Cameras in the Classrooms

Fox News | Oct 19, 2009

by Greg Palkot

London –  Closed circuit cameras are everywhere in the UK, on the streets, outside businesses, inside stores. They’re earning the country the label of “Big Brother Britain.”

Now they’ve “gone to school”…literally. Not just at front gates, in corridors, and cafeterias, but right in the classroom, sometimes a few at a time!

Nearly 100 schools in the UK have signed up to in-class surveillance efforts using high definition cameras, mikes, and recorders.

The UK company behind the systems says they’re not about ‘Big Brother’ but helping teachers improve their performance. “We sell it on the basis of professional development,” says “Classwatch”’s Angus Dreever.

Getting even more attention are the camera’s “crime-fighting” abilities. At one high school, for example, in a tough south London area, there are some 100 cameras. Administrators say they are useful in dealing with robberies, vandalism and misbehavior.

The camera marketers admit this is a worthwhile side benefit. Schools say it even helps them police bullying better.

Civil liberties champions, however, say all this goes too far. Anita Coles of the Liberty group saying they don’t think it’s “…ever necessary to be spying on children in a learning environment.”

Teachers are concerned as well. They think the closed circuit or CCTV material could be used against them. “You can always edit those clips,” says John Bangs of the UK Teacher’s union, “as a way of actually victimizing the teacher.”

There are mixed reactions too from parents and kids. Still, reports are, that enough people here like the cameras to have them installed in hundreds more schools.

As for the US, officials at the Chicago national headquarters of the PTA tell us they are not aware of any widespread use of cameras in classrooms, but if the demand is there, Big Brother could come to American schools too!

Rough Road Ahead for New York Eagle Scout as School District Won’t Budge on Pocketknife Suspension

Matthew Whalen, right, says he was suspended from high school for four weeks because he kept a 2-inch pocketknife in his car. He completed an Army basic training course this summer. Photo: Matthew Whalen

Fox News | Oct 14, 2009

By Joseph Abrams

As a 17-year-old Eagle Scout continues to wait out a one-month suspension from his upstate New York high school for having a 2-inch pocketknife locked in a survival kit in his car, the U.S. Military Academy says the missed school days could pose a big problem when it reviews his application.

Pressure is mounting on a Troy, N.Y., school board to overrule Matthew Whalen’s suspension from Lansingburgh High School, which was issued because of a zero-tolerance policy that is facing increasing opposition from parents and education advocates.

Whalen, a senior, says he stocks his car with a sleeping bag, water, a ready-to-eat meal and the small knife, which was given to him by his grandfather, a police chief in a nearby town.

But Lansingburgh High has a zero-tolerance policy for weapons, and when school officials discovered that Whalen kept his knife locked in his car, he says, they suspended him for five days — and then tacked on an additional 15 after a hearing.

Related

Cub Scout faces 45 days in reform school for carrying Swiss Army camp set

On Wednesday, West Point’s director of admissions told Foxnews.com that Whalen’s suspension alone wouldn’t be a “show-stopper” and “didn’t appear to be a big issue” for the youth, though it will appear on his record as the military academy considers his moral and ethical fiber.

“My concern would be, how does this impact on his academics?” said Col. Deborah McDonald, the academy’s head of admissions. “Because 20 (school) days is a long time to be suspended.”

But the Lansingburgh School District is not budging. A person reached at the home of a school board member referred all calls to the superintendent, who told a local newspaper he thinks the punishment was “appropriate and fair,” and that it was necessary for the district to enforce its zero-tolerance policy evenly.

“Sometimes young people do things they may not see as serious,” Superintendent George Goodwin told the Albany Times-Union. “We look at any possession of any type of knife as serious.”

Yet the knife is not considered a weapon by the New York State Education Department — definitions and punishments are left up to local school boards to decide.

“Districts by law are given a great deal of discretion for the conditions they impose,” said Jonathan Burman, spokesman for the Education Department.

“The discipline that’s meted out … [is] a matter of local discretion,” he said, and “simply here if the school board decides to make a change in their policy it’s a matter for them to decide.”

