The Observer » county

Tennis wins record fifth straight county title

dweiss — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:47:07 +0000

After a grueling two-and-a-half hour battle on the court, doubles partners junior Olivia Lee and senior captain Tanya Bagheri sealed a record fifth consecutive victory at Counties for the girls tennis team Oct. 31.

The tournament ended in a three-way tie for first place between CHS, Whitman and Wootton, with 20 senior captain points apiece. Although it was a unique situation, it extended the tennis team’s streak of first place county finishes to unprecedented heights.

“All the matches during the tournament were hard fought matches, and the girls gave their best,” coach Benjamin Woods said.

Lee and Bagheri’s doubles victory was the final match of the tournament for CHS, and the entire team was present to watch.

“It was the best feeling,” Lee said. “Everyone was screaming, the whole team was cheering. That helped us win a lot.”

The victory came as something of a surprise to the team, who expected fierce competition from the teams at the tournament, particularly Whitman.

“It was nice to know we were still on top after we lost to Whitman,” Bagheri said.

The team’s only loss of the regular season came against Whitman Oct. 4, when the previously undefeated team was blown out 6-1.

“All of those sets were close sets,” Bagheri said.

According to Bagheri, it was not widely expected that CHS would beat Whitman players in the tournament.

Many of the opposing players the Bulldogs defeated were players who had beaten CHS during the regular season, including in Lee’s doubles victory that assured a first place spot for CHS.

“Each match was three sets instead of two,” Lee said. “It was so close.”

Woods agreed with Lee’s assessment of the tournament.

“We go into every match looking to do our best and put out a strong effort,” he said. “Win or lose we try to give ourselves a chance by putting our best effort forward.”

Although Lee said her two-and-a-half hour match time was “normal,” the score alone (6-4, 4-6, 6-3) shows the strenuous play the Bulldogs endured. Team members felt a large amount of pressure to continue the four-year county win streak, and it was a factor in their games.

“I wanted to beat that team because we lost to them before,” Lee said. “I felt pressure because I wanted to get points, I felt pressure because of the people watching.”

Especially for seniors on the team, including Bagheri, the pressure paid off. This victory meant that her team won counties all four years she played for CHS.

Fantasy cross country takes hold in County

dweiss — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:25:05 +0000

Fantasy baseball, football and basketball are all well-known fantasy leagues in the CHS community. However, a new fantasy league, the fantasy cross country league, has emerged and is quickly running to the top.

Gaithersburg High School ‘03 alumnus and Mocorunning website founder Kevin Milsted started the Montgomery County fantasy cross country league in 2010 after learning about it being done by the NCAA. After hearing about it, he got several other people to help him start up the Montgomery County league.

“I saw it done on the Letsrun.com forum for the NCAA cross country championships, and I wanted to do it for Montgomery County,” Milsted said. “I gathered five people in addition to myself who are knowledgeable about the local running scene, and we agreed on a draft order and then had a runner fantasy draft on the Mocorunning forum over several weeks during the summer.”

The fantasy league has spread quickly around the county for various reasons, including the league’s competitive nature and open environment.

“It’s simple enough that there is very little time and work that goes into it, but at the same time it’s fun and popular,” Milsted said. “It was popular enough that a separate group branched off and had a second draft.”

While it is a fantasy sports league, fantasy cross country has many different aspects and has established its own unique set of rules and scoring methods.

“Unlike other fantasy sports, there are no trades or free agent pickups,” Milsted said.

The scoring of fantasy cross country is also very different from traditional fantasy leagues.

According to Milsted, fantasy cross country only applies to the county championships, and before the season starts, individuals choose a team of seven runners. These runners can be from many different schools, but must be within the county. Then, at the county championships, after everyone finishes the race, the top five finishers on the individual’s team score points, with the amount of points being equal to the runners place at the meet. The person who gets first place will earn one point, and someone who finished 18 will get 18 points. The individual who gets the lowest amount of points in the fantasy league wins.

The fantasy cross country league has attracted students from around the county, including high school graduates.

