County Council acted the way they did – what’s their defense?”

 However, the biggest concern about the lack of funding is how it will affect the classroom.

“I think any time you’re spending less money per pupil, you’re going to see a negative impact on the instructional program,” Lloyd said. According to Montgomery County councilmember Roger Berliner (D-Potomac), from the Council’s point of view, disregarding MOE is the most prudent way to approach the tightening budget because the statute sets unrealistic goals.

“In a bad economy, the notion that we have to continue this upward spiral regardless of our past success is unsustainable,” Berliner said. “Everything else in our county has taken a whack. When a great recession hits, there has to be some flexibility.”

According to Maryland state delegate Brian Feldman (D-Montgomery County), whether the Council is justified in withholding funds from education for other purposes, MOE is currently defunct and must be rewritten. The county is ultimately responsible for education, and therefore, its laws must provide for the continued success of its schools.

“The goals of MOE are something we should support,” Feldman said at the town hall meeting. “The current system is flawed. It can be gamed and was gamed by local folk. There’s got to be a way to incentivize counties to meet and exceed MOE.”

According to Feldman, a law that successfully maintains the caliber of state education will be much more complicated than a simple funding requirement. Citing the fact that Montgomery County has often surpassed MOE by as much as five percent without receiving any credit, Feldman suggested that a new law should allow counties to draw on past success to bypass MOE in times of economic stress.

“[MOE] is not a good law; it’s a great concept,” Berliner said. “It just can’t be this rigid. It allows no aberration, no considerations for a great recession, no consideration for counties that have exceeded MOE or are experiencing rising enrollment.”

The Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PROTECT-IP), which is currently pending in Congress, would make it easier for the government to remove copyrighted material from the Internet. Under the bill, the Justice Department would be permitted to sue the owners of websites that contain copyrighted material and block such websites’ use of that material.

“Sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr have fundamentally changed how Americans interact with each other in spectacular ways,” said Douglas Shatz, social media assistant for Fight for the Future, a technology rights advocacy organization. “The wording of PROTECT-IP could bring all of that to a screeching halt by forcing those sites, which are all reliant on user-generated content, to completely restructure how they operate. It would also stifle innovation and prevent new services from appearing.”

According to Shatz, the proposal gives the government the ability to shut down social media websites if they contain a single copyright-infringing link.

Tumblr, which features the protest on the front page of the site, popularized the campaign by encouraging every Tumblr user to make phone calls and send e-mails opposing the legislation.

“I think these websites are a way of expressing myself, and this bill will change that,” freshman Katya Ellis said. “I think the Internet is a place for freedom, and people should be allowed to do whatever they want.”

However, supporters of PROTECT-IP do not see it as a censorship bill. According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)’s website, it protects artists from being cheated out of money they could have earned. The trade group supports PROTECT-IP in its attempt to eliminate Internet copyright infringement and protect the jobs of people in the film and television industries.

The Copyright Alliance is a group dedicated to fighting for the protection of copyrighted material. According to their January 2011 study, the three most-visited websites, rapidshare.com, megaupload.com and megavideo.com, are collectively viewed more than 21 billion times per year, which they believe shows how much of a problem online piracy has become.

Members of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) did not comment on the proposed legislation but sent a link to an article on their website which states that the only right denied in this bill is the right to profit through criminal infringement.

“Content producers have the right to not have their content stolen, but at what cost are we willing to protect it?” Shatz said. “The way PROTECT-IP is written, if one person illegally uploads a video to YouTube, the entire site would be in danger of being taken offline.”

Congress has not yet scheduled to vote on PROTECT-IP, but initial decisions about it could come before the year’s end.

Retailers will use one penny of each nickel earned through the bag tax to cover administrative costs, while the other four cents will be donated to the Water Quality Protection Fund (WQPF), a national branch of the Environmental Protection Agency that aids storm water management, watershed restoration and litter cleanup.

“Essentially what we are doing is cutting down the source of pollution,” said Ansu John, public education and outreach specialist for the Montgomery County Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). “Plastic bags end up primarily as microscopic particles that never break down and that persist in the environment for hundreds of thousands of years.”

According to John, plastic bags are one of the top four pollutants found in county streams and embankments that retain stormwater runoff.

“The main purpose of the law is behavior change as opposed to raising revenue,” John said.

While many believe that the law will positively influence residents’ behavior, Montgomery County councilwoman Nancy Floreen feels differently.

