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Got something to say about the recent rash of fights at Andrews High School?

The News & Record has set up a special message board to post your thoughts on the problems at Andrews.

Police have responded to fights at Andrews for the past three days and so far this school year, police have filed 117 charges at the High Point high school.

Hit lists aren't unique to the Guilford County Schools. A number of school districts in eastern North Carolina have been dealing with threatening letters, according to a story in today's Raleigh News & Observer.

The first hit list was found Nov. 19 at West Hoke Middle in Raeford -- more than a week before the infamous hit list at Northwest Middle in Greensboro. The letter said that 17 students and three teachers would die.

A similar hit list was found at Hawley Middle School in Granville County on Nov. 29.

That same day, a student at Apex High School near Raleigh was caught handing out a violent homemade comic strip entitled "School Yard Rampage." School officials searched the boy's bookbag and found list of the student's "Top 10 serial killers."

On Dec. 3 - the same day hit lists were found at Northwest High School, Jamestown Middle and Mendenhall Middle here in Guilford County - a threatening letter was found in a girl's bathroom at Rosewood High School in Wayne County, about 50 miles southeast of Raleigh. A second hit list was found in Granville County, this time at an elementary school.

And on Monday, a threatening note was found in Wayne County's Rosewood Middle.

Here's a sincere hope that this disturbing trend will come to an end soon.

I hope Superintendent Terry Grier doesn't mind, but I borrowed this from his Friday Notes column. We're not the only school system struggling with discipline issues. Check out this article by the "Catalyst" which chronicles problems in the Chicago Public Schools at the elementary level.

Here's the synopsis from Friday Notes: Elementary schools are cracking down on discipline problems by suspending a record number of students, most of whom are African American. Between 1994 and 2003, the number of elementary students who were suspended has more than doubled. Schools say more resources and parental support are needed to handle unruly students. Teachers cite the problems of children born into gang culture, of retained students who are old for their grades and a lack of training in proper discipline techniques. The debate continues on whether suspensions do more harm than good, not only to the students but to the schools as well.

Read the rest of Friday Notes here.

Remember when school started this year and the new, dare I say it, bus "hub" system debuted? Students weren't picked up and others got home so late that some parents were calling police trying to find their children. Officials with Guilford County Schools spent weeks sorting out the mess, adding buses and changing routes.

How hard can it be to drive students from point A to point B, many people wondered.

Well, starting Tuesday, you can get an insider's view on what it takes to run the district's bus system.

The School Zone (GCS Cable Channel 2) is premiering a new series called "A Day in the Life." The program aims to give a behind-the-scenes look into the day-to-day operations of different departments in the district.

First up is the transportation department. See how officials deal daily with 85,000 passengers, 16,500 bus stops, 680 buses.

The first show is at 2 p.m. Tuesday. After that, "A Day in the Life" airs daily at 8:30 a.m., 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

'Tis the season for school science projects.

Back in my day, that meant a baking soda volcano or a balloon-powered rocket ship. But students have many more exciting options for their school science projects these days.

Al Tompkins over at poynter.org has compiled some science project suggestions. If your kid is or will be working on a science project, you might want to check this out.

Every now and then, someone will write a jeremiad on how U.S. students are falling behind the rest of the world in science and math. Our distracted, disinterested dullards can't match the whiz kids that other nations are producing and in 10 or 20 or 50 years, the critics say, the U.S. economy will be crippled by our lack of brainpower.

There's one problem with this Chicken Little view: it just isn't true.

U.S. elementary and middle school students are solidly middle-class in math and rank near the top in science, according to the latest version of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

The TIMSS uses standardized math and science tests to compare fourth- and eighth-grade students across the globe. The latest test results were released Tuesday.

Just like mistletoe and Santa Claus, "The Nutcracker" is a holiday tradition.

Students at Bessemer Elementary in Greensboro are performing this musical play tonight and Friday night at 7 p.m. in the school auditorium. But this isn't a normal elementary school play. Bessemer has brought in a percussion instructor from the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, along with a stage manager, sound and lighting techs, a choreographer and visual artists.