Whalen’s family says they’ve given up hope that their school district will rethink the penalty, even after a school board in Delaware reversed a similar decision Tuesday night, granting a reprieve to a 6-year-old first-grader who had been ordered to attend a reform school for 45 days after he brought a Cub Scout camping utensil to lunch.

“The board hasn’t even taken the issue,” said Bryan Whalen, Matthew’s father. “As far as the superintendent is concerned, he’s made his decision and we haven’t been offered the opportunity to even appeal that at a board meeting.”

That policy is coming under fire from some education advocates, who say it is “pernicious” and inflexible and must be overturned.

“I just don’t believe zero tolerance is the right way to go,” said John Young, a board member in the Delaware school district that voted unanimously Tuesday night to reinstate 6-year-old Zachary Christie.

Young, who was not aware of the details of Whalen’s case, said that as long as the school didn’t have reason to suspect any intent to use the knife, “I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be overturned.”

Young says the zero-tolerance policies were born in the wake of the 1999 Columbine school massacre, and were a response to worries from parents that school security needed to be beefed up. Though he doesn’t support the policies, he said he understand the impulse to ensure school safety.

But Bryan Whalen says the policy allowed no room for his son, who did not pose a danger to the school. “It was another example of an administration not providing any thought, just trying to hide behind a blind rule for whatever reason.”

Whalen said his son is more or less resigned to his fate but is still bewildered that he’s in trouble over possession of a “keychain knife” after he handled M16s during an Army basic training course he completed over the summer.

He’s “frustrated because he knows he’s falling so far behind on his studies — he’s missing a ninth of his senior year,” Whalen said.

But Whalen says his son is feeling reassured from positive feedback he’s getting from cadets at West Point who have “contacted him through Facebook and told him they’re behind him and to keep fighting.

“‘When he gets down there he’ll be carrying a machine gun around campus,’” they wrote.

Eagle Scout suspended for keeping 2-inch knife in car

AP | Oct 14, 2009

TROY, N.Y. — An Eagle Scout who kept a 2-inch pocketknife in his car was suspended from his high school for 20 days for bringing the weapon onto school grounds. Now he is concerned about his chances for acceptance to West Point.

Matthew Whalen, 17, said he gave the knife to an administrator at Lansingburgh High School in Troy last month after another student told officials he had been carrying a knife. He was suspended for violating the district’s zero-tolerance policy for weapons on school grounds.

Related

Cub Scout faces 45 days in reform school for carrying Swiss Army camp set

The high school senior said the knife was a gift from his grandfather, the police chief in a nearby village.

Whalen, a member of the Army National Guard, said he kept the knife in his car along with other survival items in case of an emergency. He now worries the suspension may hurt his chances of gaining admission to West Point, where he has wanted to go for years.

“I just want to be able to go back to school,” Whalen told the Times Union of Albany. “I didn’t intentionally do anything wrong. I don’t even consider it a weapon.”

Whalen will be allowed to return to school Oct. 21.

District officials said they don’t comment on student disciplinary matters, but superintendent George Goodwin said in a prepared statement that the district has a zero-tolerance policy for possessing weapons of any kind on school property.

“We believe this policy allows us to fulfill our duty of maintaining the safety of our district’s education environment for our students, faculty and community members,” said Goodwin.

In another zero-tolerance case this week in Delaware, a 6-year-old boy was facing 45 days in an alternative school as punishment for bringing his favorite camping utensil — a combination folding knife, fork and spoon — to school to use at lunch. The school board voted Tuesday to reduce the punishment for kindergartners and first-graders who take weapons to school or commit violent offenses, and the boy was allowed to return to school.

