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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facing a crippling increase in fuel costs, some rural U.S. schools are mulling a solution born of the '70s oil crisis: a four-day week. Cutting out one day of school has been the key to preserving educational programs and staff in parts of Kentucky, New Mexico and Minnesota, outweighing some parents' concerns about finding day-care for the day off. "For rural school districts where buses may travel 100 miles round-trip each day, there certainly are transportation savings worth considering," said Marc Egan, the director of federal affairs at the National School Boards Association. Egan said about...

San Francisco is a city that wants to do the right thing. The problem, as always, is when our politicians get carried away. Certainly, no one has any problem with standing up for someone's right to express themselves or control their own life. San Francisco has a long and proud record of backing those kinds of issues. Same-sex marriage? Absolutely. Universal health care? That, too. Banning the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps from local high schools - despite the fact that there has been no complaint about the program - because you disagree with the American military's policy on gay...

Asian American students will outnumber white classmates for the first time in the freshman class at the region's most prestigious public magnet school this fall, a milestone reached as the number of African Americans and Hispanics has remained low and the Fairfax County School Board prepares to review the school's admission policy. The rising concentration of Asian Americans at T.J. mirrors demographic trends in other elite math and science magnet schools. In New York, the selective and specialized Stuyvesant High School, Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School have Asian American majorities, although about 10 percent of...

Someone once said school board politics can be the roughest politics of all. That wise person probably served on a board and faced voter hostility over proposed budgets and, on more than one occasion, the wrath of parents upset over a school policy affecting their children. All this for an office that comes with no pay and many hours of homework on educational issues and state regulations. And, oh, yes, school board meetings can get testy, even hostile, when there is a controversial issue. It all goes with the territory -- unless you are a member of the Guilderland School...

A pair of former Ware Shoals High School students have filed lawsuits against Ware Shoals School District 51 and its board of trustees in relation to the district’s employment of ex-cheerleading coach and guidance clerk Jill Moore. The lawsuits were filed on behalf of the two WSHS graduates -- one a former cheerleader, the other a former Hornets’ football player -- by Charleston attorney Lionel Lofton. “This is a civil lawsuit being brought by two former Ware Shoals High School students,” Lofton said Wednesday. Each lawsuit levies four causes of action against the district and its board, including gross negligence,...

A brief has been filed in a federal appeals court asking the justices to overturn a judge who ordered a school district specifically to ban the Bible in its policy regarding the distribution of literature to students. WND reported just a week ago when a federal judge declared unconstitutional a Florida law that was used to prevent Gideons from handing out Bibles to students on public property near schools.Now comes another dispute, this one in Missouri and pursued by Liberty Counsel in its request to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. It wants the court to...

(06-26) 19:20 PDT San Francisco -- San Francisco public high schools will no longer award physical education credit to students enrolled in the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, the Board of Education voted today in a hastily scheduled meeting. The 4-to-1 vote will likely cripple the 90-year-old military education program that serves 1,200 students because most use it to satisfy their p.e. requirement. "If students really love the program, they'll take it anyway," said board president Mark Sanchez, who has led opposition to JROTC because of its ties to the military. Gregory Wing, who will be a sophomore at Lowell...

Tonight, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education will discuss a proposal to change its grading policy. The proposal states that 61 percent is the lowest numeric grade a student could receive if he or she gets an "F" letter grade. Currently, a zero is the lowest numerical grade a student can receive. Fractions of points greater than 0.5 will be rounded up to the next whole number, the proposal says, and homework cannot count more than 20 percent of the quarterly grade. "The district's [proposed] grading guidelines prohibit teachers from using grading practices that are punitive in nature...

Parent wants apology from school district He spends $4,000 fighting citation By JANICE KAYSER jkayser@cninow.com Posted: June 5, 2008 The Wauwatosa father said he took a photo of a reading wall in a Wilson School classroom Feb. 19 to help a parent in his wife's online support group for parents of autistic children. The photo, however, led to an interrogation of another parent, conspiracy accusations and, eight hours later, a disorderly conduct arrest of the puzzled father. "I just cannot believe this happened," Dave Gallenberger said. Gallenberger and his wife, Arlene, and Dana and Barbara Nicholson told a reporter last...

