Education Law

School Board News Today headlines

Stay in school, take your work seriously, and set high goals for yourself. Isn’t that what we want students to do, and isn’t that message reinforced if it’s coming from the President of the United States himself? Instead, the back-to-school speech President Obama plans to give at an Arlington, Va., high school next week is sure causing some angst for administrators and school board members, as some conservatives have taken to calling it a plan to instill a “Socialist agenda” in schools and some others just don’t want it to eat up time at the beginning of the school year. (An aside, do these parents think that all of their children would have paid attention anyway? And if they ban their kids from watching it, won’t that just make them more likely to sneak out and actually watch it?)

Regardless, there were plenty of other issues reported this week, as found in our weekly line-up of School Board News Today headlines:

• Two new trends in budget cutting are becoming evident: teacher furloughs and cutbacks in high school sports. Teachers in Georgia and districts across the country who still have their jobs are seeing their paychecks trimmed through unpaid furloughs. And many high school stadiums are sitting empty as schools have cut back on athletic programs and other extracurricular activities.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that 40 children have died from the H1N1 influenza virus, most of whom already had preexisting medical problems or disabilities.
• And in an attempt to win a portion of the federal Race to the Top funds, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle endorsed a plan for the mayor of Milwaukee to appoint the city’s school board and superintendent.

Read all the day’s most relevant headlines in School Board News Today, Miss a day? Check the weekly recap.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on September 04, 2009 (boomark / email).