Free Republic

Freedom News Service Black-powdered muskets may no longer ring in the New Year at Rudisill Stadium next New Year’s Day, school officials said Tuesday. The stadium, located at Cherryville High School, has been the site of the end of the night celebration of two groups of Cherryville shooters since 1991. But the groups’ use of the stadium may be violating school system policy. Principal Steve Huffstetler said he would probably not let the final shot from the Cherryville shooters take place on school grounds again. He has been at the school for seven years as principal but was unsure of...

A 12-year-old New Hampshire boy who wanted to jolly up his junior high dance by dressing in a Santa suit instead got a lesson in political correctness when his Scroogelike principal turned the student away, fearing he might offend his classmates.

(MCNS)--Attorneys filed a federal civil rights lawsuit today against the Plano Independent School District for a discriminatory policy that censors the Christmas religious expression of students and their parents. “The policy is a perfect example of politically correct extremism,” said Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Gary McCaleb. “School officials have gone so far as to prohibit students from wearing red and green at their ‘winter break’ parties because they claim they are Christmas colors. Even the plates and napkins must be white. The district’s policy is ludicrous to even the most common observer.”

Pencil sharpeners banned after attack WEAPON: A pencil sharpener blade PENCIL sharpeners have been banned from a primary school after a pupil dismantled one and used the blade to slash another child's neck. The victim was attacked in the playground at Waterloo Primary School in Ashton under Lyne. He was taken to Tameside Hospital where he had butterfly stitches placed on the wound. The attacker was suspended for two days and is now back in school. Police, who were notified two days later, have spoken to the young attacker and his parents. Headteacher David Willis has now banned all pencil...

WASHINGTON -- If you look closely, what is inside your child's textbooks may shock you. They are full of evolution theories, and many liberal historians are rewriting American history as well. But there is even more. How Islam is portrayed in today's textbooks is a subject of concern also. The familiar images of Islam include praying at Mecca, and the prophet Muhammad, a man Muslims say is the messenger of God. But this is not the whole story. When all is said and done, the story of Islam is being told and taught to our nation's school kids in their...

By PETER PORCO Anchorage Daily News November 26, 2004 ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Sixteen-year-old Rachelle A. Waterman would appear to be any parent's ideal child - an honor student, an athlete, a gifted singer. But for months, she planned her mother's murder with two of her former boyfriends who are eight years her senior, according to Alaska State Troopers. Two weekends ago on Southeast's Prince of Wales Island, their plot ended in the death of 48-year-old Lauri Waterman of Craig, according to court papers. Lauri Waterman, a teacher's aide and community activist, was killed by one of the men using a...

(AgapePress) - A popular Christian author and pastor says the overwhelming majority of Christians need a change of attitude regarding public schools. Meanwhile, leading education experts are trying to dispel some common myths about home schooling and let parents know why it may be a better choice for their families. Dr. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind novel series, says evangelical pastors who advocate sending their Christian youth to public schools are "philosophically out to lunch." He says those pastors and other Christian leaders who look favorably on public education "don't understand the worldview of the secular humanists that's...

Steven Walley is seething over the "food police" at his son's school.A letter from the Freedom Elementary School said the county's Health Services Agency plans to educate students and families about healthy eating habits and there was a list of acceptable foods.It also warned: "We will take away from students any non-nutritious foods such as hot Cheetos or chips, sugary snacks, soda, etc." Walley couldn't believe it. "The food police," he said, had gone too far."There's no law on the books that would allow this," Walley said. "They're saying if I send my kid to school with chips or a...

MIAMI, Nov. 20 (UPI) -- The superintendent of Miami-Dade Schools, where police Taser-gunned a 6-year-old first-grader, has asked police to stop using stun guns against children. Superintendent Rudy Crew made the request in a letter to the police chief, the Miami Herald reported Saturday. His letter followed an incident in October when a Miami-Dade officer zapped a 6-year-old first-grader at Kelsey Pharr Elementary School, who was wielding a piece of glass in a school office. "The Pharr student was agitated and injured," Crew wrote in his letter. "However, police officers have dealt with other children in this condition without resorting...

Montgomery County, Maryland is a blue county. Next door to Washington, D.C., the county went 66 percent to 33 percent for Senator Kerry in the recent election. So when the Montgomery County School Board rubber stamped a set of committee recommendations expanding sexual education content to include condom demonstrations and left of center views on homosexuality, I suspect the members of the board expected little resistance from parents. Surprise! In fact, after two years of stonewalling efforts from parents to register their views, the school board members may find themselves facing voters in a recall effort. Rumor is that the...

