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BE KIND

Students spread positivity with loving written messages

BEING THE "I" IN KIND: Senior Natalie Munoz, junior Ben Merriman, sophomore Brett Rice, and junior Mia McPike pose in front of the kindness poster outside of A hall. The poster features hand-shaped cutouts with encouraging messages on them. PHOTOS BY Arushi Sharma

Well-loved display celebrates its fourth anniversary

Kate Davis Dispatch Reporter

Approaching B Hall, on her way to her life skills class, teacher Brittany Norton hears the first insensitive comment of the day.

She sees other Bowie students listening.

She wishes they would say something.

She wishes they would tell the perpetrator to knock it off.

She wishes that other students would comfort the person getting hurt.

She wishes people would BE KIND.

Four years ago, in 2017, Norton, a Special Education teacher decided to bring the ‘Be the I in KIND’ project to campus after seeing it all over social media, and the response was indisputably positive. "We tried it out for one year," Norton said. "Ever since then they've asked us every year to do it again. It's a great way for people to remember to just be kind, especially in a world with everything going on right now."

Norton's students were enthusiastic about the project, excited at the opportunity to tackle any bullying issues they or others may face at school and help inspire others to make a positive change. "Our students love to be advocates for each other and they want to make sure their voices are heard," Norton said. "We talked about how important kindness is and how just a small act of kindness can go a long way for everyone."

The project includes a large poster, located outside of A hall, filled with student hand prints, and a spot for people to take photos. Norton conveyed her hope that the project encourages everyone to continue to be compassionate towards other students and themselves. "I hope that it gives people the courage to stand up and speak for themselves if they are being bullied," Norton said. "And I hope that anybody who may be bullying themselves, it's a friendly reminder to just be kind."

Norton stressed the importance of positivity for the future, and urged young people to join the fight for kindness. "This affects us now and the future. We're all about trends so why not be the positive trend," Norton said. "Why not have a positive future and bright future for everyone rather than continuing to make it a negative environment."

Aside from the positivity that can come from this initiative, being kind can have positive health impacts as well. According to Dr. David R. Hamilton, acts of kindness create emotional warmth, which releases a hormone known as oxytocin. This hormone reduces blood pressure by dilating the blood vessels. "The hands that are put on there are such a wonderful reminder of all the positivity that does exist," senior Natalie Munoz said. "You never know if you need that other reminder."

Norton explained how any students or faculty can contribute to the project by taking a picture in front of the poster and post it with the hashtag #BowieKind. She emphasizes the hope to spread awareness and put it over different social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and Tik Tok.

“I really love the idea of the Bowie KIND initiative because it spreads kindness throughout campus, which is something that we all need,” senior Zoya Faisal said. “Especially through everything that’s going on in this world, it’s so important to spread love and kindness to everyone because you never know what the other person is going through. I'm excited to see the posts on the hashtag.”

Norton emphasized that there are other ways for young individuals and adults to address injustices in their schools and neighborhoods, all starting with one person. "Once one person speaks up it's like a domino effect," Norton said. "I'm hoping that if one person has the courage to put an end to all the injustice that's happening, then more people will want to help as well."

Norton wants this project, just like the past four years, continues to impact students and faculty in a positive way, encouraging kindness and respect among the community. "I hope that it helps, even if it's just one person," Norton said. "If people haven't already, I would definitely say please go look at all the hard work they put in."

Culinary bakes wedding cakes

Lily Bourgeois Dispatch Reporter

One wrong measurement and the whole thing is ruined, all of the delicate work wiped away in one simple move. It's about teamwork and collaboration.

The Bowie Culinary department recently wrapped up another successful project.

Students in the culinary department were challenged with creating wedding cakes from scratch and had just one week of planning and five days for execution. The project was student-led with just a few parameters they had to meet.

“There were about four or five students in each group and they got to have complete creative freedom for their wedding cakes. They had to choose the flavors, the fillings, the icing and it just had to be three tiers tall. That was the only parameter I told them,” culinary teacher Kathryn Bugni said. “Then they had a bunch of resources so they could watch wedding cake videos, icing videos and they kind of just took it and ran with it and it was really fun to see what they came up with.”

The wedding cake challenge evolved on a larger scale from gingerbread making in years past. Chef Bugni has worked hard to bring her own ideas and curriculum to an already successful program.

“The heart behind it was that my wedding was coming up. I had a COVID wedding last year and so this year I got to do it all over again, big, and so that's what inspired it,” Bugni said. “Then the winner of the wedding cake competition had their cake displayed at my rehearsal dinner.”

There were many things the culinary students could look forward to in their wedding cakes based on all of the freedom they were granted.

“I personally had never made anything that big, not even just scale but just like that big in general,” senior Ana Diaz said. “We had access to a full kitchen and things to decorate it with like different icings and other toppings that we could add. It was really fun how we all got to brainstorm what we wanted and also were able to tell her what we needed to buy. We had open range for whatever we wanted to do.”