“It’s just another tax,” Floreen said. “It’s not enough to change behavior. If it was 50 cents people would really change their way.”

To encourage the use of reusable bags and to get customers prepared for the new law, grocery stores such as Giant have created special deals. According to Jeffrey Cox, a full-time cashier at the Falls Road Giant, customers can receive a free reusable bag with each 99-cent purchase of one.

Senior Hal Zeitlin, president of the environmental club Churchill Green, supports the bag tax because he believes that the overproduction of plastic bags is harmful to the environment.

“Why produce millions of plastic bags that can and most likely will be thrown out or used as pollutants when you can use one bag again and again?” Zeitlin said. “Not only for the environment, but in life, waste is never good.”

Spanish teacher Bob Roos has seen some of this stress first-hand. Roos conducted a survey of his classes Nov. 22 in which he asked his students whether they had at least two graded assessments that day. Eighty-nine percent of his first period students, 98 percent of his second period students, 90 percent of his third period students, 100 percent of his fifth period students and 52 percent of his seventh period students had at least three tests or quizzes that day. Due to this survey, he believes that multiple assessments on a particular day can be attributed to some of the stress.

“I originally took the survey because a student in a class quietly said that they had four assessments that day,” Roos said. “It really disturbed me. If I were a student I would be totally stressed out.”

According to PTSA president Geri Shapiro, the PTSA is working with the administration to try to have test days for each department, but the drawback of these designated days is that the students taking multiple classes in a subject area could have multiple tests on one day.

However, testing days are usually scheduled far in advance.

“When you finish an area of study, you look at and judge how long it would take to teach the next area of study and then decide when to assess,” World Language resource teacher Stacye Steele said. “There are timing issues, so when you lose the time when you thought you were going to assess, you have to choose the next available time.”

Social studies resource teacher Rodney Van Tassell agrees.

“We need to take into consideration holidays, half-days and end-of-quarter administratively-defined exam days,” Van Tassell said. “There are so many variables. Therefore, there are very few days you can actually test.”

As a result, many students have multiple assessments on the same day. With extracurricular activities and other homework, students have difficulty finding time to study for these assessments.

“I am overwhelmed,” sophomore Gloria Samen said. “I get home from school at 7 p.m. because of Blast rehearsals, and then I have at least three hours of homework and studying.”

According to Principal Joan Benz, if students have not had time to sleep or if they cram material at the last minute, their performance on graded assessments is often affected.

“Students need to keep up with their classes so that cramming the last day before a test is not needed,” English resource teacher Emily Goldberg said.

However, even though multiple tests on the same day can affect student performance and increase stress levels, there are few ways to solve the problem. According to Samen, each department should have a designated assessment day, but some department heads are quick to shoot down that idea. Even though the department heads refused this idea, none of them offered any other suggestions.

“Even without disruptions, we can’t give up instructional time waiting for our test date,” math resource teacher Curtis Southworth said. “We’d have to teach new material before students have the opportunity to take the summative assessment.”

However, Steele believes that designated assessment days for each department would benefit students.

“The first year might be difficult, but then the teachers would get a rhythm and can learn to adjust their lesson plans,” Steele said.

Regardless, according to science resource teacher Clinton Brown, teachers and students need better communication to achieve success.

“The best thing is for teachers to be flexible,” Brown said. “If he or she hears that there are multiple assessments on the same day, they should try and move theirs.”

Even though the designated assessment days are still in the process of deliberation, some teachers have taken the matter into their own hands by limiting homework on the weekend.

“If I can avoid homework on the weekends, I will try to,” English teacher Kevin Brown said. “However, it’s a no-win situation. At some point, the work has to get done.”

Although designated assessment days might be difficult to implement, they would alleviate some of the stress placed on students.

“It’s going to take a paradigm shift,” Roos said. “It’s going to take patience and ironing out, but in the end it is going to benefit the students.”

The MSCC hopes to persuade both of these boards to pass legislation that would encourage the construction of wind farms off the coast of Maryland in the Atlantic Ocean. Maryland government officials rejected a similar proposal last year.

“I’m collecting these signatures to convince the Maryland assembly that the citizens of Maryland support bills for wind energy,” sophomore Elise Levy said. “I hope to convince them to pass this measure.”

