3 CHEERS:
For Gilroy High School’s boys and girls varsity basketball
teams, which continue to improve and head toward an exciting
possibility
– league titles for both squads. Now that would be ‘way
cool’
The following organizations and individuals deserve either CHEERS or JEERS this week:
CHEERS: For the five third-grade teachers at Glen View School in Gilroy, who are vaulting students forward in language arts and math. These are “stand-and-deliver” results that have been consistent. Jody Childers, Kathleen Taylor, Sue Perino, Vince Oberst and Barbara Siep are using collaboration, pull-out groups based on current proficiency levels and honest communication with students to produce astounding results. Thank you, and please don’t be bashful in sharing what’s working with your peers. Your experience is a tremendous resource.
JEERS: For the news that the Santa Teresa road project, once the darling of City Hall, is headed for disaster and, worse yet, possibly the court system. The city says Granite Construction Company botched the job and that’s why ruts are surfacing in the western lanes. Granite says they performed the work to city specifications. Caught in the middle are the residents of Gilroy who have had to put up with oddball traffic cones, closed lanes and construction delays.
CHEERS: For Gilroy’s famous volunteer spirit. A broad group came together to send little touches of home and comfort to our troops in Iraq-Operation Interdependence. That title says so much: We all depend on each other. We can only imagine the delight in the barracks when those soldiers open their comfort packages from home.
JEERS: For the convenience store robber who shot a clerk in the commission of the crime. Hopefully, he will be apprehended and thrown in jail for the maximum sentence the law allows.
CHEERS: For quirky Jim Berkland, a former county geologist who has a book out now titled “The Man Who Predicts Earthquakes.” His fellow geologists drummed him out of the corps, so to speak, for his theories, which revolve around moon phases, tides and the number of lost dogs and cats in the newspaper classified sections. It’s an interesting theory. We can say for sure that Berkland excitedly called The Dispatch in 1989 and predicted a strong quake. Regardless of what his fellow scientists say, if he phones in again with the same prediction, we’ll listen.
CHEERS: for community efforts to revive and enrich the music programs at Gavilan College. Culture nurtures creativity, and that’s a key component of a healthy society. Fortunately, we have people in Gilroy who understand that and are willing to take an active role in supporting the arts.
