Moscow Education (Idaho)

The following article ran in the Lewiston Tribune.

A resolution that would help the University of Idaho to finally charge tuition sailed through the House State Affairs Committee on Monday.

The resolution calls for a constitutional amendment to allow the university to charge tuition, in addition to the student fees it already charges.

"This is trying to clear up something that's been going on for 120 years," said Sen. Joe Stegner, R-Lewiston, who sponsored the measure.

When the university was formed, territorial law specifically prohibited it from charging tuition, except for graduate programs and out-of-state students. The only way to change that, Stegner said, is with a court case or a constitutional amendment.

"It's my contention this (resolution) is a far more prudent way to resolve the issue, and far cheaper," he said.

The reason for the change is that state law defines tuition as "payments for the cost of instruction" - meaning teacher salaries. Consequently, "the university is barred from using student fees to pay for the cost of instruction. In the current economic climate, that's a problem," Stegner said.

A problem for whom? The students ?

From the Associated Press:

A bill to save the state money by allowing school districts to declare financial emergencies and modify teacher contracts has eked through the Senate Education Committee.

House Education Committee Chairman Bob Nonini on Monday brought the bill to the Senate committee, where it passed 5-4.

Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, was among lawmakers who tried to delay voting on the measure and pushed for more time to review information about how the legislation would directly impact school districts.

And unsurprising: he’s homeschooled.

As reported in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Soft-spoken and slender, Isaiah Qualls has the air of a writer.

"I write a lot. A couple of years ago we had a writing tutor and right now I'm taking a rhetoric class from a local student that teaches it," he said.

Qualls, a 14-year-old home-schooled student in Moscow, recently placed fourth in a national essay-writing contest sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

"My grandfather was a Marine in Korea and has a Purple Heart," Qualls said.

Jim Qualls and his stories of the Korean War were the inspiration and part of the writing in Isaiah's essay on the topic of "Why American veterans should be honored."

As reported in today’s online edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Washington State University President Elson S. Floyd has indicated that the university "will be forced to eliminate at least 400 to 500 positions through both layoffs and unfilled vacancies" under the biennial budget scenarios outlined by the state Legislature.

WSU also would reduce enrollment by 1,500 students under the current budget proposals submitted this week by the state House and Senate, according to a news release issued by the university Tuesday afternoon.

"We are very concerned about access and affordability," Floyd stated in the release. "While we do not want to balance our budgets on the backs of our students, the cuts are so deep that very significant tuition increases for at least the next two years will be unavoidable under the current scenarios."

A portion of U.S. Highway 195 was closed for about two hours Sunday due to extreme weather conditions.

Washington State Department of Transportation officials blocked off the highway at about 8:30 a.m. from the State Route 27 junction to the Idaho border due to blowing and drifting snow and multiple vehicle collisions.

—Moscow-Pullman Daily News

Looks like when people are given a choice, they choose to school outside of MSD.

As reported in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Palouse Prairie fills 73 of its 87 seats; Moscow School District looks at potential layoffs

Seventy-three local students have secured slots at a new charter school that will open in Moscow this fall, while two Moscow teachers could find themselves without jobs next school.

Palouse Prairie Charter School officials announced Saturday they'd filled 73 of the available 87 seats through a lottery process. The rest of the seats will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.

Nils Peterson, chairman of the Palouse Prairie board of directors, said all but six of the students live within the Moscow School District.

Moscow School District officials have predicted the district will need to cut two teachers for next year to cope with the decreased enrollment.

"This is on top of the state reduction," Superintendent Candis Donicht said today.

Donicht said based on the results of the lottery, she still believes the district will need to downsize by two positions.

The state funds school districts based on 99 percent of their previous year's enrollment to protect districts that suffer decreased enrollment from one year to the next.

"The 99 percent is designed to give us a net when we have lost enrollment," Donicht said. "So the impact is lessened for this year, but it flows into (future) years ... It lessens it to a degree, but it's still a major cut."

According to Idaho State Department of Education data, the state spent an average of $5,644 per student during the 2007-08 school year.

And our property taxes added another $3,000 per student on top of that.

