By FULLER ROYAL
Staff Writer

It’s time for kudos and raspberries.

Kudos: To East Columbus, South Columbus, West Columbus and Whiteville high schools for their annual spring musicals. It takes a lot of talent, time, elbow grease and money to mount these shows.

Raspberries: To Edgewood Elementary School for keeping 200 or so students from seeing “Disney’s High School Musical.”

The decision on whether to attend was left up to the teachers and nearly one-third decided that their students’ time would be better spent studying for the North Carolina End-of-Grade tests.

It is a shame that the state has badgered and bullied teachers into making these kinds of decisions.

Can three hours really make that kind of difference? Wow!

Can you imagine being a child stuck in a classroom studying the EOG while your friends walk to the high school and enjoy the stage version of Disney’s most highly rated television movie ever?

Frankly, I feel sorry for kids in the schools today. I feel sorry for my own children because they will never have as much fun in school as I did nor will they learn as much.

I really don’t know what teachers are worried about.

No one’s going to take their jobs away. No one wants them. The politicians in Raleigh, and some old loopy judge up there, are all nuts anyway – full of hot air.

They haven’t fired a teacher or a principal yet. And with whom are they going to replace them?

When I first looked for a teaching job in 1984, there were none to be had. You had to beg school boards for work. Now, school boards are begging people to come and teach.

Kudos: To the school board members, teachers and faculty and parents who attended their schools’ shows.

Raspberries: To the school board members, teachers and faculty and parents who decided to stay at home and grow their bellies on a couch instead of attending the shows.

Kudos: To the arts in the schools for providing at least one promise of a better life post high school to students in all of the grades.

Raspberries: To the thick skulls in Raleigh who really think making it illegal to quit school before 18 is a good idea. They can’t make them stay in until 16 – most kids drop out in ninth grade.

And frankly, we don’t have the classroom space or teachers to accommodate additional students.

North Carolina has depended on a 30 percent dropout rate since the inception of the public school system.

Look at any high school in Columbus County or Whiteville and ask where you would put 150 to 200 additional students.

Raspberries: To the thicker skulls in Raleigh who believe that adding more courses to those already required in high school will make kids smarter or make them more likely to attend college.

All it will do is increase the dropout rate to 50 percent and cause existing courses to be watered down even more.

Raspberries: To getting rid of alternative schools. If anything, they should be beefed up and expanded to accommodate even more of the “little darlings” who make teachers days “exciting” all year long.

Raspberries: To the State Department of Traffic Signals, or whoever they are, for botching up the good thing we had here. We might as well have Elizabethtown’s traffic lights.

Before they let “HAL” the computer take over last year, a light actually would be accommodating. If there was no oncoming traffic, the lights would let you through.

Now, the lights demand 1/16 inch of growth of fingernail before you can qualify enough to be considered to be evaluated for possible permission to press the accelerator in a just-so fashion and ease through the intersection, provided it’s 2:48 a.m.

And while we’re talking about stoplights …

Raspberries: To schools still using those insipid stoplights to quell any joy in their lunchrooms.

Students can’t look forward to lunch because a huge stoplight blares out “anaerrrrrrrrrkkkkkk-ka-flugga” whenever they get too loud.

Kudos: To the folks in downtown Whiteville renovating an old tattoo parlor into a “coffee house” shop.

Kudos: To parents and supporters for pushing for a soccer field renovation at Whiteville High School and to the Whiteville City Schools Board of Education for matching the money raised.

Raspberries: To the county high schools for not taking seriously the growing popularity of soccer here and across the state and nation.

Kudos: To Joanne Will, the former longtime secretary at WHS who retired several years ago. Will has been under the weather lately and this reporter and all of Will’s other former students and former colleagues wish her the very best.

We love you Mrs. Will.