JOE GRAVES

Opinion: The storm isn’t ‘perfect,’ but it’s a storm nevertheless

It’s not a “perfect” storm per se, but you’d have a hard time convincing several dozen school superintendents of that this last week. Just as the state Legislature grows ever closer to giving schools as much as 1.2 percent and as little as a great big goose egg, the Board of Directors of the South Dakota High School Activities Association announces they will be sanctioning soccer as a new school sport.

March 09, 2010

Opinion: Almost March — a time for spring, budget decisions

While I realize that spring does not arrive until March 20, according to the calendar this year, and while I also realize that even March 20 does not guarantee more temperate weather — we have missed school due to blizzards as late as the last week of April — my internal season clock always tells me that March 1 is spring. No matter how much evidence I see to the contrary during any given year, the little robin in my head announces to me on March 1 that spring has arrived. (Apparently this year, spring will be heralded by gargantuan piles of snow.)

February 23, 2010

Opinion: Weather not cooperating with schooling this year

Stupid groundhog.
Yes, I am fully aware that it really doesn’t matter whether Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow or not, that it’s just a bunch of silly folk lore. And even if it did mean something out East, it wouldn’t work in South Dakota. If we only get six more weeks of winter after Feb. 2, we count ourselves fortunate.

February 09, 2010

Opinion: With testing, be sure the remedy is worth the price

Among both theologians and philosophers alike, there is an age-old conversation about the nature of humanity. It can be summed up as a debate over whether we are fallen angels or redeemed demons. In more practical terms, it is an argument about whether people naturally act honestly, being dishonest and vile only when a fallen world trains or tempts us in that direction, or naturally cheat, steal and swindle unless given the proper incentives not to do so.

January 26, 2010

Opinion: A positive undertaking: Scholarship program investing in our future

One of the things I truly enjoy about the first few weeks of school after Christmas break — and no, I am not referring to snow, which I detest more and more as my childhood memories disappear into that fog that comes to all people “of a certain age” — is the mail at school. Typically, I am not a big fan of the mail as it typically comes with little I would ever want to receive. The typical batch includes a blizzard of advertisements, news of some innovative and even more onerous federal regulation, and, of course, some state and federal report which must be filed within the next 30 days and which I truly loathe especially if I can’t foist it off on someone else in the district which, I have to admit, is usually how it works.

January 12, 2010

Students will make up one snow day at end of year

The Mitchell School District had two snow days in the bank at the beginning of the week. The bank is now overdrawn, and one day must be added to the school calendar at the end of the year.

January 09, 2010

Opinion: Education’s future? Time will tell if video games are next great method

Inasmuch as I work in a school district arguably as high tech as any in the entire state (grades 7-12 with 1:1 laptop computers, all elementary classrooms with SmartBoards, etc. ), it is not fair to say that I am anti-technology.

By Joe Graves , December 29, 2009

Some local contracts exempt from bid laws

When Mitchell school officials set out to choose an architect and construction manager for a $2.5 million stadium replacement project at Joe Quintal Field, they did not seek applications from interested firms. Instead, they turned directly to Puetz Corporation.

By Seth Tupper , December 19, 2009

Opinion: Lift the burden of others and feel better this year

While I could never agree with Ebenezer Scrooge’s response to his charitable nephew, Fred, the disturbing fact remains that I find his views just a bit less objectionable each year that my memories of childhood Christmases recede further into the increasingly distant, and therefore foggy, past. When I was a child, presents on Christmas morning, decorations inside and outside our home on Holt Avenue, homemade Christmas goodies and enormous holiday feasts all just “appeared,” seemingly out of nowhere.

By Joe Graves , December 15, 2009

Opinion: Battling ‘culture lag’: Innovation is there, but not for local students

I don’t actually remember where I was the first time some lecturer first introduced me to the notion of “cultural lag” but, oddly, I do remember my reaction to it. I felt smug. The speaker referred to the telephone as an example or initiator of cultural lag, the notion that it takes the rest of the culture time to catch up with some new innovation, often a new technology. He then discussed the “hold-outs,” people who for decades after the phone had become common in most households simply refused to install one. How could anyone be so unreasonable, so backward, so Luddite as to decline to take advantage of such an obvious technological wonder?

By Joe Graves , December 01, 2009

Official: District can handle rise in payments

When the Mitchell School District goes forward with replacement of the stadium at Joe Quintal Field, the project will raise the district’s outstanding building-related debt to $18.385 million, although two recent projects will be paid off by 2013.

By Ross Dolan , November 28, 2009

Opinion: Praising with meaning: In a world full of undeserved awards, how can we show true appreciation for achievement?

When I was a first grader in Miss Johnson’s classroom at Cleveland Elementary, I have to admit that I was what they now call a “teacher pleaser.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t really cover it, but since I’m loathe to use the various terms students today would have assigned me then, I’ll have to go with a few of my own: toady, sycophant, and, my personal favorite, lickspittle.

By Joe Graves , November 17, 2009

Local student, teacher cases come to end

Two civil cases involving a former Mitchell student and an ex-Mitchell School District employee have been resolved after the original incident occurred three years ago. Brittany Plamp will not pursue an appeal of her case against the school district to the U.S. Supreme Court, her lawyer said recently. She alleged that then-teacher Andrew Tate battered her while she was a senior in 2006.

By Melanie Brandert , November 07, 2009

Opinion: Deciding requirements for students is painful process

With any luck at all (this column was submitted Thursday, so Monday’s events are still in the future at the time of this writing), the state Board of Education yesterday passed a final version of new high school graduation requirements for South Dakota. I hold out this hope even though I know it is unlikely that everything I hoped would go into those requirements got in, or that everything I hoped would stay out was left out. I hold out this hope because I really want the process to end.

By Joe Graves , November 03, 2009

Opinion: Education must keep hold of its birthright

Much is being made in some circles these days of the apparent prediction of the end of the world in December of 2012 by ancient Mayan astronomers and chronologists. Some of the modern-day true believers hedge their bets a bit, arguing only for some sort of cataclysmic social upheaval but either way, they argue, don’t bother buying fragile Christmas presents for anybody that year.

By Joe Graves , October 20, 2009