From AL.com:

A group of tearful and emotional school teachers from around Alabama, including Huntsville and Decatur, made a plea today for the Legislature to act quickly on the state’s education budget.

At a press conference arranged by the Senate Democratic Caucus, more than a dozen teachers told of their personal plight since receiving their pink slips.

Victoria Lemiux, who was an 11th- and 12th-grade teacher at Lee High School in Huntsville, said 20 of her students who graduated this year were on a school bus that fell off an Interstate 565 ramp on Nov. 20, 2006, killing four.

“I had the pleasure of watching them walk across the stage,” she said. “I received my pink slip before that monumental moment.”

…

Alison Lovell, who was an elementary teacher at Huntsville’s Rolling Hills Elementary School, said she got her second pink slip in two years.

But wait just a minute!  WAFF has a conflicting story:

The clock was ticking until the end of the school year and now that it’s here, were any let go?

No.

Huntsville City Schools spokesman Keith Ward says, “No pink slips.”

That’s for both Madison County and Huntsville City school systems.

Ward says each system was given a budget and a projection was based on the 3% cut the house passed.

So here we have some teachers going to Montgomery - almost certainly at the behest of the AEA - and giving sob stories during a publicity stunt, but their employer is refuting their claims.  The Huntsville City Schools’ spokesman flatly said that no pink slips were handed out.  At least two teachers in that system claimed to have been given pink slips.  Who is struggling with the truth here?

Madison City Schools superintendent Dee Fowler offered up one of my favorite selfish arguments that government bureaucrats - typically in education - love to use.

For Fowler, a smaller state education budget justifies a tax base for schools not fueled by sales tax revenue, which drops during economic downturns.

He said property taxes should drive school funding because they are more stable.

“It’s not fair to compile a budget so tied to economic factors,” Fowler said.

And just why isn’t that fair, Dee?  When the economy slows down real people feel the pain.  Real people make less money (or inflation diminishes their purchasing power - same end difference) and they buy less.  How is it fair to them to have their taxes pegged to more static property taxes that would eat up a greater share of their income during tough economic times while you guys don’t share in the pain?  What makes the government run schools so special that they should be immune to widespread suffering during unsteady economic times?

The Huntsville Times ran an article on Sunday showing statistics that black students are more likely to get arrested than white students in most north Alabama schools.  I’ll try to comment on the content of the story later if I can find the time, but I was surprised to see the nature of the offenses that officers are arresting kids for.

[I]n Huntsville and Decatur, officers arrest disruptive students, with causes ranging from pushing and fighting to cursing a teacher. Students are handcuffed, driven to the juvenile detention home, fingerprinted and released to their parents.

Seriously.  What happened to disciplining kids in the school?

The story quoted the state PTA president who made a great point.

“To me it’s ironic,” said Laurie McCaulley, state PTA president and a candidate for the Huntsville school board. “We didn’t arrest our state senator for fighting. Yet we expect zero tolerance for our children in school.”

McCaulley is, of course, referring to the altercation in the Alabama Senate last year where Charles Bishop slugged Lowell Barron.  I couldn’t agree more with her observation.

Here’s another shameless plea for more money.

The Huntsville-Madison County Chamber of Commerce on Monday affirmed its support for a half-cent sales tax increase for schools, but the chamber’s board chairman said a property tax hike would make a better choice.

…

Monday’s tax talk comes as Madison County school system leaders consider alternative ways to make room for more students, such as using vacant commercial buildings and extending the school day or having “double shifts,” where half the students attend a school in the morning and early afternoon while others start their day after lunch. 

I guess the earlier talk of year round schooling wasn’t enough to scare parents and homeowners into voting for the tax increase.  Now they’re upping the ante, but they may have overplayed their hand.  Splitting school days into morning and afternoon sessions would wreak havoc on parents and depress property values as people left the area.  Which is exactly why such a plan would NEVER become a reality.  The sheer absurdity of the proposal exposes it as an obvious bluff.

From the Star Tribune:

Three small-town eighth-graders in Minnesota were suspended by their principal for not standing Thursday morning for the Pledge of Allegiance, violating a district policy that the principal now says may soon be reworded to protect free speech rights.

As an arm of the government, schools cheapen the pledge by requiring pupils to recite it or stand during it.  Any government that forces its subjects to pledge loyalty doesn’t deserve any loyalty.  One thing that makes our country great is that people have fought and died to protect our right to speak freely without government recourse.

From the Montgomery Advertiser:

The State Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to strengthen requirements for Alabama high school diplomas, but also passed an emergency amendment to potentially allow hundreds of lower-scoring seniors to graduate this year.