Fairfax May Junk Study on Behavior Staff Report Shows Racial, Ethnic Gaps Among Students Fairfax County School Board members said they are likely to abandon a staff report that showed racial and ethnic gaps in some measures of student behavior, including in the demonstration of "sound moral character and ethical judgment." The board had delayed an April vote to approve the report after concerns were raised that findings were based on subjective measures, such as elementary report card data, and that they would fuel negative stereotypes. Board member Phillip A. Niedzielski-Eichner (Providence) said yesterday that he plans to propose at...

A seven-year member of the Baldwin Park school board has been arrested for allegedly breaking the windows of a home and driving under the influence. Authorities say 34-year-old Sergio Corona was being held on suspicion of felony vandalism, driving under the influence of a controlled substance and driving with an expired license. He was arrested early Thursday after police received a call about a man yelling and breaking the window of a front door of a home. Baldwin Park is about 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. Police arriving at the scene found a man driving a car with...

Kids' dress-up day draws Christian ire 10 minutes ago An elementary-school event in which kids were encouraged to dress as members of the opposite gender drew the ire of a Christian radio group, whose angry broadcast prompted outraged calls to the district office. Students at Pineview Elementary in Reedsburg had been dressing in costume all last week as part of an annual school tradition called Wacky Week. On Friday, students were encouraged to dress either as senior citizens or as members of the opposite sex. A local resident informed the Voice of Christian Youth America on Friday. The Milwaukee-based radio...

The superintendent of a public school that sparked a federal lawsuit by teaching homosexuality to children as young as kindergarten has told another worried parent he can review course material, but he has no right to withdraw his child from class during lessons. The lawsuit, on which WND has reported extensively, was filed by David Parker, whose child was in a class at Estabrook Elementary in Lexington, Mass. Parker's strenuous objection to not being notified when lessons concerning homosexuality were presented landed him in jail overnight. His subsequent lawsuit resulted in a court verdict that essentially concludes parents have no...

South Bend school officials have rejected a request by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign to hold a rally in the Washington High School gym on Friday. South Bend Community School Corp. board President Sheila Bergerson says Clinton's visit would have interfered with the school day. She says plans called for juniors and seniors to attend the public rally. School board members denied the request Wednesday night. Bergerson says she worried that the school corporation would give the impression it was endorsing Clinton. A Mishawaka schools spokeswoman says Clinton will instead be at nearby Mishawaka High School. Clinton also plans events in...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - The state Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of a functionally illiterate man who says the Kanawha County school system failed to provide him a proper education. An attorney for Thomas Sturm says that although Sturm was allowed to graduate from Sissonville High School in 2004, the 21-year-old man can read only on a third-grade level. The attorney, Mike Clifford, says the school board failed to abide by state and federal laws meant to monitor and protect the rights of students with disabilities. Sturm allegedly suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Kanawha County Judge...

Times are tight for everyone, for the private and public sectors alike.  While those of us in the private sector are having to do some serious belt tightening, it's only reasonable to expect government to do the same. Government spends our tax dollars, after all. You'd think that in 2008 it wouldn't be necessary to give elected officials a gentle reminder about maintaining the public trust by spending tax dollars wisely, but a recent Associated Press examination of spending by the state board of education proves otherwise. The AP investigation found that members of the board claimed as much...

The Northeastern School Board's discussion Monday regarding the calendar for the 2008-09 school year prompted a debate over the role of two holidays. The district designated Jan. 19, 2009, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as a day off. It designated Feb. 16, 2009, Washington's Birthday, and Presidents Day, as a snow makeup day. A snow makeup day is considered a day off unless the district has been forced to cancel too many school days because of the weather. If a cancellation does occur, a snow makeup day is considered a normal day of school. This system helps districts ensure that...

