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Sadie Hawkins important dates

webeic — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:54:14 +0000

Sadie Hawkins Spirit Day Themes:

Monday, Feb. 6: Pajamas
Tuesday, Feb. 7: 80’s Workout
Wednesday, Feb. 8: Holiday
Thursday, Feb. 9: Black and Gold

Outside date forms for Sadie Hawkins must be turned into the office by Wednesday, Feb. 8.
The Sadie Hawkins dance will be on Saturday, Feb. 10 from 7-11 p.m.

Spring conferences will be on Wednesday, Feb. 8 and Thursday, Feb. 9 from 4-7:30 p.m. They will be located in the main gym.

There is no school on Friday, Feb. 10 or on Monday, Feb. 20.

Tumble during competition injures cheerleader, leaving her partially paralyzed for hours

enteditor — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:31:16 +0000

She sat on the tumbling mat after the performance, unable to move her legs. Fear flowed through her as her teammate carried her off.
In that moment, she didn’t know what was going to happen.
The BV cheerleaders began preparing for their competition on Dec. 10 by flipping and launching their fliers up in the air. Varsity cheerleader junior Makenzie Bexten was practicing her tumbling when her feet barely cleared a basketball backboard sitting upright on the ground. Her back crashed onto the edge of the basketball goal.
Despite the injury, Makenzie performed the routine with her teammates.
“After the performance, I couldn’t feel my legs or anything, and I had to go to the hospital,” she said. “I couldn’t really feel my left leg while I was doing [the routine], and I kind of blacked out — I don’t even remember doing the routine.”
After the performance, fellow varsity cheerleader junior Rachel Rusnak carried Makenzie off and handed her to her father.
“My husband and I were very concerned,” Makenzie’s mother Kathy Bexten said. “ We have two daughters who’ve hurt their backs, and we were concerned she’d done something serious.”
Makenzie was carried to the trainer to evaluate her injuries, but it was decided the injuries were too severe to be dealt with there.
“They were going to call the ambulance, but I was like, ‘That’s really embarrassing, and I’m already crying — can’t we just drive to the hospital?’” Makenzie said. “My dad carried me to the car while my mom pulled the car around.”
After Makenzie arrived at the hospital, she was loaded onto a stretcher and taken to get X-rays and MRI’s.
The doctors told her she’d torn ligaments that connected vertebrae to muscles, and they discovered a spine disease called spondylosis, the degeneration of the spine.
The doctors then injected her with steroids to loosen the muscles in her back and put her on pain medication.
They told her to wait 48 hours to regain feeling in her legs, which she eventually did.
“When she was home, she didn’t really move from the recliner for several days,” Kathy said. “We had to carry her to the bathroom and make a seat for her in the shower to sit on. We basically carried her everywhere for a few days.”
Makenzie said after she injured herself, she shouldn’t have tumbled during the competition, but that she rarely gives her injuries adequate time to heal.
“After the competition, I couldn’t walk or move my legs and I was like, ‘This is probably a good time to take a break,’” she said.
Makenzie returned to school Tuesday, Dec. 13, in a wheelchair for the week of finals.
She said her teachers were understanding about the injury.
“[The doctors] told me I couldn’t even try to use crutches because of my ligaments,” Bexten said. “They heal with scar tissue, so I’ll lose flexibility in my back. If I don’t let them heal with scar tissue, then I’d lose function of my legs forever.”
Kathy said had it not been finals week, Makenzie would have stayed home.
“I was concerned about her even being able to concentrate with the pain,” Kathy said.
Makenzie said the cheer team and cheer coach Michele Wirt were all very supportive and stayed in touch with her after the injury.
“I love them all so much,” Makenzie said. “I had so many calls, texts and people writing on my Facebook wall. Michele texted me every day and called a lot. After I got hurt warming up, she told me not to tumble during the routine, but of course I was like, ‘Oh, it’s fine.’”
Makenzie said she doesn’t know when she will be fully healed.
“Everyone just heals differently,” she said. “So I don’t know what I’ll be able to do when I heal.”
Kathy said even when Makenzie is fully healed, she’d like for her daughter to tone down the risky athletics she participates in.
“I’d like to see her not do some things because she did have such an extensive injury,” Kathy said. “But I know she’s not willing to give up her activities.”

