Today's Feature
Will Discuss the Tower.

Carthage City Council will meet this evening at 7:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers of City Hall. Items on the agenda include the second reading of an ordinance issuing a special use permit to Cingular Wireless for a cellular phone tower to be located at 210 N. River Street in Carthage. The first reading of this ordinance was met with concerns from several members of council including Jackie Boyer.

Boyer asked how much research had been done before the location was selected for the 178 foot tower. She told council that since the property was already selected she felt almost required to accept the ordinance.

Council member Ronnie Wells asked if there would be more towers added in the future to which the response was negative. A representative from Cingular was in attendance at that meeting and informed council that the tower was to be a multiple carrier unit allowing different wireless services to operate from it. The property where the tower would be erected is leased from C&M Electric.

Other items on the agenda include the the discussion of adopting a City Annexation policy.

State Senator Gary Nodler
News release

Improvements on the MAP

Until last year, Missouri’s standards for student were among the highest in the nation, and once the federal government set into motion the No Child Left Behind act, those high standards became barriers to education rather than beneficial gauges of academic process.

The No Child Left Behind act placed new accountability measures on states by requiring that all students be tested annually, but how to test the students and by which standards are left up to the states to decide. The act further mandates that all students meet the standards within 10 years and that all schools pass benchmarks along the way. Since 1997 student performance has been graded according to the Missouri Assessment Program or the MAP test, which defines "proficiency" as being capable to achieve above the students’ grade level. Missouri’s choice to continue using the MAP test to assess student performance became unreasonable when, in 2003, nearly half of Missouri school districts failed to make the grade according to the federal requirement of showing "adequate yearly progress."

The MAP test was essentially setting students up to fall short, which would eventually result in costly penalties imposed on school districts. I sponsored a bill last year to improve the MAP tests. This legislation, which was signed into law last summer, requires that by June 30, 2006, the State Board of Education align the Missouri standards with those of the federal government so that our students are not unfairly compared to students in other states with lower standards.

The original MAP made it difficult to validate our progress because our standards were isolated from the national standards. Because Missouri cannot ignore the federal law, our only option if we want to consider the best interest of our students and our schools, was to modify our own performance evaluations so that the federal law is not an obstacle in the learning process.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and Missouri teachers have been working to develop new grade-level tests in math and communication arts. This past May, more than 220,000 students from 476 school districts participated in a voluntary field test of the new assessment. State educators, community representatives and parents will be getting together in early December to set achievement level at a conference. The standards will be parallel to the four achievement levels of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP): Advanced, Proficient, Basic and Below Basic. Each content area of math and communication arts will be explored by 56 panelists consisting of teachers, educators and non-educators. The panelists will make their recommendations to the State Board of Education for approval next spring.

Those who are involved in the process of restructuring Missouri’s assessment program have expressed their confidence in last year’s successful legislation and this year’s efforts from panelists. We are on our way to aligning the academic-performance standards between our state and federal levels and establishing a more fair evaluation system that does not punish Missouri schools and students for having standards that exceed those of the federal government.

Stench Report:
Monday,
10/10/05

No Stench

There’s somethin’ magic about ‘em. Kids love ‘em, parents have to take the kids to ‘em, ‘cause it’s somethin’ that can’t be taught, you’ve gotta experience it first hand.

I always like to get near a corner so I can watch ta see if the bands keep in line as they make the turn. Oh, sure, anyone can keep in a straight line just walkin’ down the street, but there is nothin’ like seein’ a marchin’ band make a perfect corner.

Fact is, Carthage has one of the best parades in these parts. No brag, just fact.

I suppose you could come up with all kinds a reasons why it works so well, but ya really just gotta be there.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

Shingles Painful, But Rarely Deadly

DEAR DR. DONOHUE: My sister has shingles really bad. She is in great pain. They say if the shingles connect, you will die. Is that so? She is so afraid of dying from them. — J.M.

ANSWER: Shingles is the resurrected chickenpox virus. It lies low in nerve cells after a person comes down with chickenpox in childhood (or later in life). The immune system keeps it pent up. From time to time, especially at older ages, the immune system has a temporary lapse, and the chickenpox virus escapes from the nerve cells and travels down to the skin. When it reaches the skin, it causes the typical shingles rash. The rash is in a band that encircles half the body. If your sister is worried that the rash will wrap entirely around the body, it won’t. It never does. I have never heard any authority say that if the shingles rash connects, a person dies. I’m not sure what that means.

The worst complication of shingles is pain that can linger long after the skin rash has disappeared, called postherpetic neuralgia.

Recently, an investigational vaccine that contains the shingles virus was given to healthy adults over age 60. Those vaccinated had far fewer outbreaks of shingles than did the unvaccinated. This news is not going to help your sister or anyone who happens to have shingles right now. It might be a boon to people when further trials have been made.