However, Idaho Department of Education spokeswoman Melissa McGrath said it's "virtually impossible" to calculate how much state funding would decrease for the Moscow School District with a loss of about 70 students.

She said funding is based on the types and ages of students in addition to the numbers of students.

Donicht said she has had several notices of retirement or resignation from elementary school teachers, and still hopes to be able to ease job cuts through some attrition.

The next step for the Palouse Prairie board of directors is to hire a school director and teachers.

Peterson said the school has a "large pile" of applications for both director and teachers.

Ashley Ater Kranov, vice chairwoman of the board of directors, said the board has 10 highly qualified applicants for the director position from all over the United States.

The board began screening applicants last week, and hopes to have an accepted offer by mid-May or sooner.

The board also is preparing to put out a bid for remodeling on the old Brown's Furniture building at the corner of Lauder Avenue and South Main Street.

"This is a big milestone to pass, and we are looking forward to hiring teachers and directors," Peterson said. "Our focus right now is just to get the school open successfully."

 

From EIA:

Wherein we highlight a contract provision from the current agreement between the National Education Association and its largest staff union. Article 14, Part A, Section 2, subsection (a) deals with the accumulation of annual leave, which roughly equates to vacation time. Normally, 75 hours equals two weeks of work.

• For employees with less than one year of seniority, 3 hours leave per 75 hours of work.
• For employees with 1-2 years of seniority, 4.5 hours leave per 75 hours of work.
• For employees with 2-4 years of seniority, 5.5 hours leave per 75 hours of work.
• For employees with 4-6 years of seniority, 6.5 hours leave per 75 hours of work.
• For employees with 6 or more years of seniority, 7.5 hours leave per 75 hours of work.

How many of my readers would like to get 7.5 hours of vactation every two weeks?

Not bad, ‘eh?

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

As reported in today’s online edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Montana State University Provost David Dooley has withdrawn his bid for the University of Idaho presidency.

Dooley's decision was announced in an e-mail from Idaho State Board of Education spokesman Mark Browning.

This study demonstrates that prolonged use of ADHD drugs make children shorter and lighter. Imagine what else those drugs are doing to kids.

And 4–times as many boys “suffer” from ADHD than girls.

According to Dr. Peter Breggin, M.D.

"In 1990, 900,000 American kids were on Ritalin. Today some estimate the total number of children on Ritalin has increased to 4 - 5 million or more per year."

From the Washington Post:

New data from a large federal study have reignited a debate over the effectiveness of long-term drug treatment of children with hyperactivity or attention-deficit disorder, and have drawn accusations that some members of the research team have sought to play down evidence that medications do little good beyond 24 months.

The study also indicated that long-term use of the drugs can stunt children's growth.

The latest data paint a very different picture than the study's positive initial results, reported in 1999.

One principal scientist in the study, psychologist William Pelham, said that the most obvious interpretation of the data is that the medications are useful in the short term but ineffective over longer periods but added that his colleagues had repeatedly sought to explain away evidence that challenged the long-term usefulness of medication. When their explanations failed to hold up, they reached for new ones, Pelham said.

As has often been said: if you want a drug-free zone, don’t look to the gov’t schools. That’s where the State is handing out drugs like candy.

In the Moscow Pullman Daily News:

There is only one absolute truth: "There is no 'absolute truth.' " Lovers of wisdom have known this for centuries.

—Ralph Nielsen, Moscow

Maybe that statement is embraced by Nielsen; but he would fail 8^th grade logic for making such an illogical statement.

Read this section from MSD’s Superintendent Candis Donicht, and see if you can catch the logical fallacy.

As reported in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

The Moscow School District is running a $7.616 million indefinite term levy, which means the levy will never expire. Voters must still approve increases through an election.

Superintendent Candis Donicht said districts with a higher cost per student than the state provides signify the "willingness and ability of the particular constituency of the school district to be able to pay for a supplemental levy.

Compare these numbers to your local private schools, whose tuitions are under $3,500 per year. You quickly see that private schools can provide a better education for anywhere from 1/3 to 1/7 the cost.  

Also note: most of the private schools have enrollment well under 200 students. For economies of scale comparisons, you need to compare a $3,500 tuition with smaller school districts like these:

Figures for the 2007-08 school year show that the Garfield School District spent $23,223, the Palouse School District spent $13,239 and the Colton School District spent $13,815 for every full-time-equivalent student.