Sweetheart attendance prompts name change

webeic — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:49:07 +0000

In early December, Student Council members discussed possible causes of low attendance at last year’s Sweetheart dance. They decided the cause of low attendance could be the implied meaning of the name itself.
“We don’t want anyone to think it has to be a boyfriend-girlfriend thing,” student body president Evelyn Davis said. “We want [students] to think they could bring a guy friend or I can just go with a bunch of girls or a bunch of guys can go together. We wanted to make the feel a little more like Homecoming in the way that big groups of girls go or guys ask friends that are girls.”
StuCo members brought in multiple ideas for names, such as Winter Formal and Women Pay All. The members then voted and chose Sadie Hawkins.
“Essentially, Sweetheart is a term that involves love and dating,” Davis said. “Sadie Hawkins is just by nature a little more casual. While this is the same idea with the girl asking the guy, people are saying that they would much prefer to ask someone to Sadie because it could be a friend thing as well as a date thing. Mostly, we’re just kind of taking away that connotation of love and Valentine’s Day, even though it is around that time of year.”
Student Council sponsor Mark Mosier said the idea of changing the dance to increase attendance has been mentioned in previous years as well.
Student body vice president senior Elliott Voss said the name was also changed so underclassmen would go to the dance.
“Mainly, we were just trying to get freshman and sophomores involved because last year we didn’t have the participation we were looking for,” he said. “We decided if we changed the connotation from you have to have a date to having fun, like at Homecoming, it would be a lot better.”
Voss said though the dance’s name has changed, the dance itself will not.
“We’re going to have a music video that Student Council does that’s related to Sadie Hawkins, but other than that, there should be many of the same things as last year,” he said.
Davis said the dance, scheduled for Feb. 11, is going to have the same feel as Homecoming.
“The only effects on the dance are going to be probably less slower songs because we want it to be sort of the same vibe as Homecoming where everyone is just dancing and having fun,” she said. “We’re just hoping that most people will just look past the lovey sentiment of Sweetheart and just see something new and better in Sadie.”
Davis said the name change would help people feel more involved in the school and was a move StuCo knew it had to make.
“There’s a thought that Sweetheart has been a tradition, but when a tradition stops being effective is when it has to be changed,” she said. “We’re hoping this will be successful, and we’re hoping for people to be happy.”

What do you think about the name change? Should it have been something different? Leave us a comment.

