The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

Well, today was the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s right, I actually am excited for the end of the school year for like the first time in my life. Excited? Heck, I haven’t stopped eating deep-fried pickle hearts since I came home 6 hours ago!

It’s not that I don’t like school, I actually love it, but this past school year has been one which has really put a stress on my stresses and my sanity. Well, actually, freshman year also did, but the fact that I completely cracked under the stress and insanity in March 2006 was entirely my fault for putting too many commitments on my shoulders.

This year was an incredibly tough one from the beginning to the end. Less than a month after school got under way, our school district fell into a serious budget crisis in which our county superintendent told our school district that they had to cut $3.5 million from their budget by the end of September or face further disciplinary action. Among many other cuts, a handful of temporary just-hired teacher positions would be eliminated (and other teachers, librarians, special ed students, etc. shifted or reprogrammed as necessary to redistribute the burden), all because the school district had given our teachers a pay raise with their previous contract based on data from the county tax assessor that turned out to be false, but the teachers refused to give back their raise, therefore forcing the district to eliminate these positions. This resulted in our teachers taking the very exceedingly idiotically STUPID move to close their doors to students at lunch and before/after school. This in turn eliminated the possibility for clubs to meet, for students to get extra help in class, or event to make up missed tests. As a result of this and of teachers spewing their rhetoric out to students to share to their parents (“We have definitely kept the soapbox out of the classroom.” LIAR!!!), all heck broke loose during that week as tensions glared and the communities turned, pitted against each other.

But to stop for a minute, why go I call the teacher’s move exceedingly idiotically stupid? The teachers are mad at the school district and the school board, so to express their anger, they’re going to close their doors to the students. That would be like me being mad at Larry and then going over and cursing at Daniel to express my anger…IT MAKES NO SENSE! It hurts the wrong people! And the teachers wouldn’t stop spewing out their side of the story to the students even though they are not supposed to be allowed to do that. For the first few days, I totally believed the teachers and was mad at the school district, but then our Superintendent Samuel Johnson came to our PTSA (as it was at that time) Meeting, and I was able to hear the school district’s point of view, and learn facts that the teachers had never even mentioned (like the fact that the district was short partially because the county assessor had predicted higher revenues than resulted for the last three years straight). Does that mean that he was totally right? No, but at least I had some more facts to know that the teachers were spewing nothing but angry rhetoric.

And that angry rhetoric worked. Between locking students out of rooms at lunch (which hurt students in their attempts to seek further help in their classes and make up work and have club meetings, as mentioned) and picketing outside of school each morning, the students got mad at the district, and the parents got mad at the district, and so many of them were making false claims that would have been seen as wrong had they heard (and listened to) the other side of the story. (I would find out later on in the year that if these close-minded people had even been given the other side, they still wouldn’t have paid attention.)

September 28th, 2006 was my 15th birthday, and here’s how I celebrated: I watched and read the newspaper as hundreds of students from across the seven high school campuses walked out of school and went to the district office to protest, even though they were not allowed to do that and would be given in-school suspension—but I even saw one or two teachers helping to pass out the student-made flyer encouraging it! And then I read in the newspaper about how the superintendent came out and spoke to the students and helped wake them up to the lies their teachers told them. (Apparently some teachers said that the school district was going to cut Prom, but the school district isn’t even the one that pays for Prom! Bull&&&&!)

Then that night was a school board meeting in the auditorium of one of the schools. I got there two hours early, and witnessed the teachers marking around in circles while screaming really hateful chants carrying signs (and I counted 14 media/television trucks). It turned out that over 2000 people attended that meeting, speakers offered public comments for 2 hours, and the people there were very rude, yelling and booing people against them, some people didn’t even acknowledge the time limits, etc. In the end, the proposed budget cuts were adopted by a 3-2 vote. Oh, and I was coming down with something that night, as I found out the next day when at 6 PM I totally crashed on my bed, and stayed on that bed for the next 28 hours. (We ended up celebrating my birthday on Sunday evening, October 1st.)

How many times did I get sick this school year? WAAAAY too many times. I was sick the weekend of September 28-October 1st (sick on my birthday!), for about two days in mid-December, during February 9th-13th (and a relapse on February 19th-20th), and on April 22nd-23rd. I also sprained my right big toe during a 15 hour day at school (due to our Aragon Club Expo) on February 8th and was in some special kind of shoe (with my big toe and second toe ace-bandaged together) for a month. Oh, and I’ve had allergies pretty much nonstop since mid-January (I’ve tried Sudafed, Sudafed PE, Claritin, Alavert, and Flonase, and none have helped yet.).