Cub Scout faces 45 days in reform school for carrying Swiss Army camp set

Cub Scout utensil gets boy, 6, school suspension

First-grader brought it to eat his lunch with; now he’s facing reform school

TODAYShow.com | Oct 13, 2009

By Mike Celizic

A combination fork, knife, spoon and bottle opener is Zachary Christie’s favorite utensil — but it got him in trouble at school. Photo: TODAY

Dressed in a button-down shirt and tie and speaking calmly and articulately, first-grader Zachary Christie hardly looks or acts like the sort of kid who should be spending 45 days in reform school. But, thanks to a zero-tolerance policy, that’s where Zachary’s Delaware school system wants him to go after he made the mistake of taking his favorite camping utensil to school.

A Swiss Army-type combination of fork, spoon, bottle opener and knife, the tool has been Zachary’s favorite ever since he got it to take on Cub Scout camping expeditions. “He eats dinner with it, breakfast and everything else, so it never occurred to him that this would have been something wrong to do,” the 6-year-old’s mother, Debbie Christie, told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira Tuesday from Newark, Del.

‘Can I have that?’

Zachary, an A student who sometimes wears a shirt and tie to school just because he likes to, told Vieira he put the tool in his pocket on Sept. 29 for a very simple reason: “To eat lunch with. I had absolutely no idea this was going to happen. I wasn’t thinking about this. I was thinking about having lunch with it.”

But when the tool fell out of his pocket on the bus and he walked off the vehicle with it in his hand, a teacher intercepted him. “She said, ‘Can I have that?’ ” Zachary recalled.

What Zachary didn’t realize was that he had fallen afoul of the Christina School District’s zero-tolerance policy toward weapons in school, one of many such policies implemented in the wake of such incidents as the Columbine High School massacre. The policy does not allow teachers or administrators to take into account intentions or the character of the student; if a student has a knife, suspension and subsequent assignment to the district’s “alternative placement school” — aka reform school — is mandatory.

Racial issue

Christina, which, according to its Web site, is the largest school district in Delaware with some 17,000 students, made its policy zero-tolerance because of concerns over racial discrimination. Studies have shown in other districts that when school officials are given discretion over such cases, African-American students are disciplined at a disproportionately high rate.

“The idea was to avoid discriminating against any student and to treat all students the same,” George Evans, president of the Christina school board, told NBC News.

While some experts favor such zero-tolerance policies, others question their efficacy, saying there is no indication that they cut down on violent incidents in schools. One of them, national school safety consultant Kenneth Trump, told NBC News, “The school administrators have to be able to administer consequences and still have some discretion to fit the totality of the circumstances.”

The totality of Zachary’s circumstances was that he had no idea that it was wrong to take his favorite camping tool to class. When the teacher asked for it when he got off the bus, he handed it over, unaware that he was already in serious trouble. He went to class while his principal called his mother.

“She said that I needed to come to the school immediately; that Zachary had brought a dangerous weapon into school, and I needed to come and pick him up. He would be suspended for five days pending a disciplinary action committee hearing. She said that he had a knife,” Christie told Vieira.

When his mother arrived at the John R. Downes Elementary School with her fiance, Lee Irving, Zachary was called from his first-grade classroom to join them.

“When they called my name up, I was like, ‘Uh-oh,’ ” he said.

Home school, not reform school

Zachary was suspended immediately for five school days. At the end of the suspension, he and his mother appeared before the district’s disciplinary action committee, where his principal and others spoke up for his good character. It didn’t matter. The committee’s hands were tied. The rules said he had brought a knife to school and would have to spend 45 days in the reform school.

Christie decided she would not send her son to that school. Instead, she has been home schooling Zachary while waiting for an opportunity to address the district’s board of education, which was to meet Tuesday night.

“I understand why they have it, but I don’t agree with the implementation of it,” Christie said of the zero-tolerance policy. “I think they need to look at the age, maturity, intent, situation; bring in the teachers who know the child or the principal, and allow them to make the first call in these situations,” she said. “Looking at other schools’ codes of conduct in the Delaware Valley, their first step would have been a suspension.”

Christie assured Vieira that her son is well aware of the necessity of not taking anything new to school without first asking and is not a threat to anyone. She hopes the school board will agree with her.