Rebecca Locke, the school's new full-time music teacher, is producing the musical. She oversaw productions of "The Nutcracker" for three seasons in Florida before coming to Greensboro.

Before performing the show themselves, the Bessemer students attended a Greensboro Ballet production of "The Nutcracker."

Admission is free, but donations will be accepted.

By now, you all have heard about the hit lists at five Guilford County schools.

Now, it appears the attention on those cases may have spawned a copycat in neighboring Forsyth County.

A student at Wiley Middle in Winston-Salem found a threatening note in a school bathroom Monday.

The handwritten note had eight names - six students and two staff members - under the header "Hit List," according to Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools spokesman Doug Hinson. Sheriff's deputies are investigating, but no arrests have been made.

Hinson said students who are considering writing threatening notes need to realize that they face severe punishment from the schools as well as possible criminal charges.

"It is not a prank," he said.

In recent weeks, we've all read about the students who have gotten into trouble in Guilford County Schools.

Youth First offers a refreshing look at students who have been on that side of the proverbial fence, yet found a way over it to reach a better place.

The December winners of Youth First's "Student Improvement Award" are
Matajana Guri, a sophomore at Dudley High School, and Derrick Emerson from Southwest High School.

The nomination letter calls for not "the best and brightest students in Guilford County," but rather those who turned around their lives. Dropped in to school instead of out. Marched ahead instead of fell behind. Got on the right path instead of the wrong one. Overcame adversity instead of giving in to it.

Guri is a student from Kosovo who goes out of her way not just to help herself but her classmates also in the English as a Second Language program, according to an e-mail from Darryl Kosciak, Youth First coordinator.

Emerson has had an extremely difficult time, Kosciak said, declining to go into details.
"This young man could have gone either direction," Kosciak wrote. "He chose the more difficult direction of studying, trying to do well in school, and doing the right things."

Youth First created the award to "recognize and encourage these students to continue down this path and show them the rewards and benefits they will receive by making this effort," according to the nominating letter.

All winners are eligible for a $1,000 savings bond and the title of Student of the Year in an awards ceremony to be held in May.

Best of luck to all of Youth First's improved students, who are all "students of the year" just by virtue of turning around their lives, which many adults have difficulty accomplishing. Bravo.

A few months ago, Bill Cosby attracted both criticism and praise when he lambasted black youth culture.

A new article in Newsweek magazine addresses one aspect of Cosby's critique: that black kids knock their peers as "acting white" if they do well in school. Newsweek found several minority youngsters who said they have been teased for their academic success.

Sadly, the low expectations aren't just coming from other teens. One black high school student quoted in the article said his guidance counselor asked him, "Don't you want to play sports?" when he tried to sign up for an Advanced Placement course.

So put on your favorite college sweatshirt, make yourself a big bowl of Jell-o pudding and find out what real high school students think about what Bill Cosby has to say.

A six-year old girl in Durham was injured when she was dragged by a Durham County Schools bus.

The girl, Chavon Thorton, suffered a broken arm after her bookbag got caught in the safety arm on the bus. The driver, not realizing Thorton was caught, retracted the arm and drove away.

The bus driver, Rachel Tippins, was fired immediately.

Remember when The Chalkboard predicted that someone would make the common - yet false - claim that U.S. students are falling behind their international peers?

Well, such a claim appears in this week's edition of The Independent, a liberal alt-weekly publication distributed in the Raleigh-Durham area.

In all fairness, columnist Bob Burtman addresses far more than the supposed gap between U.S. and global students. He criticizes North Carolina's standardized testing system, which evaluates schools and distributes teacher pay bonuses based on multiple choice test scores. Burtman calls the teacher pay bonuses, which can reach $1,500, "the most destructive aspect of the state testing program."

His contention is that by offering substantial pay bonuses, the state strongly encourages teachers to "teach to the test." He also believes the opportunities to earn bonuses could drive good teachers away from low-performing schools.

It's not our place here at The Chalkboard to decide if Burtman's opinions are on target - we will leave that to you. But we can take a look at some of the facts he cites.