C1

EDUCATIONXTRA
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2014

EDUCATOR SPOTLIGHT

Rolando Orozco
School: Cromack Elementary
Why Im here: My purpose is to
help our students prepare to become
the
future
leaders of our
community.
What makes
it worthwhile: Seeing
the students
absorb what is
being taught
PEREZ
and apply it in
their daily activities is what makes it
all worthwhile.
Teaching tip: Teach students like
you are teaching your own children.

w w w. b r o w n s v i l l e h e r a l d . c o m

Community
Benefactor

PLEASE SEE MUSIC, C4

PLEASE SEE DOCTORS, C4

BISD summer
graduation
WHAT:
The
Brownsville
Independent School District will
hold its 2014 summer graduation
ceremony honoring graduates from
all five high schools.
WHEN: At 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 28
WHERE: Rivera High School gymnasium, 6955 FM 802
WHAT ELSE: Potential summer
graduates need to contact a high
school counselor immediately.
Practice will be held at 10 a.m.
Thursday, Aug. 28 in the Rivera High
School gym. Caps and gowns will be
available for purchase before the ceremony from 5-6:45 p.m. The cost of
one 8 X 10 graduation photos is $15.
KBSD TV will videotape the ceremony.

Collaborations

The Future Is Now

WHAT: If you are 18-26 years of
age and dropped out of high
school with 12 credits or more, you
may qualify to earn a high school
diploma while also earning a certificate in welding or certification hours
toward heating, ventilation, and air
conditioning (HVAC) at the College,
Career and Technology Connection.
WHEN: Immediate enrollment
WHERE: The College, Career and
Technology Connection is located at
the BISD Brownsville Learning
Academy, 4350 Morrison Road.
WHAT ELSE: With flexible
scheduling, you can get on track
quickly. For more information,
contact Edward Ude at (956)
982-2860 or email bla@bisd.us.
MYBROWNSVILLEHERALD.COM

Visit the Brownsville

Learning Academy website.

PHOTOS BY YVETTE VELA/THE BROWNSVILLE HERALD

The Lucio Middle School band runs through its warm up music on Monday afternoon Band Director Emiliano Camarillo
led the class.
MYBROWNSVILLEHERALD.COM

The instrumental music programs at three Brownsville

Independent School District middle schools will soon receive
$134,882 in musical instruments,
repairs, and mouthpieces thanks to
The Mr. Hollands Opus Foundation.
Besteiro, Cummings and
Lucio middle schools submitted
an application for support and
the foundation found their programs to be a worthwhile investment, allowing more students to
be able to play and experience
the benefits of music education.
The Mr. Hollands Opus
Foundation is a philanthropy that
awards musical instruments to
programs that need them and
students who will use them.
The foundation keeps music
alive in our schools by donating
musical instruments to underfunded music programs, giving
youngsters the many benefits of
music education, helping them
to be better students and inspiring creativity and expression
through playing music, the

See a video about the

Mr. Hollands Opus Foundation
in action.

Lucio Middle School, band students sit

upright at they prepare to start their
band practice on Monday afternoon.
organization says on its website.
Felice Mancini, the foundations president and chief executive officer, applauded BISD
and its leaders for recognizing

BY LINDSEY TANNER

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

the importance of giving these

students opportunities through
music education. Its our goal to
remain a partner in the community to help more schools and
more kids who want to play
music, she said.
With many music programs
across the country losing vital
funding, the foundation helps
underserved schools that dont
have adequate funds to purchase
or repair their instruments.
The Mr. Hollands Opus
grant funds, support, and partnership will make a huge impact
on our community and programs, said Paul Flinchbaugh,
BISD Instrumental Music supervisor. Musical instruments are
an expensive proposition with a
top-of-the-line baritone sax or
bassoon costing around $7,000.

