TWC.11/15/07

The Edina School District might have to pay the state of Minnesota a fine if by January 15, 2008, it hasn’t come to an agreement with teachers about a new contract.
Currently, Edina teachers and the school board can’t come to an agreement about terms in the proposed teaching contract. Every two years, the state reworks its budget and its budget for public school funding, so teachers and the Edina School Board re-negotiate contracts. If a new contract can’t be agreed upon before the old contract expires, the teachers have to operate on the out-of-date one. Now, Edina teachers are under the rules and regulations of the contract that started in July 2005 and expired this June.
“It upsets me because it’s not the first time,” said Mr. Alejandro Diaz, a Spanish teacher at Edina High School. He said teachers are negatively affected by not having a current contract because he thinks the contract is essential to good working conditions. Numerous School Board members did not return phone calls.
“[The contract] clarifies your responsibilities as a teacher,” said Mr. Erik Gronberg, another Spanish teacher and secretary of the Edina Division of Education Minnesota Teacher’s Union.
The contracts, or “master agreements” as they are officially called, define terms of salaries, health care benefits, sick days and the length of a workday.
Given the “rise in inflation and health care premiums,” said Mr. Van Anderson, an English teacher at the High School and President of the Education Minnesota’s Edina Branch, the contracts are out of date and unfair for teachers. He said he believes if the current contracts aren’t upgraded it will cause financial turmoil for teachers.
Contract proposals are still quite a way from being completed, Anderson said. If the school board and the teachers can’t come to an agreement by January 15 the district will have to pay the state $25 per student (kindergarten through 12th grade) per day.

Zephyrus

I noticed that in the section of Zephyrus called We Love the 90's there were many good aspects of writing and formatting as well as some more negative parts. On the good side, the graphics were creative and well drawn. There are pictures of Pokemon characters and a cd and different names of popular things in the 90’s. The graphics drew my attention in and made me want to read more. I also like the layout of the articles and all the headings. This page was interesting to look at and very intriguing. The article "Say 'Bye Bye Bye' To Boy Bands" by DJ Adams was also interesting because it had a good topic and a catching lede (that may or may not have had a lot to do with the story). The quote was six sentences into the story, which is pretty typical writing style. One negative thing that I noticed about this article, that most people might not have picked up on was the interviews that Adams had. I know for a fact that the three junior girls he interviewed, Tess, Alex and Meredith are good friends with Adams, which is confusing to me as to why he would interview them because it makes his interviews less credible. Also along the lines of the interviews in this story, the "sophomore boy" that he interviewed strikes my curiosity because who knows if that person was made up or not. That unknown source also contributes to this feeling of distrust with the author. For the most part this author does a good job with the facts and the interesting take on the story but his story suffers because of the quotes he had. The next article in the section, titled "Nice Try, 90's" by Tony Quattrini got off to a confusing start. Personally, I had to read the lede a few times before I understood what he meant. Another negative thing about this article was the formatting. The article falls between two pages of the Zephyrus and because there are two pages the article got split into two columns, which didn't make sense to me. It creates confusion in the reader as to where to read after each line. Other than that there were a few weird sentences that didn’t make sense to me and I found all the opinions in his writing a little distracting. The overall piece was amusing and other than formatting mishaps a good story to read. The next article on this page that I chose to analyze was the “Perfect Taste Never Goes Out of Style” by Monica Squires. I found the same thing as I did in Adam’s story, that Squires interviewed a few of her friends and her older sister. That particular interview irked me because I can tell it was merely out of convenience that she had that interview. It ruins the credibility of the source and of the author. On the other hand, she used a quote from a boy who she isn’t very well acquainted so that pleased me. None of these three articles have the news element of timeliness because they all deal with stories from the 90’s and they’re ten years out of date. They all contain proximity however because the audience (being the Edina student body) can all relate to these toys, fashions and bands. We all grew up with those things so we all can feel close to them. The story about boy bands contains the news element of prominence because *NSync and the Backstreet Boys were very famous bands during that time period. These stories contain certain elements of human interest because, in all of them, there is a human twist on each topic. They evoke happiness and good memories in the minds of readers. These stories are not breaking news per say but they all interest and amuse the audience which can also qualify them as good news stories. The audience is interested in reliving those past memories of Furbies and boy bands, which makes these articles interesting to read. All in all these three articles are good because the basic format of writing is well done and they all qualify for at least two elements of the “Who Cares” model.