The emergency rule amendment covers graduations over the next 35 days and allows students who haven’t passed all five sections of the state’s high school exit exam to graduate if they passed three, including English and math.

I wonder if this will become an annual spectacle.  I’m sure more kids won’t pass all five sections next year and I’m sure moms and dads will haul their precious little offspring before the State Board of Education and demand a variance because their children put in twelve years of effort.  And the board will yield.

The “strengthening” of the diplomas comes in the form of forcing each student into the “advanced diploma” option by default.  Parents will have to choose to downgrade their kids to the basic option.  I don’t really have a problem with making the default curriculum more rigorous.  I don’t think all kids can handle it and graduation rates are already abysmal, but give it a shot.  What I find ridiculous is calling the default option advanced.  No, the default is the new basic.

The spokesman for Huntsville’s government schools told the Huntsville Times that the system is contemplating purchasing laptops for students.  Remember, this is the same school system that thinks our taxes need to be raised because they don’t have enough money.

Giving kids government issued laptops is a bad idea for any number of reasons.  Laptops aren’t rugged enough to stand up to a year (or more) of rough treatment from adolescents.  People tend to treat “free” things with less regard than something that they own.  Laptops also make an attractive target for thieves or for kids to sell themselves.  There are no such concerns with regular textbooks.  I wonder how long it would take for the kids to master using their government furnished wireless devices to cheat on a grand scale - much more so than with cell phones.  And just think of the costs of expanding the IT department to deal with copious technical problems, repairing/refurbishing the laptops regularly, and training personnel to properly manage and utilize the devices.

And back to the issue of Huntsville’s schools needing more of our hard earned money.  The latest data I could find placed total enrollment at approximately 23,000 students.  Their FY2008 budget shows that they will spend $341.3 million.  That equates to about $14,800 of spending per student.  The total revenue per student was slightly lower since the budget indicates a deficit.  To put that number into perspective, annual tuition at the area’s premier private school, Randolph School, ranges from $10,675 per year for K-3 to $13,185 per year for high school.  Now, to be fair the tuition at Randolph is augmented by an endowment and there are some additional fees that students may not have to pay at a government school.  Also, the government schools have to operate (and pay for) a bus network that the private school does not.  Still, how can the government schools credibly argue that they need more from taxpayers when their per pupil spending is already comparable to the best private school in the area?

From the Madison County Record:

Funding for Madison’s new high school is going to be tricky, said Dr. Dee Fowler, Madison City Schools superintendent.

Fowler recently reported the new school, to be located on the Limestone County side of County Line Road, could take $65 million to build. A new source of revenue will be needed to fund construction of the school, Fowler said-which could possibly come from a new half-cent county sales tax in Madison County, which is being voted on June 3.

Keep dreaming, Dee. That county wide sales tax increase is not going to happen.

The sales tax will be Madison County’s, not Limestone County’s, which is where the tricky part comes in. There will be students from both counties going to the new Madison City School, as 400 Limestone students do already in the Madison City system. Limestone County does not pay anything for the education of these crossover students, Fowler said. School funding comes from both city and county taxes, so as Madison continues to spread into its western neighbor, how to make it fair for a Madison City school located in Limestone County?

“We are trying to hammer out a funding agreement,” Fowler said. “This is the job of prudent people to make the fair decision. All the players have something to win or lose.”

I wonder how long Fowler will wait to announce the grand bargain since the sales tax vote will take place on June 3rd. He’s running out of time to advertise such a plan, should one ever come to fruition. Not to worry, though. I’m sure all the schools are actively indoctrinating their captive subjects with the message for mommy and daddy.

Kudos to Walt and his Small Town Political Gazette.

From the Rocky Mountain State:

Adams School District 50 is defending its decision to punish a third grader for sniffing a Sharpie marker.

Eight-year-old Eathan Harris was originally suspended from Harris Park Elementary School for three days. Principal Chris Benisch reduced the suspension to one day after complaints from Harris’ parents.

Harris used a black Sharpie marker to color a small area on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. A teacher sent him to the principal when she noticed him smelling the marker and his clothing.

…

“This is really, really, seriously dangerous,” Benisch said.

In his letter suspending the child, Benisch wrote that smelling the marker fumes could cause the boy to “become intoxicated.”

One small problem with Benisch’s claims: he’s wrong.

A toxicologist with the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center says that claim is nearly impossible.

Dr. Eric Lavonas says non-toxic markers like Sharpies, while pungent-smelling, cannot be used to get high.

