medical school interview

High school yearbook snafus anger parents

High school yearbooks are supposed to enshrine one’s happy youthful memories forever. Unfortunately, quite a few parents and students opened up their yearbooks with a gasp of horror this year to discover inappropriate quotes, photos and a politically inflammatory list instead of the usual feel-good fare. Let’s hope everyone takes the summer to cool off.

In Arkansas, for instance, the 2010-2011 yearbook at Russellville Middle School lists the “5 worst people of all time.” Students listed former President George W. Bush and Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, right after Adolph Hitler, Osama Bin Laden and Charles Manson.

Superintendent Randall Williams asked the yearbook printing company to cover the list with pieces of tape, but many parents aren’t mollified.

“I think it’s just hard to explain, and I’ve talked to the sponsor and she is very very very upset about it. That she didn’t pay any attention to that particular part of that particular page,” he told the local Fox affiliate. “I think she maybe just scanned the whole page and went on.”

At River City High School in West Sacramento, Calif, a 16-year-old yearbook editor wrote a screed describing the school’s cheerleading team as being “dolled up” in “glorified underwear” in violation of the school’s dress code, reports Babble’s Meredith Carroll. The page dedicated to the cheerleading squad was titled “Who Wears Short Skirts?” and accompanied by an action-shot photo (above) showing the squad with their skirts raised, and another photo that was a cropped shot showing only the girls’ legs.

School officials have told angry parents and students that the language is not libelous, nor does it harm the school’s mission to educate students, so it’s protected by the First Amendment. The 16-year-old who wrote the copy released a statement saying she deeply regrets writing the words and meant no harm. “While I did try out for the team in 2009, I carry no resentment towards the cheerleaders or their families,” the student wrote.

“I was really mad. I was just shaking,” one of the cheerleaders, Breannah Gully, told ABC in describing the moment she saw the yearbook. “Everyone had to tell me to calm down…. I called my mom, and I was crying.”

Meanwhile in Chesapeake, Virginia, an Oscar Smith High School senior apparently thought it would be a good idea to quote Adolf Hitler in his yearbook. The student chose the phrase “The more, the merrier,” attributing it rather ominously to the murderous German dictator for the senior saying that ran next to his photo. (It doesn’t appear that Hitler actually ever said the words, but let us know if we’re wrong.)

“It slipped through,” Chesapeake schools spokesman Tom Cupitt told The Virginia Pilot. “We’re so shocked and aghast that something like this happened, and we’ll take every measure to make sure something like this never happens again.”

Mercedes Malion, whose daughter attends the school, told a local TV news station that she was horrified when she noticed the quote because her daughter’s grandparents escaped Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. She said the senior quickly apologized to her daughter via a Facebook message.

You can watch the local news report on the Hitler quote here:

CORRECTION: This article originally said Russellville Middle School is in Little Rock–it’s located an hour outside that city.

(Screenshot of River City High cheerleaders as they’re represented in the yearbook: ABC News)

Philly school board passed an “interim” budget – with deep cuts

Posted Wednesday, 1st June 2011

With Kristen A. Graham

The School Reform Commission of Philadelphia approved an increase of $ 2,800,000,000 “temporary” budget approved Tuesday night, officially deep cuts, but signaled that it might again be able to some of the most painful.

“Many critical components of school district budget is still uncertain,” Chief Financial Officer Michael Masch said the CBC dramatic convened at an extraordinary session.

But if

talks in City Hall, Harrisburg, and that the performance of the new fund, has increased full-day kindergarten, as most public transport. There are 3409 fewer positions in the next year, including 1158 teachers and fewer cuts to education in early childhood, the budgets for each school nurses, chaplains, art and much more.

District officials said a massive government aid to the end of the stimulus money the federal government forced them to fill a gap of 629 million U.S. dollars, offered a budget that the Superintendent Arlene C.. Ackermann said he would “sacrifice on the part of all.”

The CBC also warned that if the five unions do not want to come with 75 million U.S. dollars in concessions, 30 June recommends that Ackermann to get the Commission to terminate their contracts – an unusual power law, where nationalization, but not used in a decade

Jerry Jordan, president of the Association of Teachers in Philadelphia. – The multi-largest union in the district – said he had not renegotiated and would not do, he said that the PFT has a contract in good faith negotiations and has already given concessions

“The School Reform Commission .. and the Superintendent have really lost their credibility with their actions that night, “Jordan said in an interview.” This difference was not created by us, and now they ask us bear the burden. “

question, whether the District was prepared to terminate the contract teachers believed that Jordan said that the union “address, if we must.”

