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KITTERY, Maine – Officials at Mitchell Primary School are apologizing after a book about a transgender child was read to most of the school’s K-3 students. “We have a practice of if a topic is considered sensitive, parents should be informed,” superintendent Allyn Hutton told SeaCoastOnline.com. “In this situation, that didn’t happen. The whole culture at Mitchell School is about teaching tolerance and respect. The people presenting the lesson thought (the book) was one more piece of teaching that lesson. “In retrospect, we understand that toleration is tolerating people of all opinions,” Hutton said. Criticism flooded the district after Fox...

Officials at Mitchell Primary School are apologizing after a book about a transgender child was read to most of the school’s K-3 students. Criticism flooded the district after Fox News host Sean Hannity posted about the lesson on his website, prompted by a Mitchell school mother who was angry she wasn’t given advanced warning that teachers were reading students the book “I am Jazz” by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, the news site reports. The book details the struggles of a child “with a boy’s body and a girl’s brain,” who eventually finds a doctor that tells the family the...

Educational choice in Detroit is worth the fight. That's the message from 11 Detroit-area families whose children attend charter schools and spoke to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy about a proposal to limit public charter schools in the city. The Mackinac Center met with the families at their homes and at schools so they could publicly share their views on school choice. “Let them flourish,” said Corey Hughes, who has had experience with charter schools first as a father and now as a grandfather. A coalition of foundations, public school officials and other interests has proposed centralizing control of...

A middle school teacher in Hempstead, New York, is recovering from a beating after a student's mother attacked her inside the classroom. Police say she put the teacher in a chokehold, then her 14-year-old niece punched the teacher in the face.

Sixth graders in a quiet Florida town saw a lot more vocabulary-lesson excitement than usual recently after a fill-in-the-blank question about porn magazines and the ethical considerations of sperm donation cropped up on an assignment. The kerfuffle occurred at Corkscrew Middle School, Fort Myers NBC affiliate WBBH reports. Here’s the question in full:

Pranksters be warned Eight-grader Domanik Green was arrested on felony charges in Holiday, Fla. Wednesday after breaking into his teacher’s computer to change the background picture to two men kissing. Green, 14, who was released the day of his arrest, said that he broke into the computer of teacher he didn’t like after realizing that faculty members’ passwords were simply their last names, the Tampa Bay Times reports. Green, who previously faced a three-day suspension for a similar prank, said that many students got in trouble for breaking into teachers’ computers.

Teacher Suspended for Having Third Graders Write 'Get Well' Letters to Convicted Cop Killer Marylin Zuniga had her third grade students in Orange write get well letters to Mumia Abu Jamal. A New Jersey school teacher has been suspended by her district and denounced by the head of the New Jersey State Police union after having her students write “get well” letters to Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former death row inmate and convicted cop-killer. Marylin Zuniga, a teacher at Forest Street Elementary School in Orange, had her third grade students write letters to Abu Jamal, who is suffering from complications related...

ORANGE, N.J. – A teacher in New Jersey who assigned her third-grade class to write "get well" letters to a sick inmate convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer was suspended Friday, the school superintendent said. Orange School Superintendent Ronald Lee said in a statement that school administrators "vehemently deny" any knowledge of Marilyn Zuniga's assignment. Preliminary inquiries found that Zuniga did not seek approval from administrators nor were parents notified, Lee said. The letters were delivered to Mumia Abu-Jamal in prison following his hospitalization last month for what his family said was treatment for complications from diabetes. The former...

The Saginaw Public School district has been operating with a deficit since the 2010-11 school year, and the proposed sale of a shuttered school building could erase the red ink, according to the Michigan Department of Education. Rather than sell the building to an interested party— a charter school — the Saginaw school board originally elected to demolish it. However, after months of effort, the board had a change of heart and approved the deal. On Thursday, the Saginaw district board accepted a $3.5 million offer from the Francis Reh Academy to purchase the Phoenix Science and Technology Center, which...

Marie Harf may have disagreed with the joint op-ed from Henry Kissinger and George Shultz on Iran, but she’s not getting the backup from the media she wished she was. In an appearance on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” Wednesday night, New York Times columnist David Brooks blasted Harf’s response to Kissinger and Shultz’s piece, calling it “the lamest rebuttal” imaginable. Brooks also took shots at Harf for saying she heard “sort of big words and big thoughts” in the piece, asking “are we in nursery school?” In their Wednesday piece in The Wall Street Journal, the two former secretaries of...