“I hope that they expunge his record and allow him to go back to Downes immediately,” she said of the board. “I think he has had an over-excess of education on this issue. I’m hoping that out of all of this the policy changes and that no other child is affected negatively by what is supposed to keep them all safe.”

Vieira asked Zachary if he’s nervous about the prospect of eventually returning to his school.

“I’m not very nervous,” Zachary said. “I like being home-schooled. It’s happy in some ways; it’s sad in some ways. Sometimes I’m strict, and sometimes I can get into my serious mode. I can get into my happy mode. It’s just kind of fun being home-schooled, but I’m not scared to go back.”

And what has he learned from everything that’s happened to him?

“To always ask before taking something new into school,” he said.

All child vaccine records to be checked

All children should have their medical records checked when they start school to see if they have had vaccinations for MMR and other illnesses, under official guidance.

Campaign groups said parents will feel under pressure to have their child vaccinated even if they have reservations.

Telegraph | Sep 23, 2009

By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor

Where there are gaps, health visitors should contact parents to encourage them them to ensure their children are given all the appropriate jabs, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence had said.

The checks should be made when a child joins nursery, playgroup or primary school and records kept where parents have expressed concerns about vaccination, the guidance said.

However campaign groups said parents will feel under pressure to have their child vaccinated even if they have reservations.

It is the first time Nice has made recommendations about immunisation.

Uptake rates of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine has improved following the scare in 1998 when Dr Andrew Wakefield linked the vaccine to bowel and autism disorders, but levels still remain relatively low.

It has been estimated that 1.3 million children aged between two and 17 in England are at risk of contracting measles because they have not been vaccinated.

Children should have three doses of the five-in-one-jab which contains vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, polio, whooping cough and Hib, three doses of pneumoccocal conjugate vaccine which protects against the bacterium that can cause septicaemia, meningitis and pneumonia, three doses of meningitis C vaccine and two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine by the time they are aged five.

The guidance said: “The Healthy Child team, led by a health visitor working with other practitioners, should check the immunisation record (including the personal child health record) of each child aged up to 5 years.

“They should carry out this check when the child joins a day nursery, nursery school, playgroup, Sure Start children’s centre or when they start primary school. The check should be carried out in conjunction with childcare or education staff and the parents.”

Jackie Fletcher, from the campaign group Jabs, said: “Parents will definitely feel under pressure particularly because their choice is so limited. Many parents would like to vaccinate their children but they cannot have the single measles, mumps and rubella vaccines on the NHS.

“This will put extra pressure on parents that they could do without, particularly because we do not have compulsory vaccination in this country.”

She said Jabs would support moves to improve record keeping where there are reasons a child has not been vaccinated, including parental concerns but if the note was used to put extra pressure on parents that would be a backward step.

In some states in America children are not allowed to start school until they have received all their immunisations.

A spokesman for Nice said: “The new Nice guidance recommends that immunisation records of children and young people should be checked when they join a new nursery, play group, school or college.

“If they are not up-to-date with their vaccinations, school nursing teams should explain to parents why immunisation is important for children’s health and provide information in an appropriate format.

“School nursing teams should also offer vaccinations to help them catch up, or refer them to other immunisation services.”

Parents will still have a choice to vaccinate their child or not and there is no recommendation to implement compulsory vaccinations, a spokesman for Nice said.

Professor Catherine Law, Chair of the Public Health Interventions Advisory Committee (PHIAC) at Nice and Professor of Public Health and Epidemiology, University College London Institute of Child Health said: “Immunisation plays a vital role in children’s health by providing protection against common infections .

“These infections can have devastating effects and even cause death. This new guidance, for those who have a role in immunisation, makes recommendations which aim to increase the uptake in groups and settings where immunisation levels are currently low.”

Dr David Elliman Consultant Community Paediatrician, Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Trust and Haringey Teaching PCT said: “Although immunisation rates are rising, there is still a way to go before all primary care trusts have achieved the desired public health targets.”

Dr Mary Ramsay Consultant Epidemiologist, Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections said: “Immunisation saves lives and the aim of this guidance is to ensure that children are given the best possible opportunity to receive the protection they need.

