“To avoid charges of ‘racism,’ we disciplined black and white students differently.” (Edmund Janko, City Journal/OpinionJournal.com, Oct. 25). According to the byline, “Mr. Janko taught in the English department of Bayside High School in New York City from 1957 to 1990.”.
Posts Tagged ‘schools’
Role of the judiciary: overseeing the girls’ basketball team
A threat of litigation forced the Castro Valley High to fire two assistant coaches, have an “ombudsman” attend practice, and allow a six-person committee including parents choose a starting line-up for the girls’ basketball team.
Attorney Andrew Sweet, who is speaking for the parents, said the program was out of control last year. “These kids were coming home from practices and leaving games crying,” Sweet says.
Sweet admitted that Nibarger wasn’t screaming at the players, playing favorites or subjecting them to physical abuse. It was more a matter of “communication” and “utter vindictiveness.” That sounded pretty vague, so Sweet went back to the parents and came up with some specific allegations.
Sweet says Nibarger once threw the girls out of the gym when a practice was not going well. (The parents’ group says it was 45 minutes early; Nibarger says it was “10 to 15.”) She didn’t attend picture day. (Neither do other Castro Valley coaches.) She cut the playing time of anyone who complained about her coaching decisions. (She’s proud of her record of playing 9 to 10 players a game.) Once, Sweet says, Nibarger was in a restaurant, saw the players and left without saying anything. (She says she wanted to respect the privacy of what appeared to be a players-only meeting.)
A local judge whose daughter is a senior on the team is thought to be spearheading the protests, though Sweet denies this. (C.W. Nevius, “Parents vs. coach: Battle goes wild”, San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 22; Deadspin blog (h/t B.C.)).
“Mom tells of daughter’s ‘rape’ scheme”
“After walking past her husband’s silent gaze in a courthouse hallway, the woman testified that she knew of plans by her daughter and her husband to frame [teacher] Danny Cuesta, 30, for rape. She said it was part of a scam to sue the North Babylon School District.” NB, however, that the witness is going through a divorce with her husband, and the prosecutors are alleging that the mother participated in the teacher’s cover-up. (Alfonso A. Castillo, Newsday, Oct. 18; AP/WSYR, Oct. 4).
Tag, you’re out
The game, that is: “Officials at the Willett Elementary School in Attleboro [southwest of Boston] have banned playground tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chasing games over concerns about the risk of injury and liability for the school.” (“Attleboro elementary school bans tag”, AP/Boston Globe, Oct. 18)(more on lawsuit-fearing fun-busters).
When schools fall short
Australia: “A settlement between a leading Melbourne private school and a parent who said her child had not been taught to read properly could result in increased litigation between parents and schools, a principals group has warned.” Yvonne Meyer faulted Brighton Grammar School for not placing enough emphasis on phonics-based instruction for her child. (David Rood and Chee Chee Leung, “Litigation warning as private school settles complaint over child’s literacy”, Melbourne Age, Aug. 16; Ewin Hannan and Justine Ferrari, “Private schools to curtail promises”, The Australian, Aug. 16). And in France: “A French schoolboy [Jérome Charasse] has successfully sued the government after blaming his failure in a philosophy exam on his teacher’s frequent absences during strikes. Parents’ groups and teaching unions believe the decision by a court in Clermont-Ferrand will lead to many similar cases.” (Colin Randall, ” Boy wins court case over striking teacher”, Daily Telegraph, Jun. 22)(h/t D.N.).
Terminating bad teachers
John Stossel maps out the New York City process (“How To Fire an Incompetent Teacher”, Reason, October, leads to a PDF).
U.K. schools fear liability surge
Britain: “Headteachers yesterday warned that litigious parents could soon sue schools for failing to prevent their children from drinking, smoking or taking drugs. … Families are already taking legal action over schools’ alleged failure to tackle bullying and heads say they could soon be held responsible for obesity, pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, drug taking and drinking.” (James Meikle, “Heads predict lawsuits over obesity targets”, The Guardian, Sept. 12).
Ivied halls, defended by lawyer phalanxes
“Large universities now employ the equivalents of small law firms on staff, and it’s worth pondering what this Perry Masonification of our schools says about how they operate. …As Ed Stoner, a retired Pittsburgh lawyer who, over a 30-year career, represented numerous schools in Western Pennsylvania, told me: ‘People [today] are much less inclined to think, “I wouldn’t sue the university, it’d be like suing my mother.” People tend to look at the university as one more institution that might have a lot of money.'” (Mark Oppenheimer, “College Goes to Court”, OpinionJournal, Jul. 14).
Second Circuit nixes teacher-competence test
In a case entitled Gulino v. New York State Education Department, the federal appeals court earlier this month “reinstated a race discrimination suit against the New York State Education Department based on the theory that a test of ‘basic college-level content’ that asks applicants to get just two-thirds of the questions right is racially discriminatory because it has a ‘disparate impact’ on African-American and Latino teachers.” Dan McLaughlin at Baseball Crank acknowledges that the court relied on existing Supreme Court precedent, but is still rubbed the wrong way by its assumptions (Aug. 31).
More summer reading: “A Nation of Wimps”
From Psychology Today, by Hara Estroff Marano: “Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern has the net effect of making kids more fragile; that may be why they’re breaking down in record numbers.”