Jordan against a resolution Tuesday night that the teachers would be freed Promise academies – schools district-term recovery -. Redundancies He promised to fight against him in court

. The budget passed 3-1. Dworetzky said Commissioner Joseph. “Reluctantly”, he supported the budget

Commissioner Johnny Irizarry, various questions about the cuts to other providers not asked school, voted “no”.

“I felt there were too many unanswered questions,” Irizarry said after the meeting. “I do not agree with some of the cuts.”

Legally, the district must adopt an investment plan before the last day of May, but said he expected to adopt Masch Ask the CBC on a supplementary budget -. Recovery of funds -. Summer

CBC a good dose of dozens of speakers at the three-hour session

was Councillor Bill Green, a spokesman for the district often said that he hopes to help new funding opportunities available for the district, but blame the officials for their approach to cutting.

“Stop the campaign of fear to adopt a responsible budget, and give your partner the city and the state as adults,” said Green. “Restoring the things that is revealed as maternal full-time education and early childhood, then do just the trick for things that are not yet proven”

Parent Poyourow Rebecca said she was “concerned -. and is an understatement – with the what seems to be a significant lack of supervision and the introduction of appropriate measures taken by the CBC and the School District of Philadelphia, when it comes to the management of the Fund will receive the district. “

Green Poyourow, and others have suggested priorities were from the district – funding a summer school for 18 days at a cost of approximately $ 23,000,000, but the cutting and transport of full-day kindergarten, for example, and pay high salaries to central administration, but the job cuts and givebacks appeal to teachers .

Poyourow, whose oldest son is a novice at Cook-Wissahickon Elementary Roxborough, is one of hundreds of parents who gathered the legislature for more funds lobby.

“Our message to the members of the SRC and the district is that we believe in our schools, and we will fight for public education,” she said, “but you have to put this house in order. “

Several people have also the decision of the district to continue to send additional money to schools, relief at the same time reducing the budgets of the principals discretion to different schools by 29 percent.

Multi-stakeholder also called for the district not having a plan to release most of the suppliers of alternative schools for students who have dropped out of or in danger of continuing to do so. The district said it would run these programs in-house, the more students for less money – instead of paying 20 million U.S. dollars it spent $ 8,700,000, officials said

.

students Joandaly Chavez said El Centro, accelerated academy they attended, “is my school, my pride, my integrity and, more importantly, my education.” She and others said they had had bad experiences in the district and schools have taken place only in companies such as Big Picture Philadelphia in El Centro, and Camelot succeeded.

Associate Superintendent Penny Nixon said students in alternative schools district concept is not lost on the services and personalized learning will help them do well.

special education shall be also raised concerns about cuts in these programs. District topping 5 percent, or about 10.7 million U.S. dollars from its budget for special needs education.

School may be built in Fountain Inn

Fountain Inn may become home to Greenville County’s first newly created high school since 1973.

A coordinated effort between city leaders and officials of Greenville County Schools has cleared the way for a new high school that may be located on Quillen Avenue in Fountain Inn a few blocks off Main Street, said Van Broad, economic development director for the city.

Fountain Inn’s Board of Zoning Appeals has approved a request to allow a school to be built on just more than 60 acres of property on Quillen Avenue and Jones Mill Road.

The new high school may open its doors by August 2017, according to Broad and Oby Lyles, school district spokesman.

Lyles told GreenvilleOnline.com that the school district has reached a “preliminary agreement” to purchase property from multiple property owners. School district administrators are in the midst of performing due diligence on the properties, and the school board would have to approve the location of the new school, he said.

He declined to identify the property or say when the measure may come before the board for a vote, but he said trustees included the new school in its 2010 long-range plan and tentatively named it New South County High School.

Fountain Inn, the only municipality in Greenville County that doesn’t have its own high school, would score a coup and the potential traffic and new development it could spark, Broad said.

“We have worked to get them as close to downtown Fountain Inn as possible,” Broad said. “A school would be a significant economic advantage for our revitalization efforts as well.”

The school would pull students from Hillcrest, Woodmont and Mauldin high schools, according to the district’s long-term development plan.

It would heighten Fountain Inn’s identity and bring more community support with a school that could potentially carry the city’s name, said attorney and former school board member Melvin Younts, a Fountain Inn resident who has led the city’s effort for five years to land the proposed high school.

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It would also allow local students to remain close to home, Younts said.

“It’s just very, very vital to a continuing growing area, which the Golden Strip is,” he said.

The new high school would be the district’s first new high school – not counting rebuilt, expanded or relocated schools – since Riverside High School opened in 1973, according to school websites and compiled histories.

Fountain Inn last had a high school in 1957 when the district shut the doors at what now is the Fountain Inn Civic Center for Performing Arts at 300 N. Main St.

Fountain Inn students have since gone to Hillcrest and Woodmont high schools.