According to Jay-Me Philips, the executive director of campaigns for the MSCC, the MSCC has gathered approximately 1,000 signatures so far. Its goal is to collect 15,000 signatures.

“While offshore wind energy will create jobs and, in the long term, bring down electricity prices, wind energy is also a renewable resource that will help us reduce our carbon footprint and prevent dangerous climate change,” MSCC member and St. Mary’s College student Caroline Selle said. “The public health and environmental impacts of fossil fuels are already seen in the high asthma rates and poor air quality found in many Maryland cities.”

According to Philips, teenagers in particular should support offshore wind energy because of the job opportunities it could create.

“As far as the future of jobs in America, the money and the jobs are in green infrastructure and green industry,” Philips said. “If teenagers are really looking ahead for a way to get in on the soon-to-be massive industry of green energy, they should get involved and jump in the game now. There’s a bunch of different ways you could take it for a future career.”

Opponents of offshore wind energy are fighting against the proposal because they believe that its advocates exaggerate its benefits and underestimate the harm that giant wind turbines can cause.

According to Green Living Answers, a website that answers questions about leading an environmentally friendly lifestyle, some complaints about wind energy are based around the bulkiness of wind turbines, which can be up to 525 ft. tall.
According to a March 2011 Chesapeake Bay Journal article, wind energy could potentially be killing one million birds per year by 2030. According to the same article, environmental activist Jon Boone is against offshore wind energy because the turbines would make the Chesapeake Bay significantly uglier.

Although wind energy is flawed, MSCC members believe that its benefits outweigh its risks.

“Not everyone likes to look at wind turbines, but some people don’t really like looking at coal plants either,” Selle said. “Ultimately it comes down to whether or not we want to get our energy from a safe and clean source or a dirty, dangerous one like fossil fuels.”

However, wind turbines’ lack of aesthetic beauty is often irrelevant, as wind turbines are frequently placed in areas that are rarely visited.

“A lot of times, the proposed installation sites are out of sight or on beaches where people wouldn’t be spending their time so they won’t disrupt too many skies,” Philips said.

Proponents of the petition are working hard to convince students to sign.

“It’s not like there’s a certain type of person who is less likely to be adversely affected by our poor environmental choices,” Levy said. “We’re all going to suffer if we don’t start to change the way we do things.”

The University of Maryland (UMD) will cut men’s indoor track and field, men’s outdoor track and field, men’s cross country, men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams, men’s tennis, women’s water polo, and the women’s acrobatics and tumbling team for the 2012-2013 school year to cope with the athletic department’s budget deficit.

CHS senior Natalya Ares committed to swim for UMD several weeks before she was notified that the swimming and diving team was being cut. Within a day and a half, she had to commit to another school.

“It would have been nice to know that there was even a possibility of the team being cut,” Ares said. “I would’ve handled the situation differently. There are a lot of people who aren’t going to end up going to Maryland even though they really wanted to.”

In deciding to commit to UMD, Ares turned down a scholarship to swim at Northwestern. By the time that she was notified about the elimination of the UMD swimming and diving program, the Northwestern scholarship had been given away.

University president Wallace Loh appointed representatives of the university’s key constituents as well as faculty, staff, alumni and a student to the President’s Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics (PCIA) in July 2011. Loh could not be reached for an interview, as he is currently traveling in India, but assistant vice president Brian Ullmann responded on his behalf.

“For several years, the athletic department has cut expenses and attempted to raise revenues,” Ullmann said in an e-mail. “We considered a wide variety of expense-reduction

and revenue-enhancing measures, but the severity of the problem required decisive action now.”

According to a Nov. 11 PCIA report, the goal of the commission was to make recommendations to increase revenue and decrease costs of the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics (ICA), while maintaining the quality of the athletics program at UMD. The commission ultimately recommended cutting eight varsity sports, improving fundraising, reallocating funds to the remaining teams to better support them and reformatting budget reports so that the ICA’s progress towards repaying its debt would be clear. The commission expects the debt to be repaid by the 2015 fiscal year by following these recommendations.

“The support for our student athletes ranked last in the ACC [Atlantic Coast Conference],” Ullmann said. “That means that we spend less on things such as academic support, training and sports medicine than student athletes at other schools. We wanted to improve that.”

According to the report, UMD should be ranked sixth in the ACC for investment per student athlete for the 2013 fiscal year.