“I enjoy the competitive nature of it,” said Bethesda-Chevy Chase ‘11 alumnus Eliot Gerson. “Additionally, I think it encourages some interesting conversations about Montgomery County cross country and running in general.”

The fantasy league not only pushes some runners to improve and move ahead to beat others, but also stimulates intellectual debates over running.

By joining fantasy cross country, Gerson has put more thought into runners from schools other than B-CC. The league has led to debates over the importance of pack running and how a certain course is good for certain types of runners.

“These types of discussions are really interesting and are a direct result of participating in the fantasy cross country league and the forum as a whole,” Gerson said.

New policy changes for students across the county

jkracov — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:55:18 +0000

MCPS implemented new cell phone and attendance policies that allow students more flexibility in using their phones while the attendance policy creates stricter guidelines to ensure that all students attend class.

The new cell phone policy allows students to use phones before and after school and during lunch, but CHS staff may restrict use in order to keep classrooms and study areas quiet.

“I have no problem with students using phones during lunch,” English teacher Linda Smith said. “Phone use during lunch should not have any bearing on phone use in class.”

According to security team leader Terry Bell, the county set guidelines for individual schools to interpret differently.

“It will cut down on the number of infractions,” Bell said. “So far it has worked out pretty well.”

According to Bell, as of the seventh day of school, only two cell phones had been seized, which surprised Bell, who would have predicted more would have been confiscated at this point.

Assistant Principal Doreen Brandes hopes that this new policy will help relieve student stress as they will no longer have to worry about when they will be able to contact their parents and friends.

“Our students are responsible,”Brandes said. “There was a need for more flexibility for parents to contact kids and kids to contact parents.”

The attendance policy has also changed and is now similar to the policy implemented during the 2009-2010 school year. The main difference is a county mandated intervention with counselors, administrator and parents after three unexcused absences. After five unexcused absences, students will be eligible for loss of credit unless they succeed in an appeals process.

“When there was no policy that included loss of credit or intervention I think unexcused absences spiked,” Brandes said. “The new policy is being more proactive.”

According to Brandes, what is criteria for excused and unexcused absences have become clearer and now students are held more accountable for their absences.

“The new policy makes the school personnel and families work as a team,” Brandes said.

County lacks standards for Edline updating

yakbari — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:10:16 +0000

Students agree: the creation of Edline is a great advance in modern education. Edline provides students with one convenient place to check their grades, their homework and their lessons from class.
But there’s a catch. In practice, Edline isn’t being used for all of these purposes at CHS. MCPS has not established detailed countywide rules on teachers’ requirements for using Edline; the rules are school-specific. At CHS, teachers are required only to update their grades every two weeks via the Pinnacle system; Pinnacle transfers grading information to Edline.
Fortunately, the majority of CHS teachers go beyond this minimum. Most upload the homework assignments and other important documents regularly. A few extremely diligent teachers even upload the day’s lesson. Constantly listing daily lessons and homework assignments online is an innovative way of facilitating education in an increasingly technologically sophisticated world.
Let’s be realistic. There are many demands on teachers’ time. They cannot be expected to do something voluntarily when they have other responsibilities as teachers. Some teachers are concerned with the amount of time extensive use of Edline takes away from other important tasks, like grading papers and making lesson plans. For those teachers who manage to balance both, the benefits are substantial for students.
The solution is to create more robust rules that mandate teachers to use additional aspects of Edline. This would not only help students, but also support parents’ increased involvement in their children’s education. It would strengthen communication between students and teachers, as well as among teachers, students and parents combined. Nowhere is the need for consistent and expansive use of Edline more necessary than in the CHS Bridge program that serves special needs students.
While all students have to work to keep their academic materials organized, Bridge students often face additional difficulties with this task. Bridge program parents have expressed concerns about insufficient use of Edline by teachers in the program, but this situation has reportedly improved.
Frustrations on both sides of the issue could be resolved if all teachers were required to use Edline’s features more frequently. If teachers believe they need more training in order to use more aspects of the program, surely CHS or MCPS could provide this instruction. If this is not cost effective during MCPS budget cuts, teachers unfamiliar with the program could look for assistance from more technologically proficient colleagues.
For students, Edline can be especially useful when studying for exams. For example, AP Statistics teacher Douglas Szafran uploads daily lessons onto Edline. Having lessons available at any time allows students to refresh themselves on topics they may need to remember and is a great way of allowing students to know exactly what teachers want them to learn. While having every lesson available online may be too great an expectation for all teachers to fulfill, teachers should, as a minimum, post key assignments, notes and Power Points to benefit students.
Expanded mandatory use of Edline by teachers would also be helpful when students are absent from class. Whether it is homework due the next day or material that will be on an assessment, students would be able to catch up on their work and better educate themselves at home.
Edline was originally designed as a way for students and parents to check grades. But it has evolved into something far more valuable: a way for teachers to help students learn with merely the click of a button. The current disparities in Edline use provide a clear advantage to students whose teachers use Edline extensively and consistently. Technology is always changing, and it’s time for all of us to catch up with it.