Recent population estimates show a boom toward the southern part of the county.

A 2008 Greenville Pickens Area Transportation Study that projects population growth for 16 county planning areas says the Fountain Inn area’s population may more than double by 2030, from 9,100 to 20,700, the highest percentage increase in the county.

Simpsonville was projected to have the second-highest population increase from 26,200 to 49,600.

Broad said that when Fountain Inn learned that the school district planned to put a new high school in the southern part of the county that city leaders pulled together to make sure it would locate in or near Fountain Inn.

Broad said he has shown multiple potential sites to district officials.

The city’s board of zoning appeals had to make an exception to the city’s zoning laws to allow a school to locate on property zoned as residential or farmland, Broad said.

The potential site, split into multiple lots, includes a large open field across from the Quillen Manor assisted living facility. Broad said nearly 62 acres are included in the proposed sale and a few more may be acquired.

“People want to be in an area that’s growing and a new school denotes that an area has grown,” Broad said. “And of course Fountain Inn is beginning to see some significant growth with the industrial companies that are moving to our area.”

He added, “For Fountain Inn to have its own high school again puts us right back into the place where our other communities are to have community pride, community spirit, and that draws us together as a community. To me that’s what a high school will do for us.”

Texas House, Senate struggle to find agreement on funding of schools – Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN — With less than a week to go, the always-volatile issue of school funding could make for a rough conclusion to the 2011 legislative session.

After House efforts to pass a school finance plan were short-circuited Monday night, House and Senate leaders began searching Tuesday for common ground on how to distribute $ 2 billion a year in funding cuts — $ 4 billion over the next two years — among the state’s 1,030 school districts.

The House was pushing a temporary plan of across-the-board cuts — with slightly larger reductions for higher-spending, higher-wealth districts — while Senate leaders touted their plan to narrow the funding differences among districts by taking more from the bigger spenders.

Dallas schools, for example, would see their funds cut 3.5 percent next year under the leading House proposal, while the Senate plan would trim 6.3 percent. The following year, the reductions would be 5.7 percent under the House version and 8.6 percent under the Senate plan.

Whatever the outcome of the negotiations between the two chambers, there is general agreement that without a school finance plan by the end of the session Monday, lawmakers will be forced to come back in special session this summer.

“If a school finance plan is not passed, we will be in special session this summer,” said Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano.

Although the Senate school funding plan and the leading House proposal — sponsored by Public Education Committee Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands — would both cut $ 4 billion from current law over the coming biennium, each gets to the bottom line differently.

Shapiro and leading senators are pushing for significant changes in the funding system to correct the wide funding disparities that now exist — amounting to a difference between districts of hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars per student annually.

The disparities were largely caused by the 2006 school finance overhaul, which protected higher-spending and higher-wealth districts like Dallas from revenue losses that otherwise would have resulted from the new finance law. Generally urban and suburban districts benefited most from the “target revenue” adjustments, while rural and medium-size districts like Lubbock fell behind on funding.

“This is a good opportunity to make the system more equitable,” said Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville. “We’ve got to rework the funding formula.”

Deuell, who will serve on the 10-member House-Senate committee that will hash out differences on school finance, said he cannot accept the House plan to spread the funding cuts more evenly among districts.

“I have a real problem with cutting those districts that have already been getting a lot less money than other districts,” he said. “And whatever problems we have now will be worse in two years.”

In the House, several members believe a temporary funding plan spreading the cuts to all districts is preferable, letting the Legislature come back and revamp the system in two years after careful review.

“Given the short amount of time left in the session, it is important to get a plan that is fair and easily explained to a large body,” said Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, who was involved in school finance talks Tuesday. “This year was not seen as a school finance session — it was seen as a tough, tough budget session.

“It is hard to do both at the same time. This session was about getting through the greatest recession in decades. We know we have more work to do on school finance in the interim.”

Eissler said his proposal makes more uniform cuts than the Senate plan, which has not been enthusiastically received in the House.

“Many House members like the more modest cuts in our plan as opposed to the Senate plan, which has sizable reductions of as much as 8.9 percent for some districts in the second year of the biennium,” he said. “In some cases, the cuts are 50 percent greater under the Senate proposal.”

Eissler said the history of school finance in Texas has taken many twists and turns that resulted in a complicated funding system. “We need to take the time to fix it permanently and fix it cleanly without rushing through a solution,” he added.

Shapiro, who agreed with Eissler that an agreement has to be reached by Thursday or Friday, said she cannot support the House approach as now written.

“With the House plan, you are pretty much giving up and throwing your hands up, and saying we don’t want to make the hard decisions. That has never been the position of the Senate,” she said.

And Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steven Ogden, R-Bryan, said the House plan only compounds the problems in school finance by putting them off.