WASHINGTON - School budgets have seemed to defy gravity in recent years — going up steadily without ever coming down. But school board members from across the country say that's likely to change soon, and they're bracing for leaner times forced by the nation's economic downturn. Board members in Washington last week for an annual conference said shortfalls in state budgets coupled with pessimistic predictions about local revenues are forcing them to look for ways to trim next year's budgets, which they are working on now. About half of the states are facing projected budget shortfalls, according to the Center...

ANN ARBOR, MI – In oral arguments last week, the Thomas More Law Center asked Maryland state circuit court judge William Rowan III to overturn a Maryland Board of Education ruling that approves of public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, teaching 8th and 10th graders that homosexuality is innate—meaning they are born that way. The schools also show how to use condoms in anal and oral sex. Montgomery educators were forced to defend their new sex curriculum that promotes anal sex, homosexuality, bisexuality and transvestitism despite strong opposition from several pro-family groups. The controversial new curriculum was adopted as a...

(12-14) 17:53 PST NAPA VALLEY -- A Napa Valley middle school's decision to bar a child from class last winter for wearing a pair of Tigger socks has proved costly. The Napa Valley Unified School District is on the hook for at least $95,000 in lawyers' fees under a legal settlement announced Thursday between the district and five Napa families who challenged the school's dress code. That's enough to pay the salaries of two teachers for a year, but it's only about a quarter of what the district would have had to pay if it went on to lose the...

Contact: Pastor Bryan Longworth, Covenant Tabernacle World Outreach Center, 772-380-2111  PORT ST. LUCIE, Florida, Dec. 14 /Christian Newswire/ -- With a 4 – 1 vote, the St. Lucie County, FL School Board approved a graphic, explicit, risky Condom Ed Curriculum. Only Troy Ingersol had the wisdom and courage to reject this outrageous curriculum. Kathryn Hensley, Carol Hilson, John Carvelli, and Judi Miller all followed the recommendation of Planned Parenthood's Michael Panella to support the following: For 4th Graders, the curriculum instructs teachers to: "Read students the following statement of fact: 'The AIDS virus is transmitted only through blood, semen, and...

But a strong majority of a very small minority is an even smaller minority. After more than two months of outreach through schools, churches and community groups, less than 10% of parents voted in the advisory ballot. Let's face it, voter turnout in the last school board election was just about as bad. But the school board is remote, its reach amorphous and the likelihood for imminent change small. In this case, parents had the chance to speak out on transforming their children's schools, bringing in new management, new financial resources and even new teachers. Instead, they stayed home in...

Fairfax County, Virginia is about to re-draw district boundary lines, which will affect at least 1/4 of the families in that county. School board says this is being done primarily because South Lakes High School, in Reston, is under-enrolled. Reston, a planned community has a variety of income levels including government project housing for low or no income families. At South Lakes H.S., 1/3 of the students are on free lunch. Gangs have caused problems in the school and fights have been violent. The school does offer the International Baccalaureate program which has brought in a few serious students, yet...

Diversity assembly at Eastern sparks backlash from parents WENDY L. GARMAN For The York Dispatch Article Launched: 11/16/2007 10:47:40 AM EST Eastern York School District's board meeting was standing-room only Thursday night after more than two dozen people turned out to protest a diversity assembly held last week at the high school. Kathy Freeland, who has a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old in the district, said she received no notification of such an assembly and was "disturbed" to learn that her children were addressed by a "gay man, an African-American woman and a Jew." "I send my children to school to...

Board pulls out of program; Organizers try to understand reasoning Posted By Jennifer Hamilton-McCharles The Nugget Posted 10 hours ago Rose Haufe doesn't buy the reason given by the area's largest school board to no longer support Operation Christmas Child. The Powassan resident told The Nugget Tuesday the project is "simply caring for people and is beyond any religious boundaries." "I'm trying to think of their motivation, but I can't think of why they wouldn't want to do this," Haufe said. "When a child gives they never forget. It's a lesson they need to learn. It teaches them there's others...