Link between NEA and SPLC?

SEATTLE -- A KIRO Team 7 Investigation exposes Washington teachers who buy illegitimate college degrees. They can profit. You pay! Worse yet, Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne discovers a loophole that technically makes this legal. The state Superintendent's office gladly approves automatic pay increases for teachers who complete their masters or doctorate. I've discovered, however, the state does not routinely check to see if the degrees are from real or certified universities. We tracked down some educators who are either getting more money, or more respect, than they deserve. Dr. Kevin Evoy is principal at Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Olympia....

TERESA: TEACHING ISN'T A 'REAL JOB' [10/20 12:19 PM] From USA Today interview with Teresa Heinz Kerry: Q: You'd be different from Laura Bush? A: Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good. But I don't know that she's ever had a real job — I mean, since she's been grown up. What arrogance. Stunning, unmitigated arrogance! From the White House: Inspired by her second grade teacher, she earned a bachelor of science degree in education from Southern Methodist University in 1968. She...

Poll Shows At Least 5 Percent of U.S. High School Students Identify as Gay or Lesbian; Poll Also Finds Anti-Gay Language is Rampant; 66 percent Report Using Homophobic Language Contact: Riley Snorton of GLSEN, 212-727-0135 ext. 138, 646-526-1076 (cell) or rsnorton@glsen.org NEW YORK, Oct. 7 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, today announced results from a new national poll on students' attitudes on sexual orientation. Based on results from the poll, approximately 5 percent of America's high school students identify as lesbian or gay, 16 percent of America's students have a gay or lesbian...

A New Hampshire teen is taking a ``Live Free or Die'' lesson to his own teachers, threatening to sue his school if it won't allow him to appear in a yearbook photo with a shotgun on his shoulder. ``I don't see anything wrong with the picture,'' Londonderry High School Senior Blake Douglass said yesterday. ``I enjoy shooting trap and skeet, and I believe you should stand up for what you believe in.'' School administrators have rejected a photo submission from Douglass that shows the smiling senior on one knee with a trapshooting shotgun over his shoulder. Trapshooting, a sport offered...

Continued immigration and a stubborn high school dropout rate have stymied efforts to improve literacy in Los Angeles County, where more than half the working-age population can't read a simple form, a report released Wednesday found. Alarmingly, only one in every 10 workers deemed functionally illiterate is enrolled in literacy classes and half of them drop out within three weeks, said the study by the United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

Eco-Logic PowerHouse From From EdWatch... FACT: "School-to-Work" is alive and well! By Michael J. Chapman For several years, EdWatch (formerly, The Maple River Education Coalition) has been warning of a coming state-planned-and-managed economy by means of the federal "School-to-Work (STW) System." We've explained how the federal agenda was driven into all 50 states by three federal bills passed piecemeal under the Clinton administration (Goals 2000, STW, and the Workforce Investment Act). On July 19, 2004, the federal House Education & the Workforce Committee posted a "fact sheet" denying that School- to -Work was involved in the pending Vocational Education funding...

Court kills N. Haledon's bid to leave Manchester Regional Thursday, August 12, 2004 North Haledon must remain in the Manchester Regional School District, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, but the district's funding formula must be retooled.The ruling ends the borough's attempt to withdraw from the district, but it portends lower school taxes for its residents.The court's decision, written by Chief Justice Deborah Poritz, found that while North Haledon's attempt to withdraw was not racially motivated, students from all three sending districts would suffer from the reduced diversity that would result from North Haledon's departure."This decision's going to have a...

A California school district is considering adopting a new policy that could cause students to be expelled for "rejecting" each other, for sharing "unpleasant stories" about each other – even if true – or for associating with like-minded peers in groups if others feel "left out." According to a statement from the Pro-Family Law Center, the Murrieta Valley Unified School District in Riverside County, Calif., is taking up the issue in response to race-related incidents that have taken place within the district in the last year. The center says national race-based organizations came to the district to propose language for...

We're hearing quite a bit from politicians who decry what they call "the two Americas," by which they mean the rich and the poor. Notwithstanding the fact that "poor" Americans are wealthier than most of the other people of the world, this political ploy seems to me to be divisive and rooted in the politics of envy. Be that as it may, I believe that there really are two Americas — the educated and the uneducated. And education is the basis of wealth in the United States. Aside from the occasional pop star who makes a fortune in show business...