By Kayla MontgomerySpecial to The Tuscaloosa News

On a regular day, Minda Paxton can fi nd herself teaching everything from geology to a unit on pirates

to Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”Paxton works as a gifted education spe-

cialist for the Tuscaloosa City Schools, serving at Alberta Elementary and Tus-caloosa Magnet Elementary School.

Much of the gifted education in Tusca-loosa is funded at the local level. However, the Alabama Association for Gifted Chil-dren, an advocacy group, hopes to in-crease state-provided funding for these advanced education programs state-wide.

“We’re trying to impress upon the peo-ple in the state that gifted matters,” said Amy Waine, president of the Alabama As-sociation for Gifted Children. “People have to see the importance of gifted be-fore they will see that there is an urgent group of kids that needs money.”

Waine’s job with the advocacy group takes her across the state speaking with legislators, parents and educators about the importance of gifted education and the need for funding.

In 2013, Alabama allotted $1.05 million for gifted education statewide. While an increase from the 2012 budget of $1 mil-lion, the 2013 budget still breaks down to roughly $3 per child per year.

“Three dollars is a little over what these children pay for lunch every day, and that’s all you get per year for that child,” Waine said. “We’re taking our best and

brightest students and giving them the shorter end of the stick.”

Waine said that the Alabama Associa-tion for Gifted Children hopes for a budget of $2 million for gifted education state-wide.

“These are the kids who are going to be the astronauts, scientists, chemists

5 Gadsden residents killed in

plane crash

The Gadsden Times, Wire Reports

Divers on Sunday located the wreckage of a small plane in which fi ve people from Gadsden were killed Saturday when it crashed into a reservoir in Colorado.

Offi cials have not released the identities of the plane’s occupants, pending notifi cation of next of kin. However, multiple social media reports have identifi ed the pas-sengers as Gadsden businessman Jimmy Hill, president of Gadsden Tool; Katrina Vinzant Barksdale and her two sons, Xander and Kobe, students at Mitchell Ele-mentary School; and Seth McDuffi e, a student at West-brook Christian School.

Ouray County Public Information Offi cer Marti Whit-more at a news conference Sunday said the plane is 60 to 70 feet below the surface of the Ridgway Reservoir, south of Montrose, Colo. Search and rescue dogs alerted on an area of the lake, and sidescan sonar was used to locate the wreckage.

Whitmore, according to reports from the Ouray County Plaindealer in the town of Ridgway, said recov-ery workers are operating on the assumption that the bodies stayed with the plane. Visibility at that depth is about 5 to 10 feet, and an offi cial said the bodies may have to be brought up with the plane’s fuselage.

County offi cials said they may have to bring in

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Japanese Commander Hidetsugu Iwamasa walks along the tarmac after his aircraft arrived to help with search operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in Perth, Australia, on Sunday.

Pilot’s mental health a concern in missing plane case

By David Koenig The Associated Press

DALLAS | Reinforced doors with keypad entries. Body scanners and pat-downs. Elaborate crew maneuvers when a pilot has to use the restroom. All those tactics are designed to keep dangerous people out of the cock-pit. But what if the pilot is the problem?

With no answers yet in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, investigators have said they’re con-sidering many options: hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or catastrophic equipment failure. Nobody knows if the pilots are heroes who tried to save a crippled airliner or if one collaborated with hijackers or was on a suicide mission.

Whatever the outcome, the mystery has raised con-cerns about whether airlines and governments do enough to make sure that pilots are mentally fi t to fl y.

“One of the most dangerous things that can happen is the rogue captain,” said John Gadzinski, a Boeing 737 captain and aviation-safety consultant. “If you get some-body who — for whatever reason — turns cancerous and starts going on their own agenda, it can be a really bad situation.”

Proving that ‘gifted matters’

STAFF PHOTOS | MICHELLE LEPIANKA CARTER

Alberta Elementary fifth-graders Jalissa Moore, left, and D’Wright Martin play a game of chess while University of Alabama student Nate Lynman looks on during Minda Paxton’s gifted education class at the Tuscaloosa Magnet Elementary School on March 18. UA students from the “Every Move Counts” program in the UA Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility come to Paxton’s class once a week to work with her students.

Advocacy group hopes to get more for advanced studentsAlberta Elementary fifth-grader Larissa Chillous reacts to a move during a game of chess against Ziaha Thomas.

Schools to challenge high achievers

By Jamon SmithStaff Writer

Starting in August, the Tuscaloosa County School System will offer more ac-ademically rigorous classes to high-achieving sixth-graders as part of its new Academic Scholars Program.

Superintendent Elizabeth Swinford said

the purpose of the program — which was unanimously approved by the board — is to provide a framework of learning for mid-dle school students that encourages them to become creative, critical and refl ective thinkers.

