The test is not whether a school board is an integral part of a school system.

The Supreme Court of the United States has held that a public body or a deliberative body who chooses to open its sessions with a religious invocation has a secular purpose for doing so -- to solemnize the event -- and that's perfectly acceptable. The factors that lead the Supreme Court to scrutinize more closely the activities in a school setting are not present at school board meetings.

We use the same general approach. We have to understand why he isn't coming to school and listen to what is coming between them as a person because some anger is directed at you or the school. Anger could be directed at another individual or a life situation. In order to make the student/parent relationship successful, the student must be in touch with his own pain, identity and change.

There aren't even truant officers any more. I deal with kids that don't come to school and why (they don't). It has a lot to do with family problems. That is the biggest change. The counselor must find out how to solve the problem. The truancy officer must connect with the community and understand family problems.

We have kids on our B team that would start for any other school and they rarely see the mat with the A team. It's perplexing from where I sit how one program can be so successful and others struggle to reach .500 from the same crop of athletes. I do know that it's there and in place and we're sure proud of it.

It is totally different from a normal school day and they try to keep things as normal as possible up until the day when we are actually doing the testing and then we drop into a different kind of routine.