District to announce results of bond referendum

webeic — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:40:43 +0000

Facility Improvements: $167 million. Technology: $84 million. Safety: $20 million.
The Blue Valley Board of Education elected to propose a $271,285,031 bond to voters this January. If the bond passes, it will allow the district to maintain or enhance current levels of technology, facilities and safety for schools.
Every registered voter residing within the district’s boundaries received a ballot in the mail. The votes will be tabulated on Jan. 31, and the results should be known by 1 p.m. that day.
“What we find is that more people vote when the ballot is mailed to their home than when they have to be proactive and actually go to site or request a ballot,” Superintendent Dr. Tom Trigg said. “We feel like the democratic process, quite frankly, is best put to use when more people are involved and more people vote.”
Members of the board traveled to each of the school buildings and talked with principals and administrative teams to decide on the needs of each school. Then, they discussed HVAC upgrades, paving needs and carpeting upgrades with the district’s construction department and maintenance operations.
After that, board members decided the projects and the level of priority concerning each of those projects. Because of the certain taxing level the district does not want to exceed, some items did not make the list.
“Everybody wants their project done first,” Trigg said. “But if you think about it, this is a five-to-seven-year bond referendum. There are some projects that won’t happen until five years down the road, some maybe not until seven years down the road because what we want to do is treat the tax payers fairly. So, we want to sell these bonds incrementally over time, so that we don’t have one year where taxes spike dramatically. We do have a pretty strong equity theme here in the district.”
Trigg said the district would like to see more technology in the hands of students and continues to search for new ways to utilize technology.
“When you buy a desktop or a laptop from home, you can normally figure that the life cycle of that piece of hardware is going to be about four years,” Trigg said. “We have the same situation here in the school district. We buy all this technology for student use, and then, after about four years, it needs to be replaced. That money has to come from some place. So, in order to maintain our current levels of technology for students, I would say this is very, very important.”
In a world of increasing technology, Trigg said schools need to help prepare students for their futures.
“We really want to prepare kids, so when they go on to college and do whatever it is that they are going to do, that they just flow right into that university, and they don’t have any kind of technological divide,” Trigg said. “We want to keep up with the newest and the best, whether it is software, hardware, whatever, so that kids make that easy transition.”
Blue Valley parent Jackie Storm said Johnson County is ahead of the curve compared to other school districts considering technology and facilities.
“I think it is an important lesson that we don’t always need the best of the best,” she said. “And we need to learn to live within our means.”
The district aims to provide a safe environment for every student. With this bond, the district plans to add improvements such as safety railings for elementary schools and secure entry ways for older buildings.
Trigg said more of the bond money will go to the older facilities rather than newer ones like BV Southwest, Aubry Bend Middle School and Timber Creek Elementary. The district has a cycle for repaving parking lots and re-roofing buildings. Depending on where a specific school is in the cycle decides how early a project will be completed in the bond.
BVHS has had more additions than any other facility in the district, and the bond proposes a number of changes to the campus, including new home side bleachers and a new press box. The bleachers began to show structural defects resulting from natural wear and weather.
“That’s an aging stadium,” Trigg said. “That’s the oldest stadium that we have. Quite frankly, that press box up there, if you’ve been in it, not only is it small and not very functional — it’s safe — but it doesn’t come near meeting the standards needed in today’s media world. With games being televised now, games being put on the radio, newspaper folks, along with coaches’ boxes, it needs to be enlarged.”
The bond referendum in 2005 was projected to last until 2010. However, in 2010 and 2011 the board of education felt the time was not appropriate to raise taxes and asked administration to stretch the current bond.
“We are to the point now where everybody is in agreement we can’t do that any longer,” Trigg said. “We are virtually out of technology dollars. We are in a position where we really need to go out and ask the voters to do this, and they’ll tell us whether they agree or not.”
Storm said she will vote no in the bond referendum.
“With the way the economy is right now, where some people are just getting by, it is not an appropriate time for them to come out and ask for this,” she said.
Storm said she sees no direct correlation with the quality of education and the condition of the school facilities.
“I think the money they are asking for is too much,” she said. “We need some money for improvements that are absolutely necessary, like if a roof needs to be fixed, but I think just the way they are directing the funds is unnecessary.”
If the bond fails, the district will regroup and figure out why. The only time a district bond has failed was in 1982. Trigg said if the bond fails, the schools would take the biggest hit technologically.
“We would have to come up with some ways to make our current technology last longer, which, as you know, is very, very expensive,” he said. “It would more than likely put us in a position that we would have less technology available for student use.”
Trigg said the community supports each school in the district.
“We just happen to have people that value education in this community, and they seem to understand, and they seem to be willing to provide the tax dollars to pay for it,” he said. “We’ll have to see this time if that is the prevalent attitude.”

Scholars Bowl team to attend regionals

webeic — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:40:28 +0000

With a record of 50 wins and six losses, the Scholars Bowl team prepares for the regional competition which will take place on Thursday, Feb. 2.
Last year, the Scholars Bowl team was named 5A State Champion, and sponsor Adam Wade says the team hopes to continue with this same level of success.
Juniors Asim Zaidi and Jamie Brower, sophomores Luke Chen and Ajay Subramanian and freshman Luke Conners will compete in the regional competition.
Categories include communication arts, social studies, science, math, fine arts, year in review and foreign language.
“We are the strongest in math and science and social studies,” Wade said. “Me being a math teacher means most kids I recruit are good at math, and math kids are usually good at science. And Jamie Brower is a total geography whiz.”
With such a wide array of questions, Brower said it helps to have members who excel in different categories.
“This year we have a lot of people that specialize in certain areas,” he said. “Everyone has their own specialty.”
Science Knowledge Bowl will fall on the same day as Scholars Bowl. Though the seniors on the Scholars Bowl team, Allen Zhu, Spencer Ho, Danny Theisen and Alex Schoenberg, chose to compete in Science Knowledge Bowl instead of Scholars Bowl, Wade said they contributed greatly to the team’s successful record.
The State Scholars Bowl competition will be on Saturday, Feb. 11.

