By Mitchell Alexander, Northside High School

Advanced Placement (AP) courses, which prepare high school students across the nation for college-level work, will face a challenge in our area in the upcoming school year.

Virginia Advanced Study Strategies (VASS), is a non-profit group that has provided support and financial compensation to Virginia students enrolled in AP classes since its inception in 2007. Roanoke County started receiving benefits in 2010.

However, the grant Roanoke County Public Schools has through the program will expire next year.

The VASS program places focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Traditionally, teachers of supported classes would receive money based on how well their students performed, and also training during the summer.

In addition, students would receive a 100 dollar check for each exam passed. VASS would provide weekend study sessions with a lunch for students along with equipment for labs, and pay half the cost of each AP test (89 dollars).

Now, students earn only 50 dollars per exam, the VASS sessions have been shortened to half-days and no lunch is provided.

Next year, when the grant has completely expired, there will be no monetary rewards and no remedial sessions.

However, the grant is less necessary now that the county’s AP program has, according to the Collegeboard, been established as a viable and successful initiative.

Roanoke County Public Schools has been included in the Collegeboard’s AP honor roll for the past 3 years by increasing access to AP programs while simultaneously increasing the percentage of students that perform well on the AP exam.

“I think that the VASS grant losing funds will really hurt scores and students will lose an incentive to do well,” said William Byrd Senior Adam Cline, who has taken multiple AP classes. “However, a poorly financed program with limited funds won’t do much good either.”

The answers are in! Click on the “Read More” link to see the answers to our schools quiz. Read more »

Think you know all there is to know about high school? Take this quiz compiled by our Edge staff and see how well you’ve been schooled on schools in our region. We’ll publish the answers on our blog on Friday.

UPDATE: The answers are in! Click here to see how you did on the quiz.

– The Edge

1. Which school’s Air Force JROTC marksmanship team came in fourth this year at national competition?

A. Radford
B. Cave Spring
C. Glenvar
D. Franklin County

2. What school was named after the governor of Virginia who served from 1768-70?

A. William Fleming
B. Lord Botetourt
C. Patrick Henry
D. William Byrd

3. At which school did former President Bill Clinton speak at during the 2012-13 school year?

A. Northside
B. William Byrd
C. Patrick Henry
D. Lord Botetourt

4. Which school’s Forensics Team has won eight consecutive state titles?

A. Salem
B. Glenvar
C. Hidden Valley
D. Patrick Henry Read more »

By Lauren Maddox, Hidden Valley High School

Workers moving weight equipment onto a truck and sounds of clanking and banging aren’t normal in high school. But the sounds echo around Hidden Valley High School. All because Hidden Valley is getting a new weight room.

Hidden Valley was fundraising for a new field house for the past two years; however, “the money was needed to be spent in other, more important places, such as security,” said Hidden Valley’s principal, Rhonda Stegall.

Hidden Valley applied for several grants and were told that the national foundation had picked Hidden Valley to be it’s regional nomination. But the school did not receive the grant. They then went to the school board to show how much support they had, and the school evidently approved a grant for Hidden Valley, Glenvar and Cave Spring to all get new weight rooms.

After the Newtown shooting, there was a need for more security, so the money that was for the weight room is now being used for those purposes at all three schools.

The estimated combined cost for a new weight room and locker room was about 1.1 million dollars, according to football head coach Scott Weaver. The booster club at Hidden Valley was able to raise enough money for both. The football team sold gold cards (cards that have a variety of coupons on them) and volunteered at Salem Red Sox games to raise money.

The old weight room was far too small and with the amount of athletes using it at one time, it became a hazard.

“The weight room was overall a safety hazard,” Stegall said. “There were too many people using it at one time and too little space.”

As a result, the boy’s locker room was used often.

“There wasn’t much time allowed for a good cleaning, so athletes were contracting skin infections,” Stegall said. “The [new] locker room will have better ventilation so it will be less of a hazard.”

Beginning this year, Hidden Valley’s district changed because the school was over-populated. Therefore, there are less students enrolled at Hidden Valley High School, causing classrooms to go unused.

The foreign language pod and the math pod, which are on opposite ends of a hallway, will be flip-flopped next year. This will allow the space for a new locker room with showers and weight room.

And along with the new weight room and locker room, there will be all new weight equipment.

“The new weight room will enhance our performance and it will give us the opportunity to workout to our full potential,” Weaver said. “It allows us to work out with the best equipment, and will give us an advantage throughout the season.”

By Paras Patel, Hidden Valley High School

School policies that provide each student with a personal laptop or iPad to use during and after school means some students often spend more time playing games on the Internet or browsing sites such as Facebook and Reddit.

