The Fall of the Town Pool

The town pool is a “waste of money” says a Cheshire citizen quoted in the Cheshire Herald.   Every year millions of dollars are spent on the Cheshire pool.  Does it have perks? Of course it does, it’s a pool. But does it also have a lot of bad things about it?   For example, this year we are spending 7 million dollars on a machine that will make it so the pool will not use as much energy.  A lifeguard who represented the pool at a town meeting stated that 500 kids were taught how to swim in 2011. The real question is whether 500 kids learning how to swim is more important than millions of dollars that could be going to other essential needs of the town.

In my opinion the Cheshire public pool is a HUGE waste of money. I think that millions of dollars of Cheshire’s money should be going to more important things like education or healthy eating. Yes, I do believe that it is attractive to have a town pool, but I do not think it looks good to the town if the roof covering it is falling down every single winter!   Did you know that 1.3 million dollars of the schools budget was cut so that there was more money to spend on the pool?  I doubt it. There is no way that we have this much money to just throw at the pool and hope that it survives the year.  Even if does survive then you just hope you won’t have too much trouble putting the bubble up and down. I have been a citizen of Cheshire ever since I was born and I think that I have been to the pool all of 3 times. There are way too many problems to worry about when dealing with the pool. I think that it should be closed for good.

~Adler Demac

Getting Enough Sleep is Very Important for Kids

Is sleep important for children? A new study says yes. A new study published this week in the journal Pediatrics shows that children who do not get enough sleep have less control over emotions and are less focused at school. The National Sleep Foundation recommend that children who are between 5 to 12 should get 10 to 11 hours of sleep. Getting enough sleep does not just wake you up in the drowsy morning.  If you get enough sleep, your behaviors and grades can get improved. Before the survey had began, students were asked to sleep the same amount of time as they normally would, and their teachers were asked to score down their behaviors and grades. After five nights of kids’ sleep change, the teachers were asked to do the same again. Compared to the original score, those who slept less had the worse behaviors, and those who had enough sleep were normal.

I think sleep is just so important, sometimes you can pass out if you’re way too tired. If you’re tired at school, you won’t be able to pay attention in the class. If you don’t pay attention, you won’t be able to do your homework at home, therefore you can get  bad grades. If sleep is that important, why don’t kids just go to bed earlier? Do they spend too much time on the screen? I know some kids do that, but also, I know most kids in my school do not spend a whole lot of time on the screen, and they couldn’t get enough sleep either. It’s because when kids get to high school and middle school, they get more homework than before. In addition, they have to wake up early in the morning. Especially in high school. So I strongly suggest that middle school and high school should delay the school time, if you want kids to pay their whole attention in the class, you need to let them wake up late. If kids want to go to bed early and be awake the next morning, and they have sports or activities after school, they will have too much pressure. In a long period of time, they will be stressed, and we definitely don’t want kids to get too stressed. So, if the schools want kids to get better grades, you have to delay the school time, then kids can get an amount of sleep they need.

~Oscar Cai

Uconn Denied for Big East Tournament

Many people are probably wondering what’s the deal with the the issues concerning Uconn’s eligibility in the Big East Tournament. This is why I read the article “UCONN MEN’S BASKETBALL: No Big East Tournament for Huskies if team not eligible for NCAA Tournament” By The Associated Press. In this article it states “our presidents conceptually agreed that any team in any sport that is ineligible for postseason NCAA competition that they would not compete in the conference tournament or championship.” I personally  don’t like the idea of that because I am a die  hard Uconn fan and always attend at least one Big East Tournament game.  It also says under rules approved in October, the Uconn Huskies would be academically ineligible in 2013, because the NCAA plans to use data from the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years, when Connecticut’ scores were too low to meet the standards. I found this really interesting because I guarantee  a lot  of  NCAA  Mens Basketball teams are under the standard score limit.The last fact that I saw was Connecticut has been pursuing an appeal that could result in a waiver of the sanctions, arguing that it has made changes that have resulted in significant improvements in the program’s academic performance. After reading this part of the article I don’t get why they can’t just let Uconn work on their grades without being punished with such harsh punishments. This article was great and gave good information on my Huskies.

This really answered almost all of my question’s except one. This question is what if they get their grades up before the season starts? I want to know this because if they do why can’t they enter the tournament. I think this punishment is very harsh and out of order. They just don’t make sense, they should have a chance to redeem themselves. Maybe this ruling will change, I guess time will have to tell us.

~Mike Millea