Tamir Harper

Matthew Milligan

Staff Writer

 

In January, the eleventh EduCon was held at Science Leadership Academy. Educators from around the country and globe visited the school to observe classes, attend discussion, and meet members of the SLA and larger educational community.

Educon also serves another, more practical purpose.

“Educon is one of our main fundraisers for the school,” explained Physics and Astronomy teacher and EduCon Co-Chair BJ Enzweiler.  “The reason we have a lot of the capabilities the school has is because of EduCon . . . We are able to pay for the laptops as well as at least half of our teachers’ salaries.”

Each year Educon is expected to make between $40,000 to $50,000, but it is one of several events that the school throws in order to raise funds for staff and programming.

“There’s also a secondary fundraiser called Fuel the Rocket . . . Both of those together make up the vast majority of fundraising for the school.”

Overall, the school aims to raise anywhere between $100,000 to $150,000 each year.

Since EduCon has such a large impact on the finances of our school, it was important that it did well this year, just as in previous years. Despite the overall operation going quite well, this year’s Educon was not as successful as previous ones before it.

When asked about the performance of EduCon 2018, Mr. Enzweiler stated, “Things actually went really swimmingly day of. The thing that we did have different this year was that we had 100 less people in the building than we had in the previous year.” Fewer ticket sales meant less profit from the event.

Junior and veteran student volunteer Kimberly Gucciardi-Kriegh said that she also noticed the difference.

“Sunday there weren’t that many adults there . . . I feel like people usually stay the whole time but people were starting to leave . . . Everyone was kind of over it.”

Now that EduCon is over and we know that it did not do as well as it normally does, the big question is, should there be concern for the SLA budget?

Mr. Enzweiler doesn’t think so.

“No, there is no need for concern. We have what is called a “rainy day” fund.

Junior and student co-chair Miguel Rivera also sees no need for concern.

“I don’t think I’m that concerned with the budget to be honest. I feel like Educon this year . . . it did have a large number of people.  I felt like, it was just a little bit smaller than last year.”

In addition, EduCon is projected to have made around $42,000, which is less than last year ($48,000) but still within the expected margin.

While there is no need for concern now, the fact that EduCon’s performance has been down does call for change.

“This is something that has been slowly happening over the last few years in that attendance has been getting lower and so we’re working on some methodologies to try and increase attendance so that we are raising as much as we had in the past,” Mr. Enzweiler stated. He elaborated further by saying, ““There’s probably just a few factors in there, one of them being just some of the forms of outreach are probably just going dry.”

Rivera has some ideas as to how things can be improved.

“Maybe the structure of it. Maybe the tendency of something new, like people want to go to something new. Maybe that ran off a little bit on people. . . I think for a panel, maybe some new sessions, some new ideas.”

Gucciardi-Kriegh thinks that bringing back merchandise could help to raise more money.

“They didn’t have t-shirts this year so that could have had something to do with it, usually the t-shirts make a lot of money”

One factor that needs to be taken into consideration for the future of EduCon would also be the campus move to Ben Franklin, which is less than two years away. Mr. Enzweiler thinks that this move will definitely affect the future dynamics of EduCon.

“I think the largest change is probably gonna come from whenever we do move to Benjamin Franklin . . . That’s gonna be the biggest change to how things run. In addition, since it’s going to be a public school, things might be different in how we relate the information about how we work the conference through the district because the building will actually be owned by the district at that time.”

 

Sarah Berg

Staff Writer

In the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on February 14, several events have been planned to advocate for increased gun control in the country. The following three have gotten national attention.

National School Walkout | Wednesday, March 14

The National School Walkout is organized by the same group that organized the Women’s March. It falls on the one month anniversary of the Stoneman Douglas shooting. It consists of a 17-minute walk out at 10:00 am, one minute dedicated to each of the people killed in Stoneman Douglas. The website states the walkout’s purpose is “to demand Congress pass legislation to keep us safe from gun violence at our schools, on our streets and in our homes and places of worship,” and that “students and staff have the right to teach and learn in an environment free from the worry of being gunned down in their classrooms or on their way home from school”.

