Holiday season brings kindness on campus through the 'KIND' hands poster
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Senior Cash Peters works with Nike as a model for their products
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THE DISPATCH FRIDAY, DEC. 10, 2021
PHOTO BY Anna Bea Heise
STARLIGHT THEATER CHILDREN SHOWS Theater performs children shows at local elementary schools
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Bowie students share their opinions on
SCHOOL SAFETY INTERVIEWS AND PHOTOS BY
Arushi Sharma
Arushi Sharma Editor-in-Chief It started off as a normal Friday with the 9:05 am bell. Thirty minutes later, sophomore Martin Piorkowski’s substitute teacher was singing loudly to the song Toxic by Britney Spears on a karaoke machine. This wasn’t what he expected in his Spanish 2 class first period. “Once we got in the classroom, after waiting for our substitute teacher who showed up late, he started telling everyone about how he had been kicked out of Utah and California school districts, trying to make everyone laugh,” Piorkowski said. “After that he started telling everyone to invite our friends to the classroom to watch the karaoke show, and then he started singing really loudly.” Known as the @therealchillsub on both Instagram and TikTok with over a thousand followers on Instagram, he has been posing as a substitute teacher and posting karaoke singing videos in classrooms on his social media. On Friday, Dec. 3, the teacher was hired to substitute Tatiana Chavez’s Spanish classes. “The fact that he brought a karaoke machine onto campus and wasn’t questioned is concerning,” parent Kimberly Skeene said. “So either he was ignored and no one ever noticed the machine or they saw it and didn’t bother to ask questions. Both of those scenarios raise concerns. What if it had been a gun case? A bomb? It raises questions about the check-in procedures for teachers, especially
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Zaid Daud Senior
At Bowie, the gate in the back of the school and the main entrance door is always open and there’s not always security guards on the doors, so that makes me feel unsafe since anyone can come in. Also there’s not a lot of cameras that are around the school.
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Luci Wilkinson Sophomore
I think that if someone wanted to come on campus they could with ease, since it's pretty open for the most part. However, I feel like Bowie is in a good area so I don't think that it would happen.
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Leaks leave learning lacking Claire Scott Dispatch Reporter
ing so I did not go to the bathroom for the entire school day because I didn’t want to walk to the athletic building,” sophomore Lauren Riegler. “I Hallways filled with the sound of student didn’t hear it was as big of a problem as it was, I voices as they started leaving their classes before personally think that the staff was trying to keep any bells rang on Nov. 1, 2021. the low end so students didn’t just up and leave.” That day the school learned there was a major Students were not the only ones impacted water leak that required by the water leak them to shut off water events. All staff, to the school. This led including teachers, to the closure of nearly Having all the water leaks really were also affected every bathroom on as there were many messed up a lot of teachers in campus, and no running students who left water in the academic terms of planning and the way we early, and teachers building. were also only able were set up to do things. In response, students to access specific were allowed to leave bathrooms. Some are Kiersten Berton school for the day, with still dealing with the World History Teacher an excused absence. By lost teaching time the end of the day, most from those three classes were empty, as days.. students left campus for safety reason. “I think that having the water leak really But Nov. 1 was just the start of the problems messed up a lot of teachers in terms of our planin terms of the water leak. The following day ning and the way we were set up to do things,” saw the same problems with additional leaks. world history teacher Kiersten Berton said. “BeAnd a week later, another day was disrupted by cause of the water leak, I know that I have one a different water leak issue. There was a fourth class that is extremely behind because I couldn’t issue that impacted the baseball fields which teach them for three days because of the water were flooded. situation.” “I did hear that the bathrooms weren’t workREAD MORE “Water Leaks”pg. 2
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for substitute teachers.” While the substitute teacher didn’t have a formal AISD badge, he was checked in and was processed through the Raptor system, and was AISD approved. Once the administration learned of @therealchillsub’s actions on campus, he was escorted off the Bowie campus, and hours later posted from the Austin High School campus. “What students need to hear that ultimately safety and security is everyone's responsibility, because it depends on all of us,” principal Mark Robinson said. “It's important for students and staff to follow three rules whenever they're on campus: see something, say something, always wear your ID so we know who you are and don't leave doors propped open.” After hearing about this intrusion, an anonymous source shared that this wasn’t the first time that they have heard of someone being on campus that wasn’t supposed to be. They explained that there is a girl who visits Bowie each week who doesn’t even go here and hasn’t been caught. “Even though I’ve met her a couple of times and she’s