Updated 27 July 2004: Charges dropped against Conroy (at bottom of post)
Assistant principal admits planting marijuana in student’s locker
Additional information from The Smoking Gun
Police say Pat Conroy told them earlier this month that he placed the marijuana in the male student’s locker at South Haven High School last year because he suspected the student was a drug dealer. Conroy told police he was trying to get the boy expelled.
Wow. What an unbelievable abuse of power and position. In today’s environment there is nobody who would have believed the student if the drugs were found in his locker. He was saved only because the police drug dog didn’t find the marijuana.
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Updated 27 July 2004: Court rules for George T. (at bottom of post)
Updated 25 May 2004: Added George’s poem.
Authorities look to high court in case of teen’s ‘dark poetry’
It was 2001 and ‘George T’ was having a bad time of school. He had a history of non-violent trouble and had recently been transfered to Santa Teresa High School. The 15 year old Honors English student expressed his teen angst through dark poetry. This would have been completely fine except he shared it with a fellow Honors student. That student reported him to the school and the school expelled him and turned him over to the juvenile court system.
For school officials and law enforcement, the case is seen as an opportunity for the state’s high court to provide guidance for when something a student has said or written should be sufficient to warrant a trip into the juvenile justice system. School officials have increasingly turned over cases of threatening behavior to police, prompting concerns among civil liberties groups that normal student expressions of inner turmoil are being treated like crimes instead of social and mental health problems.
Even prosecutors who deal with juveniles concede they will welcome some direction from the Supreme Court. Kurt Kumli, a deputy district attorney who supervises juvenile prosecutions in Santa Clara County, said he believes the law supports the conviction against George T., but he wonders whether it was the type of case that belongs in the criminal system.
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Court: Student’s rights violated
Brandon Tun and three other Wayne high school wrestlers were photographed while taking showers after a wrestling practice. That student later gave the negatives to Tun and they were subsequently confiscated and developed by school officials. All four wrestlers were then expelled for violating a school rule against public indecency.
[He] could not have violated a school rule against public indecency because a locker-room shower is not a public place, U.S. Magistrate Judge Roger B. Cosbey ruled.
“Tun was taking a shower in a place explicitly designated and designed for that activity and was naturally nude while doing so. To suggest that this conduct constitutes public indecency is the same as saying that everyone who showers at a YMCA or athletic club commits a criminal act in the state of Indiana,” Cosbey wrote.
Even if the photographs were deemed pornographic, school policy does not set expulsion as a penalty for possessing pornography, Cosbey also found.
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Whitby student suspended for jaywalking
Kelly Simo, a 17 year-old student at Anderson Collegiate, had a rude welcoming when she got to school on February 5. Vice principal Pauline Langmaid handed her a one day suspension for jaywalking on her way home the previous day. Kelly claims the light turned red while she was in the intersection, the vice principal says it was red and that Kelly must be punished for this ’safety issue’ as an example to underclassmen.
I say that’s a load of bull and Kelly’s mother Jackie feels the same way. It does not matter whether Kelly jaywalked or not. The incident was not on school property and was not during school hours. Jackie Simo confronted the school on precisely this issue.
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At a Forsyth County school the answer to that question will be “a whole lot of books”. North Forsyth High School in Georgia is a fairly high performing school. SAT/ACT averages last year were significantly higher than the Georgia average and statistically similar to the national averages. Criminal activity isn’t a notable problem and there is no known gang activity. But that isn’t stopping the implementation of new policies to enforce tighter security.
The new bookbag policy specifies that only see-through mesh or clear bags are allowed. Backpacks and sport bags are right out. Judging from a cursory tour through local stores they will be seeing a large number of mesh laundry bags as these seem to be the only retail items that fit the new policy. They won’t be seen during the schoolday though as even these privacy free bags are strictly forbidden in halls and classrooms.
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Updated 20 July 2004: Clarifying comments from a Christian Scientist reader (at bottom of post)
Married lesbian can’t teach
A teacher at Church of Christ, Scientist took advantage of the temporarily relaxed marriage laws in Massachusetts to marry her lesbian lover (out of state couples are no longer being married there). The church fired her when she refused to repent. Her firing is a personnel issue - one I neither support nor wish to debate. What I have a serious problem about is this:
Kathleen Clementson returned her teaching credentials and left the church. Her former students are now considered by the Christian Science board of directors to have had no primary instruction.
Her homosexuality tainted and undermined knowledge that was previously dispensed? I wonder how long she worked there. Will they need to recall high school and college students to retake their grade school tests? Are any of her former students in the church seminary? If they’ve taught other students would that also not count? Is homosexual anti-knowledge like cooties where it stops after three exchanges? I’ll try to contact the church and find out.
UPDATE:
12:22 PM - I just got off the phone with the church. Kathleen was teaching a religious curriculum - the scriptures as used by the Christian Scientists.
(Tip credit to Where the Dolphins Play)
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Updated 16 July 2004: Judge throws out punishment (at bottom of post)
Judge told school’s policy on Motrin may discriminate
On December 3, fifteen year-old Ysatis Jones took a Motrin to relieve her menstrual cramps. The Clay-Chalkville High code of conduct says that taking any drug is a major offense and they sentenced her to 15 days in alternative school as her punishment.
Dawna Hill, a Jefferson County school board hearing officer, testified that Jones’ offense was too serious for a sentence of community service.
For offenses involving drugs, Hill said punishment could range from community service to extended time in alternative school.
“Because of the severity of having possession of drugs, I did not consider community service in this case,” Hill said.
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Part 1 - Speech costs grad
Part 2 - Her validation day
Part 3 - Apology to HS grad is diploma-tic
Part 4 - Sheepskin at Tiffany’s
17 year-old Tiffany Schley was the Valedictorian for the High School of Legal Studies in Bushwick, Brooklyn, graduating class of 2004. Her dramatic story began when she stuck to her original valedictorian speech including actual meaningful content instead of the fluff piece edited for her by the school. She delivered a blistering speech about her alma mater before having her mike cut out and being escorted away from the graduation ceremony.
Among her gripes: The school has had four principals in four years, overcrowded classes, a shortage of textbooks and other basic materials, unqualified teachers, unstable staffing and uncaring administrators who refused to meet with students to discuss the school’s problems.
“They always want to keep the problems hush-hush, but what goes on in this school is real,” said Tiffany, who was also the editor of the school newspaper, yearbook chairwoman and a member of the student council.
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He can’t play
When it is not available to the public. Falmouth has just one public playground and the actions of the school tend to put the definition of “public” in question.
Nine-year-old Jan Rankowski became suspicious when a teacher’s aide began following him around with a clipboard at this small town’s only public playground.
The aide talked to Jan’s playmates and took notes on his behavior, said the home-schooled boy, who has autism.
Then, Jan’s suspicion turned to anger when Falmouth school officials barred him last fall from using the playground during the day. They said he undermined adults, used unacceptable language, and played aggressively with other children, including pushing a first-grader too hard on a swing.
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It seems that the wrong element is making up the rolls at Harvard University. Attendance by blacks is up to a celebration inducing 8 percent of total enrollment. The problem is that this percentage is being inflated by the wrong type of black student.
Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of Harvard’s African and African-American studies department, pointed out that the majority of them � perhaps as many as two-thirds � were West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples.
Only 1/3 are what Guinier and Gates would consider slave descendants. That is, black students with four black grandparents who were all born in the United States. These other blacks are motivated immigrants, children of immigrants or mulatto children of whites. Privileged types. Not the sort who should be given the advantages of Affirmative Action programs.
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