Free Republic

The “zero-tolerance” policy has become pretty insane in recent years, with school officials drastically over-reacting to kids being, well, normal kids. In one incident last year, a little boy in Maryland chewed his Pop-tart into the shape of a gun, and the adults in his school went ballistic. Legislators in Florida are pushing back against the madness by passing a “Pop-tart bill.”

It’s just so confusing. Do you feed your kids bologna sandwiches or pieces of wet cardboard? Can you give them PlayDoh on a dead mackerel?Modern grads of Ivy League colleges don’t have the time to figure all this stuff out. That’s why there are government bureaucrats who tell schools what to feed kids so they don’t die of cardboard overdose.And there’s Michelle Obama who spends more time obsessed with what your kids eat than most major food conglomerates. In an interview with MSN.com, First Lady Michelle Obama explained she used to struggle to feed her kids right—even though she received...

Today my family and I had need of entering a federal building. In the process of doing so we encountered the following crazy federal hangups. 1) one family member had a pair of child's sissors they forgot about. these had to be removed and kept up front before we were allowed entrance to the building. now bear in mind thousands of kids take the very same kind of sissors to the gun free zones known as schools every day without a care. in fact, the schools often supply the "deadly" weapons. 2) another family member had left their driver's license...

The Los Angeles Unified School District wants to disprove the old saying that there's no free lunch. The district on Thursday said it will serve free lunches through summer to children and the disabled at 317 school campuses along with 105 parks and recreation centers. District Director of Food Services David Binkle says he expects the program to dish out 4.5 million meals.

Editor’s Note: This story contains mature subject matter. Reader discretion is advised. A Washington state parent is speaking out after she was left stunned by a school awards ceremony that she said featured profanity, inappropriate jokes and a box of sex toys. The parent, who sent an email to KOMO-TV, but wished to remain anonymous, said she was left in tears by what she witnessed when she accompanied her 17-year-old daughter to the event put on by Bellingham High School drama teacher Teri Grimes. “I sat there with my mouth open in shock and the final straw was when a joke...

OAKLAND (CBS SF) – An act of retribution may have provoked a woman to brutally attack a third grader inside an Oakland elementary school bathroom, police say. Students at Oakland’s Lafayette school knew something was wrong when they saw officers arrive at school Friday morning. They arrived to arrest Haseemah Diame, a parent and volunteer at the school. Police say Diame walked onto the campus during recess armed with a hammer and pulled a 9-year-old girl aside.

FULL TITLE: Caught On Video: Oakland School Security Guard Seen Hitting Student In Wheelchair, Dumping Him On Floor OAKLAND (CBS SF) — A security guard at a high school in Oakland has been arrested and charged with a felony for an assault on a student in a wheelchair, caught on video by school surveillance cameras. According to a letter from Oakland High School principal Matin Abdel-Qawi to parents, a student in a wheelchair was lingering in a hallway as security officers urged them to get to class on May 19. One security officer then ordered the student, identified as freshman...

ELLIJAY — Three former Calhoun High students were charged Wednesday with aggravated sexual battery and underage consumption of alcohol stemming from an alleged sexual assault at a cabin in Gilmer County on May 11. Andrew Haynes, Fields Chapman and Damon “Avery” Johnson, all 18-year-olds, turned themselves in at the Gilmer County Jail and were each released on $51,000 bond. If convicted, the men could face 25 years to life in prison, Gilmer County Sheriff Stacy Nicholson said. Nicholson said Wednesday during a press conference on the town square that his agency did not have evidence to charge the men with...

Two people were arrested in connection with a large fight that broke out outside a Baltimore County high school graduation Monday. The violence erupted after the ceremony about 12:30 p.m. outside Towson University's SECU Arena, where the event took place, according to the college's police department. Dante Smith, 23, of the 2300 block of Tucker Lane in Woodlawn faces charges of assault and resisting arrest, police said. Natanya Johnson, 33, of the 3400 block of Retlaw Road in Gwynn Oak was charged with two counts of disorderly conduct. Both adults were attendees at the graduation ceremony, said Charles Herring, deputy...

A lesson on the value of a dollar may have gone too far in southern Washington. A school district is investigating claims a teacher caused a student to wet their pants at school. At Mill Plain Elementary in Vancouver, third grade students earn play money to buy treats. Some students said they have to use that money to get bathroom breaks, too. In the last week, there were two cases in which children chose to spend the money on the treat instead of a trip to the bathroom.

CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) - Charleston County deputies say eight students have been arrested after they were caught on surveillance video throwing rocks and food at passing cars while on their school bus. According to an incident report, Durham Bus Services notified Septima Clark Academy that several students on bus 529 threw items at a passing vehicles on May 8, causing damage to a truck. Officers arrived on the scene to find a dent on victim's passenger side roof/window area and "food splashed across the grill, hood, and windshield." Deputies say none of the students on the bus admitted to throwing...

A third-grade teacher at Mill Plain Elementary School is in hot water after she was accused of going too far by asking students to pay to potty. Students in the class earn Monopoly play money through good behavior and performance that they can then spend on toys, treats and using the restroom. Last week, two parents complained that their children wet themselves at school because they couldn’t “afford” to go to the bathroom. Officials in the Evergreen School District are investigating the claim. “My daughter finally told me, ‘We have to pay to use the bathroom,’” said parent Merchon Ortega....

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack fired back Wednesday at Republican-led efforts to weaken nutrition guidelines in the federal school lunch program that were championed by first lady Michelle Obama and enacted in 2010 when Democrats ruled the House. Headlining the Organic Trade Association’s annual conference in Washington, Vilsack labeled as “outrageous” the GOP policy rider in the agriculture appropriations bill, and he urged the organic industry to fight back. The rider would let schools facing financial hardships in the lunch program opt out of the rules. School lunch administrators and some big food manufacturers oppose the nutrition requirements as too rigid...

Academia is hell. In the latest higher-education fad, students want "trigger warnings," according to The New York Times. It appears that some students are so fragile that they want university staff to protect them from big bad ideas. Students around the country say they want "explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans." An Oberlin College draft -- now "under revision" -- for trigger warnings suggested faculty "be aware of racism,...

On Saturday last, the attorney general of the United States spoke at a segregated school. He spoke, without a trace of irony, as the nation celebrated the 60th anniversary of Brown v. The Board of Education, which, to quote the Washington Post, “ended — legally at least — racial segregation in public education.”

What ever happened to letting "boys be boys?" Take these two cases: In one, a seven-year-old boy was sent home for nibbling a Pop Tart into a gun. In another, a teacher was so alarmed by a picture drawn by a student (of a sword fight), that the boy's parents were summoned in for a conference. In short, boys in America's schools are routinely punished for being active, competitive, and restless. In other words, boys can no longer be boys. Christina Hoff Sommers, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, explains how we can change this.

Updating our previous story about a fifth grader told by his teacher he could not read his Bible during free time, school lawyers for Broward County Public Schools have now gotten involved and changed their story. They now say that the time in question is not free reading time, but instead Accelerated Reader Program time. During this period, students can only read certain approved books, and the Bible is not among them. Hence, Broward County Public Schools will continue banning the Bible.

Progressives Today sent undercover reporters to expose the White Privilege Conference 2014 in Madison, Wisconsin. In today’s segment the speakers at the White Privilege Conference 2014 claim racism was invented in the American colonies. The WPC14 speakers also insist that America is inherently evil because of its racist roots. This is the message they are spewing to the thousands of teachers and students who attended this radical far left conference. Coming soon to a classroom near you…. Highlights from today’s video include: White people were invented in 1681. Racism was invented in Colonial America by White Capitalists as a tool...

George Mason economics professor Bryan Caplan, at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said that college is not worth it for both taxpayers and for low-performing students coming out of high school. He examined it with two important questions: Is college worthwhile for the student and is it a good investment? Is college a good investment for taxpayers? Caplan said, “Education is a wasteful arms race, the more you get, the more you need to avoid looking like a loser.” For example, “in 1945, only about 25% of Americans over the age of 25 finished high school.” One used to...

[Video] Texas Elementary School Student Suspended for Gun Gestures With Fingers May 3 2014 by Dan Cannon Share This Post Here we go again, and in Texas of all places. More anti-gun hysteria in our public schools. In this case, two elementary school students were given 1.5 days of in school suspension for pointing their fingers like guns during recess. The school claims the incident was “more serious than horseplay,” whatever that means. The mother of one of the children spoke out against the suspension to a local Fox affiliate, She said, “I asked them if they were serious and...