WATERLOO, Ontario, November 2, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Family Life Advisory Committee (FLAC) of the Waterloo Catholic District School Board (WCDSB) met last night to consider objections to a pro-homosexual teacher resource manual which were raised by the local group Defend Traditional Marriage and Family (DTMF). Despite a petition signed by nearly 500 Catholic parents opposing the book, FLAC decided to retain "Open Minds to Equality" in an 11-5 vote. Page 16 of the book states: "The heterosexism in our society fosters homophobia, the fear and hatred of homosexuality which is grounded in prejudice and stereotyping." The book provides role...

HALTOM CITY -- The Birdville school district superintendent will apologize in writing to a student offended by a lesson on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and teachers will get cultural sensitivity training. Those were the agreements reached Wednesday after a 90-minute meeting between school officials, 17-year-old Ibrahim Mohamed, his parents and a coalition of activists offended by the teacher's repeated use of a racial slur that is in the text of the classic 1884 Mark Twain novel. The school district has removed the book from the Richland High School student's class and has allowed him to enroll in a different...

STEELE, N.D. - School boards across the country are debating how to deal with parents like Cody Mittleider. The 28-year-old married father of three young children spent a year in prison for a 2005 rape conviction, but has since worked to become a respected member of the community. He quit drinking, attends counseling, got a job at a potato farm and joined the volunteer fire department in this central North Dakota town of about 760 residents. But as a convicted sex offender, Mittleider, is not allowed to attend his children's school programs or athletic events, pending a Steele School Board...

Thanks to pressure from the right and left...the nonsense ends! SAMPSON COUNTY, N.C – A North Carolina High School that came under national attention over their rule that prohibited students from wearing items with the American flag, or any flag from other countries, has lifted the ban. Superintendent Dr. L. Stewart Hobbs, Jr said they have lifted the ban on flags and “from this point on, all dress code changes will be made at the school board level.” But before I finish eating my hat...I get this mixed bag email. I just received a return call from Dr. Hobbs, the...

BRANDON, S.D. (AP) Mom's brownies and other homemade goodies have been banned from grade schools in the Brandon-Valley School District. The ban is intended to protect kids who are allergic to nuts. The "no shared treats" policy means no more suckers, cookies or even apples. And it means shared treats will not be allowed at Halloween, Christmas and Valentine's parties in grade-school classrooms. School district officials say the ban will be strictly enforced. Although the district no longer allows shared treats in elementary schools, students may bring their own snacks from home. The ban does not apply to Brand Valley...

Friends and Colleagues, I have a special request concerning the Guilford County School Board, which I understand is meeting in Greensboro, NC, tomorrow night. I hear they will take final action on two matters. One is to set all student extra-curricular meetings back to start at 6 p.m., rather than right after the school days end. This is insane. Where both parents work, this destroys an advantage and creates a problem. Also, it means that students will get out of these meetings AFTER DARK, which ain't too safe. And, because of the gap between the school day and meetings, all...

OAKLAND -- Oakland school board member Chris Dobbins went on several dates with a 17-year-old girl, sent her inappropriate text messages and e-mails and had several late night rendezvous at secluded venues, an internal investigation found. Those findings by a special three-member committee of the Oakland Unified School District board prompted a majority of his board colleagues Wednesday to urge the 35-year-old Dobbins to resign. The board's vote was 5-2, with two members absent. In addition to calling for his resignation, the board's resolution censured Dobbins and removed him from all board committees, appointments and external assignments. Dobbins referred questions...

A Texas family is suing Gov. Rick Perry and a school district over a state-mandated moment of silence in schools, according to The Dallas Morning News. David Wallace Croft and his wife, Shannon, of Carrollton, Texas, have three children at Rosemeade Elementary and argue that the moment of silence is unconstitutional and amounts to state-sanctioned school prayer.

