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October 9, 2008 Dear xxxxxx: Two significant events have occurred regarding elementary and secondary education funding this week. In order of importance, the Governor released his budget cuts at an 11 a.m. press conference. Kaine's press release began: Governor Timothy M. Kaine today announced the official revenue reforecast, and immediately announced an executive spending reduction plan to meet the fiscal year 2009 shortfall. The Governor's plan reduces government spending by making operations more efficient and reducing the scope of some government programs, while protecting K-12 education and other critical government functions, like public safety. Thankfully, P-12 funding was spared for...

KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- An Osceola County teacher is out of a job after parents started complaining. They said she asked third grade students to give her massages. One mother told Eyewitness News the touching going in the Kissimmee Charter Academy classroom was highly inappropriate. CAST YOUR VOTE: Agree With The School's Decision To Fire The Teacher? In Donna Coulter's third grade class, each student had a job. It could be cleaning the room, organizing books or taking out the trash, but one task really upset parents. "One of the jobs she was giving was to give her massages," said parent...

Teen Pees In Teacher's Drink, Police SayUPDATED: 5:16 pm PDT September 23, 2008 CASTLE ROCK, Wash. -- Police in Washington said they've arrested a teenager for urinating in his teacher's drink. Investigators said officers arrested the 13-year-old at Castle Rock Middle School on Friday, and he's now facing a felony charge. Castle Rock police said the victim was a woman who was teaching four eighth-grade boys Friday when one of them peed in her drink. The teacher walked into her class just in time to catch the boy zipping up and discovered urine in her plastic drink bottle, officers said....

TALIBAN militants dragged a school teacher out of a mosque in Afghanistan and cut off his ears as a "punishment" for working for the Government, an education official said. The rebels took another dozen people, most of them elderly men, out of the mosque in the southern province of Zabul and beat them up on similar charges, provincial education chief Mohammad Nabi Khushal said overnight. The men had burst into the mosque while dozens of worshippers were in a late night prayer session Saturday and singled out primary school teacher Bismillah Khan, Mr Khushal said, blaming Taliban rebels. "They took...

A school teacher killed in a shooting in Montgomery Village on Saturday was the cousin of Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony G. Brown, an official statement revealed today. Lt. Gov. Brown announced that he would be leaving the Democratic National Convention in Denver to return home and support his family in the wake of cousin Cathy Brown's shooting. Lt. Gov. Brown's statement adds that, "I leave my fellow delegates with a heavy heart and I ask that everyone keep my family in their prayers." Cathy Brown was an elementary school teacher. It was reported on Sunday that she and a campus...

There once was a time when campus highjinx referred to the antics of college kids engaged in such harmless stunts as conducting late night panty raids, swallowing goldfish, or stuffing twenty human beings into a Volkswagen. Those college days are long gone. Many of today’s college students are so hungover from last night’s binging and with heads so clouded with marijuana that they wouldn’t know how to conduct a panty raid or they would confuse a goldfish with a bong. As for stuffing twenty of themselves into a Volkswagen, they’re far too busy stuffing themselves into coeds. The trickle down...

Governor To Ask For Legal Immunity For Teachers FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels says teachers should have legal protections if they act in good faith to maintain discipline and order in their classrooms. Daniels said Monday that if he is re-elected, he would ask the General Assembly next year to give legal immunity to teachers who may become the target of litigation. For example, one Indiana student sued a principal for attempting to restrain the student after he was separated during a fight. Another student filed a tort claim after a gym teacher required the student to...

AMARAH, Iraq, Aug. 1, 2008 – Six months ago, Army Maj. Donald Crider was teaching high school physics in Seattle. Today, he’s assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, flying helicopters in southeastern Iraq. Army Maj. Donald Crider, a Seattle native assigned to the 126th Aviation Regiment, performs a pre-flight check on a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter used for medical evacuation missions near Amarah, Iraq. Crider and soldiers of the 126th support the 1st Cavalry Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team. U.S. Army photo by Pfc. Terence Ewings, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division   (Click photo...

A teacher has been suspended amid claims she punished two children who refused to worship Allah during a Religious Education lesson. Alison Phillips, head of RE at Cheshire's respected Alsager High School, allegedly disciplined the Year 7 duo claiming they were disrespectful for refusing to kneel down and pray. After giving the two boys detention the school was believed to have received several complaints from parents about the long-standing teacher. Today, a school spokesman said she was suspended over the allegations - but also for "ongoing inquiries centred around other practical issues". Joan Feenan, director of Cheshire County Council's children's...