March for Our Lives | Saturday, March 24

The March for our Lives is comprised of a primary march in Washington DC, as well as sister marches in other cities throughout the country (including Philadelphia). The students leading the march are demanding that a “comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues”. The organization has also started a petition, “An Act to Protect & Save Your Children”.

National High School Walkout | Friday, April 20

The National High School Walkout is on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting. It is also at 10:00 am. A statement on Twitter from the organizers encourages students to “Sit outside your schools and peacefully protest. Make some noise. Voice your thoughts. ‘We are students, we are victims, we are change’”.

SLA’s Participation

Many SLA students are planning to participate in the walkouts and marches, and since the National School Walkout is soonest, it’s on people’s minds the most. Senior Tamir Harper has been active in planning for the walkout. According to Harper, the plan for the 14th is for SLA students, possibly accompanied by students from Friend’s Select, Freire Charter, and Masterman, to occupy the sidewalks from 22nd and Market to 20th and Market Streets, where Senator Bob Casey’s office is located. Students should wear orange and bring signs if they can.

Several speakers were invited to the event, including Senator Vincent Hughes, Councilman Kenyatta Johnson, and Councilwoman Helen Gym. Outside of school, there will be a table where students who are 18 or will be before the next election (May 15) will be able to register to vote, as well as a letter writing table where students will be able to write letters to congresspeople, senators, and state leadership. Harper assures that these letters will go to the governor and the speaker of the house.

The reason Harper and other SLA students are invested in this movement is echoed in the sentiment nationwide. “We are walking out for common sense ideas. We don’t want people to be able to own assault rifles. We want bump stocks banned. We don’t want any more people, specifically young people in schools being shot and killed for no apparent reason,” Harper explained. “This conversation must continue to grow until we see our lawmakers do their jobs until we start feeling safe in our schools.”

Although we’ve heard horror stories like the threats of suspensions for walking out in a Houston-area school district, the Philadelphia school district has not said anything discouraging students from walking out, according to Co-Principal Gerwer. Superintendent Hite was even quoted in the Inquirer saying he’d “probably participate”. As for SLA’s administration’s stance, Mr. Gerwer said, “I think it’s always really awesome when students take a stand and let their voices be heard, and as school administrators, we definitely want to support that and encourage kids to be a voice for change… whoever has to be the voice to make the change [that senators and people in Congress aren’t making], I say yes.”

Sarah Berg

Staff Writer

At SLA, almost all of our classes are taught by multiple people. Commonly, there will be a Senior Assistant Teacher, and sometimes graduate students who help out the teacher. Usually, lessons will alternate between these teachers so classes experience a mixture of teaching styles.

Recently, the juniors in Water stream were unsatisfied with the student teaching system in their physics class and petitioned to change it. Their argument: they were only being taught by the student teacher, and found this unfair.

The petition’s proposal was that the student teacher alternate between teaching the four junior streams instead of solely Water. It defended this suggestion by claiming it would not only benefit the students, but the teacher as well. “This not only gives her the required hours for her program but also lets her get more experience. By this we mean she gets a wider variety of students to teach, and she gets to listen to their different ideas as well as becoming more familiarized with the students instead”.

The petition was successful, and ultimately was able to garner signatures from the majority of the class. Why did so many people sign?

Student William Huang agreed with what it stood for. He explained, “I was excited to know that a classmate of mine was trying to fight for something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’ve been wanting a change to happen, but I decided to just deal with it.”

Interestingly, Huang did not actually believe it was going to work, and became “extremely nervous” about the teacher addressing it.

A student who preferred to remain anonymous spoke about why they did not sign, citing initial thoughts that “the petition was a class joke”, but mostly reluctance because they did not get to read the whole letter. However, this student was not surprised at the achievement, “because SLA does like to hear from its students about things to improve on”.

Physics teacher Mr. Enzweiler described his thoughts when given the petition as a progression, recalling, “First: this is weird. I’ve never been given a petition by any students whatsoever. Next was a little bit of frustration because I’d been very careful about how Ms. Tanner and I had been implementing ideas and working her through the class. Then a little bit of ‘this is so SLA’.”

