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.”

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

D. Franklin County

Franklin County’s team finished fourth out of 28 teams at the National All Service JROTC Championship and were the first Air Force team to place nationally in the history of the program, according to retired Air Force Lt. Col. Tracey Carter in a Roanoke Times article in March.

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

B. Lord Botetourt

Norborne Berkeley, baron de Botetourt, served as governor from 1768 until his death in 1770, according to Encyclopedia Virginia.

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

C. Patrick Henry

Bill Clinton came to speak at Patrick Henry High School in November 2012 while campaigning for presidential candidate Barack Obama.

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

A. Salem

According to coach Mike Ingerson, Salem’s eighth-straight title this school year is the 3rd longest streak in VHSL forensics history, behind Blacksburg’s 15 consecutive (1989-2003) and Madison County’s 9 straight (1995-2003).

5. What school has an annual Tennis Prom that includes mixed tennis matches between the school’s boys’ and girls’ teams?

D. North Cross

6. What school’s alumni include professional athletes such as basketball player J.J. Redick and football players Tiki and Ronde Barber?

B. Cave Spring

7. What school’s mascot is said to be based on a movie? BONUS: Can you name the mascot and the movie?

A. Hidden Valley

The movie “Remember the Titans” (2000) starring Denzel Washington came out the year before Hidden Valley and its Titans rolled into the Roanoke Valley.

8. What school started in someone’s basement?

C. North Cross

According to a SoSalem article by Emily Paine Carter in 2007, “patron May Butts (wife of Howard Butts) launched the school in her Langhorne Place basement in 1944, when the public school board wouldn’t admit her two-weeks-too-young daughter, Cynthia, to the first grade.”

9. Match each school to its mascot.

Northside Vikings
William Byrd Terriers
Radford Bobcats
Christiansburg Blue Demons
Blacksburg Bruins
Staunton River Golden Eagles

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

5. What school has an annual Tennis Prom that includes mixed tennis matches between the school’s boys’ and girls’ teams?

A. Staunton River
B. Glenvar
C. Cave Spring
D. North Cross

6. What school’s alumni include professional athletes such as basketball player J.J. Redick and football players Tiki and Ronde Barber?

A. William Byrd
B. Cave Spring
C. Salem
D. William Fleming

7. What school’s mascot is said to be based on a movie? BONUS: Can you name the mascot and the movie?

A. Hidden Valley
B. Radford
C. Patrick Henry
D. Lord Botetourt

8. What school started in someone’s basement?

A. Cave Spring
B. Hidden Valley
C. North Cross
D. Roanoke Catholic

9. Match each school to its mascot.

1. Northside                               A. Golden Eagles

2. William Byrd                         B. Blue Demons

3. Radford                                   C.  Bruins

4. Christiansburg                     D. Vikings

5. Blacksburg                             E. Bobcats

6. Staunton River                     F. Terriers

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.”

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.

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!”

The closed group page, named for Governor’s School Director John Kowalski, was formed for students and alumni to discuss the campaign against the budget cuts. The page had 391 members as of this morning.

Letters, emails and phone calls have also been sent by individuals to the Franklin County Board of Supervisors, who last month rejected a real estate tax increase that would have generated additional funds for the school division.

In an email to the board, student Rebekah Wellons wrote, “Please consider keeping the dreams of your RVGS students alive. Save your resources to let them stay at the Roanoke Valley Governor’s School and grow to be at their full potential. Thank you for your time.”

A petition letter from Governor’s School alumni was also hand-delivered to each member of the board of supervisors. Along with two pages of signatures of alumni from Franklin County and other RVGS school divisions, the letter reads in part, “We collectively plead that each of you will stand with us, and not against us, in support of high quality education institutions for citizens of Franklin County and Southwest Virginia.”

A rally in protest of the county’s budget proposal was scheduled to begin 9 a.m. today in the Franklin County High School parking lot.

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.

“She’s the…”

In the movie “She’s the Man,” Viola Hastings (played by Amanda Bynes) takes her runaway brother’s place at Illyria High School to get revenge on her old high school, Cornwall, and to get away from her controlling mother who is dead-set on making Viola into a debutant.

The coach at Cornwall refused to allow Viola and her teammates to try out for the boy’s soccer team after the girl’s team was cut. So when she goes to Illyria she hopes to join their boy’s soccer team posing as her brother, Sebastian, to beat her old school.

But she forgot a few things. For example, Viola didn’t plan on falling in love with her roommate, Duke Orsino. Duke has his eyes on a girl named Olivia, and she thinks she is falling in love with Sebastian, who has been in England with his band.

When he comes back, no one knows was replaced by his sister.

Sebastian tries to play soccer which nearly cost Viola her spot on the team. At halftime Viola and Sebastian switch back. The entire school then finds out Viola has been a girl the whole time. The Cornwall coach tries to get rid of Viola, because he knows with Viola it will cost Cornwall the match.

However The Illyria coach takes the soccer manual rips it in half and tells the Cornwall coach that at Illyria, they don’t discriminate against gender.

In the end Illyria wins. Duke and Viola are in love. Sebastian and Olivia are in love. Viola’s ex boyfriend and Sebastian’s ex girlfriend are miserable.

In both “The Twelfth Night” and “She’s the Man,” Viola pretends to be a boy and arrives in a place called Illyria. Olivia also falls in love with Sebastian. Viola and the Duke do fall in love, and both are comedic. I guess somethings never change even if the original play was written 400 years ago.