Schools roundup

  • Progressive law school opinion has never made its peace with Milliken v. Bradley, which is another reason not to be surprised that the coming campaign cycle might relitigate the whole school busing issue [Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski, CNN on 1975 Elizabeth Warren article]
  • Irony? School “anti-bullying specialist” seems to have bullied students over officially disapproved expression [Robby Soave, Reason; Lacey Township, N.J. students suspended over off-campus Snapchat]
  • How Abbott and other New Jersey school finance rulings wound up plunging the state deep in debt [Steven Malanga, City Journal; earlier here and at Cato on New Jersey and more generally on school finance litigation including here, here (Kansas, etc.) and at Cato (Colorado)]
  • “Pennsylvania School District Warns Parents They Could Lose Kids Over Unpaid School Lunches” [AP/CBS Philadelphia]
  • “Educational Freedom, Teacher Sickouts, and Bloated Higher Ed” [Cato Daily Podcast with Corey DeAngelis, Neal McCluskey, and Caleb Brown]
  • No shock, Sherlock: New York law suspending statute of limitations for suing schools results in higher insurance premiums for public districts [New York Post]

2 Comments

  • Re: Lacey Township. How about 18 USC 242?

  • It is truly amazing to me how people are so willing to impose harsh costs on innocent students in order to get their way. Think about some poor first-grader spending 2 or 3 hours on a bus each day to get to school. Or a high school kid who does extra-curricular activities—whereas if he or she went to a local school, he could arrange transport home relatively easily–try doing that if the school is 20 miles from home through an urban area.

    And what of the many issues—given the comments of the NYC schools chancellor or some of the comments of others about ignoring the white kids’ needs, who in their right mind would send a suburban kid to a school system run with that ethos—and one over which you had no say as a voter?

    And who gets to decide school discipline? Are the “out of district” kids going to be treated fairly? Are they going to be treated better (due to court scrutiny)? And how do schools deal with the inevitable lawsuits over that?

    The whole thing is the classic example of the cure being far worse than the disease. As someone who has “walked the walk” (my kids attended city public schools in a major urban area–one of which was 18% white), I don’t have any countenance for de jure racial segregation—but the idea of making kids bear the burden of society’s ills strikes me as deeply immoral. I hope that Ms. Warren has gotten wiser in her age.