Now that the charter school is in session, even more problems seem to be coming up. The newest situation is the question as to whether students at the charter school should be allowed to participate in city-wide extracurricular activities. Gloucester's All City Band seems to be the main focus.  The band director Davis Benjamin said that the students would not be able to continue in this after school activity after becoming enrolled in a school that wasn't part of the Gloucester Public School system. His decision has extended to all after school programs in the district and the School Committee's Program Subcommittee voted unanimously on this issue, agreeing with Benjamin. Mayor Carolyn Kirk is opposed to this decision "because it perpetuates acrimony and further divides our community," shes says in an email statement last Friday. Kirk has been opposed to the charter school from the beginning and she feels that by excluding these kids it will divide the community even more. However there are other people that say schools cannot afford to dedicate resources to students who have chosen to leave the district for a state funded school, especially when the state money funding it was taken from the city. Some opinions say that the independent charter school is certainly still a public school and there is no reason that the students attending charter should be excluded. It has been said that this policy has only happened because city officials and residents are still very angry about the school and how it got pushed through a seriously flawed approval system. This issue will continue to be  problem for many people in the future.

         Gloucester's charter school has been bringing mixed emotions out from various people. In general most educators and employees of the Gloucester Public Schools are very strongly against it. There is good reason for this because the charter school will be taking a huge portion of the money for the other public schools in Goucester.
         The children enrolled in the charter school have only begun attending it about a week ago. This is a long awaited victory for some people but for others it's a disaster they thought would never really come true. Because of the controversy and the long wait as to whether the school would even open or not, it has sent parents and students into a frenzy.
           My 11 year old sister who is in sixth grade attending O'maley Middle School has had two new additions to her class starting almost three weeks late who were originally enrolled in the charter school. The confusion over the issue has parents distressed and now only sixty of the original ninety are still enrolled today. In order to get money from the state that this charter school would be bringing, the school needs to have all ninety children enrolled which is no longer a option.
        The other students have been dispersed to either their original elementary school or to O'maley Middle School where some biased parents would never dream of sending their children due to suspicions and rumors that continue to be spread about the quality of the school. However, many have been forced to do this without any time left to enroll their children in a private school or even a school at a neighboring town.
      The actual school building where the children will be learning hasn't even been built yet. Modules have been erected with heat and air conditioning that the children will be taught in. Outside of these box like modules there is a small enclosed area surrounded by a fence where students are supposed to be able to run around and play for recess. This small enclosure, which  looks more like a cage than a place where young kids are supposed to release their energy, is meant to be their playground. Compared to other schools in Gloucester, especially the Science Park located at West Parish Elementary, this is a sorry excuse for a place to play.
        Parents who had enrolled their children in the charter school long before any controversy had come up about it may have had good reason to do so. The school is more focused on the arts like painting, drawing and music and with a smaller learning environment and with more attention toward each individual student. I'm sure this sounded very appealing to many parents in the beginning when the charter school was first proposed. But now with hesitation from city and state officials, not having the school built yet, and it being a learning environment barely fit for young kids, it makes you really think as to whether having this charter school in Gloucester is really right for our community.

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This weekend I got to enjoy going apple picking with my friends. We went to the Brooksby Farm in Ipswich. We first waited in line to buy the bags for the apples and then took a hayride to the very end of the farm where all the Mackintosh apples were, my favorite. We choose to only pick the very best apples we could find and sometimes it took a lot of effort to do that. Me and my friends climbed through branches to reach the very best apples at the very top of the tree. The ripest and most perfect apples we always found at the very top. After we had filled up our bags to the very top and our pockets were overflowing with apples we took the hayride back. We loaded our apples into the car but we weren't even thinking about leaving until we had all gotten out delicious apple cider doughnuts from the farm's store. There was a line going out the door just for them but it was well worth the wait when we got our steaming, fresh doughnuts straight out of the oven. After that we were finally prepared to head home after a great day of apple picking, eating doughnuts, and seeing the farm animals. It was a great day that i will not soon forget.