As reported in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Idaho 2007-08

Statewide

• Total supplemental levies: $101,166,329
• General fund expenditures: $1,631,553,252
• Average daily attendance: 255,204
• Cost per student: $6,393

Moscow School District

• Supplemental levy amount: $7.616 million
• General fund expenditures: $18,177,145
• Average daily attendance: 2281
• Cost per student: $7,969

Potlatch School District

• Supplemental levy amount: $790,000
• General fund expenditures: $3,652,606
• Average daily attendance: 419
• Cost per student: $8,716

Troy School District

• Supplemental levy amount: $560,000
• General fund expenditures: $2,799,251
• Average daily attendance: 306 Cost per student: $9,131

Kendrick-Juliaetta Joint School District

• Supplemental levy amount: $395,000
• General fund expenditures: $2,700,536
• Average daily attendance: 283
• Cost per student: $9,532

Genesee School District

Supplemental levy amount: $495,000

• General fund expenditures: $2,853,208
• Average daily attendance: 296
• Cost per student: $9,635

Whitepine Joint School District:

• Supplemental levy amount: $485,000
• General fund expenditures: $2,893,759
• Average daily attendance: 262
• Cost per student: $11,030

Here’s an idea: make your textbook free and open to the public.

Instead of charging $80+ for that textbook, put it online and let your students (and everyone else) read it there.

See Flatworld Knowledge.

So far they’ve got college texts in fields such as accounting, economics, finance, business, IS, etc.

MSD Superintendent, Candis Donicht, is requesting input from MSD parents concerning how to deal with the upcoming budget cuts.

I’m not sure if this applies only to MSD parents, since there are a lot of us tax-payers in town who are not in that category.

But you may want to print this out (PDF) and submit it and see if they want to take taxpayer inputs as well.

Details from Spokesman Review Betsy Russell's blog An Eye on Boise.

The House has voted 49-20 for HB 262, to cut $8.1 million from school funding next year by freezing movement on the teacher salary schedule for increased experience for a year, and phasing out an early retirement incentive. “Tough issues call for tough votes, and today is going to be another tough vote,” Rep. Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d’Alene, said before the vote. “We’re doing the tough things we have to do. … In tough times, things have to be taken back.”

House Assistant Majority Leader Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, speaking in favor of HB 262, the bill to trim teacher pay and retirement incentives, told the House, "Let's keep in mind that none of us are enjoying this process - it's the economy. It's not mean-spiritedness. ... We've had a major downturn, the revenue is not available. ... It is only the economy."

There was no debate and no discussion on the equally bare-bones budget for community colleges that followed the university budget-setting this morning. Community colleges will take an 11 percent cut in their state general funds next year, under the budget, but see a 5.4 percent cut overall, thanks to the addition of $1.6 million in federal stimulus money. No additional items were funded in the budget over last year, not even the $102,000 that Gov. Butch Otter recommended for additional nursing faculty positions, the only one of five budget expansion requests from Idaho's three community colleges that got his nod. Going unfunded are requests for a campus technology upgrade, more funding for dual credit math and science programs, building occupancy costs, and a new dental hygiene and assistant program at North Idaho College. NIC had hoped for $605,100 next year to start up the program in partnership with a local free clinic.

Legislative budget writers have approved a "bare-bones" budget for Idaho's four-year colleges and universities that cuts 14.7 percent from their state general-fund money for next year, but gives them a 5.8 percent cut in overall funding, thanks in part to plugging in some federal stimulus money that's specifically for restoring funding cuts at colleges and universities. It was a bipartisan budget, proposed by Sen. Dean Mortimer, R-Idaho Falls, and Sen. Diane Bilyeu, D-Pocatello, and approved unanimously. Said Rep. Shirley Ringo, D-Moscow, "Our budgets haven't been very healthy during this session." She noted the 12 budget items that went unfunded, from a third-year law school program in Boise to nursing education expansion to biomedical research. "Unfortunately we're not able to put the energy into those this year that we'd like to, but we certainly hope in the future we'll do better," Ringo said.
 

