In 1991, 30-year veteran and master teacher John Taylor Gatto resigned immediately after being named “Teacher of the Year” in New York. A number of educators and concerned parents took note — especially after the disillusioned teacher’s reasons for resigning appeared in the Wall Street Journal, under the caption, “I Quit, I Think.”

Congress is likely to re-authorize the No Child Left Behind Act sometime this fall. If that is indeed the case, then we can only hope it makes some significant changes in this flawed bill that will help school systems use their resources to educate children instead of turning out students whose most memorable public school lessons will be a useless ability to ace bubble tests.

By David Curtis

As a teacher in the public school system I have often heard teachers express their frustrations by using the famous middle school axiom, “How do they expect us to train a wild animal if each night we send it back to the jungle?”

By Julia Merchant • Staff Writer

Much like a band-aid on a kid’s scraped elbow, No Child Left Behind was put in place to mend an educational system many claimed was in disrepair. An increasing number of critics, however, are questioning the effectiveness of the act as a permanent fix for the problems plaguing America’s schools.

By David Curtis

As a schoolteacher you always wonder how your students will remember you.

“She was a good teacher, but she smelled like garlic,” was my daughter’s comment when the name of a former teacher came up in conversation.

By Julia Merchant • Staff Writer

Paula Ledford is getting worried.

With a little over a month to go before school starts in Macon County, the school human resources director still has to find 15 people to fill vacant positions. The list includes assistant principals, elementary school faculty, teachers of exceptional children, and more. She’s digging deep — calling universities to ask about recent graduates that still might be looking for jobs, posting notices on as many Web sites as she can think of, even calling retired teachers to see if they’ll come back as a sub on a short-term basis. After all, Ledford says, “sometimes people will graduate in December,” which means she might be able to lure someone to Macon County by the winter.

By the time we hit the streets with this edition and this column is read, the election that has been dominating the news will be behind us. Talking heads and columnists will be digesting and spinning the results, givingtheir take on what it all means. As of this writing, though, we don’t know who will win.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Jacob Clark, a sixth-grader at Waynesville Middle School, likes the trumpet.

“It’s easy to play,” he says.

Bond numbers

Haywood County voters approved a $25 million school bond in May 2005 intended to pay for a host of projects. The list of cost estimates presented to the public is as follows:

Haywood County schools must pay back more than $300,000 in state flood repair grants after double-billing both the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the same work.