non-threatening, the idea that someone that's not supposed to be here and is allowed to walk around for the majority of the day is concerning,” the anonymous source said. On Tuesday, Nov. 30, just three days before the substitute teacher incident, a student brought a 9-mm rifle to Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan. Around noon, the student opened fire in a classroom killing four students and injuring eight after firing over 15 rounds of ammunition. “In light of everything this week from what happened in Michigan, to the lock down at Akins High School, it seems almost unreal that there was an unknown intruder who was an adult in a classroom full of students,” senior Sarah Yoo said. “It makes me question who I see on campus now, adult or student, and what weapons or harmful items they might carry.” What has been classified as the ‘epidemic of gun violence', school shootings have heavily increased, despite the COVID-19 pandemic inter-
December 13 End of Second Nine Weeks December 18January 4 Winter Break January 5 Classes Resume
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rupting the trend line, with 29 school shootings resulting in injury and death in 2021. “I've always had a lot of anxiety about being caught up in a school shooting,” senior Digby Matthews said. “Especially before COVID-19 when there were a lot of school shootings, it was really hard to focus most of the time in class because I was afraid of Bowie being shot up by an intruder.” Matthews isn’t alone in his fear of a school shooting occurring at Bowie. With the recent incident of the substitute teacher, rumors about other students coming on campus freely, and the recent Oxford shooting, this feeling has echoed among other students as well. “Being on an open campus, it does make me feel more unsafe as there are many ways a person can get on campus,” sophomore Matthew Pogonat-Walters said. “The various unlocked doors and how it’s extremely easy it is for anyone to get in and out is extremely unsettling.” A recent study conducted by Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control advocacy group that uses news reports to track gunshots being fired on or into school property, recorded 138 of these gunshots on school property in 2021 alone, all in the United States. “In America, especially Texas it seems like gun violence is more prevalent as other places they have measures in place to prevent events like this,” Pogonat-Walters said. “Especially since it’s possible to implement these regulations, so I think it’s bad that we don’t have them in place as it can prevent something harmful from happening.” Compared to other countries, America which has less than 5% of the world’s population, has 46% of the world’s civilian-owned guns. Moreover, America also has the highest homicide-by-firearm rate of the world’s most-developed nation. “With everything going on, it makes it difficult to feel safe on campus because nobody knows or can predict what can happen,especially on such a large campus,” Matthews said. “While we’re in a safe area, there is still this constant overwhelming fear that someone is here on campus that’s not supposed to be.”
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AISD Proposes a New Block Schedule for next year Corinne Piorkowski and Arushi Sharma Editors-in-Chief A choice sheet. A list of possible classes from Algebra 2 to the Introduction to Journalism. A chance to broaden the high school learning experience and fall in love with a career path or class. One that can determine the adventures that an individual may go through throughout high school. The eight-period block schedule allows for 32 credits over a four-year period for students to choose from and take. With budget cuts looming, Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde has proposed a change to the current bell schedule for the 2022-23 school year and beyond. The proposed plan would change the current eight-period block schedule to a seven-period one, where instead of switching off of A and B days, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays would be seven periods, each 54 minutes long. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, there would be an A and B day, Wednesday with three periods, 98 minutes each with an early release to give teachers an hour for planning, and Thursday with four periods, 98 minutes each. “My initial reaction was that the schedule would not work at all for special programs such as CTE, ACC classes, ON RAMPS, etc due to
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the uneven M/W and T/Th schedule,” parent and teacher Ginger Davis Jarosek said. “Then I realized that it would also reduce the number of elective classes a student could take.” While the Board of Trustees will vote on calendar changes at their December board meeting, the decision to alter the daily schedules lies directly with Elizalde and her immediate staff, according to members of the Board. Superintendent Elizalde ultimately has the power to decide on the block schedule change without the consent of the board of trustees, according to multiple AISD Board members, including District 5 trustee Lynn Boswell. “This is an administrative decision, not a board vote, since it deals with the day-to-day operation of schools, so any feedback that needs to be shared should go to Superintendent Stephanie S. Elizalde who will be making the decision with her team and to the AISD board who can voice their opinions on behalf of the community in ways that are informed by the experience of students, families, and educators,” trustee Boswell said in a post to the Facebook group.
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