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sj lmon call us at 6402100 or 8529741 teachers need to get preparation time back there is no convincing reason why in a wealthy region whose leaders jboast of taking on the world that citizens should be satisfied with anything sub standard in their public schools but that is what the york region board of education is insisting its elementary teach ers and therefore parents and children must accept an amount ofpreparation time that is far below the provincial aver age the boards nonnegotiated and possibly illegal slashing of this teachers resource from 200 to 100 minutes a week hurt stu dents this year in small but sig nificant ways the boards final offer of 120 minutes is driving teachers to strike for the first time a reporters view mike adler the board tried a similar move against high school teachers last april and it turned into an embarrassment as the province threw out the changes in july later a factfinder monitoring the stalled contract talks report ed board officials suggested the board had not researched the possible effects of the plan he castigated it as totally dri ven by shortterm economics factfinder richard jackson also noted average prep time for the 79 elementary boards in his file was 160 minutes a week yorks elementary teachers have appealed the preparation time order by a different route and a decision has not yet come the board meanwhile has reduced the number of teachers at elementary schools and saved 11 million this was done said board chair bill crothers because a deep cut in provincial grants and the economic climate demanded it but while crothers never said the prep time cut was going to help children he argued recent ly we never said ifs going to harm them either but teachers say it has and they have less time to plan spe cial lessons for pupils because half the time was moved to after school teachers have fewer chances to offer extra help and parents see sports opportunities for their children disappear teachers cant keep up with the pace because were not being given the time to keep up one teacher said at the board head quarters after trustees rejected her unions offer now only reasonable negotia tors those who remember the first duty of teachers and school boards is to protect the quality of education can stop a strike teachers say money is not the issue in this strike they are not seeking a wage increase they and the children deserve to get back at least some if not all of the preparation time taken away mike adler covers the weekender education beat the tribune weekender edition a metround community newspaper patmciapappas publisher joann stevenson editorinchief andrew mair general managereditor debraweller director of advertising barry goodyear director of distribution vivian cnejl business manager pamela nichols operations manager stoitffvtixe all enquiries 905 6402100 fax 905 6405477 6244 main st stouffviue ont uxbridge all enquiries 905 8529741 fax 905 8524355 88 brock st w uxbridge ont httpwwwyorkregioncom the tribune published every wednesday and satur day is one of the metroland printing publishing and dis tributing group of community newspapers which includes ajai pickering news advertiser alliston herald barrie advance brampton guardian burlington post citypar- ent collingwoodwasaga beach connection east york mirror etobicoke guardian georgetown independentacton free press kingston this week lind say this week midlandpenetanguishene mirror milton canadian champion mississauga news newmarketaurora erabanner northumberland news north york mirror oakville beaver orillia today oshawawhitbyclaringtonport perry this week peter borough this week richmond hillthomhillvaughan liberal scarborough mirror todays seniors- contents not to be reproduced without written permission from the publisher permit 1247 the publisher reserves the right to refuse or classify any advertisement credit for advertisement limited to space error occupied the weekender is a number of the ontario press council eihb morse code is over and out do you have any idea what i mean when i write dot-dot- dot dashdashdash dot- dotdot if you do chances are youre a little longer in the tooth than your average gen eration xer those dots and dashes spell out help may day aidezmoi specifically they spell out the letters s o and s the internationally recognized distress signal the telegra pher on the titanic frantical ly typed out that message just before his ship went to its watery doom same thing happened on the lusitania the andrea doria and the edmund fitzgerald sos sos my pop told me it stands for save our ship save our souls if thats not editors mail grade 3 testing package will help create education crisis i dear editor as a mother and a grade 3 teacher i felt the need to vent today i had the dubious pleasure of unpacking one of the 7million testing packages recently distributed to all grade 3 classrooms it was with disgust that i discovered i have actually wasted my time teaching my students their multiplication and division facts since there are exactly three questions on the 10day test which require those skills oddly enough i thought they might actu ally need to know those things at some point in the future but apparently it is deemed more relevant by our education ministry that our students should be able to calculate the area of a zucchini leaf i can also look forward to days of what does this word say again since the majority of eight year olds dont eat zucchini with the same zest that they might nibble cheese strings i then filled out the required twosided forms for each child only to realize that just 10 of my 29 students have been in the coun try for more than four years and of the remaining 10 three of my students were classified as special needs the remaining seven may have varied success with this test no doubt my peers and myself will be widely criticized for our inability to produce rocket scientists thank you minister of education john snobelen for creating your education crisis t coulter true it ought to be theres no telling how many thousands of lives morse code has saved at sea and on land since it was invented by one samuel finley breese morse 159 years ago morse a massachusetts artist and sometime inventor was fooling around with an electromagnet when it occurred to him that he could use shortduration electric current to print a pretty well infinite series of marks on a moving strip of paper by pressing a key he could make those marks long a dash or with a light touch short a dot morse poked around for several years refining his idea finally he was ready to go public with it his first message traveled by overhead wire from balti more to washington in 1844 decoded it read what hath god wrought sam morse didnt know it but he not god had wrought a system of codified conversation that was des tined to dominate long dis tance communication around the world for the next centu ry and a half the beauty of morse code is its universal adaptability you dont need a telegraph key to use it morse code can be sent by whistles buzzers flags even by alternating clenched and open fists at night you can speak morse with anything from a light house beacon to a bic lighter prisoners have used morse code to communicate between cells rapping on their bars or water pipes in the hands of an expert morse code approached an basic black arthur black art form operators with sensitive fingertips could tap out messages with blistering speed they called it making the wires sing its a little like music says one morse operator its been an altogether won derful and lifeenhancing invention old sam morses brainwave too bad its about to die french maritime radio authorities have already offi cially given up sending mes sages in morse the rest of the world is expected to fol low suit two years from now use of morse by mar itime authorities is sched uled to be a thing of the past worldwide what did morse code in advancing technology for the most part the experts say its too horseandbuggy to survive in an age of ultra- slick hyperquick radio and satellite communication well perhaps but i like to think that there will always be room for a system of non- vocal communication that doesnt have to rely on inter stellar satellites and fancy display monitors in order to work all i can do is lament the passing and maybe tap out a tribute on my key board dot-dot-dot-dash- dotdash im sure thats morse code for over and out