“This could be achieved by ensuring that children are offered immunisation at every possible opportunity by improving access by offering walk-in vaccination clinics, mobile or outreach services which may include home visits or vaccinations at children’s centres and keeping track of their immunisation history.”

The guidance said the youngest children from large families are among those who may miss out on vital vaccinations, along with children in care, those with physical or learning disabilities and children from non-English speaking families.

This could be down to parents not wishing to have their children immunised or other factors, such as failing to return to the GP for a follow-up jab.

Other recommendations include introducing outreach programmes and longer opening hours in clinics so parents can access vaccines for their children more easily.

Early bad behaviour sees children branded troublemakers, report warns

Children who behave badly in their first few weeks of school risk being forever branded troublemakers even if their behaviour improves, a report has warned.

Telegraph | Sep 20, 2009

By Aislinn Laing

Teachers, parents and other children are slow to forget bad behaviour, regardless of how many “good” things a child does subsequently, it added.

“Reputations can start to solidify within the first term,” said Maggie MacLure, professor of education at Manchester Metropolitan University and co-author of the study, Classroom behaviour: why it’s hard to be good, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

“Teachers will have decided in a broad way what kind of child this is. Is it a good child? Things that contribute to reputation are often very public. A lot of what happens is in whole class settings – so if children are disciplined others see it happen.”

Teachers will also judge a child based on their views of their home background, she said, and one teacher’s view of a child can quickly spread.

“If children go on to another class, their reputation could transfer with them just because one teacher writes a little note saying ‘This child has difficulty concentrating’ or ‘This child won’t sit still’,” she said.

Siobhan Freegard, founder of the website Netmums, knows of many children who struggled to shake their reputation and said “summer babies” born in July and August particularly struggle as they are sometimes a whole year younger than their contemporaries and so tend to act up out because they lack of maturity.

“One little boy in my older son’s class found it really hard to sit still and control himself,” she said. “Then, when they were 10, somebody snapped someone else’s pencil and all the children said he did it. Soon all the parents were talking about it, but it turned out he wasn’t even in the class at the time.”

Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said some children struggle to make the transition from home to school. He advised teachers to forge a strong link with parents to turn their offspring from “troublemakers to contributors to the class”.

The research was conducted in the reception classes of four schools in Greater Manchester. They included a faith school with mainly white children and a high proportion on free meals, an inner-city school with a large ethnic minority population, a suburban school favoured by middle-class parents and one in a socially deprived area.

Professor Liz Jones, co-author of the report, said: “Some cherished principles of early years education may have some unintended consequences. The principle of strong home-school links, for instance, may contribute to certain families being identified as sources of their children’s problematic behaviour.”

The study follows a recent poll which found that one in three teachers believed they could spot troublemakers simply by their first names.

Boys called Connor, Callum and Jack and girls named Courtney and Chardonnay were most likely to be disruptive.

Schools Learn Lessons From Strip Searches

Attorneys advise educators seeking drugs to call police

ctlawtribune.com | Sep 14, 2009

By CHRISTIAN NOLAN

With the new school year underway, students may soon see whether their administrators and teachers did their homework over the summer.

If a student is subjected to a strip search and school officials claim they have an unquestioned right to conduct such searches, then the odds are they weren’t paying attention to a U.S. Supreme Court decision released in June.

Connecticut education law experts say the case, Safford Unified School District No. 1, et. al. v. Redding, offers schools further guidance on how and when they might search a student for drugs, money or other contraband.

“Justifying a highly intrusive search is between difficult and impossible in the school setting,” said Thomas B. Mooney, who heads up Shipman & Goodwin’s School Law practice in Hartford. “If you’re in that serious of a situation, I think you call the police and let them deal with it.”

Middle school officials in Safford, Ariz., took a different approach after a student found with pills told a teacher that her supplier was a classmate, Savana Redding. The pills contained ibuprofen and naproxen, the same ingredients as an over-the-counter Advil and Aleve.

