Mission Statement

The Marple Newtown school board postponed a vote on a district mission statement Tuesday after a member said the one-sentence statement did not reflect multicultural awareness. The statement presented Tuesday said the district's purpose was "to prepare each student for a responsible, productive, and rewarding life . . . thus enabling each student to meet the challenges of a diverse and rapidly changing world. " Board member Patrick F. Kennedy asked that the vote be postponed until he consulted with assistant superintendent Thomas G. Kerr, who is overseeing development of the mission statement.

I've got a mission statement. You've got a mission statement. To update the old spiritual, all God's chillun' got mission statements. According to a recent news report, the Logitech company of Fremont, Calif., has two mission statements. Mission statement Number One they wrote themselves. Mission statement Number Two was inspired by the noted and expensive consultant, Ray Mebert. It was under Mebert's tutelage that a group of top Logitech executives rewrote their mission statement from a fairly clear-cut statement of corporate greed to the incomprehensible hodgepodge that declared their mission to be "scouting profitable growth opportunities in relationships, both internally and externally, in emerging, mission inclusive markets, and to explore new paradigms and then filter and communicate and evangelize the findings.

Who are the Boy Scouts of America, and what do they stand for? According to the group's mission statement, the Scouts "serve others by helping to instill values in young people and, in other ways, to prepare them to make ethical choices over their lifetime.... " One of these values, again as stated by the Scouts themselves, is "a commitment that our membership shall be representative of all the population in every community. " This commitment is specified by one further self-declaration: "Neither the charter nor the bylaws of the Boy Scouts permits the exclusion of any boy. " Any boy except a gay one, the Scouts now say. And last Wednesday, the Supreme Court allowed the Scouts to enforce their recently stated "policy" against gay members, by reversing a unanimous decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Concerned that Chester County's comprehensive plan could mean mid-rise buildings in Frazer and additional traffic on already busy highways, the township Board of Supervisors added a reservation when it gave thumbs up to the plan, called Landscapes. The board asked that the county delete a phrase in the first sentence of the mission statement. The sentence, which asserts that "the county's quality of life is dependent on managed growth," ends by calling for "concentrating growth in the most appropriate areas.

As the summer sky darkened and the heat began to lessen inside the large- group instructional room of the Owen J. Roberts Middle School on Monday, a cross-section of church, school and civic leaders came to a consensus. It was time to set what some were calling a "moral tone" for the community. That could be accomplished, the group decided, by working together to form a "unity coalition" to combat white supremacists and other hate groups in the community. Owen J. Roberts Superintendent Terrance Furin said that if the coalition were to be successful, it would require a broad range of involvement.

Playing at: Lakewood (A) Position: Catcher. Height: 6-1. Weight: 240. Age: 22. Born: Sept. 28, 1988, in Plano, Texas. Bats: Right. Throws: Right. College: Texas. How obtained: Drafted in the third round (No. 108 overall) last June. This season: Hitting .212 with just one homer and nine RBI in 36 games. Hit .218 with Williamsport (A) last season, so he's going to have to improve his offense. Early shower: Was ejected from a game (by umpire Jose Esteras)

Scandal is the intriguing new drama from Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes. It's built around one of the strongest (in every sense) female characters to hit prime time in recent memory. Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) is a former Oval Office insider who has formed a thriving, teeming crisis-management firm in Washington, D.C. With her frighteningly fast-talking staff (Henry Ian Cusick of Lost, Columbus Short, Darby Stanchfield, Katie Lowes, and Guillermo Diaz), she represents clients - a Russian diplomat, a Georgetown madame, a decorated military hero - caught in compromising positions.

ITHINK the Daily News could use a mission statement: Do you intend to be a local newspaper or a tabloid? When it comes to your Page 1, the passable and occasionally great regularly alternates with the horrible & cheesy. You have no consistent sense of what is newsworthy versus merely cheap and sensational. The exceptional coverage of the Columbia space shuttle contrasts sharply with the front page story of Michael Jackson's euphemistic pedophilia. Perhaps the interview was worth covering, but Page 1 play?

The nine-month-old Camden Redevelopment Agency yesterday adopted a "mission statement" and a 1988 action plan to help shape future redevelopment in the city. "The mission statement will be our bible," said agency counsel Robert A. Sori, referring to the seven-page document developed with the aid of a Washington-based law firm instrumental in Baltimore's redevelopment. "A key thrust of the statement is that the neighborhoods must be brought into the redevelopment process," said agency chairwoman Joan Davis.