 

Kai Bradley-Gutierrez de Teran

Staff Writer

School shootings have been on the rise in the 21st century. A threat that was rarely considered by past generations now has become all too real of a menace. School shootings occur at a much higher rate in the United States compared to the rest of the world.

So, could it happen at SLA?

In our school, four sophomores and they all said that it had passed their mind that they could possibly become victims of a school shooting one day.  

Unfortunately, It is no longer considered strange to fear a school shooting, which leads to the question: what does SLA do to protect their students from such a tragedy?

The information

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 97% of the time the shooter is male and 40% of the time they commit suicide before the police have a chance to arrest them. These statistics may point to the idea that our society’s expectations of males allow them to keep their anger inside until finally, they release it, which often ends up being A violent form as our society teaches men and boys to release emotions this way.

The FBI also has found that “Active-shooter incidents often occur in small and medium-sized communities.” These are places where police forces tend to be at a minimum and are restricted by small budgets. They also found that the average shooting lasts 12 minutes and tends to be over by the time law enforcement arrives, or they end almost immediately after first responders are heard.

Statistically speaking, SLA is less likely to be a school shooting target because it is located in a large community. However, there is still a School District protocol for practicing and preparing for such an event.

Security and prevention

The most basic prevention for school shootings are lockdowns. Lockdowns occur without any necessary evidence of a shooting but just the sheer possibility of a weapon in a school causes a lockdown. These happen with some regularity in Philadelphia. For example, On November 20, 2017, Mastbaum High School in North Philadelphia, was placed on lockdown after reports of a gun.

Though they may seem extreme, lockdowns are proven to help prevent casualties in the case of an active shooter. For example, on November 13, 2017, Kevin Neal went on a shooting rampage at an elementary school in Northern California. As soon as the school officials realized they were gunshots and not firecrackers a lockdown was initiated. Students were immediately rushed into the school building to take cover in the classrooms. The quick reaction by the school officials is credited with saving the lives of countless students and adults that day.

Lockdowns at SLA

School Police Officer Cynthia Byrd says that first a notification of a lockdown would be spread to the school over the intercom system and 911 would be called. In the lockdown, everyone is supposed to go into a classroom or office, lock the doors, silence their phones and stay hidden.  

Officer Byrd said that in a real-life situation her job during a lockdown, specifically for a school shooter, is “To call 911, then call school district police dispatch.”

Engineering teacher and Fire Marshall, John Kamal, confirmed that this past school year, 2016-2017, there was no lockdown drills, which is in violation of School District Protocol. He also stated that every month we have a fire drill at the SLA Center City campus.

Will there be one this school year?

Officer Byrd stated that there is one coming up.

Student Knowledge

Do students literally know the drill?

This is specifically important at SLA because of various students, when asked how they believe they would react in a school shooting, responded that they would just run and ignore any instructions from the school. Maya Kohl, a 10th grader, said: “I would be like,‘all mans [sic] for themselves’ and be gone.”

When asked what could be done to make her feel safer she said “Having a self-defense class or some sort of preparation.”

This attitude is specifically what lockdowns seek to address — to create order and increase safety during a time that can be chaotic.

Autumn Lor, a Junior, participated in an actual lockdown when she was 12 because a man entered her school grounds with a gun and was threatening people. While no one was killed, one person was assaulted, Lor says it was very scary as it put her and other students in a vulnerable position as they could not contact anyone and felt alone.

Lor stated how half of the kids were “Scared to death. Hugging each other and crying.” Meanwhile she says the rest thought it was fake and took it as a joke until they heard the police.  

The level of understanding of lockdown policies from students at SLA is mixed, with some having no understanding what so ever to other knowing all the details. It was noticed that many students who said they would ignore all calls by teachers and try to get out of the school did have a basic understanding of how a lockdown should proceed.

This all could lead to the ignoring of an actual lockdown and an ignorance of how to act leading to possible chaos.