NEWSBYALISON LEITHNER

Next month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to go into New York City public schools and begin a thorough sweep for cancer-causing PCBs in fluorescent lighting fixtures.

...But NYC's Education Department is trying to stop them. Why? Eh, there's no rush, they're saying.

The city’s Department of Education claims that it will cost $1 billion to replace all of the PCB-laden lights, and that they would rather wait a year to complete a PCB-searching pilot program that started last summer before spending the cash. That would be reasonable, if they hadn’t already found that three of the five pilot study schools contained dangerous amounts of PCBs.

Even if the other two schools turn up negative for PCBs, that’s 60% of the tested schools that contain PCBs. The result will be the same: New York City will have to clean up the schools. Why wait and put more children (and teachers for that matter) at risk?

In Collier County, Florida, an autistic, seizure-prone 6-year-old named J.C. isn’t allowed to bring his medicine to school.  Why not?  Because his prescription is Pepsi, a service dog.

Elizabeth Lasanta, J.C.’s mom, spent months trying to find help for her son. Finally, she found Pepsi, a golden retriever. Pepsi is trained to recognize when J.C. is going to have a seizure, prevent him from falling and injuring himself and call attention to the boy to ensure that he gets the help he needs. On a daily basis, the dog reduces the disruptive behaviors caused by J.C.’s autism, making it possible for the little boy to function.

Estates Elementary and the Collier County School District have been made aware of the great service that Pepsi does for J.C. and yet, they still won’t allow the dog to come to school with the boy. According to the principal, the school’s “individualized education play” is enough to “provide…an appropriate education.” Well, that’s good. And if Pepsi’s role was solely to help J.C. learn, then that would have been the end of the story. Except that Pepsi’s job is much bigger than just helping his master learn. Pepsi keeps the boy safe; something individualized education play cannot do.

Victory! On Jan. 6, 2011, Governor Chris Christie just signed the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights into law. This tough piece of legislation has been heralded by activists as the strongest anti-bullying law in the country. New Jersey LGBT rights group Garden State Equality tirelessly advocated for this law. Among the many voices calling for this new, stronger legislation were the 833 Change.org members who signed our petition to Gov. Christie, urging him to sign the bill.

New Jersey’s newest anti-bullying bill is sitting idly on New Jersey Governor’s Chris Christie's desk, waiting to be signed.  The bill, which passed with a 102-1 vote in the New Jersey legislature on Monday, would set the precedent for anti-bullying laws in the United States. To date, it would be the strictest anti-bullying legislation ever passed.

The bill has been in the works for a year but garnered huge support in recent months after the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a gay Rutgers student who committed suicide after being bullied and publically humiliated by fellow students. This momentum, as well as tireless efforts by Garden State Equality, helped get the bill get to the Governor’s desk. With apparent state and countrywide support for the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights, what is the Governor waiting for?

If signed into law, New Jersey would become a model of what states should do to protect their citizens.  While 44 other states currently have anti-bullying laws, most of these states are unable to properly enforce the law. The New Jersey law would serve as an example of how to overhaul legislation that isn’t working as well as implement statewide policies to protect children from bullies.

Earlier this month, Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle was sentenced to two years time served for the shooting of Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man, in 2009. People were reminded of and expected riots reminiscent of L.A. in 1992. Instead of hiding under her desk in fear, one Oakland teacher seized the moment to teach her kids a valuable lesson: empathy.

Using a play by Anna Deveare Smith based on interviews with victims who lived through the L.A. riots, Jill Thomas, an English teacher, entered her students into a dialogue about justice, prejudice, and history repeating itself.  She asked the students to step outside of themselves and their lives and try to understand what the various victims (an immigrant shopkeeper, a gang member, a police officer) went through during those dark days in L.A. Some students got it and some just couldn’t find the similarities between those characters and themselves. Did the lesson fail?  Certainly not.

Victory! On Jan. 6, 2011, Governor Chris Christie signed the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights into law. This tough piece of legislation has been heralded by activists as the strongest anti-bullying law in the country. New Jersey LGBT rights group Garden State Equality tirelessly advocated for this law. Among the many voices calling for this new, stronger legislation were the 833 Change.org members who signed our petition to Gov. Christie, urging him to sign the bill.

New Jersey is revisiting its anti-bullying laws in the hopes of making them the strongest in the country. Currently, New Jersey’s law “encourages” anti-bullying classes. The new law would make them mandatory in K-12 and change language in the college codes to ensure bullying on campus could be properly punished. It’s about time.

Do an Internet search for “teen suicide and bullying”. The results are appalling.  Names like Phoebe Prince, Justin Aaberg and, most recently, Tyler Clementi come up. All were teenagers.  All were bullied.  All killed themselves. These students were mentally, and sometimes physically, abused and felt they had nowhere to turn.  If stronger laws were in place and there were more visible places for bullied kids to turn, there is a good chance they would still be alive today.

Bullying is something everyone knows happens in schools and, many think, is a rite of passage.  It’s not. It’s merely a way for insecure kids (the bullies) to make themselves feel better by picking on weaker kids about things they can’t change: their looks, their weight, their sexual orientation. The kids who are bullied carry these scars with them forever. However short that forever might be.

