0113twA01ABE by The Columbus Dispatch/Dispatch Magazines

January 13, 2011

Bexley High School

New turf, lights on way for stadium By JEFF DONAHUE ThisWeek Community Newspapers The Bexley High School stadium is scheduled to receive a major facelift in 2011. Director of Operations Barry Zwick told school board members Monday, Jan. 10, that approximately $350,000 in improvements will be made to the stadium in 2011 but no taxpayer dollars will be spent on the project. The bulk of the improvement project will be to replace the artificial turf. “The field is going on 10 years old,”

Zwick said. “…As they get older, the fields get harder. Ours is still measuring in the acceptable range, but with every year, it gets a little bit harder.” Zwick said safety issues will also be addressed during the project. “We have some issues along the edges that our soccer teams have found when they slide, where they are sliding is into the edges where the track is,” he said. “So, we want to rectify those problems when we put the turf in.” He noted that new goal posts will also be installed since the existing ones create a safety concern because of their

proximity to the back of the soccer goal net. He said the new goalposts will be moved farther back and will feature a longer gooseneck. Zwick said a group of coaches, administrators and boosters have interviewed several companies about the project but no formal estimates have been received yet. “We came up with the product that we want and we’re coming up with the specs that we want,” he said. “We’re going to ask them to supply quotes next.” Zwick emphasized that no taxpayer dollars will be spent on the project.

“Through the years, we have been putting our cell phone tower money into a permanent improvement account,” he said. “We have a pot of money there that we are going to use to replace this … the cell phone monies and things like that will continue to go in there so that in the future, there should be enough money in there to do the same process again in 10-12 years.” Zwick said the timeline for the project is still uncertain. “In a perfect world, it would be best to do it after the fall season, in November,” he said. “Some of the companies

Race to the Top

Library opens homework help center

Bexley schools plan how to use $100K By TARA STUBBS-FIGURSKI ThisWeek Community Newspapers

By TARA STUBBS-FIGURSKI ThisWeek Community Newspapers A new homework help center opened at the Bexley Public Library on Jan. 10 to assist students with their assignments. Young adult librarian Mandy Simon said the homework help center will be open from 3 to 6 p.m. during the school year. The homework help center is free and offers free printing for homework related assignments. “They can come in and work on specific homework assignments,” she said. “We are trying to make sure it is not individualized tutoring but help on specific assignments (students) are bringing home from school.” Simon said students will have access to four help center Internet computers, electronic library resources such as reference collections, and the library’s collection of non-fiction books. “We have purchased a lot of new nonfiction books in the children’s area for the last four to five months to supplement our reference collection,” Simon said. Bexley Schools collaborated with the library to establish the homework help center by donating classroom textbooks. If students forget their textbook at school they can come to the library and borrow a copy although the books are not available for checkout. “They are definitely available for students to use to work on homework,” Simon said. Other homework help center items include play money to help younger students work on counting, protractors and calculators, anything that would be needed for basic homework.

say that would not be a problem and some of them say they would prefer to do it in the summer time. So, before we can say when we are going to do it, we have to get the quotes in.” Thanks to an ongoing agreement with the stadium lighting contractor, the field will also get new lights this year, he said. “At the end of 10 years, they come in and they completely re-lamp all the lights,” he said. “Right now, that’s tentatively scheduled for the week of July 3.” jdonahue@thisweeknews.com www.ThisWeekNEWS.com

By Lorrie Cecil/ThisWeek

Shoshie Wasserman, 11, left, helps Rakiya Katagum, 7, with her math homework at Bexley Library’s Homework Help Center on Jan. 10. The center will be open Monday through Thursday from 3 to 6 p.m. Wasserman was there to do her own homework, but also helped Katagum. Young adult librarian Mandy Simon says she thinks the peer interaction is something that will help many students.

The computers in the homework center work will be given first priority, Simon said. Simon said the help center is open to any are reserved for people working on homework from 3 to 6 p.m. Outside of those hours, See HOMEWORK, page A3 students who need the computers for home-

Bexley City Schools officials are planning how to use $100,000 they will receive as part of the federal government’s “Race to the Top” initiative. The school district is one of 500 school districts and community schools in Ohio participating in the program. Bexley will receive $25,000 a year over the next four years. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Web site, the Race to the Top fund is a “competitive grant program designed to encourage and reward states that are creating the conditions for education innovation and reform; achieving significant improvement in student outcomes; ensuring student preparation for success in college and careers and implementing ambitious plans in four core education reform areas.” The school district learned in November it had been awarded the funding. District educators have been planning on how to use the funding. Funds will be used to pay teacher stipends and to pay substitute teachers, according to Anne Hyland, Bexley City School’s director of curriculum and development, so educators can complete the work required by the program. Teachers will receive a stipend for working beyond their con-

A closer look The school district is one of 500 school districts and community schools in Ohio participating in the program. Bexley will receive $25,000 a year over the next four years.

tract day including after school, in the evening and during the summer, Hyland said. Substitutes will be needed so teachers can participate in continuing education. As part of the Race to the Top program, the state of Ohio has developed new standards for math, science, language arts and social studies. Hyland said in some cases district curriculum will need to be revised to reflect those changes. “All that we needed to do anyway,” Hyland said. “Race to the Top compresses all of that work over a four-year period of time.” Hyland said 37 states have agreed to use the same common course standards in math and language arts. The focus of the program is to have students be college and career ready when they leave high school, she added. Participating schools will have to evaluate 21st Century skills like leadership, collaboration, creativity, open mindedness, problem solving and communiSee FUNDS, page A2

Bexley grads hope to break world record By TARA STUBBS-FIGURSKI ThisWeek Community Newspapers Two Bexley High school graduates are hoping to help break the record for the longest hand shake on Jan. 14 in New York City’s Times Square. “The best way to put this is over the past year-and-a-half to two years I have had this fascination with world record breaking,” said Jason Soll, a 2008 BHS graduate. “Although I have no record under my name there is something so captivating about breaking Guinness Records that has made me curious.” Soll, the organizer of the event, is friends with BHS 2008 graduate Joe Luchsinger and John-Clark Levin, one of the teams compet-

ing to break the handshake record. Levin is a previous record holder. “The foundation of this fascination is the innovation that goes behind if,” Soll said. “If you want to break a Guinness (record) for the most amount of stamps licked in a minute or the world’s largest handshake there is no defined method for becoming the best in the world.” Other mainstream activities like sports have training methods that have been defined over generations by the greatest performers in their sports, Soll said. When breaking a world record the competitor must develop his or her own training methods. See RECORD, page A3

Cavalier performance The Bexley High School Vocal Ensemble performed at the Dec. 28 Cleveland Cavaliers game.