Free Republic

ONTARIO - The family of a boy who committed suicide after an immigration rally earlier this year is asking a federal judge to bar the school district from disciplining students who miss class to attend such protests. The family has said Anthony Soltero, 14, killed himself because he was threatened with harsh discipline for skipping class to attend a rally. He died April 1. "Anthony was learning about the importance of civic duties and rights in his eighth-grade class," said Louise Corales, the boy's mother. "We have to let the schools know that they can't punish our children for exercising...

ARLINGTON, Texas -- The Arlington school district has expanded its dress codes to include bans on mouth jewelry known as "grills" and the earlobe-stretching practice known as gauging. "The district is having to respond to fads because they've become distracters or a safety hazard for those around them," said Malcolm Turner, the district's executive director of student services. The nearby Irving, Grand Prairie and DeSoto districts also ban grills, and some also address gauging -- the process of placing increasingly large items in the ears to stretch the lobes. But students said the body modification is simply self-expression. "Really, a...

GRANADA HILLS - State Sen. George Runner and Assemblyman Keith Richman announced legislation Monday that would break up the 727,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District into at least 15 smaller districts. The two lawmakers promised greater accountability would come from community-based school systems, calling the nation's second-largest district a "bureaucratic behemoth" that was failing students. Under identical bills proposed in the state Assembly and Senate, any California school district with more than half a million students - L.A. Unified is the only one large enough to qualify - must split into districts no larger than 50,000 students by 2010. A...

School District to Taxpayers and Parents: Up Yours ..... and the Homeschooling Movement Gets a Yet Another Shot in the Arm: Here is yet another reason for parents to homeschool their children if at all possible (By the way, the story is hopelessly slanted -- The lecture was objectively biased; plus, the primary issue here is teaching the subject matter, and secondarily the political indoctrination Jay Bennish engaged in while not doing his job): Bennish to teach again Punishment not revealed; teacher returns MondayAn Aurora social studies teacher accused of giving a biased lecture that sparked national debate over academic...

In front of a crowd of angry parents, teachers and students... San Francisco's Board of Education Thursday night voted to close, merge and relocate more than a dozen public schools...due to declining enrollment. The board did its work during a five-hour meeting before hundreds of angry parents, students and teachers who filled the Everett Middle School auditorium and occasionally shouted -- or wept aloud -- as the panel voted on a case-by-case basis. The first vote hardly caused a stir in the crowd: the Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program will be merged into Rosa Parks Elementary School... But when the board...

When a friend told coach Stu Gorski in 1995 that Mount Adams School District had hired "a phenomenal wrestling coach," Gorski froze. "Tell me you didn't hire Randy Deming," he pleaded. The district had. Gorski, a football and golf coach in Whatcom County, knew Deming for years as a rival coach at nearby Blaine High School. Gorski also knew of Deming's reputation as a groper of girls who had even been charged with child molestation. When Gorski learned Deming would also be teaching girls, he warned: "You're putting him back into the fire." GORDON KING / YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC Randy Deming...

WORLAND (AP) -- The family of a teenage girl who was allegedly given emergency contraception pills under the supervision of a school counselor has filed a claim against Washakie County School District No. 1. The claim included a dollar amount, but the family's attorney, Larry Berryman, declined to reveal it, the Northern Wyoming Daily News reports. Berryman said in a prepared statement that the Worland High School student, 15, confided in the ninth-grade counselor that she had sex with a 23-year-old and was afraid of being pregnant. The counselor made an appointment with the public health office in Worland and...

School District Critics Plan Nativity Scene, 'Silent Night' Performances MUSTANG, Okla. -- Lakehoma Elementary School's annual Christmas performance was to include a rendition of "Silent Night" on Thursday evening after Mustang school officials reached a compromised in a dispute over Christian religious elements in the program. The decision came after a number of Mustang residents complained and others announced plans to stage a silent protest Thursday night during the evening performance. Superintendent Karl Springer had originally banned a staged nativity scene and the singing of "Silent Night" because of First Amendment concerns. However, during an early performance of the program...

PITTSBURGH — A suburban Pittsburgh school district is reviewing whether it should be paying for U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum's children to use its Internet-based school, since the Pennsylvania senator and his family live in Virginia. The Penn Hills district has spent $100,000 educating the Republican's children since 2001-02, said Erin Vecchio, a school board member who requested the review. She also is head of the local Democratic committee. "I'm concerned because [he is] taking away from my kid. That $100,000 ... could be going to my kids, a computer or something," said Vecchio, who has three children enrolled in Penn...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A federal grand jury has opened an investigation into the Los Angeles Unified School District's purchase of its $74.5 million downtown headquarters. LAUSD Inspector General Don Mullinax disclosed the investigation Thursday in a memo to school district officials. "I am writing to inform you that at the request of the U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California, the Office of the Inspector General is providing assistance in a federal grand jury investigation regarding the purchase of the Beaudry building," Mullinax wrote. Board member David Tokofsky, who cast the only vote against the purchase of the building,...

KOVR-13 news item From MyDogDaisy | 2002-05-24 18:37:22 replied Forgive me for sending this note to you, but I note you posted an item about KCRA. I want to alert FR to something that happened that was reported on KOVR-13 on Thursday 5/23/02 but don't know how to post here. Maybe you saw the item on the news. It concerned the Navy SEAL, Niel Roberts, who was killed in Operation Anaconda. He is from Woodland, CA. Well, they are building a new high school there. Some of the citizens wanted to name this new school after him. They came to...