By Hillary Vancil

What does it mean to be “SARBed?” To find out, four people who are deeply involved in student attendance and education were interviewed about the effectiveness of the Student Attendance Review Board (SARB), as well as two students who have been SARBed. Through the interviews SARB’s effectiveness was demonstrated, as well as how SARB operates within Siskiyou County. SARB is also known as the truancy police. The board is in place to keep students in school.

There is a multi-step process to the board once a student is SARBed, and if its policies are violated there can and will be negative consequences. There can be consequences not only for the students, but possibly the parents and even the school, as well.

The SARB panel is made up of different members from throughout Siskiyou County that represent different venues. There is a principal, a superintendent, a member of law enforcement, a probation officer, a mental health worker, and the district attorney or a prosecutor. These members of the community are in charge of students who break the law and skip school. It is up to them to take the time out of their already busy lives to make sure that students are attending school and that the schools get maximum funding through ADA. (more…)

WEED – The subject is passive solar power, but Weed High School shop teacher Damon Zeller and his construction class students aren’t passive about learning. They could have learned from a book, but instead Zeller and science teacher Mike Gilmore secured a grant from British Petroleum to build model houses, and study how differing amounts of windows and insulation, as well as orientation to the sun affect the temperature in the various house designs.

“The project was all about looking at how passive solar energy, the sun’s energy, could be warming your house. We have six model houses, and in each one of those models there’s something different,” said Zeller. “Some have double insulation. Some have no insulation, or one layer of insulation. Some have two windows, and some have five windows. Some are oriented towards the north, and some are oriented towards the south. We are looking at how all of that affects the temperature in the houses.”

What Zeller and his students discovered was that if you have more windows on a house and a southern exposure it’s going to heat up more. If oriented towards the north with no sunlight coming into the house, the house stays much cooler. (more…)