Remove Science Fair Requirement for Honors Science Courses at Dutchtown High School for 2012-2013 Sc

The science fair is an effective but time consuming learning tool. Many of us that have done it and took it seriously have spent hundreds of hours on a single project. The science fair committee has neglected this and has yet to get topics back to students even though the topics were submitted nearly two months ago.

I personally asked Dr. Hafza if the committee would work diligently to get topics back to students in a timely manner this year, and he assured me that they would. I asked him this because last year I had my first topic to be denied a few weeks after I sumbitted it so I went back to the drawing board and submitted three more topics a few days later and it was not until late October (over a month and a half later) that my topic was approved. I was forced to rush to complete my project and it did not turn out as well as it could have if my topic had been approved in a more timely manner.

There is no excuse for these topics to be so late this year as we turned them in even earlier than last year. I usually enjoy taking on a challenging science fair project but because of time constraints cause by other classes and the topics I submitted this year, there is no way possible that I could sumbit a quality project in the current amount of time left.

I ask you to sign this petition to urge the school to drop the science fair requirement for students in honors science courses. I only ask DHS students in classes that require the completion of the science fair to sign this petition. Also, sign it with your real name. Please share this with any and every person you know that is a DHS student in a science class that requires the completion of the science fair.

I will be presenting this to the before mentioned people along with the letter below: 

"Dear esteemed members of Dutchtown faculty,

To whom it may concern, we believe that it should be noted that many students who are participating in science fair still have not been given an approved topic to research on. With approximately eight weeks of school left before science fair is to be judged, and less than seven weeks of school left for students to do projects in before Christmas break, many students are now unable to do their desired projects due to time limitations. It is not for lack of trying, some students have submitted several topics and have still not received approval from the science fair selection committee. As students of Dutchtown High School, we are aware that we are held to a higher standard than students from other schools but we feel that without adequate time to complete a science experiment it is an inevitability that our experiments and our projects will suffer as a result. Please note, we understand the time constraints the selection committee is under, and that the teachers on the committee have extremely full schedules and they do the best they can do, but feel it should be noted that students can be under just as terrible time constraints. The following people who have signed this petition are under these time constraints and are therefore unable to complete a major science project and experiment in the short amount of time that has been allotted to them by the science fair selection committee.

Respectfully,
Dutchtown High School students."

-Edward Mauger