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They’re all teachers of the year

Congratulations to Sunnyside Elementary reading and math interventionist Sara Medalen who was named North Dakota Teacher of the Year for 2020. She is clearly a deserving recipient and obviously an excellent, innovative teacher who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to best serve her students and thus all of Minot. Sara would likely agree that all teachers deserve to be considered teachers of the year. Teachers face more challenges today than perhaps any time in history. Broken homes, the impact of drugs and other social ills inevitably lead to a percentage of students with ...

High school sports participation decline disappointing

It’s difficult to flip television channels these days without coming across sports – either live contests, rebroadcasts, talk shows or a heavy flow of highlights. Famous athletes and former athletes are pitch-men in commercials for countless products. The money in sports is copious. All signs would seem to point to an increase in Americans’ fascination with sports. At least that’s true from the perspective of the spectator. However as reported in Minot Daily News’ Sept. 28-29 edition, high school sports is struggling with fewer athletes interested in playing. In many parts ...

Latest class of Golden Award recipients impress

Reading the biographies of the latest Golden Award recipients might cause one to assume the winners came from major centers of learning, not our own Minot State University. But that is so. The Minot State Alumni Association will honor four people with the award Thursday, and their accomplishments are indeed impressive. The 2019 honorees include Greg Fjeld, Cheryl Nilsen, Michael Saba and Myron Thompson. Some of the highlights of Fjeld’s high school teaching and coaching career, according to MSU, include: three-time WDA Coach of the Year, two-time North Dakota Coaches Association ...

If budgets matter, then tune in

In a Sept. 25 readers poll in Minot Daily News, the majority of respondents answered “No” to the question “Do you approve of the budget just approved by the Minot City Council?” Two caveats should be kept in mind. One is that our reader polls are not scientific. Instead, they are a simple snapshot of what readers who opt to answer the question on any given day feel. Two is that even though the majority answered in the negative, it was not by overwhelming numbers with 60 percent. At the same time readers have opinions on the budget – positive and negative – public turnout ...

Politics can’t interfere with energy independence

Officials in Saudi Arabia have said damage from an attack on oil production facilities last weekend is being repaired quickly. By mid-week last week, about half the production capacity affected had been restored. Still, the interruption in exports from the oil-rich kingdom ought to serve as a reminder that U.S. politicians who advocate shutting down our nation’s fossil-fuel industry without having true alternatives in place are wrong. Some Democratic candidates for president have gone as far as to demand that hydraulic fracturing — “fracking” — of oil and gas wells be ...

Congress can’t let Biden off the hook

Clearly, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi smells blood in the water. Otherwise, she would not have launched an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. The question now is whether House Democrats circling to take a political bite out of Trump will attempt to ignore a potentially worse scandal. For months, Pelosi, D-California, has resisted calls from the left wing of her party to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump. This week, she apparently sensed controversty regarding U.S. relations with Ukraine might provide an opening against the ...