Declaration of Independence Banned at Calif School
Is Declaration of Independence unconstitutional?
Updated 31 January 2005: Stevens Creek Parents speak out, offer clarification and information. (Details/commentary at bottom of post.)
Updated 30 November 2004: The lawsuit has been archived on The Smoking Gun.
The Declaration of Independence, various state constitutions, the diary of George Washington and the writings of John Adams and William Penn. These historical documents have been banned from the Cupertino Union School District because they contain some references to God and religion.
Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San Francisco Bay area suburb of Cupertino, sued for discrimination on Monday, claiming he had been singled out for censorship by principal Patricia Vidmar because he is a Christian.
“It’s a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful,” said Williams’ attorney, Terry Thompson.
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Protest letter brings suspension for Willowcreek sixth-grader
Updated 31 January 2005: Superintendent overrules principal, suspension revoked. (Details at bottom of post.)
Tyler Zilz, a sixth-grader at Willowcreek Middle School disagreed with new school rules that prevented students from socializing before school and during lunch periods. With the help of his older brother he wrote a three page letter and distributed copies.
�We, as a student body, we are strong,� Zilz wrote. �We are also intelligent enough to realize an unfair judgment when we see it.�
He encouraged students to wear white shirts and blue pants this week to protest. Reports have filtered out that some students are following the protest dress.
�I will not resort to anything violent or improper,� Zilz wrote.
Andrew Halaschak, school principal and designer of the restrictive rules, gave Zilz a one day in-school suspension for “interfering with the educational process”.
(Tip credit to Tori in Texas)
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Honor student arrested in connection with menacing note
A middle school student at Pointe South Middle School in the Clayton County School District made a list of people who made her angry.
The girl, a gifted student, created the list of 12 or 13 names of students, said something about the list to other students and then tore it up and throw it away, Clayton County schools spokesman Charles White said.
But after members of the school administration learned of the incident, they conducted interviews and reassembled the list before turning it over to Clayton County police, White said.
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Wilcox: School choice ‘flawed’
Pinellas County schools superintendent Clayton Wilcox is outspoken and brutally honest about the school system under his administration. He also has a head for common sense.
He said the school choice plan was “fundamentally flawed from its inception” and in need of short- and long-term changes.
Members of the School Board are “very well-intentioned,” Wilcox said, but are “struggling with the line between management and policymaking,” meaning they too often interfere with his job.
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Teacher arrested in principal slashing
Potted principal goes potty
Perhaps the reason that schools are taking on such a similarity to prisons is the abundance of criminals employed by them.
A Brooklyn teacher and her friend were arrested in the September slashing of a Brooklyn principal, the culmination of what police believe was an ongoing feud between the educators, authorities said Friday.
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Father questions policy on talking in lunch line
The Carmichaels School District has taken the ‘Silence is Golden’ adage to a new level. They now forbid elementary school students from talking in the lunch line.
The Carmichaels board of directors heard from Carmichaels resident Victor Frye about improvements that could be made to speed up the time it takes for students to be served in the grade school cafeteria.
Frye noted that his daughter, who is in third grade, and other elementary school students, are not permitted to talk in the lunch line until all children are served, which takes a good portion of the lunch period. If children do talk in the lunch line, he said, they have to sit at the “bad table,” which takes one minute off the 10 minutes the students are allowed to talk.
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Puyallup School District Pulls Plug On Halo 2 Fundraiser
The Puyallup School District, previously profiled for cancelling the anti-Wiccan celebration of Halloween, has put the kibosh on a student organized game tournament meant to raise funds for Tsunami relief.
The game [Halo 2] is so popular, Rogers High School seniors Mike Alston and Joshua Shake figured a Halo 2 tournament would be the perfect way to raise money for tsunami victims.
“$380 we were thinking was going to go straight into the Red Cross Tsunami fund,” Alston said.
As a precaution, the boys even got parents to sign waivers acknowledging the graphic nature of the game.
But the Puyallup School District canceled the fundraiser, saying the game goes against its anti-violence policy.
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Business segments are generally reactive, not proactive. That is, somebody recognizes a need and then fills it. Zero tolerance and school hyper-discipline have created cottage industries as their fearful needs have become apparent to the business world.
Camerawatch has a website full of examples of scholastic fears. The site opens to a page cluttered with links to articles like “School district installs cameras in every class” and “Where the Hall Monitor Is a Webcam”. Graphics entice with messages like “One School District is saving nearly $250,000 a year” and “ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL SOLUTIONS”.
The fact that there is a successful company in a niche market specializing in installing surveillance equipment in schools should be a very sobering fact.
(Tip credit to Sharon)
Student Suspended Over ‘Hit List’
An 8th grade student at Clay Middle School got angry after being caught passing notes in class. He wrote the names of eight students and an administrator in his notebook and titled the page Hit List.
[Kent DeKoninck, school principal] says he really had no choice but to suspend the eighth grader after a teacher found the student with a hit list.
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DeKoninck says the student on Thursday morning admitted to being angry and writing the list. Students were sent home with copies of this letter explaining the incident to parents. It also says the student could be expelled.
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Zero Intelligence is one year old, and what a year it has been. In the past 365 days we have:
- profiled 281 stories of zero tolerance abuses and other gaffs of scholastic administrations
- had 2189 comments from readers
- been referenced by 180 other websites
- had over half a million visitors
- Update: have 309 people on the email notification list for new content
This is nothing short of phenomenal and I couldn’t be more proud of this site’s success. It shows me that it is worthwhile to get this information out, that there is a receptive and appreciative audience and that it is making a difference. I couldn’t ask for any more than that.
What changes will there be in year two? Well, there’s no sense in messing with a successful system but there is some room for improvement. Coming up soon will be a site redesign with easier and more intuitive navigation and a software upgrade which will help me to combat an ever increasing comment spam problem. Content will remain the same - I will still be profiling cases of zero tolerance abuses as well as other gaffs by scholastic administrations.
Speaking of stories, a fair percentage of the ones I post are discovered and forwarded to me by readers. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate these tips. If a story is not picked up by a national newswire there is a very good chance that it will escape my searches. Even the ones that do get picked up can be missed if they don’t use the specific search terms I look for. Both the quality and quantity of the posts on this site are a direct result of the participation of the readers. Thank you and please keep up the great work.
