News Briefs Issue 1

East

A new app, Manager, has been introduced in several East classrooms this year that allows teachers to put various restrictions on student’s district-issued MacBooks. Physics teacher Nathan Southwick hopes that Manager will reduce distractions and cheating in the classroom.

“It lets us see the screen of any student in our class,” Southwick said. “It lets us set only certain websites to be available to students and it also lets us lock down their apps.”

In addition to this, Southwick says it enables teachers to create a safe testing environment with the click of a button. Teachers have the option to lock screens on one website to ensure students can’t leave the site.

However, the program does not prevent sharing answers of online tests through screenshots and has experienced some glitches, so teachers are working with IT on improvement.

Manager also allows teachers to use the controls at any time, meaning they are able to use the controls even at night or in other classes.

“Teachers are going to have to be really careful about using it so they don’t mess with students who are doing homework at home,” said Southwick, citing an incident where he kept accidentally kicking a student off of Netflix at night.

According to Southwick, some students have been “weirded out” by the app’s features. Senior Cooper Lintner, who is in a Spanish class that uses Manager, is one of these students that has a negative opinion on it.

“I could see this being useful in middle school, but high school is supposed to prepare you for college,” Lintner said. “It’s not like your professors are going to be keeping you on task, that’s just a lesson kids have to learn throughout high school.”

Local

All 11th grade students in Kansas public schools will be taking the ACT for free on Feb. 20. This implementation by the Kansas State Department of Education will make Kansas the 19th state to offer one free ACT for high school students. Along with the ACT, which measures a student’s readiness for college, students will also be able to take the ACT WorkKeys assessment, which evaluates proficiency in workplace skills.

The adding of the free ACT and WorkKeys assessment is part of State Commissioner of Education Dr. Randy Watson’s vision of postsecondary success in Kansas.

Kristoffer Barikmo, instructional coach for teachers at East and free ACT prep class teacher, thinks “the piece that is the most exciting is everybody now will have access to the standard college entrance exam.”

Barikmo sees several benefits of the free ACT, one of them being that it will take away financial boundaries for students wanting to take the $50 test. In addition, it will provide a better testing environment because it is hosted at the student’s usual school during the school day.

Junior Emory Apodaca, who has already taken the test once and is planning on a second attempt, agrees that the new implementation would be beneficial for those seeking to raise their score.

“This [free ACT] will give [students] either another opportunity [to test], or just an opportunity at all to test well and get into a better college, because standardized tests makes up a large part of your college admissions,” Apodaca said.

The testing day for East will occur during the school day on Feb. 20, though details are still being discussed on the district level.

National

Former Arizona Senator and 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain died on Aug. 25 at the age of 81. McCain, who suffered from a brain tumor, was regarded by many as a war hero for his service in the Vietnam War.

Like many politicians, he was marred by some controversies. However, Americans, especially Republicans, are coming together to honor McCain. Hank Breckenridge, president of the Young Republicans Club at East, agrees with the necessity of honoring the senator’s life.

“There are many people who deeply respect him as a hardworking man who made sacrifices for his country,” Breckenridge said. “He did a lot that could be controversial but I don’t see much use of talking about that after he’s gone.”

Along with Republicans, Democrats have also come together to honor the senator’s legacy. Junior and Democrat Lucy Brock expressed her disappointment in losing a less extreme Republican voice in the senate.

“He’s served a really important role in the senate of representing kind of the more moderate Republican stances and pushing common sense reform in a lot of areas,” Brock said .

The flag at the White House was lowered to half-staff on the evening of Aug. 25 and returned back to its regular position by the following Monday. After President Donald Trump faced criticism from the public and a veteran group called VoteVets, the flag was re-lowered.

Trump also released a formal statement on Monday honoring McCain and his service. This came after his short Tweet expressing sympathies to McCain’s family, which was released Aug. 25 and met with scrutiny for its brevity. McCain requested that Trump not attend his funeral, as they have a history of conflicts.