By Patric Hedlund, TME Managing Editor

Dave Nelson is a self-proclaimed curmudgeon. He is a retired radio and TV news station manager who lives in Pine Mountain Club and sometimes on a boat. He has serious hobbies, such as writing sci-fi screenplays. His most vigorous occupation is as a sharp-tongued skeptic poking holes in the rhetoric of puffed-up national politicians. A lessor hobby is to occasionally take the the time to send encouraging notes to this 54-year-old homegrown newspaper.

Recently, however, Nelson noticed all the fun we’ve had in these pages celebrating the creativity and enthusiasm of local schools and families to invent ways to show appreciation for Class of 2020 graduates, despite coronavirus restrictions.

Nelson asked Dr. Google’s Chrome to tell him more about Frazier Mountain High School (FMHS). We don’t know how it happened, but information popped up on a site called PrepScholarSAT.com. Nelson took it as an official source, which led him to write a letter to the editor voicing concerns.

Hate to Throw Cold Water on Frazier Mountain High School Graduation Bubble – BUT….

It is a pithy letter, as is Nelson’s style. In accord with our protocol, we passed it along—with an invitation to comment—to those mentioned in the critique. The principal of Frazier Mountain High School is Sara Haflich.

She is also the superintendent of El Tejon Unified School District (ETUSD) and principal of FMHS.

We explained it is our protocol to temporarily remove the name of the source, so the focus of the reply is on facts, rather than on the letter writer. We restore the name when we go to press. We do it this way for everyone. Here are some of Nelson’s comments, based on what he saw at PrepScholarSAT.com:

Most of these students aren’t 21st-century-ready. They do have a great girls volleyball team though. The article said that only 9% of all students at Frazier Mountain High took the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), so the low results could be skewed by…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

FMHS Principal Sara Haflich

Frazier Mountain High School Progress 2017 – 2020

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This is part of the June 26, 2020 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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