Mr. Hollands Opus Foundation funds three BISD music programs

SPECIAL TO THE HERALD

Doctors
urge later
start times
CHICAGO

Pediatricians have a new

prescription for schools:
later start times for teens.
Delaying the start of the
school day until at least 8:30
a.m. would help curb their
lack of sleep, which has
been linked with poor
health, bad grades, car
crashes and other problems,
the
American
Academy of Pediatrics
says in a new policy.
The influential group
says teens are especially
at risk; for them, chronic sleep loss has increasingly become the norm.
Studies have found
that most U.S. students in
middle school and high
school dont
get the recommended
amount of
sleep 8
to 9 hours
on
school
nights; and
American
eric
that
most
Academy
of
high school
seniors get Pediatrics: http://
an average www.aap.org
of less than www.my
seven hours. Brownsville
More than Herald.com
40 percent of
the nations public high
schools start classes
before 8 a.m., according to
government data cited in
the policy. And even when
the buzzer rings at 8 a.m.,
school bus pickup times
typically mean kids have
to get up before dawn if
they want that ride.
High school classes in
the Brownsville Independent School District start
at 8:40 a.m. Middle school
classes start at 7:40 a.m.
The issue is really
cost,
said
Kristen
Amundson,
executive
director of the National
Association of State
Boards of Education.
School buses often
make multiple runs each
morning for older and
younger students. Adding
bus drivers and rerouting
buses is one of the biggest
financial obstacles to later
start times, Amundson
said. The roughly 80 school
districts that have adopted
later times tend to be
smaller, she said.
After-school sports
are another often-cited
obstacle because a later
dismissal delays practices and games. The

EDUCATION BRIEFS

WHAT: The BISD Fine Arts

Department presents the 19th
Annual Faculty Art Exhibition, titled
Collaborations.
WHEN: The exhibit opens Friday,
Aug. 29 with a reception from 6-8
p.m. The public is invited.
WHERE: The Brownsville Museum
of Fine Art, 660 E. Ringgold St.
WHAT ELSE: For more information, call the BISD Fine Arts
Department at 982-3730.

Classifieds C5

STARGAZER

Constellations help map out the night sky

the pleasure of observing
Looking for something
the emerging curves of
we havent talked about
the waxing moon
recently? Look at
phases. This is a
the S curve of the
CAROL
good time to pull
Scorpion, directly
out the forgotten,
in front of the row LUTSINGER
wobbly telescope
of nearly vertical
you got for your
stars of the pinchbirthday as a kid
ers of Scorpius.
and use it to go
Libra is faint and
exploring the cralocated just in
ters on the lunar
front of the
American
surface. Major craScorpion in the
ters on the moon
south and is nearly Astronomical
include Tycho and
the same pentago- Society
Copernicus, named
nal shape as King
Cepheus in the north.
There are several constellations with a pentagonal
shape; if you get a star map
from Skymaps.com you will
see what I mean. Saturn is
within Libra and Mars is
just to the right of it, along
either side of the ecliptic.
One of the most interesting solar system
objects to observe is the
moon, or luna. As the
moon began its new cycle
on Monday, we will have

MYBROWNSVILLEHERALD.COM
Visit the NASA website to learn more about the stars and space exploration.
mo astronoafter famous
mers of an earlier age.
The moon is large enough
that you can find it fairly
easily, and if it trails out
of the line of sight it is a
relatively simple matter
to return the image to the
eyepiece. This is one way
to finally get your parents money out of it.

$6.90

That wobbly scope should

be a reminder to you not
to repeat the mistake for
YOUR family. I know you
whined for it and pined
for it until they sacrificed
for it and you lost interest
in it immediately.
Decent useable scopes
cost major money, but they
should be the last thing

you think about buying.

Until you can recognize
and identify constellations
and planets there really is
not a good reason to invest
$1,000 in a telescope.
Binoculars are easy to use
and fun for all ages; they
afford reasonable viewing
experiences that will
enable a new observer to

find his or her way around

the night sky until ready for
that big investment -when they are spending
their OWN money! In the
meantime, use someone
elses telescope!
Carol Lutsinger is a NASA/JPL
Solar System educator and
ambassador, Texas Space
Grant Consortium collaborator,
and American Astronomical
Society resource agent

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