The Seattle School Board unanimously approved new restrictions on military recruiters visiting high school campuses, though the changes didn't go far enough for student protesters. The Wednesday night vote capped a months-long debate, complete with protests by a group of students and community members. Students had lobbied board members, and occasionally disrupted several Seattle School Board meetings, held rallies and met with members one-on-one in to press their case. Students in the group Youth Against War and Racism even developed their own proposal, which would ban all recruiting in schools in lieu of an annual, districtwide recruiting fair. Despite their...

SAN DIEGO -- A San Diego school that drew international attention for setting aside time for Muslim students to pray in the classroom will no longer do so, it was reported Friday. Instead, Carver Elementary's schedule will be reconfigured so students can say their required midday prayers during lunch. Courts have long upheld students' rights to pray on their own during lunch or recess, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. When the new school year begins, Carver will have two lunch periods, including one that will fall when Muslims typically say their midday prayer -- between 1 and 2 p.m., the...

San Diego School District Removes “God” from the Classroom: Thomas More Law Center Files Suit on Behalf of Teacher Tue, May 1, 2007 ANN ARBOR, MI – The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announced today that it has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Poway Unified School District, located in San Diego, California. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of Brad Johnson, a respected teacher who has been teaching in the school district for 30 years. The lawsuit claims that school officials violated Johnson’s constitutional rights by ordering...

Jul 25, 2007 — Standing with blood pouring from a deep gash in his head, two eyes nearly swollen shut and a broken nose, Richard Hupper was "almost zombie-like" as David Yates asked him questions about what happened inside a restroom at Farquhar Park Sunday. People were screaming as parents frantically grabbed their children when Hupper stumbled out of the restroom covered in blood, Yates said. Yates used his cell phone to call York County 911 to request police and ambulance for a man who was brutally beaten when he left an outdoor concert by the York Symphony to use...

Former Orleans Parish School Board President Ellenese Brooks-Simms pled guilty to accepting $140,000 in bribes from a local businessman in exchange for promoting and approving a software education program for the parish schools, her attorney announced Wednesday. --- SNIP ---- The documents showed that in 2002, 2003 and 2004, Brooks-Simms approved contracts between the school board and JRL Enterprises to provide the OPSB with computer-related equipment, programs and services and that on three separate occasions she received payments in the amount of $40,000, $50,000 and $50,000.

The National Association of State Boards of Education will elect officers in July, and for one office, president-elect, there is only one candidate: a member of the Kansas school board who supported its efforts against the teaching of evolution. Scientists who have been active in the nation’s evolution debate say they want to thwart his candidacy, but it is not clear that they can. The candidate is Kenneth R. Willard, a Kansas Republican who voted with the conservative majority in 2005 when the school board changed the state’s science standards to allow inclusion of intelligent design, an ideological cousin of...

I am considering a run for School Board in my community. We really have a terrific school district and one of my jobs would be to keep it that way. However, we have a major reconstruction of the high school coming down the pipe that will start design and planning in the next 12 months. Total cost of the project will be around $10million. We have around 25,000 people in the community and our real estate taxes are relatively high. Figure for a $200,000 house you pay $5,000 per year PLUS a 2% wage tax. Revenue for the school district...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A divided federal appeals court panel issued a ruling that may allow the Tangipahoa Parish school board to open its meetings with a nonsectarian prayer, and opened up a new chapter in a long dispute between school officials and the American Civil Liberties Union. The three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the school board should be treated like other elected bodies, which are allowed to invoke nonsectarian and non-proselytizing prayers at their meetings. But the panel upheld a district judge's view that the Tangipahoa board's previous practice of prayer violated...

The school board race in Rockingham County, N.C., has produced imagery including, from left, Pink Floyd, “Star Wars,” and the Wild West.The election season is getting punchier in places far from the national political spotlight — even in Eden, N.C., where 16 candidates are slugging it out for the five available seats on the Rockingham County School Board. One of them produced a television advertisement suggesting that the school system turned children into automatons. It is shot against a backdrop of a Pink Floyd video showing children coursing through an assembly line to the lyrics: “We don’t need no education....

