The sirens blared and the crowds cheered Saturday afternoon in Marceline as the Marceline High School Varsity Football Cheerleaders were led back into town after taking first place in Class 1A, Small Squad Division, and were crowned State Champions for the second time in three years.

Concept drawings of the proposed agriculture education building, presented by registered architect Brian Connell of Connell Architecture, PC, Columbia, were the main focus of the November meeting of the Linn County R-I School District Board.
Three concept drawings were provided, the first of which had previously been viewed by board members. The third drawing, presenting a smaller building having the potential for an additional multi-purpose building  added on in the future which would also be used as an elementary school gymnasium, was the choice of a majority of board members due to lower construction costs.

The tale of how a federal literacy program with so much promise waxed and waned in the minds of our Congressional leaders is as misleading as the suggestion there is only one way to become a proficient reader. It is the very nature of a false dichotomy (i.e., whole language vs. phonics) to suggest that there are only two ways of addressing a challenge, and that the choice of one excludes the other from further consideration. Because learning to read is all about intellectual development and applying the teaching methods appropriate to each stage in that steady march toward becoming fully literate, it is especially misguided to insist upon a single approach. But that is exactly what has happened with the federal funding of Reading First, “the most effective federal program in history” according to an Alabama superintendent of education who witnessed its remarkable impact upon his least literate students.

Although R-3 Elementary teachers and administrators recognize how invaluable the Reading First (RF) literacy program is to the overall education of their youngest students, textbook publishers and Washington politicians seem to value profit and the consolidation of power more. As a result, the RF program has had its federal funding cut nationwide by two-thirds and, at R-3 Elementary, almost 50 percent since initial implementation four-and-a-half years ago. The result has been a largely unfunded mandate local educators are now doing their best to fulfill.

For over 50 years a battle of educational belief systems has raged between makers of instructional materials and politicians, each side claiming to hold the key to how children learn to read. But current educators at Brookfield Elementary—some of the true foot soldiers in the war against illiteracy—know the real casualties in this ideological struggle could be the children in their charge.

Echoing Abraham Lincoln’s assertion that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” both Barack Obama (D) and John McCain (R) urged all Americans to forget their differences and, in the President Elect’s words, “unite in common effort to chart a new course for America.”