“I don’t know whether it would be possible for a real overachiever to figure out a way to get high off them,” Lavonas said. “But in regular use, it’s just not something that’s going to happen.”

“If you went to Costco and bought 50 bags of Sharpies and did something to them, maybe there’s a way to get creative and make it happen,” Lavonas said.

But don’t worry, the schools aren’t going to let a little reality faze them.

Despite the medical evidence, Benisch promised to draw an even clearer line on markers.

“We’ve purged every permanent marker there is in this building,” he said.

He’ll probably win administrator of the year.

I wrote a post yesterday about a local peacenik named Lynda Haynes who is protesting Columbia High School’s JROTC rifle team. I had the opportunity to listen to Ms. Haynes this afternoon on a local talk show. She said, and I kid you not, that high school JROTC programs lead to gangs and violence.

Ms. Haynes, member of the North Alabama Military Hating Peace Network, cited as evidence a website that seeks to undermine our armed forces by encouraging people to go AWOL. The site has a page dedicated to JROTC programs, which includes a link at the top for finding out “if a JROTC unit is coming to your community” as though it a JROTC program is analogous to a posse of child molesters. The site was obviously authored by someone with no real knowledge of JROTC programs and says that “JROTC is the only program in our schools which can be expected to cause deaths and severe casualties among its graduates.” Well, not really Ms. Haynes.

Virtually every high school sport has had a history of students dying while participating. Deaths related to high school football tend to register about five to fifteen per year and 36 died in 1968 alone. And while relatively few high school athletes go on to compete on the college gridiron, and fewer still in the NFL, we still hear about such deaths. One could even argue that Sean Taylor’s murder was the result of the fortune he derived from pro football and therefore the sport played a role in his death. Maybe we should ban football.

The anti-military site given by Ms. Haynes goes on to list a number of unsourced incidents involving individuals affiliated with JROTC. The list includes a “JROTC enthusiast,” which translates into a kid who was not actually in the JROTC program but wore military fatigues. It also includes the terrifying story about how some kids fainted while standing in formation in the hot sun (again, note the football parallel). It even mentions a JROTC instructor who sexually abused female cadets. By that logic maybe we should ban all reading teachers too.

I mentioned that the list of crimes on the anti military site were unsourced. I tried to Google the first one, which was about a gang called the “Fenkell Mafia Killers,” and got no valid hits other than a book that used the anti-military site as a source. But, lets give the kooks the benefit of the doubt and assume all the details are accurate. So what if there are documented cases of kids affiliated with JROTC committing crimes, hazing other cadets, or fainting from heat exhaustion? A very cursory Google search found multiple stories about high school football players committing sexual assaults and even murders. Hazing has long been prevalent in social fraternities (and sports teams). Heat related “injuries” are common in high school sports. Does that mean all these activities are evil and should be banned? NO! Furthermore, the fact that some of the kids involved in the listed crimes participated in JROTC may be ancillary to the crime, not a contributing factor as the military haters would lead you to believe.

I was the battalion commander of my high school’s JROTC program many years ago. I don’t recall any teaching of violence. I do recall leadership instruction and training. I remember performing acts of service. I remember professional instructors who emphasized safety and genuinely cared for the cadets. Most of all I remember seeing the program turn kids - many of whom I might have categorized as “wayward” - into focused, mature individuals eager to make something of themselves. When we trained in hot weather we took great pains to tell cadets to speak up if they felt ill. The extent of our “hazing” was limited to messy activities in which senior and junior cadets equally participated, a mutually enjoyable event that did not involve any intimindation or demeaning actions.

Ms. Haynes thinks that the schools should replace JROTC with “conflict resolution” classes. Let’s be a bit more frank about what Ms. Haynes wants. She loathes our military, she probably views them as baby killers, and would like to weaken it by eliminating a fine source of identifying young, eager, and talented soldiers. I’m an open minded guy and I would like to see if there is some merit to Ms. Haynes’ “conflict resolution” solution. If she is willing, I would like to take up a collection to buy her a ticket to Sudan. Once there she can spearhead efforts to put an end to the genocide there using her conflict resolution skills. When a gang of Janjaweed thugs attepmts to rape her we’ll see how effective her conflict resolution approach is at diffusing that situation.

We live in a dangerous world. We should make every effort to avoid violence as a solution (which by the way is taught in JROTC), but we cannot be so foolish as to rely on passivity as the means of protecting our persons and our property. People like Ms. Haynes should step back and reflect on the fact that people have had to use violence to secure and defend the freedom that allows her to condemn them for their efforts. There are other countries that aren’t so tolerant.