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Forty-two-year-old Janelle Batkins of Harrison Township pleaded Thursday to two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct in Macomb County Circuit Court. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt, but is treated as such for sentencing.

HIGH school teachers will be issued with emergency phones and new teachers will be trained to handle problem students under new school security measures. Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith told a Parliamentary Estimates hearing today it was part of the Government's $10 million plan, funded from 2007, to manage students' behaviour. Under the initiatives announced today: MOBILE phones will be provided to secondary teachers on yard duty so staff or police can be called immediately in the event of a security incident. THE Anti-Bullying Coalition will advise Government and non-government schools on the use of technology including mobile phones in violent...

A former teacher has been found guilty of 11 counts of making terroristic threats at Longstreth Elementary School in Warminster Township where she worked last year. Susan Romanyszyn, 46, of Warminster, faces a maximum of 73 years in prison, but prosecutor Gary Gambardella said she likely will be sentenced to significantly less. Judge Rea Boylan postponed Romanyszyn's sentencing until she could get a psychiatric evaluation. During that time, Romanyszyn, who has been free after posting 10 percent of $1 million bail, will be on house arrest. "She's guilty of terrorizing a school," Gambardella said. "If she wants to do this,...

Detectives said 60-year-old Adrienne Laflamme told a former juvenile detention center student to lie about their sexual relationship, which also included sex with another minor; and drug use because she could lose her job, police said. Palm Bay police arrested Laflamme, a science teacher at the Brevard County Juvenile Detention Center in Sharpes, at her Americana Boulevard home on Wednesday. Her bond is set at $225,000 and she faces 15 counts of unlawful sex with minors and filing a false police report, jail records show.

A 24-year-old English teacher at Atlantic High School in Delray Beach resigned amid an investigation into a possible sexual relationship with a graduating senior, authorities said. Heather March submitted her resignation letter on May 28, 12 days after the school district opened an investigation based on information from another student, according to Palm Beach County School District documents. News of March's resignation follows a series of teacher-student sex scandals at Santaluces High School. Revelations emerged earlier this week that teacher Natalie Fraxedas, 23, was fired after admitting she had sex with an 18-year-old student.

Ex-teacher accused of stomping Old Glory Reports reacting to confiscation of Mexican banner from student Posted: June 20, 2008 6:35 pm Eastern © 2008 WorldNetDaily A former teacher in Idaho has been charged under a state law that bans desecration of the U.S. flag after he allegedly threw Old Glory on the floor of an administrator's office at Minico High School and stomped it, breaking the pole and ripping the flag from its fastenings.

A Mount Vernon teacher undermined science instruction in the public school district by discrediting evolution in his classroom and focusing on creationism and intelligent design, an investigation has found. Eighth-graders who were taught by John Freshwater frequently had to be re-taught in high school what they were supposed to have learned in Freshwater's class, according to outside investigators hired by the district. For 11 years, other teachers in the school district and people in the community complained about Freshwater preaching his Christian beliefs in class and slamming scientific theories, a school administrator told investigators. "There is a significant amount of...

A county prosecutor is taking on a Supreme Court ruling that for decades has protected flag desecration as a citizen's right to free expression. The challenge may be the first of its kind in Idaho, legal experts say. Invoking a misdemeanor statute the Legislature passed eight years before a Supreme Court ruling changed federal law in 1989, Minidoka County Prosecutor Nikki Cannon has charged former school teacher Dan Luker with publicly mutilating a U.S. flag at his school on May 5. Cannon alleges that Luker, then an English as a Second Language teacher, threw the flag on the floor of...

A high school science teacher in North Carolina has been arrested and is facing charges of sexually assaulting a student nine times. Shebana Rajput, 35, a biology and physical science instructor since August 2005 at Jones Senior High School in Trenton, N.C., resigned her position May 21 – just two days before she was arrested in her home for alleged sexual conduct with a 17-year-old student, according to WNCT-TV. Rajput is just the latest instructor to make WND's big list of American teachers accused or convicted of having sexual relations with students. Sheriff's officials say she had sexual relations with...

arrested on charges of having sex with four teenage boys, two of whom were her students, was warned by school officials to never be alone in a classroom with "any male students," Local 6 News reported on Friday. Danielle Jones, 32, was in court on Friday, a day after the Stambaugh (Auburndale) Middle School sixth-grade science teacher was arrested on suspicion of having sex with two of her students, ages 14 and 15, and their two 16-year-old cousins. The school principal sent Jones a letter on Jan. 23 -- about six months after the alleged sex took place -- after...