The following is from The Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal:

According to the National Center for Education, in 1970 there were 1.5 million fewer women than men enrolled in higher education institutions. By 2005, there were 2.6 million more women than men enrolled (Mortenson, 2008). This dramatic decrease in the proportion of male to female students on campus has serious implications for higher education institutions. For many years there were significant programs and efforts to recruit and encourage women to be successful in higher education. The numbers above seem to demonstrate that those efforts have been successful. Now it appears that men need similar specialized initiatives to recruit and retain them on college campuses. We need to refocus our efforts and help male students before their relative numbers further plummet. When examining this issue, we may ask many questions, such as, “What can be done to connect with male students?” and, more importantly, “How can we help male students?” The purpose of this article is to explore the history of males in higher education, gain an understanding about how males think differently from females, and then propose that academic advisers use the Appreciative Advising approach to help male students succeed.

Who would ever have thought that the shoe would be on the other foot.

And this is a problem for women. There are fewer gene-pool opportunities for women with college degrees.

Academic Earth has compiled videos of some of the best teachers in the world.

You don’t need to send your kids to higher education institutions to be indoctrinated in the ways of Lenin, Marx, and Mao.

It would be interesting to see how higher ed institutions could survive if they had to actually compete based on academics alone.

The following article ran in the Lewiston Tribune.

Collaborative efforts to address the school funding dilemma went to the back of the bus Wednesday, as House Republicans rammed through a bill that would cut reimbursements for K-12 transportation costs.

The bill was approved 50-20, along a mostly party-line vote.

The bill would temporarily eliminate state reimbursements for academic field trips. It would also permanently affect reimbursement methods for high-density school districts like Lewiston, and modify the overall transportation funding formula.

Only three Republicans - Moscow Rep. Tom Trail and Boise representatives Cliff Bayer and Lynn Luker - voted against the measure; Wallace Rep. Mary Lou Shepherd was the only Democrat to vote in favor of it.

As reported in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

University of Idaho researcher Laura Richards' first reaction to the news of a possible 3-percent salary cut was, "Oh, no."

"But when I stop, and I think about it I think well, you know, I'd rather take a 3-percent salary decrease than see a colleague lose their job," she said. 

This is the right attitude to have: being grateful to have a job in this period of economic decline. It’s better to have 3% less than to have 100% less.

I’m always taken aback when some argue that no cuts are permitted.

The rest of the world is taking pay cuts. Why is education the sacred cow that is off-limits? Especially since faculty and administration are well paid?

As reported in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

The Moscow School District will operate with fewer people next year to cope with anticipated state funding cuts.

A number of employees already have submitted notices of resignation, and district officials had hoped to account for potential job cuts through attrition.

But Superintendent Candis Donicht told the school board Tuesday that employee salaries and benefits make up too much of the district's budget to go untouched by cuts.

The district spends about 83 percent to 85 percent of its budget on personnel costs each year.

"We know we can't get our total reductions met through all of the other areas," Donicht told the board. "We have to look at all three categories: certified, administrative, classified (staff)."

The board activated a Reduction In Force policy for the month of March in anticipation of state funding cuts and decreased enrollment due to a new charter school opening in Moscow this fall.

As I’ve said before: why don’t the admin staff that make over $100k per year set the example and take a bigger pay cut?

And why don’t those teachers earning over $80k per year do the same?

The fact of a bomb threat being called in is not surprising to me.

What is surprising is the timing here.

As reported in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Moscow High School was temporarily evacuated Tuesday afternoon as police investigated a bomb threat.

Principal Bob Celebrezze said the school office received a threatening phone call at about 12:18 p.m. from a young male caller.

…

Police declared the school safe at about 1:05 p.m., and students were told to return to their classes.

"The threat didn't appear to have much validity," Crime Prevention Officer Rick Whitmore said. "We searched the building and nothing suspicious was found. We checked as thoroughly as we could."

They evacuated and searched the entire high school “as thoroughly as we could” in 45 minutes? That’s amazing. In the navy, I have been the Command Duty Officer many times when a bomb threat has been called in. Being able to thoroughly search an entire school complex in 45 minutes (including evacuating the entire school, rallying all of the staff to search, doing thorough searches, reporting all spaces searched) from start to finish is impossible.