Despite administrators’ efforts to implement policy that would make actions such as gaming and renegade Internet usage illegal upon school grounds, the use of laptops for such purposes has remained steady since laptops were introduced to Roanoke County 10 years ago.

At the core of these problems is the obstruction of a school’s bandwidth, or the amount of data that can be downloaded or uploaded through a connection at one time.

“If you have people that have legitimate academic pursuits, … and you have all these other people using up the bandwidth for non-academic pursuits, they are taking away the bandwidth for other people,” said Andrew Clapper, the instructional technology resource teacher at Hidden Valley High School. “The problem isn’t generally with one user. … You can get around one user pulling stuff down, the issue is when you have 300 [students] using Spotify.”

With students occupying data streams with Spotify, YouTube or other content streaming services, it becomes more difficult for teachers to fulfill certain duties, such as administering tests or giving multimedia presentations.

At Hidden Valley, many tests are now administered through the online service of Blackboard, which also can cause frustration for students waiting for tests to load.

By Ciara Mulcahy, Patrick Henry High School

The Franklin County School Board will vote Monday on whether to eliminate the division’s 34 slots and associated funding for the Roanoke Valley Governor’s School.

The announcement has elicited a significant community response across the seven school divisions that contribute to the RVGS student body, who worry that the action will put the Governor’s School in jeopardy.

“I cannot fathom why anyone would want to cut such an influential program. So many studies have shown that U.S. students are falling behind other countries in math and science. So why then are we cutting our math and science programs?” said McKenna Luzynski, a junior at Cave Spring High School.

“We should be striving for excellence instead of the bare minimum required by standardized tests,” added Luzynski, who is an administrator for the Facebook page “Kowalski’s Army: Save RVGS!” Read more »

amazon.com

By Saloni Patolia, Hidden Valley High School

Director John Madden gives an interesting twist on William Shakespeare in his 1998 film “Shakespeare in Love.”

In the movie, Joseph Fiennes plays the titular William Shakespeare, the world-famous playwright who penned greats such as “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Hamlet.”

The movie is not a new point of view on one of Shakespeare’s plays, but is rather a twist on the life of young Shakespeare and his inspiration for his famous play, “Romeo and Juliet.”

In the movie, young Shakespeare is a struggling poet, playwright and actor. He has an all too familiar case of writer’s block and can’t seem to write anything worth reading.

But when he meets Viola de Lessep, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, the two begin a love affair and Shakespeare finds inspiration for the immortal “Romeo and Juliet.”

The film captured a realistic love story and I strongly recommend it to Shakespeare lovers and first-time Shakespeare fans alike. The movie, like many of Shakespeare’s plays, captures love, comedy and tragedy, and ties them all together to make a wonderful film.

By Jessica Wiegandt, Lord Botetourt High School

Small sounds of dings and rings are audible from smart phones and tablets may be due to a game called Ruzzle.

Ruzzle is a new application available for handheld devices that allows users to connect with their contacts, Facebook friends or random opponents to play the word game.

Ruzzle was created by MAG Interactive in March of 2012. The game seems to have since skyrocketed into popularity, and I’ve noticed  students at Lord Botetourt High School have become avid players.

The app consists of a board of letters, each contained within a small box. The player drags their finger around the screen to create words out of the letters. It’s like a jumbled up version of Boggle.

The player is on a two-minute time limit to get as many points as possible to beat the opposing player. (The longer the words, the better, and some letters can even earn a player extra points.)

The app is a game for iPhone and Android owners who are players seeking a new word game to play.

amazon.com

By Julia Rogan, Patrick Henry High School

“The Twelfth Night,” written by William Shakespeare was adapted into a modern-day movie called “She’s the Man.”

In “The Twelfth Night,” the main protagonist, Viola, is shipwrecked and has lost contact with her twin brother, Sebastian.

Viola disguises herself as a man and uses the name “Cesario” in order to get a job as a page for the Duke of Orsino.

Meanwhile, the Duke believes that he is falling in love with his neighbor, the wealthy Countess Olivia. In an effort to win over Countess Olivia, the Duke sends Viola as a messenger to persuade Olivia to marry the Duke.

But that has the opposite effect when Olivia begins to fall in love with Cesario (who is really Viola).

Things get complicated when it turns out that Viola’s brother is actually alive, and didn’t die after the shipwreck.

When both Viola and Sebastian are seen together, it creates much confusion among the Duke and the Countess. Viola then reveals that she is in fact a woman, and all ends well when Viola marries the Duke and Olivia marries Sebastian.

Read more »