Knitting? You bet.

Those at the meeting who expressed outrage over the tax dollars spent on an intelligent design class, which was dropped to avoid a costly lawsuit, barely raised an eyebrow over the news that a class on knitting, along with badminton and weight-lifting, was among the electives offered during the school's midyear intercession class, a four-week remedial break from core academics.

Frazier Mountain students who don't need remedial work - and we can only hope they are in the majority - may choose any two electives they want. They take only those classes for four weeks.

Knitting? Three hours a day for four weeks? Is that really a prudent use of tax dollars?

To hear some Frazier Park teachers tell it, the intercession class, which comes on the heels of the two-week Christmas break, has been a concern since it was put in place six years ago as the solution to the district's inability to offer summer school.

Tim Garcia, a science teacher at the school, rightly points out that standards suffer when students are away from core academics for so long.

"Six weeks away from classes where they are learning state standards is a long time," he says. "By the time they start the second semester, they've forgotten a lot of what they learned from the first."

Those concerns are valid, but it wasn't until the introduction of the intelligent design class that teachers were suddenly concerned enough to speak up. Garcia says teachers never addressed the issue with the school's former principal, or present Principal Dan Penner because of the "fear factor" that their jobs may suffer.

Sounds like the school still has a few problems to work through.

For those protesting the intelligent design class, the issue is not about "standards" but about keeping religion, or the slightest semblance thereof, out of the public schools.

Admittedly, the issue of faith in public schools was decided by the courts long ago and the introduction of the intelligent design class in question - taught by a special education teacher who also happens to be the wife of a local pastor - was unwise.

But a well-outlined and expertly taught course on intelligent design - the theory that explores the gaps in evolution and attributes life to an unnamed intelligent source - would only broaden students' minds and draw them into one of the most compelling and fascinating debates of our time.

Thanks to the settlement agreement between the separation folks and the school district, it's one debate students at Frazier Mountain High School won't be part of.

But I'll be they can knit some awesome socks.

------------------------------------------------- -----------------

Turns out the two military academy grads I featured in my column on June 13 weren't Bakersfield's only newly commissioned officers to toss their hats in the air.

Ensign Beau Portillo, an alumnus of East Bakersfield High School, graduated in May from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

His diploma and new military rank or something to be proud of. Academy training is so intense that not every student makes it to graduation - 220 of the 1,200 men and women Portal started with four years ago, didn't.

Portillo, 25, didn't even know Annapolis existed when he graduated from high school in 1999. He discovered the academy, and his life's purpose, only after enlisting in the Navy.

"Once I found out about the academy and how prestigious it was, I wanted to be a part of it," he says. "I wanted to be an officer."

Portillo's two years of military experience, including a six-month stint on the aircraft carrier USS Stennis, prepared him for the rigors of academy life, though having to take orders from higher ranking upperclassmen, most of whom were younger than he, was humbling.

Even harder was the school's daily regimen - several hours of classes, each day, then a team sport or physical training, followed by four to five hours of homework each night. Rooms and uniforms, subject to daily inspections, were kept in perfect order. Days off were few.

Portillo says when things got tough, there was a single vision that kept him going - that of him at graduation, tossing his cap high into the air.

That dream now cherished memory, Portillo will soon report to Nuclear Power Training Command in Charleston, S.C. for training. After that, another dream - a station in Hawaii and his first submarine.