Perhaps it was a cursory search based on this being a non-credible threat.

Anyone with information about the threat is urged to call (208) 892-3898 and can remain anonymous.

In these troubled times, I think that most people are either a) grateful to have a job, b) grateful to have a job if it means taking a 3% cut, and c) grateful not to be laid off.

It seems that education is the only area where people think that they should be exempt from the financial realities of life.

But as I’ve said before: if the worker-bees are going to take a 3% cut, then the administration should take a 5%-10% cut first. In the navy we call that “leading by example.”

The following article ran in the Lewiston Tribune.

The University of Idaho is seeking to calm employees worried about possible salary reductions and layoffs.

In a statement of support released Tuesday, the university decried a proposed 3 percent salary reduction for all state employees.

"We are concerned about the potential impact of this proposal on our employees and their families, and on the long-term strategic progress of our state's public universities as we seek to recruit and retain outstanding teachers, researchers, scholars and staff," the statement said.

Vice President for Finance and Administration Lloyd Mues said the statement was aimed at telling UI workers the university will know much more about their futures by Thursday, when the Legislature's Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee will set the university's tentative budget.

"They're reading stuff in the paper, they're watching JFAC," Mues said. "We're just trying to get people to wait a couple more days." 

 

The following email was sent to all the staff at the University of Idaho.

To University of Idaho Faculty and Staff,

The state has a pending directive to reduce all state employee salaries by 3 percent beginning next fiscal year. We are communicating with state officials regarding the efficacy and details of this proposal, and we are told that the Legislature is scheduled to take further action later this week. We are concerned about the potential impact of this proposal on our employees and their families, and on the long-term strategic progress of our state’s public universities as we seek to recruit and retain outstanding teachers, researchers, scholars and staff. We will communicate the requirements, along with our additional efforts to further reduce spending and maintain our strategic progress, as appropriations are finalized and communicated officially through the state.

HT: Matt J.

That headline caught my eye.

It’s never a good thing when a research thesis is publicly discredited.

From Fiji Times:

A scientist has refuted claims made by media organisations in the United States about the poisonous effects of reusing plastic bottles.

University of the South Pacific organic chemistry professor Subramanium Sotheeswaran said there was no credible scientific evidence that reusing plastic bottles leads to poisoning.

Prof Sotheeswaran said the hoax news item originated from a University of Idaho masters thesis.

"Although the findings were taken up by the mainstream media, the US Food and Drug Administration did not review the thesis nor was it published in any scientific or technical journal," he said.

"The thesis identifies DEHA (potentially cancer causing substance called diethylhydroxylamine) as a carcinogenic element when this is not the case."

Ouch!

I’m reading through an article by historian David McCullough.

It’s a transcript of remarks delivered on 15 February 2005 in Phoenix, Arizona, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar on the topic, "American History and America's Future."

This section really struck me. In the past, education involved sacrifice. I wonder if the reason that education today is so lousy is because there is no sacrifice involved.

Will we ever see the greatness of the past and the moral character common in the past if something as important as education is “free”?

Little John Adams was taken to Europe by his father when his father sailed out of Massachusetts in the midst of winter, in the midst of war, to serve our country in France. Nobody went to sea in the wintertime, on the North Atlantic, if it could possibly be avoided. And nobody did it trying to cut through the British barricade outside of Boston Harbor because the British ships were sitting out there waiting to capture somebody like John Adams and take him to London and to the Tower, where he would have been hanged as a traitor. But they sent this little ten-year-old boy with his father, risking his life, his mother knowing that she wouldn’t see him for months, maybe years at best. Why? Because she and his father wanted John Quincy to be in association with Franklin and the great political philosophers of France, to learn to speak French, to travel in Europe, to be able to soak it all up. And they risked his life for that—for his education. We have no idea what people were willing to do for education in times past. It’s the one sustaining theme through our whole country—that the next generation will be better educated than we are. John Adams himself is a living example of the transforming miracle of education. His father was able to write his name, we know. His mother was almost certainly illiterate. And because he had a scholarship to Harvard, everything changed for him. He said, ”I discovered books and read forever,“ and he did. And they wanted this for their son.