“Over 90 percent of universities subsidize their athletic departments with millions of dollars,” Ullmann said. “Here at UMD, our athletic department must be entirely self-sufficient. No state funds are used to support athletics here.”

According to a Nov. 21 Washington Post article, Loh and athletic director Kevin Anderson will allow the teams that are cut to continue if they are able to raise eight years worth of total program costs by June 30, or $29 million total for the eight teams. In order to comply with Title IX requirements, the same number of women’s teams and men’s teams were cut. In the process of making cuts, each men’s team was paired with a women’s team. Both teams in each pair must raise enough money to continue for either to do so.

“The money issue is really out of the individual students’ hands,” said Rebecca Yep, a UMD sophomore who runs cross country and indoor and outdoor track. “I don’t think the general public realizes how much money is needed; at this point it’s not like we can just host a fundraising bake sale or car wash to raise a couple thousand dollars. No, we need millions of dollars, and therefore it is my understanding that we are looking to corporate and alumni sponsorship.”

Although the women’s running teams are not being cut, they will still feel the loss of the men’s teams.

“A huge attraction to potential runners was the close-knit, co-ed, family atmosphere of the team that is very rare in the collegiate running community across the nation,” Yep said. “Getting rid of our guys is like ripping away half of our family.”

According to Yep, she and her teammates are willing to do whatever they can to prevent the men’s cross country and track and field programs from being cut. So far, they have created a Facebook group, sold t-shirts, contacted other schools, newspapers and running websites and written letters and petitions to gain support.

“Everyone on the team is definitely dedicated and willing to do what is necessary to fight to save their family,” Yep said. “This is our lives we’re talking about, not some random club or class.”

However, Yep and her teammates acknowledge that they may not be able to raise enough money to continue the programs.

“Our coaches are working with many of the men to uphold scholarships, help older athletes finish out their college career at Maryland and help the younger athletes communicate with other schools in the case of transferring,” Ullmann said.

According to CHS ’09 alumnus Drew Fisher, a current UMD junior who swam on the team his freshman and sophomore years, the juniors on the swim and dive team are not planning on transferring.

“I think most of the freshmen will leave, but I think a lot of the sophomores are on the edge right now because they’re already invested in their majors and have set a good foundation here,” Fisher said.

Ullmann believes that the increase in spending per athlete that will result from the cuts will help the UMD athletics program.

“If we are going to fulfill our mission of preparing our student athletes academically, socially and athletically, we must increase our levels of support,” Ullmann said.

Nevertheless, many people wish that that helping some athletes didn’t come at the expense of eliminating others.

“Sports don’t last forever, but you should decide to quit the sports you do on your own terms,” Ares said. “Just because you don’t play a spectator sport doesn’t mean you have any less of a right to play that sport.”

The donations will be divided with a majority of the money going toward a scholarship fund for Whyte’s two daughters, and the remaining money being given to the Whyte family to help them financially during the holiday season. The drive to help Whyte’s family during the holiday season ended Dec. 16, but donations to the scholarship fund are still being accepted.

 ”This is such a tragic loss for his family and for the CHS community,” said senior Jenna Cantor, who thought of the idea of donating money to the Whyte family. “I think it’s really meaningful that the school organized something to help out Mr. Whyte’s family during this holiday season.”

 According to math resource teacher Curtis Southworth, Whyte strongly believed in having a college fund for his daughters.

 ”I’m just overwhelmed with the generosity of the CHS community and really impressed with Jenna Cantor, who has been spearheading this,” Southworth said.

 According to Southworth, Principal Joan Benz made it possible to donate money to the fund through the business office, which was key in making the idea of the fund a reality.

 ”We really wanted it to be a lasting support to his family,” Benz said. “I would hope that after this initial drive, we would continue on an annual basis to help them.”

 Cantor was inspired to do something for the Whyte family after she was a student in Whyte’s calculus class.

 ”Mr. Whyte was such an important part of CHS, and his loss is devastating to the community,” Cantor said. “Everybody thought of him as a great teacher and person. He did so much for his students, and I think it’s important that we give back to him and his family.”

 Those who wish to donate to the fund can give cash or checks with the subject line “Whyte Memorial Fund” to Southworth in the main office or to school financial assistant Judith Starlings in the business office.

 Donations in honor of Special Education teacher Ruth Checker, who passed away Nov. 14, can be made to Susan G. Komen for the Cure to end breast cancer.