Teacher Caught on Tape: Kindergartner 'Ignorant, Pathetic, Self-Absorbed' Parents Sent 5-Year-Old to School With Tape Recorder By JONANN BRADY May 27, 2008Ignorant. Pathetic. Self-absorbed. Those are some of the harsh names an Indiana kindergarten teacher called one of her students, and the boy's parents captured it all on tape. Five-year-old Gabriel Ross complained over the school year that his teacher, Kristen Woodward, was being mean to him, said his mother Tabitha McMahan and stepfather J.R. Edwards. Gabriel told them other kids didn't like him because he was "bad and stupid." When he began acting out at home, they decided to...

Former Loveland Teacher Sentenced For Sex AssaultMay 28, 2008 3:37 pm US/Mountain FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) A former social studies teacher at a Loveland middle school is being ordered to spend one year behind bars and 10 years on probation for sexually assaulting an underage girl. Larimer County District Judge James Hiatt handed down the sentence Tuesday to 42-year-old Michael Gaylor. The former Walt Clark Middle School teacher apologized in court, saying he took advantage of his position without any regard for the girl. He said he took the victim's innocence, and called his former students victims, saying they'll "forever...

Unsigned fliers in city schools urge 'job actions' . Not a single classroom teacher showed up for work at a northwest Denver school on Tuesday, an apparent "sickout" staged by teachers upset over stalled contract talks. All 16 classroom teachers plus the music teacher and a librarian called in sick... "I didn't have any warning," Kraft said. "I don't know what the goal is, so I can't really speak to whether or not that accomplished their goal. . . . (But) I'm not sure if leaving your students without a teacher is a way to address contract negotiations." DPS Superintendent...

Hundreds of parents of autistic children are signing an online petition to get Florida teacher Wendy Portillo fired for her alleged tactics toward a 5-year-old boy that mirror the reality show “Survivor.” Morningside Elementary School in Port St. Lucie, Fla., recently alerted Melissa Barton that her son, Alex, suffers from a high-functioning form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome, WPEC News reported.

PORT ST. LUCIE — Melissa Barton said she is considering legal action after her son's kindergarten teacher led his classmates to vote him out of class. After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn't like about Barton's 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo said they were going to take a vote, Barton said. By a 14 to 2 margin, the students voted Alex — who is in the process of being diagnosed with autism — out of the class. Melissa Barton filed a complaint with Morningside's school resource officer, who investigated the matter, Port St....

A SEX swap instructor at an all-female driving school was left devastated when the Sheffield husband of one of her pupils threatened to sue her firm - for sending a man to teach his Muslim wife.

Contract Canceled for High School Teacher Who Called Student's Muslim Father a Terrorist Wednesday, May 14, 2008 AP MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. — A high school teacher accused of calling the Muslim father of one of his students a terrorist will not be back next school year. The Michigan City Area Schools Board voted unanimously Tuesday to cancel the contract of John Scheimann, who has taught in the district for 19 years. The action was included in several personnel recommendations by Superintendent Michael Harding. There was no discussion. Scheimann could not be reached for comment Wednesday by The Associated Press because...

A local teacher is accused of wizardy for doing a slight of hand trick.

Brooksville, Florida – A student at Central High School in Hernando County was arrested Friday morning, after deputies say he thrust his pelvis into a teacher. Around 9 am, the teacher bent over to take a drink at a water foundation in one of the hallways. At that point, deputies say the 17-year-old student thrust his pelvis into the back of the teacher for a few seconds. The teacher told deputies she felt violated and told the student to back off. The student was arrested on a charge of assault or battery on a member of school personnel.

ATLANTA — Atlanta police have arrested a high school student and her mother in the beating of the girl's teacher. Forty-four-year-old Georgia Thornton and her daughter, 17-year-old Sequita Thornton, have been charged with attacking Felecia Williams at Southside High School on February 28th. According to a police report, the mother was charged with battery on a school teacher, disrupting public schools, criminal trespass and theft by taking in connection with the attack. Sequita was charged with battery on a teacher and disrupting public schools.