Well, it was a horrendous voyage. Everything that could have happened to go wrong, went wrong. And when the little boy came back, he said he didn’t ever want to go across the Atlantic again as long as he lived. And then his father was called back, and his mother said you’re going back. And here is what she wrote to him. Now, keep in mind that this is being written to a little kid and listen to how different it is from how we talk to our children in our time. She’s talking as if to a grownup. She’s talking to someone whom they want to bring along quickly because there’s work to do and survival is essential:

These are the times in which genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life or the repose of a pacific station that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

Now, there are several interesting things going on in that letter. For all the times that she mentions the mind, in the last sentence she says, ”When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.“ In other words, the mind itself isn’t enough. You have to have the heart. Well, of course he went and the history of our country is different because of it. John Quincy Adams, in my view, was the most superbly educated and maybe the most brilliant human being who ever occupied the executive office. He was, in my view, the greatest Secretary of State we’ve ever had. He wrote the Monroe Doctrine, among other things. And he was a wonderful human being and a great writer. Told to keep a diary by his father when he was in Europe, he kept the diary for 65 years. And those diaries are unbelievable. They are essays on all kinds of important, heavy subjects. He never tells you who he had lunch with or what the weather’s like. But if you want to know that, there’s another sort of little Cliff diary that he kept about such things.

As reported in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Gresham Schlect had to cross-examine his sister on Tuesday.

"I almost started laughing at the beginning," he said. "But it was pretty fun. I eventually got through it."

Schlect was a prosecuting attorney for one of Logos School's mock trial teams at the state championships in Boise this week - a competition Logos has now won for six consecutive years and 11 of the past 15 years.

The school's "A" team will go on to compete in the national competition in Atlanta in May.

The A team, which consists of older Logos students, faced off against the school's younger team in the semifinals Tuesday morning, and then went on to face Boise's Saint Ambrose High School in the championship round.

Schools received this year's case in October, and teams set about preparing both a prosecution and defense.

The Logos students met three times a week at 6 a.m. through December, and then gathered once a week in the Latah County Courthouse.

As part of their preparations the team members tried the case in front of Latah County District Court Magistrate Judge John Judge.

This year's case centered on a woman who had shot and killed a grizzly bear.

Prosecutors argued that she was in violation of the Endangered Species Act, while defense attorneys contended that she was forced to shoot the bear in self-defense.

Teams are randomly assigned to prosecution or defense before each round of competition.

Logos prosecuted in both the semifinal and final rounds on Tuesday.

"You get really tired, it's really hard," Schlect said, adding that nerves prevented most of the team from eating much over the two-day span.

The team will get a several-week break before receiving its case for nationals at the beginning of April.

"It's a lot different (from preparing for state)," Schlect said. "You get a lot shorter time to prepare but you have to be a lot better. Just for the next month it's going to be really tough."

Last year's state competition found the two Logos teams facing off in the championship round.

Coach Chris Schlect laughed awkwardly when asked if that means that even Logos' newer mock-trial participants are more skilled than any other team in the state.

The Logos team has not yet won a national competition, although 2008 graduate Maggie Church was recognized by the national judges as the best high school trial advocate in the country last year.

As preparation for the national competition, the team will try the case in Moscow sometime in April.

They also will fundraise and accept donations to offset the costs of traveling to Atlanta, although the details have not yet been worked out.

"I'll put it this way: We need money," Chris Schlect said with a laugh.

The team also includes attorneys Bekah Ryan, Tim Schultz and Tyler Evans, and witnesses Elliot Dickison, Naphtali Lineberger, Lizzy Ryan and Caleb Courtney.

Logos' secondary team is made up of attorneys Josiah Nance, Lizzy Jeschke, Lydia Ryan and Madeline Schlect, and witnesses Hannah Page, Kellen Meyer, Gavin Meyer and Kevin McGarry. 

Here is a picture of the four semifinalists at the Idaho State Mock Trial Competition.

In this picture: Logos School (Moscow) and St. Ambrose (Boise).

Both are the only two classical Christian schools in the state of Idaho.