Two students seeking to start school pro-life clubs in Fargo, North Dakota, are claiming they are victims of unconstitutional discrimination from officials opposed to their cause.According to a complaint letter sent by the Thomas More Society (TMS), a public interest law firm assisting the students, Brigid O’Keefe of Fargo North High School and Katie McPherson of Fargo Davies High School have each spent months attempting to establish pro-life clubs at their schools, to no avail. McPherson first applied to found a club in September 2014, while O’Keefe applied last February. Both had their applications declined, with O’Keefe saying she and other potential club members were...

CONCORDIA Two school districts plan to end the academic year early to save money, citing financial pressures caused by reduced state aid for this academic year. The Concordia school district will release students May 15, rather than May 21. And the Twin Valley School District, which includes Bennington and Tescott, will dismiss May 8, rather than May 20. Concordia Superintendent Bev Mortimer said students have hugged her in thanks for the early release. “They remember me as the snow day lady,” she said. “We are popular with the kids but not the parents.” Kansas school districts are facing financial pressures...

PALMETTO -- Gripping a squirt bottle of hand sanitizer in her gloved hands, school food bus driver Debra Valdez called to four children shyly making their way toward the brightly colored school bus with mom pushing the youngest one forward. "Y'all ready to eat?" Valdez asked with a smile. The four children were the first of more than 70 students who ate a free lunch Tuesday courtesy of the Manatee County School District Food and Nutrition Services Department. The district retrofitted a school bus last summer to feed students and brought the program back for spring break this week. The...

A parish priest on the troubling news he's learned from kids in the confessional The Need for Questions in Lent Lent is a penitential season, a time of purification and of clarification: of being purified of our sins and of clarifying the roots of what has been keeping us from God in the first place. Purification and clarification can come about through the typical Lenten observances: prayer, almsgiving, and fasting. Fasting, for example, not only acts as an immediate purification of something (ie, a thing is taken away), but it can also clarify in that, as we are feeling the...

Kylee Moss, a 7-year-old-girl from Belton, Missouri, was sent home from school with a note to her mother saying that the 54-pound child’s Body Mass Index (BMI) was too high. Aside from the idiocy of using a discredited measurement for body fat, what are these administrators thinking? Obviously, they’re not. If they had two working brain cells, they would take one look at this kid and realize the stupidity of believing their “measurements.”

Earlier this month, 13-year-old Tom Sosnik, wearing a tallit and holding a kiddush cup, marked a transition into manhood with a special ceremony at his Jewish day school. He wasn’t celebrating receiving a first prayer book or a first Bible, or graduating from one grade to another. He wasn’t really observing his bar mitzvah, either. In what was a decidedly nontraditional event, the short-haired teenager was publicly marking his gender transition from girl to boy

Is it legal in NY for a school to issue an "anonymous" survey to students asking about their family's gun ownership, access to firearms and other questions? This was given to my son today. I am furious about the intrusion, the manipulation of our children and the sliminess of how it was done. I am collecting information to formulate a response to the school. Anyone out there know if this kind of survey is even legal?

U.S. Sen. John McCain is running a “sponsored post” on Facebook with the intention of building support for a potential re-election campaign. While the intended audience is unclear, the paid post is boomeranging big time. “If I decide to stand for re-election to the United States Senate, I will give it everything I’ve got — and your continued support means a great deal to me. Please stand with me today,” the senator’s Facebook post reads.

A Jewish school in Paris was evacuated on Thursday — three years to the day after the brutal massacre at a Jewish school in Toulouse, French news website JSS News reported. The evacuation follows disturbing instances of increased antisemitic violence throughout France and Europe. Police searched the classrooms and common areas at the Ecole Alliance Gustave Leven in Paris using bomb-sniffing dogs. Though the report did not indicate whether the police found any explosives, sources did tell JSS News that it was a fairly serious threat. The evacuation at the French school occurred on the third anniversary of the horrific...

Federally-mandated changes to school lunches backed by first lady Michelle Obama helped cause an unprecedented drop in the number of students eating lunch, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO cited two factors stemming from the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which caused a decrease in the number of children eating school lunch each day: school childrens’ issues with “palatability” and “federally-mandated” increases in the price of school lunches.