Free Republic

PURDY, Wash. -- A student presenting an essay at Peninsula High School in Purdy on Tuesday morning took out a marijuana joint, lit it, and began smoking it, police said. Read the essay here. See cell phone video. According to Pierce County sheriff's detective Ed Troyer, the student smoked the joint during his essay supporting the legalization of marijuana. He then finished his essay, sat down, finished smoking the joint and then ate the end after it was fully smoked. The teacher of the class contacted the school resources officer, a Pierce County sheriff's deputy, who found a small residual...

Members of the graduating class of 2009 at Florida's Pace High School have expressed their objections to ACLU restrictions on statements of religious faith at their school by rising up en masse at their ceremony and reciting the Lord's Prayer. The incident happened just days ago, but has been virtually ignored by media outlets throughout the region, according to officials with Liberty Counsel, a legal team representing Principal Frank Lay and teacher Michelle Winkler in their battle with the ACLU, which had complained that faculty and teachers were talking about their beliefs. Nearly 400 graduating seniors at Pace, a Santa...

Nashville, N.C. — Some parents say Nash Central Middle School has become a battleground with student fights in the hallways and bathrooms. Concerned for their children's safety, parents filled the Nash-Rocky Mount school board meeting Monday evening. Parents, students say fights taking place at school WATCH VIDEO http://www.wral.com/news/local/video/5258741/

LEE COUNTY — The Lee County School District is supported with taxes but is now on the list of property owners who have failed to pay 2008 taxes on time. According to the Lee County Tax Collector Web site, the district has not paid taxes on five of the 126 properties it owns, the largest of which is a $34,000 bill for 2008 taxes on an undeveloped property in Cape Coral. The taxes owed are non-ad valorem taxes — for services such as wastewater treatment — and not the same kind of taxes at the heart of a discussion in...

LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that GREGG M. CAVALUZZI, 34, a former Pelham middle school teacher, has been arrested for enticement of a minor. According to the Complaint filed yesterday in White Plains federal court and statements at CAVALUZZI’s presentment yesterday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge PAUL E. DAVISON: From approximately May 19 through May 31, 2009, CAVALUZZI had numerous recorded telephone conversations and text message exchanges with a police officer from the Westchester County Police Department who was posing as a 15-year-old girl. During the telephone conversations and...

Board votes to fire teacher charged with having sex with studentJune 2, 2009 By CRAIG A. WHITNEY Maine Township High School District 207 officials voted to terminate the employment of Jennifer Espinosa, the Maine East teacher charged on suspicion of having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old former student. Board members voted 7-0 on the issue during Monday's regular Board of Education meeting in the board room of the Ralph Frost Administration Center, 1131 S. Dee Road. Jennifer Espinosa District spokesman Dave Beery explained the decision Tuesday, which became effective immediately. "They voted to terminate her employment," he said. The...

Middle-school students to be tried as adults in alleged locker room attackFour middle-school students in the Tampa, Fla., area are being charged as adults with sexually assaulting a younger flag-football teammate in a locker room.

A Grand Rapids, Mich., grand jury returned a two-count indictment charging a former school superintendent with engaging in a conspiracy to accept a bribe from a vendor and to deprive his former employer and the citizens of Michigan of his honest services in connection with the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) E-Rate Program. The former superintendent was also charged with obstructing justice in relation to the Department of Justice’s investigation into potential fraud and competitive bidding violations relating to E-Rate Program funding applications in Michigan. According to the indictment filed today in the U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, Mich., Bradley...

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 2, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Although President Barack Obama has advocated speaking "fair minded words" in debating differences on major ethical issues, his recent nominee to the Department of Education's Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools is a homosexual activist with a history of using foul and abusive language against those who have opposed his homosexualist agenda. Kevin Jennings, the founder of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), was recently appointed to the Obama Administration as Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools, which is under the Department of Education led by Education...

Not many schools in California recruit teachers with language like this: "We are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism. . . . Multi-cultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots, and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply." That, it turns out, is just the beginning of the ways in which American Indian Public Charter and its two sibling schools spit in the eye of mainstream education. These small, no-frills, independent public schools in the hard-scrabble flats of Oakland sometimes seem like creations of television's "Colbert Report." They mock liberal orthodoxy with such zeal that it can seem like...

Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced today the arrest of MARIO MESCHINO, age 41, of 24950 Madison in Plainfield, Illinois. MESCHINO was arrested yesterday morning at his residence, without incident, by Special Agents assigned to the Chicago FBI's Innocent Images Task Force (IITF). MESCHINO, who is employed by the First Student Transportation Company in Plainfield as a school bus driver, was charged in a criminal complaint filed yesterday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Chicago with one count of Distribution of Child Pornography, which is a felony offense. According...

The 18-year-old accused of gunning down a middle school student at a bus stop earlier this month allegedly shot him twice and then continued on his way to high school, police and prosecutors said today at a press conference announcing his arrest. "This was a cold-blooded assassination of a middle school student," said Assistant District Attorney Joshua Wall at the press conference at Boston police headquarters. Xzeniyeju Chukwuezi is accused of walking up to Soheil Turner, 15, as he waited for a bus on Dudley Street at 7:20 a.m. on May 7 and firing two bullets into his head. Boston...

A Knox Central High School Math Teacher, 28-year old Jason Davis was arrested Tuesday for 2nd Degree terroristic threatening. He is accused of threatening to kill 500 people and put his school in the national news on the last day of school. Superintendent Walter Hulett says he didn't want to take the accusations lightly, sparking the investigation. Davis sat down with 27 NEWSFIRST and says this was all a misunderstanding. He says he was stressed but not threatening

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 @ 11:24am Dori writes... People asked me why I didn't talk about the governor signing the "everything but marriage" bill yesterday. I didn't address it on the air because to me, there's nothing controversial about the bill. I think homosexuals should have the same legal rights as heteros - but I do not think we should redefine marriage. I am perfectly fine with this bill. But I am NOT fine with the outrageous use of children in the photo-op of the governor signing the bill. Gregoire surrounded herself with a group of four year olds as...

LAROSE, La. – A Louisiana middle school student stormed into a classroom and fired a gunshot over a teacher's head Monday before shooting himself in a bathroom, authorities said. Investigators found a suicide note and plans for a rampage in the teen's journal. The 15-year-old student, whose name was not released, fired once around 9 a.m. inside a classroom at Larose-Cut Off Middle School, then shot himself in the head, said Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre. He was in critical but stable condition. The teacher had never taught the teen. Webre said investigators found a note describing the boy's plans...

The father said he overreacted. And who can blame him when the son is 28 years old. But that's not the best part. The son is also a school board member and a budding Democrat politician who lives in his parent's basement. It's odd enough that a Bedford father would actually call police after arguing with his son about cleaning his room. Stranger still, the sloppy son is 28 years old and serves on the Bedford School Board. "I know this looks bad," said School Board member Andrew Mizsak, who lives with his parents and also works as an independent...

Emulating a controversial practice at many colleges, two high-achieving public school districts in California are giving preference to the children of alumni. The Beverly Hills Unified School District and the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District have adopted legacy admissions policies for children of former students who live outside their enrollment boundaries. The policies appear to be the first in the nation at public schools, education experts said. The programs vary slightly, but leaders of both districts say they hope to raise money by forging closer ties with alumni who may be priced out of their hometowns as well as with...

Surrounded by elementary students from the Green School in Baltimore and charming critters – including an armadillo, cheetah and an Asian Toddy Cat – Democrats declared that the introduction of the “No Child Left Inside Act of 2009” was “historic” legislation that would connect children with nature. Some critics, however, said it is a way to spread environmental propaganda in the public schools.

About 45 Los Angeles teachers and union leaders were arrested and booked for unlawful assembly outside school district headquarters today after they sat in the middle of the street and refused to move in an act of civil disobedience meant to protest possible layoffs. Among those detained outside Los Angeles Unified District offices on Beaudry Street, between Third and Fourth streets, was L.A. teachers union leader A.J. Duffy. The protesters were warned four times by police via bullhorn to move out of the street before they were handcuffed. They were then led to a waiting Los Angeles Police Department bus....

Over the last decade the various teachers unions across the country have expanded their operations into the courtroom. Unions have threatened, and even successfully litigated, "adequacy" lawsuits across the country, to force states to increase funds to K-12 education. On Tuesday, Lynn Warne, president of the Nevada State Education Association, threatened such an adequacy lawsuit. But what exactly is "adequate" funding? The National Center for Education Statistics reports that during the 1959-60 school year, Nevada spent $430 per pupil. By the 1999-2000 school year, Nevada was spending $6,145 per pupil. After adjusting for inflation, Nevada spent about 146 percent more...