I think it says a whole bunch for the classical pedagogy that the four finalists were from the two small classical schools. And that both schools' junior varsity teams made it all the way to the semi-finals.

Joint press release from the Idaho Law Foundation and Logos School:

Hundreds of observers, many without seats, crowded the gallery of Idaho's Supreme Court on Tuesday to watch the proceedings in one of the highest profile cases in the state. Prosecutors in US v Eldredge argued that the defendant killed a grizzly bear in violation of the Endangered Species Act. Eldredge's attorneys argued that she had to shoot the bear to avoid being mauled. In the end, jurors acquitted Eldredge, but that was not the important verdict. The captivated gallery erupted in applause for both prosecution and defense teams, the two finalists in the Idaho Mock Trial state championship. And for the 11th time in 15 years, judges awarded the state championship to Logos School of Moscow.

Mock Trial is a contest of drama, persuasive oratory and quick thinking. Many believe it to be the most demanding and stressful of all high school academic competitions. Students are given a 100-page collection of witness testimony, exhibits and law-highly detailed and convoluted, just like real-world materials that all trial lawyers must sort through. They prepare a case to present to a jury by developing testimony through witnesses, entering evidence, and arguing facts and law. At the same time they must react to, cross-examine and rebut the opposing side which is doing the same to them. Mock Trial is a gripping spectacle to watch. The statewide competition is run by the Idaho Bar and Law Foundation.

"Logos School's Mock Trial program has quite a tradition to uphold," said the Hon. Joel Horton, Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, who sat on the judging panel for this year's championship round. Horton described Logos's performance on Tuesday as "flat amazing." He added, "I am amazed at the quality of their preparation and presentation year in and year out." Horton singled out Logos prosecuting attorneys Bekah Ryan and Gresham Schlect, now juniors, whom he immediately recognized. As sophomores, Ryan and Schlect prosecuted last year's case before the Surpreme Court to help win the 2008 Idaho championship.

Two weeks ago, Logos defeated Coeur d'Alene and Lewiston High Schools to earn a bid to the state competition in Boise. In preliminary rounds on Monday at the Ada County Courthouse, Logos defeated strong teams from Blackfoot and Boise High to earn their way into the semifinal round. In the semis they faced their own second team, which had also advanced. (Each school is allowed to enter two teams.) Classmates and even two pairs of siblings opposed one another in this unique round. In Tuesday's championship round, Logos faced St. Ambrose High School of Boise, which is a classical Christian school similar to Logos. Logos coach Chris Schlect noted, "it was an honor to compete against such a talented team. Those at St. Ambrose have become both our best friends and our toughest competition in the state. This round was extremely close." Judges agreed; they awarded the victory to Logos by a narrow margin.

Logos team members include student-attorneys Bekah Ryan, Tim Schultz, Gresham Schlect and Tyler Evans, and witnesses Elliot Dickison, Naphthali Lineberger, Lizzy Ryan and Caleb Courtney. State judges recognized seniors Schultz and Dickison for standout performances in preliminary rounds. This champion team is coached by Chris Schlect and attorney Greg Dickison. Logos's second team, which reached the semifinals, included attorneys Josiah Nance, Lizzy Jesche, Lydia Ryan and Madeline Schlect, and witnesses Hannah Page, Kellen Meyer, Gavin Meyer, and Kevin McGarry. Judges recognized Jesche and Schlect for outstanding performances. This team is coached by Tom Garfield together with Mock Trial alumni Maggie Church and Chantelle Courtney.

This championship qualifies Logos to represent Idaho at the national tournament in Atlanta this coming May. The team must prepare a new case for nationals. As part of their preparation they will argue the case in Moscow sometime in late April. The public will be invited.

For more information about this press release, contact:

Chris Schlect, Logos School Mock Trial coach, cschlect@nsa.edu

Carey Shoufler, Law-Related Education Coordinator of the Idaho Law Foundation, cshoufler@isb.idaho.gov

Here are some pictures from yesterday’s competition in Boise. Captions are underneath the pictures.

The Logos Varsity Mock Trial Team and coaches: Greg Dickison and Chris Schlect.

#1 daughter and #1 son

Mr. Dickison, #1 son, and Mr. Schlect.