Profits from Matchmaker survey donated to cystic fibrosis research

webeic — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:40:12 +0000

Eleven years ago this March, BV student Julie O’Neal passed away from cystic fibrosis.
Student Council continues to support cystic fibrosis research by donating all profits made from the Matchmaker quizzes to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF).
“It helps to keep her memory alive,” student body treasurer senior Taylor Leathers said. “It’s kind of a sign of respect. It shows she was loved here, and, even though it’s been a while, we still support the cause.”
Cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening disease, affects the lungs and digestive system.
The money donated to the CFF helps fund research to find new treatments and a cure.
Students complete the Matchmaker questionnaires during school.
The company then sends back the results that pair students with their best matches based on their answers.
The Matchmaker results cost $2. One dollar goes to the company, and the other dollar is donated to CFF.
“We are constantly in search of charities that we can give the money we raise that are near and dear to our hearts,” Leathers said. “With a young lady who died of the disease, it makes sense that we donate there.”
Julie was a junior when she passed away in 2001. She realized her best option was to have a lung transplant, which she had in November of 2000 in St. Louis, MO.
She returned home in February, but then started having complications and passed away in March.
Julie’s parents said they are thankful that StuCo continues to donate to CFF.
“It’s very touching,” Julie’s father Mike O’Neal said. “It’s very special to us. I remember one thing, in Julie’s last months she was alive, when she knew that she was dying, she always wanted people to remember her. So it means a lot.”
StuCo sponsor Mark Mosier said the Matchmaker quizzes have been used as a fundraiser for the past 15 years, but it wasn’t until Julie’s death that the students donated the profits to CFF.
“The students chose to commemorate or memorialize Julie as well as donate to cystic fibrosis in her name,” he said. “Since that time, whatever profits the students make from Matchmaker [go to CFF].”
Julie’s mother Janet O’Neal said Julie would have enjoyed the Matchmaker quizzes.
“She was just a real people-person,” Janet said. “She was curious about people. She loved to laugh and loved people.”
The Matchmaker results will be sold for $2 on Feb. 7-9 in the commons during lunch.

Annual Activity Fair tonight

webeic — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:19:26 +0000

Blue Valley’s Activity Fair will take place in the commons at 7:40 p.m. on Jan. 25. It is a part of the the eighth grade Curriculum Night. Tables for different extra-curricular and co-curricular activities will be set up for eighth graders and their parents to see what activities BV offers.
“The Activity Fair is a portion of the eighth grade night where the eighth graders come over and get to travel around to different areas,” assistant principal Mollie McNally said. “First, they listen to the different presentations on the subject areas, and the activities portion is in the commons where the students and their parents can go around and visit the different tables to find out about different sports they might want to play, different clubs they might want to be involved with, and some of the elective classes have tables, too. It’s really just an opportunity for eighth grades to see all that there is to be involved with at Blue Valley High School.”
Students involved in activities attend the event to talk to the eighth graders about different activities.
“They’re at the tables too,” McNally said. “It’s kind of at the coach’s or sponsor’s discretion, but they’re highly involved with talking to students. As an eighth grader, you want to come in and see what we have, but you don’t just want to see the adults. It’s nice to have the students here to kind of show them what it’s all about and all of the different things they can do.”
McNally said the event usually gets positive feedback.
“It’s great for parents to come in, especially for parents with their first high school kid,” she said. “[The parents] can come in and see what to expect. It helps to answer questions that they’re starting to have because their kid is getting ready to go to high school.”
McNally said attendance is important for the eighth graders to see where their new “home” is going to be.
“I think it’s very important to attend for the reason they do attend — to see what high school’s all about,” she said. “It’s different. It’s a big difference from middle school. It’s bigger. There’s many more things to do and a lot more after school activities to be involved with. This starts the beginning of your journey to preparing for college and graduating. Four years goes by really quick and I think any time you can get a good handle on coming into something, I think you feel more comfortable.”

