Re: SF Gate: Teen hits on a plan for Berkeley districts/16-year-old'sis 1 of 5 under consideration

[Karen Canty <kscanty@PACBELL.NET>]

Re: SF Gate: Teen hits on a plan for Berkeley districts/16-year-old's is 1
of 5 under considerationMichelle,

I noticed - and I didn't even send a link to the other story that was also
in the Chronicle about a student who had gone to Vietnam last summer, was
concerned about the number of children he saw who had legs blown off by land
mines and had no way to get around easily - came home, worked with his metal
working teacher, welding teacher, protheses makers across the US and
designed a prothesis that is adjustable and cheap ($50) so they might
actually get to the kids who need them...Did he have all these options in
public school?  Of course not - because all we're spending money on is
"academics" - sorry, dripping with sarcasm too!  As my daughter said, "where
is the test that measures caring?"

Karen
  -----Original Message-----
  From: Assessment Reform Network Mailing List
[mailto:ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU]On Behalf Of Michelle in Nevada
  Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 8:06 PM
  To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU
  Subject: Re: SF Gate: Teen hits on a plan for Berkeley
districts/16-year-old'sis 1 of 5 under consideration


  B"H

  I think we better write Berkeley right now and tell them to give that kid
a Standardized test.  If he doesn't pass it, they should immediately ignore
his great plan because he isn't smart and no one should listen to him.

  (Offered, in case you didn't notice, with dripping sarcasm).

  Michelle


    From: Karen Canty <kscanty@PACBELL.NET>
    Subject: SF Gate: Teen hits on a plan for Berkeley
districts/16-year-old's is 1 of 5 under consideration




    Speaking of imagination and rigor, thought you would enjoy..Karen
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate.
    The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/13
/MN37548.DTL
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Wednesday, February 13, 2002 (SF Chronicle)
    Teen hits on a plan for Berkeley districts/16-year-old's is 1 of 5 under
consideration
    Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer


      The grown-ups were stymied, so 16-year-old Berkeley High School junior
    Nick Rizzo got out his calculator and carefully crafted a plan to solve
    the city's protracted tug-of-war over where to draw the boundaries for
    City Council districts.
      "I said, 'Wow!' " recalled council member Kriss Worthington. "That's a
    pretty gargantuan task. Many people have tried and failed."
      Nick, whose favorite reading ranges from the congressional newspaper
Roll
    Call to the Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol, wrote in his proposal:
      "The Ancient Greeks believed a person's primary duty was civic
    participation," he wrote, "and I couldn't agree with them more. . . . I
    would be privileged to believe that even though I can't vote, because of
    me, the thousands of Berkeley citizens who can will have a fair
    representation."
      Berkeley could use some help. City officials have been struggling for
    months to come up with an acceptable redistricting plan.
      The city is required to redraw the lines every 10 years to adjust for
    population shifts recorded by the census. After long wrangling, the
left-
    leaning majority on the council in October approved a plan that was
later
    tossed out after a successful petition drive branded it "another blatant
    power grab by the far left."
      The city had to go back to the drawing boards. This time, one of the
five
    plans submitted by the public came from Nick.
      Nick said his plan, unlike the others, is nonpartisan, reflecting his
own
    "in-the-middle" politics.
      He's currently working on the state Assembly campaign of Loni Hancock,
a
    former Berkeley mayor allied with the city's leftist faction. But he
    previously worked for the election campaign of Mim Hawley, who's allied
    with the rival centrist party. He now serves as Hawley's appointee to
the
    city's Youth Commission.
      "It is unbelievable," said Molly O'Shaughnessy, Hancock's campaign
    coordinator. "He's like this 38-year-old trapped in a 16-year-old's
body."
      His articulate answers to questions pour forth with enthusiasm. Why
would
    he concentrate students in a certain district? "The Federal Voting
Rights
    Act specifically tells us, where possible, to look out for communities
of
    interest, " he replies.
      Public review of his plan and the others will begin today, with the
    expected release of the proposals by the city clerk's office. His
    proposal, which he estimates took only about 12 to 15 hours, seems to
meet
    the requirements and comes closer than some others to the goal of
    preserving existing boundaries as much as possible.
      His plan was as much a surprise to his family as it was to City Hall.
    Redistricting wasn't a topic at home with his parents, author and critic
    Wendy Lesser and Sonoma State University Professor Richard Rizzo.
      But he did show an early interest in civics when, at age 8 or 9 as a
    student at Bentley School, he would pick a city at random from the
atlas,
    check the population and draw up a city plan, Lesser recalled.
      Civics isn't his only interest. He helped make a short film last year,
    based on the one-paragraph Kafka story "The Top," and he played one of
the
    leads last fall in the school play, "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
      And he also manages to serve as a reporter for Berkeley High's award-
    winning paper, The Jacket.
      But he insists he's "just a normal teenager."
      "I'm not some kind of child prodigy or savant," he said. "I'm a
regular
    kid.
      I worry about my Spanish grades. I wonder if I'm going to get the car
on
    Friday."

      E-mail Charles Burress at cburress@sfchronicle.com.
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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