CAMP TAJI, Iraq, April 21, 2008 – More than 10 years ago, Maranata Temese was an elementary school teacher living in American Samoa with his wife, Leaiseaiga, and their three children. Wanting to provide a better life for his family, he decided to join the military. But there was one problem: He was not a U.S. citizen. Army Staff Sgt. Maranata Temese, center, a platoon sergeant in Company G, Task Force 12, waits to receive his Certificate of Naturalization during a Multinational Corps Iraq naturalization ceremony at Camp Victory, Iraq, April 12, 2008. Temese, who was born in Samoa,...

Bill would banish teachers who abuseBy Steven K. Paulson, Associated Press Friday, April 18, 2008 With no debate and no dissent, the Colorado House gave initial approval Friday to a bill that would require teachers convicted of child abuse or unlawful sexual behavior to agree never to teach again anywhere in this country. One lawmaker read a long list of accusations against teachers in Colorado for assaulting children, then noted those cases occurred in just one month. **SNIP** She said school districts do background checks when teachers are hired, but the state currently has no way to determine whether teachers...

MOUNT VERNON, Ohio — They painted crosses on white T-shirts and wore them to school yesterday. They carried Bibles and put them on their desks. Some students at Mount Vernon Middle and High schools want everyone to know they support a science teacher who has refused to remove a Bible from his classroom desk. Students cheered and offered high-fives to Middle School teacher John Freshwater when he showed up yesterday at a student-organized rally in his honor. Mount Vernon High senior Caleb McCoy stood on a rock as he told the crowd of students and parents at the Knox County...

Hope this works: http://www.mountvernonnews.net/local/08/04/18/rally.html

(Too short to excerpt) MOUNT VERNON — Things appeared calm and quiet this morning at Mount Vernon Middle School as students and staff followed their normal routines. Mount Vernon City police officers were stationed in the entry lobby, presumably to prevent unauthorized entry and to protect the students’ privacy. Middle school officials declined to comment on reports of students wearing T-shirts and carrying signs in support of science teacher John Freshwater. Several students had also planned to take Bibles to classes in support of Freshwater’s refusal to remove a Bible from his classroom desk. Superintendent Steve Short said the students...

Can only post link: http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080417/UPDATES01/80417024

At least eight ads in the Yellow Pages that hawk exotic entertainment by female companions lead callers to numbers belonging to a teacher at Kellam High School in Virginia Beach. The numbers used to reach Penthouse V.I.P. , Exotic Playmates, Exotic Sinsations, Fantasies, Sweet Pleasures, Party Girls, Oasis Escorts and Delilah’s are all registered in the name of Michelle Droelle, a 33-year-old social studies teacher in her first year in the classroom at Kellam. The ads appear in the 2007 edition of the Verizon Yellow Pages. Standing outside her Ocean Lakes home after school Tuesday afternoon, Droelle insisted she left...

Six days after she was sucker punched and beaten in her own Baltimore classroom, high school art teacher Jolita Berry still finds it almost impossible to watch the MySpace video of the attack. And she can’t make herself go back to work.... The attack happened last Friday morning in Berry’s classroom in Reginald F. Lewis High School in Baltimore. One of the girls in the class approached the 30-year-old teacher and got nose-to-nose with her and threatened her. ...The video, recorded on a cell phone by another student, picks up with Berry on the floor trying to defend herself while...

TAMPA - Teacher-turned-sex-offender Debra Lafave gets to spend her final three months of house arrest on probation instead. A judge ordered Tuesday that the 27-year-old former middle school teacher will be released from house arrest on July 11. She'll serve straight probation instead, which is less restrictive and doesn't require her to wear a monitoring bracelet. She was sentenced in November 2005 to three years' house arrest and seven years of probation for having sex with a 14-year-old student. Prosecutor Mike Sinacore objects to Tuesday's decision. He says the victim's family objects, too.

"A teenage student in possession of sexually explicit photos of his Swedish school teacher claims the woman was trying to seduce him, reports the Göteborgs Tidning (GT) newspaper. The photos, which depict the teacher in sexually provocative positions, have now been circulated to several students at a school in Kungsbacka outside of Gothenburg, landing the teacher at the centre of a school-wide sex scandal. The woman denies accusations that she sent the photos to the student or that she was trying to seduce him, claiming that the boy could have easily downloaded the pictures himself."