Nothing was found in Redding’s backpack so two female administrators searched her clothing. Stripped to her bra and panties, the 13-year-old was forced to shake her underwear so anything hidden would fall out. Nothing did. The school defended its actions by claiming it was part of a crackdown on drug use.

Redding said it was the most “humiliating experience” of her life and, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, filed suit. Attorneys for the school district countered that the courts have always given educators plenty of leeway to keep order in school settings, and a ruling against them could jeopardize student safety.

But lower level courts said the Arizona administrators overreacted, and the Supreme Court ruled that educators, like other public officials, could not conduct unreasonable searches.

“What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear,” Justice David Souter wrote in the majority opinion. “We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.”

Door Not Closed

Could such a sequence of events unfold in Connecticut? They already have.

Earlier this year, a principal and a teacher at an Ansonia school were fired after strip-searching four students who were suspected of stealing $70 from a teacher. A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the students.

The Supreme Court case may have reduced the likelihood of future incidents, as education law attorneys are strongly advising educators to call in police rather than try to conduct intrusive searches on their own.

When police intervene, it becomes “a law enforcement function and you’ve removed the student from the presence of the rest of the student body. So then you’ve reduced the danger hopefully,” said attorney Michelle Laubin, who writes the Connecticut Education Law Blog for her firm, Berchem, Moses & Devlin in Milford.

Laubin said the only drawback is that if officers decide not to search a student, and if drugs or weapons aren’t found, it makes it harder for school officials to take disciplinary action.

Laubin added that some districts have banned strip searches, but others will keep the option open, even after the Arizona case. “I don’t think this closes the door on all strip searches involving drugs and weapons,” she said.

Mooney said that before even considering a search, school officials must be sure they have reliable evidence that a student is hiding something. In a best-case scenario, that means a teacher or school official actually witnessing a student tucking something into his or her clothing.

Even then, said Mooney, educators should try to avoid a search. The teacher might say, “’I saw you stuff the drugs down your pants, c’mon give it to me,’” said Mooney. “And in most cases, the kid would comply.”

And if a student is suspected of having weapons? Mooney said that’s grounds for a search, but he noted that firearms are usually large enough that an administrator wouldn’t have to strip a student to his or her underwear to find them.

No Qualified Immunity

This isn’t the first time that the Supreme Court has ruled on student searches.

In 1985, in New Jersey v. T.L.O., the justices ruled that courts must determine whether a search has reasonable chance of turning up evidence and whether it is reasonable in scope and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the students.

Despite the ruling, districts facing lawsuits often continued to claim qualified immunity, which protects government officials who are doing their jobs from being sued unless they violated clearly established law. Districts often argued that the facts of their case were different from those of T.L.O., in which a principal searched the purse of a 14-year-old accused of smoking in the girls’ bathroom and found marijuana and other drug paraphernalia.

Since 1985, judges around the nation have come to different conclusions about immunity for school officials in strip search cases, which led the Supreme Court in the Arizona case to “doubt that we were sufficiently clear in the prior statement of law,” Souter wrote.

The Safford case removes that doubt. The Supreme Court spared the Arizona administrators from damages because the educators believed they enjoyed qualified immunity. But educators in similar future cases will be vulnerable.

“With this [decision], we have a recent Supreme Court case clearly stating that a strip search under these particular circumstances is impermissible,” said Matthew E. Venhorst, an associate at Shipman & Goodwin’s School Law Practice Group. “In the future, if this were to happen again… the qualified immunity doctrine would not be available in light of this case.”

Kelly Moyher, a staff attorney at the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, said school districts were already fairly well versed on the law even before the Supreme Court decision. Part of that was due to T.L.O. But there was also a 2001 New Haven case where 16 female middle school students were strip-searched during gym class after a classmate reported $40 missing. The girls eventually collected $28,500 each in damages.

“I think that school districts are pretty well prepared to deal with situations like this,” Moyher said. Safford “didn’t make any sweeping changes to the law.”