Scandal is the intriguing new drama from Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes. It's built around one of the strongest (in every sense) female characters to hit prime time in recent memory. Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) is a former Oval Office insider who has formed a thriving, teeming crisis-management firm in Washington, D.C. With her frighteningly fast-talking staff (Henry Ian Cusick of Lost, Columbus Short, Darby Stanchfield, Katie Lowes, and Guillermo Diaz), she represents clients - a Russian diplomat, a Georgetown madame, a decorated military hero - caught in compromising positions.

Man Man don't so much create order out of chaos as harness chaos' power in the service of euphoria. Singer Ryan Kattner, a.k.a. Honus Honus, calls it "structured chaos," and the Philadelphia band's live shows are notorious for creating visceral, communal experiences. "I think that connection [with the audience], for us, is a mission statement and is really important," Kattner says from Los Angeles, where he was working on a video for the album Life Fantastic 's "Piranhas Club.

Playing at: Lakewood (A) Position: Catcher. Height: 6-1. Weight: 240. Age: 22. Born: Sept. 28, 1988, in Plano, Texas. Bats: Right. Throws: Right. College: Texas. How obtained: Drafted in the third round (No. 108 overall) last June. This season: Hitting .212 with just one homer and nine RBI in 36 games. Hit .218 with Williamsport (A) last season, so he's going to have to improve his offense. Early shower: Was ejected from a game (by umpire Jose Esteras)

BOSTON - Tyler Seguin had two goals and two assists and the Boston Bruins fed off the energy of the recently promoted rookie to beat the Tampa Bay Lightning, 6-5, and tie the Eastern Conference finals at one game each on Tuesday night. Boston earned a split at home and snapped the Lightning's eight-game winning streak that began when they were down three games to one to Pittsburgh in the first round. Game 3 will be at Tampa Bay on Thursday. The Bruins have won nine of 11. The shifty, 19-year-old Seguin, the second pick in last year's NHL draft, was benched for the first 11 playoff games because of perceived defensive shortcomings.

Philadelphia Charters for Excellence launched yesterday to "define the Philadelphia charter community in terms of academic progress and safety" and to promote ethics and accountability. The organization's leaders said they wanted to "clarify misperceptions and misinformation about charters" in light of ongoing federal and local investigations into the financial dealings of several in the city. "There are over 70 charter schools in this city, but only a handful are having problems," Naomi Johnson Booker, president of the new group and chief executive of Global Leadership Academy, said yesterday.

Quintessence Theatre Group has big ambitions: "adaptation of epic works of drama and classic literature," and restoring Mount Airy's Sedgwick Theater to its rightful place "as a jewel in Philadelphia's cultural landscape. " The fledgling company embarks on its grand effort with co-founder Alexander Burns directing Measure for Measure, Shakespeare's darkest comedy, and a particularly problematic problem play. At its heart, however, this is still a comedy, complete with all the identity-switching one can expect from such Elizabethan follies.

The day after members of a Burlington County conservative group successfully petitioned to have a book on teenage homosexuality labeled obscene and removed from a high school library, organizer Gerry Grabinski was ebullient. The local chapter of talk-radio and television personality Glenn Beck's nationwide conservative watchdog network, Burlington County 9.12, had won a minor political coup Tuesday night, and Grabinski was hopeful its larger message would gather momentum as a result.

Elementary charter schools in Camden and Burlington Counties were among six proposals that received final approval yesterday to open in September. New Jersey Education Commissioner Lucille Davy signed off on the Institute for Excellence Charter School in Winslow Township and the Riverbank Charter School of Excellence in Florence Township, as well as schools in Union, Hudson, Essex, and Cumberland Counties. The Institute for Excellence plans to open on Route 73 with 240 students in kindergarten, first, and second grades.

IT'S BEYOND sad that Sean Conroy died as the result of an attack by teenagers in the subway and that Tyesha Tazwell was beaten and robbed by another group of teens. But you get the impression from Keenan Jones' remarks that this behavior is unusual or the result of special circumstances ("the teens lost a friend and fellow group member to suicide . . . Jones said they didn't know how to deal with their loss"). Actually, subway attacks by teens have been occurring regularly for a long time but only now wind up on the front page because Mr. Conroy's death raised the stakes to murder and Ms. Tazwell's attack followed close on the heels of that atrocity.

Valuable lessons from an untimely death I've never known someone who was murdered. Now I do: Lea Sullivan. She was 25; I'm 55. I've been among the lucky ones. Perhaps Lea's death tells us what we already know but don't want to face - our lives can end at any time. We have as much to fear from the man on the street as we do from cave-dwelling terrorists. We pretend we can stay safe if we follow the rules: don't talk to strangers, carry a cell phone, avoid dark alleys, stockpile water.