CT1C01112902 CT1C01112902 ZALLCALL 50 12:15:28 11/29/04 B

Schoolexpulsionrate rises49 kicked outin 2003-2004

DAVID SANDELL/THE CAPITAL TIMES

Nichols Elementary School third-grade teacher KymDavick asks a student to explain how he arrived athis answer during a recent class.

By Lee SensenbrennerThe Capital Times

The Madison school district ex-pelled 49 students in the 2003-2004school year, the highest number of ex-pulsions in at least a decade, for of-fenses that ranged from sexual assaultto wielding a pencil as a weapon.

The most common offenses weredrug-related. According to numbersreleased by the district today, 13 stu-dents were expelled for being in-volved in a drug deal. Another fivewere expelled for possessing a drugor controlled substance “with the in-tent to deliver.”

Physical attacks and weapons of-fenses accounted for most of the re-maining expulsions. The district listedseven cases in which a student at-tacked another student and five casesin which a student attacked a staffmember.

The district listed 13 expulsions forpossessing a weapon or threatening touse a weapon. These students mostoften armed themselves with a knife,but one student was listed as having aknife and a hammer. Other weaponsincluded a BB gun, a belt, brassknuckles, a broom handle and a pen-cil.

One expulsion was due to “a seri-ous sexual assault” and another camefrom making a bomb threat. Threestudents were kicked out for repeat-edly disobeying school rules.

All these expulsion cases are han-dled in closed sessions, and the

See EXPEL, Page 10C

Math classdivideseducatorsEveryday Math putsfocus on how it works

By Karyn SaemannCorrespondent for The Capital Times

MONONA – Kym Davick is catching her breath.“I’m always tired after math,” the Nichols Elemen-

tary School teacher quips lightly after an hour of teach-ing third-graders to add and subtract two-digitnumbers.

It’s not just fidgety children that bring a weary smilefrom Davick, it’s the curriculum Monona Grove beganusing last year.

This curriculum — which is used in several schooldistricts in Dane County — is hailed for raising testscores, for its meshing of math with life and for lettingchildren find their own way to solve problems.

It is decried for its use of calculators in kindergartenand its passing nod to the memorization of facts.

The University of Chicago’s “Everyday Math” curric-ulum is one of three elementary math programs en-dorsed 15 years ago by the National ScienceFoundation and now used by 2.8 million children.

It is many controversial things but this for certain —it’s fast paced.

The last 20 minutes of Davick’s class find childrenpracticing subtraction on the blackboard, huddled overworkbooks or getting individual help from a teacher.

But the first 40 minutes are a whirlwind, startingwith an 8-minute “Basketball Addition” game wheresmall groups of children bend together over desks orsit in circles on the floor.

The drill: roll two or three standard dice, add the re-sults in your head and write the sum in marker on awipe-away basketball-themed game board.

Confer with classmates on your accuracy, check onyour kid-friendly, red and purple calculator if someonechallenges your answer and then — here’s where oldand new math begin to clash — explain how you got itright.

Traditional concepts like carrying and borrowing arestill taught in Everyday Math, but as one of a variety ofways to add and subtract multiple-digit numbers, notend-alls.

To add 21, 20 and 17, one child might add the 10sfirst then the ones, essentially getting 50 then tackingon eight. Or he might move the 1 over to 17, to easilyadd 18 to the two 20s to get 58.

The class continues. For 30 minutes, Davick projectsnumber sentences on an overhead screen and childrenwrite answers on individual wipe-away slates.

Need visual help? Consult the printed number charton your desktop or the long black and white numberchart that starts below zero and climbs into the hun-dreds as it snakes around three classroom walls.

Think you have the answer? Hold the slate up high.Let the teacher scan the room to see if most childrenare correct. Then do it again and again — fast, fast, fast— with number sentences then with rounding and esti-mating.

See MATH, Page 3C

Judge haltstwo coal-firedpower plants

DAVID SANDELL/THE CAPITAL TIMES

Nichols student Sawyer Rothrock holds up her dry slate with her answer to the problem.

By Mike MillerThe Capital Times

Plans by Wisconsin Energy Corp.to build two coal-powered generatingplants at Oak Creek have been put onhold.

Dane County Circuit Judge DavidFlanagan ruled today that the PublicService Commission’s approval of theproject violated state laws and proce-dures in several ways. In a 54-pagewritten decision, Flanagan sent thematter back to the commission tobegin the approval process anew.

The decision came in a consolida-tion of cases brought by Clean Wis-consin Inc. and S.C. Johnson andSons; the Calpine Corp.; and the cityof Oak Creek, all of which opposed atleast some parts of the commission’sorder approving the $2.15 billionproject.

Although Flanagan found severalportions of the PSC order to have vio-lated various statutes and procedures,at the heart of his ruling is that Wis-consin Energy Corp.’s initial applica-tion for the project was not complete.

“The application ... fails to identifyat least two alternative locations, failsto include all required regulatory ap-provals and fails to set forth transmis-sion line agreements,” the judgewrote, and said that means the casemust go back to the PSC for the

See POWER, Page 2C

Nichols studentPerla Dom-inguez prac-tices measuringwith a ruler.

UW computer team plansfor world finals in Shanghai

By Aaron NathansThe Capital Times

The fearsome computer pro-gramming team at the UW-Madisonhad everything they needed to crushthe competition.

Their brains were swimming withmath smarts. They were experiencedwith various computer languages.They were patient and poised in frontof a keyboard.

But earlier this semester, theywere missing one thing.

“I told them they needed to comeup with a name,” said their headcoach, Dieter van Melkebeek. “Theonly constraint was whether it wouldfit in the registration form.”

The trio of graduate students Mat-

thew Anderson and Patrick Davidsonand undergraduate Alex Frase choseto go the unassuming route. Theypicked “Harmless Fluffy Bunnies.”

“Someone suggested it as an exam-ple of what not to call us,” Davidsonexplained.

This band of Bunnies, however,would go on to take first place in theregional contest of the Association forComputing Machinery InternationalCollegiate Programming Competition,held Nov. 13. Their next stop is theworld finals in China in April.

The University of Wisconsin-Madi-son computer programming team is arelatively recent creation. It startedfour years ago when a graduate

See FINALS, Page 2C

DAVID SANDELL/THE CAPITAL TIMES

UW-Madison’s “Harmless Fluffy Bunnies” have been anything but harmless on the competitive computer pro-gramming circuit. They are (from left) Sai Suresh Krishna Kumaran, Matt Anderson, coach Dieter van Melke-beek, Patrick Davidson, assistant coach Scott Diehl and Alex Frase.

METROMETRORon McCrea, city editor

252-6419Chris Murphyassistant city editor

252-6420

Mary Yeater Rathbunassistant city editor

252-6484

E-mail: citydesk@madison.com

More good news for Madison is tricklingout of the massive federal spending billthat was passed a week ago.A $300,000 grant to study the feasibility

of a light rail system linking Madison’ssouth and north sides was among fundsapproved by Congress in the 2005omnibus appropriations bill.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz has proposed acity streetcar system running north-southup the isthmus from Park Street to theairport.“That’s where there is the most poten-

tial for economic development,” mayoralspokeswoman Melanie Conklin saidrecently.

MADISON DANE COUNTY

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* Monday, Nov. 29, 2004

Today’s Talker

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Rail idea gets federal money