Mooney, who typically answers two or three questions a year from school administrators about student searches, recalled an inappropriate strip search in 1985 at Terryville High School. He said 30 or more male students were searched for alcohol.

Mooney recommended the district apologize to the students and their parents.

“People don’t always sue to get money. Their sense of principle is offended,” said Mooney. “We made a mistake. We [said we’re] sorry and we never got sued. In Safford they didn’t say that, and they went to the Supreme Court.”•

Giuliani joins new program to teach students about 9/11

AP | Sep 8, 2009

By CRISTIAN SALAZAR

NEW YORK — Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani joined Sept. 11 family members and college professors on Tuesday at a hotel blocks from the World Trade Center site to unveil a plan to teach middle and high school students about the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The 9/11 curriculum, believed to be the first comprehensive educational plan focusing on the attacks, is expected to be tested this year at schools in New York City, California, New Jersey, Alabama, Indiana, Illinois and Kansas.

It was developed with the help of educators by the Brick, N.J.-based Sept. 11 Education Trust, and was based on primary sources, archival footage and more than 70 interviews with witnesses, family members of victims and politicians, including Giuliani and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a New York senator at the time of the attacks.

The curriculum is taught through videos, lessons and interactive exercises, including one that requires students to use Google Earth software to map global terrorist activity.

One of the main goals is to help students entering middle and high school, who may been too young to have strong memories of the attacks, to develop a tangible connection to what happened.

“In a few years, we will be teaching students who were not even alive at the time of the attacks,” said Anthony Gardner, the executive director of the Sept. 11 Education Trust.

The nonprofit group is run by victims’ families, survivors and rescue workers who worry that educators don’t teach about the attacks because they don’t have the educational tools to do so.

Giuliani said that the curriculum can help students to think critically about the attacks as both a historical event and one that shapes the present, noting the continued threat of terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“This is one of the critical subjects on which young people should develop some ideas and thoughts. They’re going to have to live with this for quite some time,” he said. “It gives young people a framework in which to think about Sept. 11, all that it meant and all that it means to the present.”

For the professors who helped to develop the plan through the Taft Institute for Government at Queens College, creating that framework to understanding how 9/11 affects today’s policies was critical to the endeavor, and part of the challenge.

“The real trick is to get kids to see that it’s not just a dramatic event like 9/11 that connects them to these issues, it’s connected to their lives in the everyday, said Michael A. Krasner, a political scientist at Queens College. He said a range of viewpoints are reflected in the curriculum, including from Muslim scholars, to enrich the discussion.

The curriculum was designed so that teachers could tailor it to their own classrooms, but it gives an open-eyed view of 9/11, Gardner said.

“We’re not sugarcoating the event,” said Gardner, whose brother died in the World Trade Center. “We’ve included images that are challenging.”

Students and professors are invited to participate on a Web site developed around the curriculum, where they can share their own videos, lesson plans and discuss the questions raised in their classrooms.

The curriculum was tried out in 2008 at the River Dell Regional High School, a roughly 1,000-student high school in Oradell, N.J., about 20 miles north of Manhattan.

It costs $99 per license through Sept. 18, 2009. After that, it will cost $129. The money will go toward the development of more teaching materials on 9/11.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum has also developed educational materials for high schools, which are intended to augment classroom discussions, not to serve as an in-depth curriculum.
On the Net:

* http://www.sept11educationtrust.org
* http://www.learnabout9-11.org/

School Strip Searches Have Students Scared

Strip Search Accusations Have Students Scared and One Administrator On Leave

Action 3 News | Sep 8, 2009

Atlantic, IA- It started with someone stealing a hundred dollars from a student at the Atlantic, Iowa High School.  It ended with five girls who say they were stripped searched by a female counselor.  The male administrator who allegedly gave the strip search order is on leave.

Some of the girls, their parents and others showed up at the Tuesday school board meeting trying to get answers. Concerned mom, Shelly Pottebaum says, “Everyone involved has to answer for it in one way or the other.” Shelly told the school board to find a quick resolution to the situation for the girls. The interim superintendent, Dan Crozier says, “We are in the confidential stage and still interviewing. There’s not much we can say.”