School Board Campaign Commercial #1 It started airing this afternoon. It's ummmm... elicited some interesting comments. I'll probably be releasing another version soon with a different disclaimer at the beginning, 'cuz I'm not all that happy with it: I wanted to shoot that outside but we've had a lot of rain the past few days. So here it is, my first-ever political campaign TV ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLi5B0Iefsk EDIT: Lisa posted a few thoughts about the ad and the controversy it's evoked on her blog. She says some things a lot better than I can about it.

http://us.video.aol.com/video.index.adp?mode=2&guideContext=65.73&pmmsid=1704808 CNN's Ed Lavandera reports that a Dallas school board official wants people to pull their pants up. (Sept. 7)

Montgomery County school officials announced yesterday that they are temporarily banning outside groups such as parent-teacher associations and the Boy Scouts from distributing fliers about activities and events in student backpacks. The decision comes less than a week after a federal appeals court ruled that the school system's policy for flier distribution was unconstitutional because it gave educators unlimited power to approve or reject materials. The case is the outgrowth of a dispute between the school system and Child Evangelism Fellowship of Maryland. The group filed suit in 2001 after the school system denied its request to distribute fliers about...

The sponsor of a failed measure that targeted illegal immigrants is running for the city's school board and says he will campaign to abolish bilingual education in the city's schools. Joseph Turner, 29, said he is running for the San Bernardino City Unified School District board to "aggressively target the policies that aid and abet illegal immigration." His girlfriend, Alexis Ashley, is running for the San Bernardino County Board of Education and is seeking the same seat as Gil Navarro, a pro-immigrant activist who campaigned against Turner's ballot measure. Turner and Ashley, both political novices, turned in their candidacy papers...

  Organizers of the first ever JESUS FEST in downtown Clarksburg have invited the volunteers for the "Christian Freedom Fund" to attend JESUS FEST on Saturday, August 12th.       JESUS FEST chairman Frank Jarman invited Harrison County school board member Mike Queen to be a guest speaker on the main stage Saturday.  Mike will speak at 12:30pm.  The main stage is located in front of the Harrison County Courthouse.Queen will use the opportunity to update attendees on the success of the fund drive for legal fees to protect a portrait of Jesus which has been hanging at Bridgeport High School for...

http://www.knightforboard.orgPRESS RELEASE IMMEDIATE RELEASE CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT ANNOUNCES CANDIDACY FOR SCHOOL BOARD August 7 2006 Christopher Knight has announced his candidacy for one of the at-large seats on the Rockingham County Board of Education after filing to run on August 3rd. "I believe that I will bring a fresh and unique perspective to the Rockingham County school board," Knight said. "The realm of education is one that I have experienced much during my young life, from studying to be a teacher to actually running a classroom. I'm looking forward to contributing a new voice toward school policy-making." At the top of...

What’s the Matter with Kansas? Dishonest Darwinists -- coming to a state near you. By David Klinghoffer ----------------------------------- State school-board elections don’t normally receive much national media attention. Yet the school-board primary race in Kansas on Tuesday, representing a key front in the Darwin wars, was an exception. Will Darwinism be taught as unquestionable dogma? That’s the question that voters decided. In Kansas, it seems it will. Kansas has been one of five states with biology curricula that include instruction about the evidence both for and against neo-Darwinism, requiring that students learn about the “critical analysis” of evolutionary theory. Darwin...

TOPEKA, Kan. -- Conservative Republicans who pushed anti-evolution standards back into Kansas schools last year have lost control of the state Board of Education once again. The most closely watched race was in western Kansas, where incumbent conservative Connie Morris lost her Republican primary Tuesday. The former teacher had described evolution as "an age-old fairy tale" and "a nice bedtime story" unsupported by science. As a result of Tuesday's vote, board members and candidates who believe evolution is well-supported by evidence will have a 6-4 majority. Evolution skeptics had entered the election with a two-person majority.