Peace Action of San Mateo and my Peace Club put on an effort to significantly reduce the presence of military recruiters on campuses in January-March, and thanks to our efforts, our district ended up increasing their presence on all of the schools except mine (which had originally had the most presence). Uh, yeah, we were really excited with that result.

And then the nitwits who were running my school’s PTSA decided to disband, and put on a huge misinformation campaign about the “problems” of the PTSA versus the “benefits” of PTO. I spearheaded the effort to try to help them see the light, and I even nominated myself to run for president in order to try to shoehorn some effective leadership in the case that they did have enough sense to stick with PTSA. But the PTO misinformers had more resources and more access than our little effort had, which means that they gained the upper-hand, and as I learned, the parents at Aragon will latch onto the first idea that they hear about and then close their mind off to any other ideas. Not that we had a chance to present any other ideas: the president set strict rules that essentially prevented any real discussion or debate…just speakers, and I didn’t get a chance to be a part of the presentation that I would have been a part of under the previous version of the rules. I had prepared a fairly good-sized speech enumerating through all of the lies and half-truths that the PTO-promoters had issued, one by one, but I didn’t get an opportunity to say more than one or two things. And the 47-year-old PTSA fell on May 16th by a vote of 104-22.

This is kind of how I have defined this school year. Although I didn’t suffer through the same kind of stress that I incurred last year (from simply having too many committments and too many things to do), I have felt like I have just been knocked down and slapped in the face time and time again this year after putting a lot of effort into what I fight for. And you know, after a lot of that, it really does start to take its toll.

I should be happy about some of my accomplishments this year. I was one of 10 to receive the California Teachers Association Peace & Justice Caucus Youth Activism Award, I received an Honorary Service Award from 17th District PTA, I received a CSF Math Department Award this year (1 of 4), and I’ve been accepted to be a student representative on the California State PTA Board of Managers next year (something I’ve been trying for for the last 2 years).

But today was my last two finals, and the school year is now offically over. Summer is here, and I now have 2 and a half months to lay back and recover from this school year, in the hopes that next year will hopefully be a better year, a calmer year, and one with a lot less controversy.

But I am certainly going to keep myself occupied this summer, because I know from experience that just like how I get stress from too much stuff in a school year, I also get stress from not enough stuff during a summer. So, with further ado, my summer plans/projects/goals:

• Get photos from the CAPTA Convention Online I have almost 600 photos from Convention and I have promised people that I am going to get them up online.
• Go through old(er) electronics/computers This includes things like my iBook to determine if they are fit for eBay or for an E-waste facility. Any profits I get from eBay will help pay off the MacBook loan I have with my parents.
• Clean my room! The toxic waste dump that I call my room has not been given a thorough overhaul in over a year, and oh boy does it need it, and soon!
• Finish Nicholas Nickleby The book that I was supposed to read for my read-on-your-own novel for English. I’ve finished the first 30 chapters, but there’s 65 total. Although the project that went along with it was completed (and I got an A on it), I’ve promised myself (and my teacher) that I’ll finish it by the end of June.
• Summer Reading Novel I’m dropping to English CP next year (hallelujah!), which means I only have to read one novel this year which I pick from a list. I need to pick it and finish it, and take notes on it for a test on the second day of school. To be read in July-August.
• Webmacster87.info 5 Coming out sometime this month!
• New 17th District PTA Website I’m evaluating and playing around with Drupal, considering using it for the new site.
• phpBB MODs I’m hoping to get back into phpBB MODding for the summer, and hopefully learn how to make MODs for phpBB3 (which is kind of confusing).
• Sacramento July 11-14 As I mentioned, I’m a student rep on the State PTA Board of Managers, and the year’s first (and longest) BOM meeting is in Sacramento!
• WordCamp July 21-22 Although I won’t have a video camera this year (due to the accident), I’m hoping to go (at least on Saturday) and be there again this year! Maybe I’ll volunteer to help out with the podcasting seminar, they didn’t have any volunteers last year…
• Tour de Peninsula August 5 I nearly died doing it, but last year I finished all 33 miles! I’m going to be back out there again! (This also means training for it during the week or two before the event.)
• San Mateo County Fair August 10-19 Still need to determine what I want to enter in the fair this year, but I’m certainly planning to enter and participate (even if school starts during the middle of it)!
• Ring a Bell? Not quite sure anymore if I’ll be doing my video podcast, it depends if I have time what with everything else I’ll be doing…

Welcome summer! The school year is over, let the rest, relaxation, and recovery begin!