“I am not leaving this place in worse shape that I found it,” he said. “I am not for kicking the can down the road on school finance.”

Even if lawmakers can agree on a plan, the specter of a new school finance lawsuit hangs over the Legislature as school districts are forced to continue meeting an array of state requirements while having less money to comply with those standards. In the last lawsuit, which resulted in the 2006 funding law, hundreds of districts — including Dallas — sued the state over inadequate funding.

Bleak House: Trying to save a school for mentally disabled – San Jose Mercury News
Click on the photo to

Joan and her daughter Jessica, and his dog “Coco” in their home in Sunnyvale Wednesday 27 to increase April 2011. Jessica Sharp, 26, with an intellectual disability, but does every day in the Santa Clara Unified School District, where the teacher David Grant aid a real life lead to school instead of just kept the whole day. (Photo: Patrick Tehan / Mercury News)

A revised budget was under the dome of the Capitol chrome Governor Jerry Brown last week injected down like an ax in the mosh pit of legislators and lobbyists, is now, as Brown noted, “break it.”

Far from the melee Sacramento, lowering the bucket budget was the subject of debate and consternation among the adult students with intellectual disabilities to Wilson Alternative School in Santa Clara – and is the second chapter, “Bleak House” continues our look at how the state budget affects us all.

The created budget battle Cliff Hanger in the classrooms by the state. But for the 82 innocent students of the independence of the network – a program for adults with physical and mental, for two decades by the Santa Clara Unified School District provided – without an urgent infusion of cash, was the end is near

save if the independence of the network were in the area, his students with intellectual disabilities – at the age of 22 to mid-60s – would not be shot in the streets. Most come from stable families, and would end in a day. But for teachers and involved parents

in the program, the loss would be painful.

“If they closed Agnew Developmental Center, it’s pretty devastating for students,” said Brian Darby Professor Wilson, based on the 2009 closure of the largest downtown San Jose for the disabled of their development. “Many of these students learn to learn to speak, for the first time in her life, go into the community and be not afraid.”

But there are some benchmarks for success. Disability stage of development do not test well. “It’s one of those sentimental things that is difficult to quantify,” said David Grant, Professor Jessica Forte. Federal funding is now difficult to moving students from schools or focused adult education and employment. But Forte and many of his classmates can never be used full time.

constantly consume computing principals developed district budget over the country, programs such as class Jessica Strong Survive Every year a budget of this pot of money and loans it is based. The uncertainty on this year’s budget – Brown always insists on the extension of the tax and insisted the Republicans on anything, but – the Santa Clara school reluctantly concluded that it had received to $ 200,000 it spends each year on the power of independence

But this week, teachers in the program -. the 25 percent of their salary in budget cuts were ordered by the Legislative Assembly – seems ready to leaves, a pay cut and reductions to accept the school district employee complaints to help ends meet

“So this whole state will serve.” Santa Clara, said retired superintendent of schools, Steve Stavis. “We will get them all together and say,” You know, as we do here, and we get input on the page, and the program remains .’”

Take the day difficult last 46 years of his career working as a teacher , Stavis has adopted a billboard warning that the Day of Judgement comes after May 21 but mentally between the programs for young players and piccolo with disabilities can choose every day seem like a mini-apocalypse. For schools, the actual day of reckoning 15 . June, when the final decisions, what to keep and what to fall, must be made independently of the mess in Sacramento.

“We are not eager to knock down the most vulnerable members of society,” Stavis said during a particularly terrible round of planning for the Last Judgement. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. If it does not extend much about these two taxes and fees, it is a budget cut of all, we are screwed. “

The district just spent $ 16,000,000 to improve their libraries, Stavis said, unless and Republicans and Democrats in the legislation, a budget compromise, he has to reach to dismiss perhaps librarians. The only what is holy holy – even more sacrosanct than -. disabled school sport

“I am not stupid to go after sports,” said Stavis “I saw what she has in the East Side (Union School District). “when the boss now defunct cutting sports, money proposed to save.” They almost killed this guy. “

At the end of the day that Mr Brown’s revised budget is released, found Stavis and teachers a formula which would enable the district to school Jessica Forte continues. parents and other donors, public schools can not accept tuition – - agents should with $ 70,000 in “contributions” come to the independence of the network for another year

Finance ” “I think we saved,” he said Stavis said, but $ 20,000 of the total amount must be announced in early June, or the agreement is made and the ax is the acceleration

Contact Bruce Newman at 408 to 920th .. – 5004th

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donations to the independence of the network will be established in District Santa Clara Unified School, while the independence the network in the memo field. SCUSD mail for the Department for Adult Education, 1840 Benton Ave., Santa Clara, CA 95 050, attention Cathy Dunlavy.