Board President, Phil Hascall addressed the small crowd at the meeting. “It’s a long investigation and we are going to take our time and do it right by policy and by law.”

After the incident August 21, one of the girls went to the Atlantic Police Department and filed a report. The Chief of Police says detectives investigated and found this wasn’t a criminal matter, but a school matter.

The report states, “A female counselor stated she searched all five girls, one by one in a separate room, telling them only that she needed to see the inside of their pants and bras. “

However, Matt Hudson, the lawyer representing one girl says, “My client was told to take off her bra and underwear  in front of the counselor and female classmate who had money stolen. My client asked if she could just lift up her bra and was told no to take it off. My client also asked if she had to take off her underwear and she was told yes to take it off too.”

One Atlantic High Senior, Sara Pottebaum says she doesn’t feel safe in school anymore. “Ever since the stripping happened, you don’t know what to expect when you come to school and walk through those doors.” Sara also says she has grown up with one girls, “They’re embarrassed and they didn’t want to come to school the next day.”

Iowa state code says strip searches are not allowed in school. In fact, they’re illegal.   The lawyer says the families could file a lawsuit against the district.

No justification for school strip search

No justification for alleged strip search

Desmoines Register | Sep 11, 2009

by Rekha Basu

Even in the ambiguous, self-doubting, early teen-age years, I knew one thing about myself. I knew I would rather have died than have to appear naked in front of my classmates and teachers.

Times may have changed along with social and sexual mores, but what remains constant is the need for young women to control who gets access to their intimate body parts.

Society has grown to better understand these issues: The risks of being taken advantage of sexually; the defining role that body image plays in forming a sense of self; the eating disorders that can result from poor self-image. Which is why, from preschool on, children are taught to respect their bodies and refuse anyone (even a close family member) access to their private parts if it makes them uncomfortable.

If the facts presented by representatives of five Atlantic High School girls are true, those five were not only unfairly accused but personally violated by school officials who allegedly allowed them to be strip-searched in pursuit of missing money.

The searches took place Aug. 21 after another student reported $100 missing. One 15-year-old allegedly had to take off all her clothes while others were required to strip to differing degrees, such as lifting up their underwear. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this very year in favor of an Arizona middle-school girl, then 13, who was ordered to strip down to her underwear and shake out her bra and underpants in a search for prescription-strength ibuprofen.

According to accounts in Atlantic, one girl asked if she could lift up her bra and was told that wasn’t good enough. One allegedly was searched twice. Remember, there was no allegation of imminent danger – no drugs or weapons, no probable cause. No money turned up.

The decision to search apparently was made by a male gym teacher and a male assistant principal, and conducted in front of a female counselor, with the accuser watching – giving her unwarranted power over her classmates.

The faculty members have denied these were strip searches, according to district Superintendent Dan Crozier. Apparently accepting their word, he last week called them allowable searches under school district policy. But since then, an unidentified school administrator has been put on leave pending an investigation. Perhaps the superintendent realized he spoke too soon in siding with his staff over students.

And then there’s school board President Phil Hascall, who dismissed the issue when contacted by the Register last week, saying, “our superintendent handled it,” and he had no more questions. Does he not understand his oversight responsibility? Is the board just a rubber stamp for the administrator?

Do any of these school officials bother to know the laws? In the Arizona case, nothing was found either, and the former honor student was so humiliated, she later dropped out of school.

If that search was abusive, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it was, this one sounds five times more so. Strip searches are also against Iowa law. But laws aside, could $100 ever be more valuable than the girls’ rights to physical privacy and presumption of innocence?

Parents send their kids to school expecting they’ll be safe from coercion, humiliation and unwarranted intrusiveness. If these allegations are true, their own school violated these girls in ways likely to haunt them forever. Then officials compounded the damage by justifying the actions without all the facts.

Now, to regain the community’s confidence, the district needs to conduct a thorough, transparent investigation, admit to any wrongdoing and take appropriate action.