Class competitions continue, each grade fair chance at winning

webeic — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:50:23 +0000

Blood, sweat and tears.
Students will go to just about anything in order to beat other grade levels in the class competition.
But is the judging fair?
Assistant Principal Mollie McNally said that while she finds teachers to judge, STUCO decides on the different competitions and Jessica Janish keeps track of points.
The class with the most points at the end of the school year gets a day off of school to go bowling.
She said the closest competition always occurs during the class cheers.
“It can be really close sometimes,” she said. “But if you listen closely, you can usually tell who wins.”
McNally said all the events are completely fair, despite student doubt.
“The seniors don’t always win,” she said. “The sophomores won the the float competition this year, and there’s no way that’s rigged. When it comes down to it, the best class wins.”
Some of the different events so far this year include class cheers at pep rallies, Homecoming floats and spirit days.
“It’s a great way to get more school spirit,” she said. “Winning is definitely a motivating factor. It creates competition and makes the kids willing to get more involved.”
The class dance off, held at the Sadie Hawkins assembly every year, will be the next event of this school year.
To find out how your grade is doing in the competition, check the wall opposite the performing arts center in the cafeteria.

GSA writes letters to state representatives, hope to legalize gay marriage, adoption, civil unions

webeic — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:47:15 +0000

On Wednesday, Jan. 18, members of the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) at BV came together to write letters to Kansas representatives. They were writing because they wanted to enforce the idea of legalizing gay marriage, gay adoption (adoption by gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender partners) and civil unions (a partnership similar to marriage).
Currently in the state of Kansas, gay marriage, gay adoption and civil unions are all prohibited by a law passed in 2005.
Since then, lawmakers have tried to repeal laws prohibiting gay marriage, gay adoption and civil unions. After representative of Hutchinson Jan Pauls and representative of Olathe Lance Kinzer rejected these ideas, the repeal was stopped.
Now the GSA is taking charge.
“It’s going to be a formal letter that we share our views,” GSA president senior Clinton Webb said. “We are going to be very respectful in going about it.”
The GSA based their letters off facts to try to persuade representatives.
“One member looked up facts about how gay marriage can be positive,” Webb said. “Hopefully by showing the facts we can get our opinions heard. By showing that states that allow gay marriage are prospering and not in turmoil or something, it will help back up our reasons.”
GSA vice president Archana Vasa said she hopes to make the representatives think hard about this topic.
“Everyone should have the ability to say what they feel,” she said. “So we are expressing to the representatives that gay marriage should be legalized. We want to influence them to change policies and have them recognize this issue.”
Vasa said she is glad she is a part of the GSA.
“I didn’t want to join at first because I thought it would be strange, but I realized that if I actually support equality and gay rights I needed to join,” she said. “Being in GSA shows all homosexuals we approve and support them.”
GSA sponsor Jill Gouger said the club will mail the letters to representatives a few at a time.
“We are going to stagger out the mailing so it is always on the forefront,” she said. “We want them to think about it more than just one day.”
Gouger said the representatives need to truly represent the people.
“I always think it’s important that you let your voice be heard,” she said. “Everyone is supposed to be heard. The representatives are supposed to represent the people, so we are bringing it to attention that there are people who think gay marriage should be allowed.”

Web sites protest SOPA by blacking out their pages

webeic — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:54:06 +0000

This Wednesday, Wikipedia blacked out its Web pages in a global protest against the anti-piracy legalisation going through Congress. Google also blacked out the word “Google” on its home page.
The particular bills, Stop Online Piracy Act [SOPA] and Protect Intellectual Property Act, would attempt to shut down Web sites selling pirated or counterfeit goods. And according to the Washington Post, would impose restrictions forcing U.S. companies to stop selling online ads to suspected pirates and would refuse to list Web sites suspected of piracy in search-engine results.
The goal is to cut off sites that deliver American customers to potential pirates.
Sites like Google and Wikipedia are protesting these bills because they fear the added costs of the bill, and the new rules would stifle the success of current and up-and-coming sites.
According to the New York Times, the 24-hour shut down of Wikipedia, which garners almost 2.7 billion U.S. visitors per month, is a message to lawmakers that people who use the Internet daily are not happy with the potential effects of the bill.
“It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web,” said a statement signed by three of the free encyclopedia’s administrators. The actual decision to black out the website was decided in an online discussion with 1,800 users of Wikipedia.
Stay tuned to see if SOPA and the Protect Intellectual Property Act pass.