Unification

Caprice Young, District No. 3 1) Yes. I think the No. 1 reason why the district is in the mess that it's in is that, for the last 15 years, parents and businesses, then significant numbers of people who ought to be stakeholders in the district, have given up and not participated. I think that has meant that the unions and the people who are impacted every day--teachers, predominately, and the different employee unions--have really run the district.

The heavyweight division still doesn't have an undisputed heavyweight champion. But it has one heck of a dispute. In a decision that pleased no one except maybe Evander Holyfield, Holyfield and Lennox Lewis battled to a draw Saturday night in front of a Madison Square Garden crowd of 21,284, a crowd that indicated by its reaction that it felt Lewis had won the fight. Judge Eugenia Williams of New Jersey scored it 115-113 for Holyfield.

Before an overflow crowd of about 200, school officials from four school districts on Monday night hashed out the details of bringing Adolfo Camarillo High School under the control of a local elementary school district. The meeting was billed as a joint study session among the four school boards that could see their districts change if Pleasant Valley's kindergarten through eighth-grade school system were to unify.

While some residents are excited about the idea of bringing all local campuses into a unified school district, teachers here are giving the topic a cool reception. In an informal survey of about 70 of Adolfo Camarillo High School's 100 teachers and 10 other employees, 96% said they opposed the unification effort being explored by Pleasant Valley School District, an elementary school system.

Pleasant Valley school trustees have created a task force to study a proposal to bring Adolfo Camarillo High School under the district's control. After a sometimes heated four-hour discussion of a study examining the feasibility of unification, trustees agreed unanimously Thursday night to create the panel, which will likely include Camarillo parents, teachers and school district officials. The exact composition will be decided at a January school board meeting.

Despite concerns that the move could harm racial balance and cost substantial money, several parents Thursday night pleaded with Pleasant Valley school trustees to move ahead with a proposal to unite all Camarillo schools within one district. "I am in support of unification," said Camarillo resident Jim Grant. "I did not hear anything tonight to cause us any alarm. . . . I think we ought to proceed and put together a task force to study unification.

It's the educational equivalent of a divorce, complete with custody dispute. Officials with Camarillo's elementary school district are studying a plan to bring award-winning Adolfo Camarillo High School under their control. Problem is, the Oxnard Union High School District already has custody of the school and isn't looking to give it up. The process known as unification has been a topic of casual discussion in Camarillo for years.

So what's holding up the announcement of the long-awaited heavyweight title unification fight between Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis? "We have a contract from Don King that is not signable," said co-promoter Dino Duva. A questionable Don King contract? Now there's a shock.

The head of the Episcopal Church--often considered the bridge between the Roman Catholic and Protestant faiths--is challenging churches to jettison outmoded attitudes and strip away nonessentials for the sake of church unity. Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold said Wednesday that Episcopalians are facing calls from Catholics for "clarity and consistency in our theological discourse" and from Lutherans an "insistence upon transparency of the Gospel" in ordaining bishops.

When Edward O. Wilson has a new idea, people listen--and then start fighting. A distinguished professor emeritus of biology at Harvard University and recognized as perhaps the world's leading authority on ants, Wilson opened a new field of science in the 1970s with his book "Sociobiology." It argued that social animals, including humans, behave largely according to rules written in their very genes.