County should place priority on teachers

cbachrach — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:24:21 +0000

In a county known for the academic strength and dedication of its students, a budget plan for the coming year has been created that favors the priorities of MCPS executives and non-student related groups rather than those of teachers and students.

It is far from surprising that CHS and other Montgomery County schools will have to deal with budget cuts due to the economic strain placed on the entirety of the nation, but the unsettling issue of this situation lies within the budget plan itself which is full of appropriations of an already small budget toward frivolous aspects of the school’s needs, a misrepresentation of statistics leading to a misrepresentation of the needed money and an inadequate amount of money given to CHS in comparison to other schools.

The most important job of a school is to meet the needs of the individual students to foster academic strength, but the school budget proposed for the upcoming school year has completely failed at focusing on the components that adequately support the students.

According to the Churchill Cluster Testimony against the proposed 2011 operating budget, while the funding toward the communications and family outreach budget has been increased over 2800 percent from 2003 to 2011, the amount of the total number of MCPS staff positions, such as teachers who directly impact the academic success of the students, allowed by the budget has only increased by 12.75 percent. With an already dwindling budget, it makes no sense to grant the communications and family outreach programs, which consist of frivolous activities such as taking parents on tours of MCPS bus depots and food preparation facilities, with more money, attention and financial support than the teachers.

The proposed budget also reflects a complete misrepresentation of class size within MCPS, leading to ignorance toward the dire situation of out of control class sizes and a lack of attention to a necessary increase in teaching staff.

According to the proposed 2011 budget, the “projected average” of students per class in the coming year is 25.7. This hardly makes sense since several high school English classes are listed at 28 students while other are at 32. Not to mention that during this current semester alone approximately 80 percent of CHS classes have more than 26 students, and of the 300 Honors and AP courses, almost all have the maximum number of students.

According to the Churchill Cluster Testimony, the misleading average was concocted due to the averaging of the much smaller special education classes with the regular education classes, resulting in an optimistically low overall average class size.

In order to create an improved budget, the county must also put more money towards teacher salaries.

According to the testimony, while the number of MCPS executives, administrators and other support personnel who do not directly impact the students has increased by 513.6 percent from the recommended budget of 2003 to 2001’s, the number of teachers has only increased by 12.75 percent. Not to mention that the new budget plan runs the risk of losing teachers because of the salary differential between Montgomery County and other counties is decreasing while the cost of living in Montgomery County is much higher than that of most counties.

With an already dwindling budget, a focus on MCPS positions instead of teachers does nothing to ensure the academic success of the affected students. Instead of spending precious dollars on non-classroom positions, more money must be allocated to support teachers and student materials.

CHS and other Montgomery County schools did not attain Blue Ribbon statuses or academic renown because their students are geniuses. They did so because their schools have had well planned budgets that support the academic needs of their students. Without an improved budget plan students will suffer academically. Although no one wants to admit it, money really does make the world go round. The Board of Education can either accept that fact and create an adequate budget or lower the expectations for their students.