Sonya and David
Channel One’s "Advisory Board"
From Jim Metrock:
This Advisory Board is a marketing gimmick to make Channel One look like it is relevant to educators. Channel One wants the public to think educators are daily guiding Channel One News in its decision making. Hogwash. This board is a joke and possibly worse. It could easily be considered a fraud perpetrated on the public.
Obligation has written these two members of the infamous and anonymous Channel One Advisory Board. We asked both of these educators to tell us if the board is a sham or is real. Neither replied.
Sonya Boyd is a media specialist at Shaw High School in Columbus, GA. Shaw’s bell schedule actually shows Channel One News is shown every day to students. This is rare. Most schools refuse to honor the contract because the school time is needed for more important things. For a high school like Shaw to waste an hour of school time each week watching a commercial television show is frightening.
According to Great Schools, Shaw High School’s composite ACT scores for the class of 2007 (latest year posted) was 17. The National average was 21. The average for Georgia high schools was 20.
It is not shocking that Shaw is behind the curve in Georgia. If school administrators think that showing students commercials for upcoming movies is a wise use of school time, then quite frankly it is amazing the school is doing as well as it is.
David Zwingel is a principal of all things. He should know better than to use his position to benefit a private company like Channel One. His school is Rugby High in Rugby, ND. It’s a small school that appears to be average by North Dakota standards. From the school’s website, there is no indication that Channel One News is shown in his school. Let’s hope he agreed to serve on this make-believe Advisory Board but has refused to waste his students school time with it.
For the last three years Mr. Zwingel and Ms. Boyd like the other Advisory Board members were known only by their first name. Anybody with walking-around sense knows that if you are asked to be on a board and your identity is going to be secret, then you are doing something you shouldn’t be doing. Not one of these board members picked up on this lack of transparency as being a problem. Now the public knows the names of two of the ten.
The citizens of both Columbus, GA and Rugby, ND should politely ask these two to stop using their government, taxpayer-funded positions to advance the interest of a school vendor. Citizens should politely tell these two educators that Channel One News is, and has been, extremely controversial and they and their schools should have no relationship with it.
I wonder if a principal can ever send himself to the principal’s office for bad conduct?