Legislators should stop focusing on winning votes and start competing to hold the top prize of “best protectors for those who cannot protect themselves”.  They should compete to have the strictest bullying laws in the nation. To date, Massachusetts holds this honor. New Jersey, if they pass their new “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights” will steal the trophy. Let’s encourage our representatives to participate in this competition to see which state can best stand up for its residents.

The Texas State Board of Education just voted 7-6 to pass a resolution that insists that Social Studies textbooks are hugely pro-Islam and anti-Christianity.  I’m sorry.  What? 

 The resolution contains appendices upon appendices that go through Social Studies textbooks page-by-page, citing how many lines discuss Islam and how many Christianity.  According to this line-by-line breakdown, Islam is discussed both more often and in a more positive light.  Basically, what it seems to come down to is that more mentions were made of massacres committed by Christians than by Muslims.

The resolution is largely symbolic; the current board will not make decisions on the next generation of Social Studies textbooks, the AP reports. But it sends a chilling message to textbook publishers that when it comes to fueling the fire of controversy over Islam and Christianity, textbooks are fair game.

I will be the first to admit that when I look at the examples cited in the re

In 10 states, undocumented students are considered “residents” and are able to pay in-state tuition.  In Texas, these same students are even able to apply for state-funded financial aid.  Despite the efforts of these states, and 12 more that have passed legislation that is waiting to be signed, when these students get out of college, they are still unhirable.  Unbelievable.

States such as Texas and California, both states who allow in-state tuition for undocumented students, have state universities that rival or surpass many private universities in the U.S.  Both UC Berkley and UCLA rank in the top 25 colleges in the country.  University of Texas-Austin ranks number 45 and Texas A&M – College Station is at number 63.

And yet, for certain students who graduate, these diplomas mean nothing because, after they leave the graduation stage, they fall back into the classification of “illegal.”  This means that the thousands of dollars these students paid in tuition was money wasted.  Their education will not pay for itself over time.  Those funds are simply gone.

Passage of the DREAM Act, however, will save these educations from being wasted.  Once the DREAM Act is passed, these students who have already shown enough “good moral character” could then become citizens and use their hard-earned diplomas. They can get jobs in their fields of study and give back to the states that granted them in-state tuition. In addition, more students would attend college because they knew that they could find employment once they graduated. A win-win situation for all involved.

The DREAM Act is getting there.  On September 14^th, Senator Reid <

Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Dallas) has apparently been treating her family and friends to scholarship money courtesy of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. The problem is that the application rules clearly state that family and friends of CBC members, of which Johnson is one, are not eligible for scholarships.  Oops.

Since the news broke, Johnson has been spouting out any number of ridiculous excuses as to why this oversight happened. Last Friday, in an interview with Anderson Cooper, she blamed her staff and said that she hadn’t read the forms.  Apparently she would rather ruin someone else’s career than stand up and be held accountable for her own actions.

The problem in this case is two-fold.  First, there is the good old-fashioned “politician abusing her power”. Perhaps Johnson’s grandchildren and great-nephew really needed the scholarship money. I don’t know one way or the other. What I do know is that someone who definitely does need those funds in order to get an education was cheated because Johnson’s family lied on their application form. As a public servant, this alone should be enough to make Johnson turn herself in.

There continues to be a shortage in many school districts yet teachers are not being rehired. This is in spite of the edict that the $10 billion that the federal government just doled out to schools should be used to retain or hire employees. It’s also in spite of the fact that many children now find themselves in classes with double or triple the number of classmates they are used to.

School systems say they are using the allotted money in order to preempt budget losses next year so that next year’s cuts are not so drastic. This is important; there is no question about that. It is tragic that school officials have to choose when they will make their cuts instead of if. Wouldn’t it be nice if school boards could be optimistic about the coming year? Instead of knowing for certain that they will have less money than they need to operate, they could consider that they might have enough. What an idea.

The onus lies on the shoulders of politicians. They have to cut funds, this is true. But it always seems that so much of those funds come from education. Perhaps this is because people speak out more loudly about human rights and the environment. Education advocates seem to be a quieter bunch and their protests are not heard in the capitols. This needs to change.

The government is continuing its crackdown on the for-profit colleges this week with the announcement of a 50% increase in program and recruiting reviews over the coming year. This is yet another blow to the bruised and battered for-profit industry.

The real question, however, is whether or not this increase in program reviews will help solve the problem. The Department of Education hired 60 more people to monitor these colleges. Just to put that in perspective, as of 2005, there were 879 for-profit degree granting colleges in the United States. There were nearly 5000 including non degree granting institutions. 60 additional reviewers is hardly enough manpower to increase program and recruiting reviews by 50%.

In theory, we could assume that the reviewers could simply visit the head offices and ask them to ensure that their branches are following the rules. But that would be just theory. It’s entirely too early to trust for-profit management to self-regulate. No, each branch and each recruiting facility needs to be spot reviewed on a regular basis and that will take far more than 60 people working in the Department of Education. It’s a start, but it’s not enough.