She said the implementation of the pro-gram is part of the system’s mission to educate and empower all students to be-

come college- and career-ready gradu-ates.

“The reason why we saw the need for it was from various sources,” Swinford said. “No. 1, after being out in the community with our community forums, several things came up. People wanted more op-tions for kids, including options for kids who are gifted, but not exclusively gifted. In other words, above-average kids.

“We thought, ‘You know what, you’re right.’ We have a lot of things for at-risk students, but not a lot for gifted students.

WWW.TUSCALOOSANEWS.COM

County’s Academic Scholars Program will offer more rigorous classes to above-average students

Victims of Colo. accident have been identifi ed on social media

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and are those that have the brains to solve the problems of the 22nd century,” Waine said. “They really should have the opportunity to acquire these skills they need to become our No. 1 members of society.”

Waine also said that if a larger budget for gifted pro-grams is passed, hiring more gifted specialists would be a top priority.

She said that current gifted specialists become overloaded between teaching gifted stu-dents and testing other stu-dents to see if they qualify for the program. The 2014 fi scal year budget the state is cur-rently operating under allo-cated $1.05 million for gifted education programs. The bud-get proposed by the House calls for $1.1 million in fi scal year 2015, state Rep. Bill Poole, R-Tuscaloosa, said.

Poole described the increase as modest but the best sce-nario in a year where legisla-tors are faced with meeting an array of needs, including health insurance costs for pub-lic school employees, with lim-ited funds.

“We just weren’t able to sub-stantively increase that partic-ular line item,” he said. “We are just not there right now from the dollars standpoint.”

There are at least 1,273 stu-dents in gifted programs in Tuscaloosa City Schools and

1,506 gifted students in the Tuscaloosa County Schools System.

Children are generally screened in second grade as part of a “second-grade child fi nd” program, where all chil-dren are tested and those who would likely do well in gifted programs are identifi ed, said Bruce Prescott, Tuscaloosa City Schools director of special education.

While children in third through fi fth grades receive direct gifted services through teacher instruction, children in sixth through 12th grades participate in gifted mainte-nance programs, which in-clude honors, Advanced Place-ment and classes in the International Baccalaureate program, Prescott said.

Gifted education operates similarly in county schools.

“Middle and high schools do not have direct instruction from a teacher, they have con-sultative; that’s where a gifted specialist is on staff who gives the regular class teachers any assistance they may need to as-sist those gifted students,” said Ruth Graves, special edu-cation director for the Tusca-loosa County Schools Sys-tem.

Prescott said that gifted spe-cialists also help in the general education classrooms.

“They are a very good re-source to all general education teachers because they provide extra strategies and support,” Prescott said. “We try to change the way we teach to

truly meet the needs of all kids, and teachers try to continually broaden these children’s minds.”

Tuscaloosa parent Amy Duncan said that educators have made all the difference in her children’s experience with gifted education. Duncan said that her daughter enjoyed her gifted classes largely because of the enthusiasm and creativ-ity of her teacher at Woodland Forrest Elementary School.

“My daughter looked for-ward to it every week because her teacher made it very hands-on, and the topics she got to do were totally things you would not do in the classroom, like forensic studies,” Duncan said. “She also got to go around the university and study architec-ture — looking at different types of columns and that sort of thing.”

In addition to the interest-based and hands-on curricu-lum of gifted education, Pax-ton said that one of the selling points in the gifted program is that students get to be them-selves in their environment and enjoy learning.

“I think a lot of times, our gifted students just need a place they can come and be gifted,” Paxton said. “They can work together with other higher-level thinkers and have those discussions they can’t have in the regular classroom because it can get disrup-tive.”

Staff Writer Ed Enoch contrib-uted to this report.

We also have this push for ca-reer technical education, but a segment of students were left out. So we created this for stu-dents who are gifted and above average. This is also for stu-dents who work hard and do well.”

Tuscaloosa County Board of Education member Joe Boteler said this is the kind of program that the board hoped would be put in place when they hired Swinford last April.

“Once again, we’re trying to push those gifted students,” Boteler said. “By push, I mean challenge them. We want to make sure that they are taking courses that require them to think and to learn. That’s the basis behind this. A lot of this will be a hands-on process that is designed to make them think and reason.

“This is definitely a good thing. In my mind, one of the main reasons we hired Dr. Swinford was to provide the leadership where our students are excelling. We’re not going to accept mediocrity, we’re looking for excellence.”

Swinford said if they’re going to increase the number of stu-dents taking advanced place-ment, honors and dual-enroll-ment classes in high school, it

needs to provide students with more challenging classes start-ing in middle school. That way, students will be prepared for advanced classes when they get to high school.