Baking in general has to be extremely precise with little room for error. Baking wedding cakes has its unique difficulties that students had to work around and adjust accordingly.

“The challenge with my group was actually the cake itself,” senior Emma Graham said. “Baking the cakes and having to stay after school or after class actually just to make sure our cakes would be okay. Getting them out of the oven and into the cooler and making sure they are cooked and the whole process is just smooth.”

At the very start of the wedding cake process, students hit a road block when Bowie experienced all of the water leaks. That caused an overall angst and anxiety throughout the rest of the process.

“We lost so many days from the water thing. Coming to school the next day, I was like there’s no way we are still doing this, it's definitely going to get canceled,” Diaz said. “But then when chef told us it was still happening and we had like two and a half days to put it together, it was crazy because we all hadn't seen each other so it was really scary.”

The winning cake of the wedding cake project that was displayed at Chef Bugni’s wedding rehearsal dinner was an espresso chocolate cake with dried orange slices made by culinary students. However, for the taste section of the project the winning cake was a blackberry mojito cake. Bugni shares her feelings about the overall experience.

“It was so fun, it was a little more chaotic than I expected and it was a great reminder that baking is tough, it's a very exact process,” Bugni said. “With cooking you can tweak things here and there, you can problem solve you know, you can check the timing you can fudge those little bit but with baking its very precise and when your doing that amount of baking it's just very chaotic but it was so fun we laughed a lot, we smiled a lot and I just love my students and we had a great week.”

THREE, TWO, ONE BAKE: Culinary students bake three layer wedding cakes during class. After they were completed, chef Bugni voted to have at her wedding cake rehearsal. PHOTO BY Rachel Maddox

Water leak sparks bond conversations

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Once the news broke to parents about the water leak situation, there were various responses that were made about the situation. Some parents made posts to Facebook Groups updating others with what they heard and knew about the situation. Others called the front office, hoping for an update from the administration, while others just picked up their students.

“Well the students obviously missed a lot of learning time which I know caused a lot of confusion,” parent Susan Riegler said. “It was very frustrating, as a parent. I was mainly frustrated with the staff because if there was something they could have done to fix the water leak ahead of time that would have made the situation less chaotic.”

With the creation of a new athletics and fine art building, plus parking garage, several parents expressed concerns about why previous bond money didn't take care these problems. “Bowie was built in 1987 and because of its size there are miles and miles of old pipes beneath the buildings and in these systems circulate cold water, hot water, drinkable water, and wastewater,” AISD Chief of Operations Matias Segura said. “Now to replace the pipes you have to go beneath the buildings or you have to dig up. We can’t really do that while schools are in session. If we did it with school in session we wouldn’t be able to have classes, so we have to do it in the summer time, and that's a very short time to do any work."

When the bond was passed on Nov. 7, 2017, 72% of Austin voters passed on the bond to focus on updating the learning spaces for AISD students in over 15 schools. Some of the key projects in the bond included constructing new or modernized campus facilities, improving facilities to address overcrowding, and district wide improvements to technology for teachers and students and transportation.

“The bond money has it written into law that this money can be used for this specific project and so the money is spent for the new buildings that was decided on four years ago," Berton said. "Would it be really cool that we could take some of that money and use it on the academic building’s plumbing? Yeah, but we can't.” A bond is created when a school district asks the community to support the school system with additional taxes. The most recent bond included the construction of the athletic facility and fine art building on the Bowie campus.

“Bowie should invest in bathrooms and weatherproofing the whole building because of increased weather volatility due to climate change,” senior Caroline Rasmussen said. “The only thing to add is that Biden’s infrastructure bill might help the problem.”

One of the main problems with the water system came from the winter freeze in February. Since that time, the system's pipes have been weakening and may continue to cause problems.

“The district took on about $16 million dollars in water breaks, water damage, and damage to the boilers, especially after the February freeze last year,” Segura said. “This includes the HVAC units going down because water expands and it freezes and destroys the system inside it.” Although it is nearly impossible for schools to do big projects without a bond, there are often questions and misunderstandings about how an AISD bond truly works, especially how a bond is created in correspondence to a school and their needs.

“The bond is really a mechanism that allows institutions to give us money and that we pay them back over time,” Segura said. “Think about a credit card or a loan to buy a house. We take this opportunity and money to go and make these improvements."

While bonds help fund projects for schools throughout the entire district, the process to plan, vote, fund, execute, and follow through takes time. In the past, aside from 2017, there have been bond projects in 2013, 2008, and 2004. "We always want to be proactive and plan, but sometimes things happen and we have to respond to it," principal Mark Robinson said. "We try to do that and communicate that out."

Currently, the AISD staff is in the process of finding solutions to not just Bowie’s system issues but also other schools as well. Segura emphasized that the portable restrooms and water bottles were the fastest way to fix the problem with the pipes in a short period of time.

“There had been a lot of repairs that we've done to fix the symptoms that were affecting the leaks from the past month,” Robinson said. "We're hopeful that we'll be able to continue to maintain a consistent water supply and not have to experience the water leak again."