Dear Parents,
This week has been full of exciting learning experiences for our kids at Western and dynamic chapels, led by students, including worship , skits, drama, choral, instrumental performances and sharing of personal testimonies.

It has also been a great week of outreach opportunities with city leaders  and business owners from Upland and surrounding areas  attending a “Chamber Business Mixer”, at our high school last Thursday.  It was a standing room only event, while our jazz band and Hill Top faith singers, gold medal winners in the San Francisco Heritage competition, entertained the special guests.

In athletics, our high school baseball team won 1st place in the league championships, their fourth in five years. Other athletic highlights this week included: The Lady Lancers  currently sitting in 5th place league.  The WCS Track and Field team won their first league title since 1992.

Tuesday night, our families were entertained by the performances of our Kids on the Rock elementary choir, recently awarded with highest honors, performing splendidly along with encore performances from our middle school choir, instrumental music, and middle school Shakespeare drama team.

The week culminated with the annual Pops concert in our new outdoor amphitheater at our Upland campus.  Packed crowds gathered around to hear the amazing talents of our high school students, both instrumental and vocal.  Grilled burgers and hotdogs were a treat to go along with the lovely evening and wonderful atmosphere of fellowship, so strongly reinforced at Western.

Parents and students share with me regularly how much the educational experience at Western means to them.  I thought I’d share with you some recent comments from a parent who has had children at Western for 10 year, at all levels.:

“Mrs. Winter, I want to thank you so much of this school and for the difference it has made in my children’s lives.  Western is amazing to me.  I can’t believe al the improvements the past three years.  I look around and everywhere I see improvements, not only in facilities, but academically, the bar has certainly been raised at Western.  We have amazing godly teachers and administrators who have made such an impact on my children. Thanks for making a difference at Western.  We are so happy here!.”

I am grateful to the Lord for His continued favor upon Western, to our Western Team who work hard to help make Western a great school and to you our parents for your support throughout the years.

Karen Winter, Superintendent

Here is a recent article from the Daily Bulletin about the importance of screening inappropriate games from your child.

Keep vile games from children

Created: 05/02/2010 05:51:38 PM PDT

Should children have the constitutional right to buy the most violent of video games? Games where women are decapitated with shovels and humans are set on fire?

The U.S. Supreme Court will take up that question in its upcoming term. In light of the court’s recent decision that even brutal animal cruelty films are protected by the First Amendment, it might seem like it would be fair game to sell sadistic games to children.

We hope not, and we think there is a strong argument to be made as to how the First Amendment applies differently to children and violence than it does to adults.

At issue is a California law that would punish stores that sell exceptionally violent games to those under 18 years old. The law imposes a $1,000 fine and applies to games that depict the “killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being.”

In order to fall under the auspices of the law, a reasonable person would have to find the game appeals to a “deviant or morbid interest” of minors, that it’s patently offensive to community standards and that the game lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

The law did not prohibit a minor’s parents from buying such a game for their child.

The descriptions of the games that fall under the ban are stomach-turning. One of the games outlined in the litigation involved the shooting of police officers, women beaten with a shovel who then can be decapitated, people shot in the leg, who then can be doused with gasoline and set on fire.

The player also has the option of urinating on them. We’re talking about some pretty seriously sick stuff.

California argues – and we agree with this position – that very violent video game sales to minors ought to be treated in the same way as selling sexual materials to minors.

The state contends that excessively violent material sold to children deserves no protection under the First Amendment.

Such a holding would add to the power of parents in determining whether their children should have such material, since presumably minors could get it only through their parents.

The opposition in this case, video game trade associations, contends that video games are a “modern form of artistic expression,” comparing them to great literature and Greek mythology.

We admit that we are not intimately familiar with the violent video game genre, but the descriptions we’ve read seem like a far cry from great literature.

We hope when Supreme Court justices contemplate the issues, they find that when it comes to minors, seriously sick and violent games deserve the same treatment as sexually explicit materials.