“That’s why we’re starting this in sixth grade,” she said. “Research shows that academ-ics drop in middle school, so we’re trying to do something to help them maintain their per-formance in middle school. There’s a lot of pieces in this academy. It’s fi lling a void in the area of gifting, the area of high achievement, and helping the drop in test scores that occur in middle school.”

The program will offer core classes — science, math, read-ing and social studies — taught with hands-on, project-based learning techniques that will minimize the teacher’s delivery of instruction and increase the students’ learning and under-standing of a concept through the process of discovery, which Swinford said increases stu-dents’ problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.

“Our approach will be more towards the STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art Mathematics) curriculum,” she said. “Art will be integrated into everything.”

Students in the program will have to be independent learn-ers and independent thinkers, but they’ll also have to be able to work well in a group, Swin-

ford said.Technology will be heavily

used in the program, and stu-dents will likely be able to take home school-assigned laptops. The program will be taught in separate classes outside of where other students are being taught.

To enter the program, stu-dents in sixth grade will have to have a B average or higher. Students who qualify for gifted services will automatically be eligible for the Academic Schol-ars Program.

Though the program is ini-tially only for sixth-graders, it will expand to seventh grade in spring 2015 and to eighth-grade in spring 2016.

“ We’ l l have meet ings throughout the community probably at the end of April and May to explain it to parents so they can see if they want their kids to participate,” Swinford said.

Teachers will be trained to teach the more rigorous cur-riculum this summer and dur-ing the school year.

Swinford said she doesn’t know the cost of the program yet, but will know once all of the details are worked out.

“It will be an exciting option for kids, and I think they’re go-ing to love it.”

Reach Jamon Smith at jamon.smith@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0204.

GIFTEDCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A

SCHOOLSCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A

equipment from Denver or Salt Lake City to recover the fuselage.

Recovery workers battled air and water temperatures on Sunday, Ridgway State Park Manager Kirsten Copeland said at the news conference. Boats patrolling the banks found some debris, she said.

The reservoir is located in the park, which is in the south-western portion of Colorado between Grand Junction and Durango, about 180 miles from Denver.

Whitmore said the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the re-gional Environmental Protec-tion Agency offi ce had been notifi ed about the potential of hazardous materials in the res-ervoir from the crash, and a Colorado State Patrol hazmat specialist has been on-site from the beginning. However, no hazmat situation had devel-oped as of late Sunday.

Federal Aviation Adminis-tration Spokesman Ian Gregor earlier Sunday said the single-eng ine Socat a T BM70 0 crashed at about 1:50 p.m. Sat-urday in the reservoir. A por-tion of the plane was recov-ered and pulled to shore before efforts were suspended late Saturday afternoon, ac-

cording to published reports.According to the FAA’s on-

line database, the fi xed-wing, turbo-prop plane, N702H, is registered to Gadsden Avia-tion LLC.

Records at the Alabama Sec-retary of State’s offi ce list Gad-sden Tool as a member name for Gadsden Aviation LLC. The aviation company’s regis-tered address, 712 Natco Drive, Rainbow City, is that of Gadsden Tool. Hill is listed as a registered agent and mem-ber name for Gadsden Aviation LLC in state records.

Whitmore said the plane was traveling to Montrose af-ter stopping in Bartlesville, Okla., on a fl ight originating from the Northeast Alabama Regional Airport in Gadsden. She said the plane crashed about 90 feet from shore.

Ridgway resident Lena Mar-

tinez told the Plaindealer that she was attending a wedding on Saturday on Log Hill Mesa and saw the plane in a spin. From the meadow where the wed-ding was taking place, she saw the aircraft fl y overhead and heard its impact in the reser-voir.

“It popped out of the thick, heavy clouds and went into a fl at spin,” Martinez said.

Witnesses told the Plain-dealer that the plane went down in Mears Bay, in the northeast corner of the reservoir. An oil slick was visible on the water.

Lynn Padgett, chairperson of the Ouray County Board of County Commissioners, said at the news conference that the victims’ families “are in our hearts and prayers.” She thanked local businesses that have provided lodging and meals to fi rst responders.

GADSDENCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A

CANDLELIGHT VIGIL HELD FOR VICTIMSGadsden residents gathered Sunday night at Mitchell

Elementary School to remember friends who died Saturday in a plane crash in Colorado.

Multiple social media reports have identified the plane’s occupants as Gadsden businessman Jimmy Hill, president of Gadsden Tool; Katrina Vinzant Barksdale and her two sons, Xander and Kobe, students at Mitchell; and Seth McDuffie, a student at Westbrook Christian School.

Mitchell’s former principal, Russ Waits, led the vigil and tried to comfort the grieving and hurting families. After the service, children went across the bus circle to a makeshift memorial site near the school’s fence on Noccalula Road.

— John Davidson, The Gadsden Times

MONDAY , MARCH 24 , 2014 | THE TUSCALOOSA NEWS 7A