Former Urbana teacher White sentenced to 48 yearsBy Mary Schenk Friday, April 4, 2008 3:33 PM CDT URBANA – A former Urbana grade school teacher was sentenced this afternoon to 48 years in prison for molesting female students. Champaign County Judge Harry Clem sentenced Jon White, 27, of Villa Grove for aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving acts that occurred between August 2005 and December 2007 with 7- and 8-year-old girls who were students at Thomas Paine School in Urbana. White pleaded guilty in February to eight counts that accused him of deriving sexual gratification from having the blindfolded girls put...

SPRINGFIELD -- Elementary students at Robberson Elementary School got a surprise on Friday morning. Third grade teacher and Army 1st Lt. Fred Romaine received an emotional welcome home. A member of the Missouri National Guard, Romaine served in Iraq for the past year. Romaine will again teach at Robberson in the fall. At least nine Springfield school district employees have been called to active duty in the past two years.

TAMPA -- Before a Davidsen Middle School teacher started a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old student, she told the boy she could help him overcome his shyness, according to a new court filing. When teacher Stephanie Ragusa, 28, left, broke her foot and was confined to a wheel chair, the boy was assigned to escort her around the school, detectives wrote in their request for a search warrant filed in Hillsborough Circuit Court. Ragusa told the boy when they got into the elevator that she noticed he was "shy and she could break him of that," the warrant states. Then,...

Teacher who campaigns for gay rights wins awardAllison Douglas, For the Tribune A gay right’s activist and elementary school teacher from Flagstaff will receive the Arizona Education Association Human and Civil Rights Award this month at a Mesa ceremony. Annie Crego will receive the award April 25 during the Salute to Excellence dinner sponsored by the AEA Foundation for Teaching and Learning at the Phoenix Marriott Mesa hotel ballroom. “I started teaching 34 years ago when no child ever admitted to being gay because they would be beaten or shunned,” Crego said. “Teachers never admitted they were gay, and everything...

WAYCROSS, Ga. - A group of third-graders plotted to attack their teacher, bringing a broken steak knife, handcuffs, duct tape and other items for the job and assigning children tasks including covering the windows and cleaning up afterward, police said Tuesday. The plot by as many as nine boys and girls at Center Elementary School in south Georgia was a serious threat, Waycross Police Chief Tony Tanner said. "We did not hear anybody say they intended to kill her, but could they have accidentally killed her? Absolutely," Tanner said. "We feel like if they weren't interrupted, there would have been...

When it comes to teachers and students, there is no such thing as consensual sex, experts said yesterday. The power differential is too exploitative in those sexual encounters, said Charol Shakeshaft, a former Hofstra University professor who now teaches educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University and is an expert on sexual abuse in schools. "It's a violation of trust and professional boundaries," Shakeshaft said of the March 20 encounter Nassau police say happened between Heather Kennedy, 25, a math teacher at Wantagh High School, and a 16-year-old boy who is a student at the school. Kennedy was arraigned yesterday on...

NEW YORK - A Long Island high school math teacher who police say was highly regarded by her bosses now faces rape charges for allegedly having sex with a 16-year-old student. Heather Kennedy, 25, was arrested and arraigned for allegedly having sexual intercourse on March 20 with a 16-year-old male student in Massapequa. Kennedy is being held on $35,000 bail. She is being charged with third-degree rape and endangering the welfare of a child, authorities said. Police said Kennedy is a math teacher at Wantagh High School. Police said she was tutoring the boy in his Massapequa home when the...

TAMPA, Fla. -- In the past two weeks, three female teachers have been arrested in the Tampa, Fla., area, accused of having sex with male students. First came the arrest of a middle school math teacher, Stephanie Ragusa, 28. She was charged with having sex with a 14-year-old, authorities said. Investigators monitored phone calls between teacher and student in which Ragusa allegedly acknowledged having sex with the boy. Last Thursday, high school honors English teacher Mary Jo Spack, 45, also was arrested. She is accused of meeting a 17- and an 18-year-old student at a liquor store and leading them...

NEW TAMPA -- Mary Jo Spack. Married 13 years, mother of four kids. At 38, she graduated USF's School of Education with honors, and became an Honors English Teacher herself at Freedom High in Tampa. By all accounts, a teacher's teacher. "Excellent teacher, spotless record," said Hillsborough District spokeswoman Linda Cobbe. "All the evaluations I saw she had the highest marks you can give." A perfect record that's now tainted. Tampa Police say Spack had sex with a 17-year-old male student in the shower of a Howard Johnson motel room while four other students listened in. Police say she also...