Here we are in Utah again. This time lawmakers want to help cut the state deficit by putting advertising on the sides of school buses, starting with the Jordan School District.

Rep. Jim Bird, R-West Jordan, is sponsoring a bill that would allow school boards to sell advertising space on the exteriors of school buses. He said the Jordan School District’s financial troubles inspired him to run the bill. The Jordan board decided last week to cut hundreds of jobs and increase class sizes to deal with an estimated $30 million budget shortfall next school year.

There are a few stipulations: No alcohol, tobacco, drugs, gambling or sexual material are to be advertised and it must be age appropriate.

Naturally, there are concerns about the kids’ over-exposure to commercialism and the ads causing too much distraction all around.

“Somebody’s reading an advertisement and not realizing that the bus is stopping,” said Bob Riley, executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services. “We want them seeing one thing when they see a school bus, and that’s basically a yellow flag of caution.”

Childhood advocates Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood have spoken out on the subject as well, throughout other states.

What really irks me-amazingly-is not the fact that they are considering putting the ads on, but that they think the kids won’t actually pay attention to the ads.

One parent is actually quoted as saying:

“I don’t think they’d pay attention,” said Geurts, who has three teenagers and an 11-year-old in the Davis District.

Hate to say it, but Guerts’ statement seems a bit naive. Of course they’d pay attention. Kids pick up on everything.

However,

Parent Trissy Bawden, also of Bountiful, called putting ads on buses, “a seemingly simple way to get some money for education which is much needed.”

Her husband, Sam Bawden, said he’s not as concerned about his four young children being exposed to ads as he is about them suffering the impacts of school budget cuts.

“The education budget is a bigger issue in my mind than commercialization,” he said.

Read the entire article here.

In an effort to save money, State Senator Chris Buttars of Utah has proposed making 12th grade optional. Your last year of high school, optional.

He said eliminating 12th grade altogether would have saved $102 million.

If given the option to skip 12th grade that would save something like $60 million. Utah is certainly a state that could use some cuts here and there (especially when their state deficit runs to the tune of $700 million) , but I’m not sure cutting out 12th grade-cutting education- is the answer.

Are kids really ready to forgo Senior year?  J. D. Williams doesn’t think so-

J.D. Williams, student body president at West Jordan High School in Utah, told the Los Angeles Times that he’s against the plan.

“I need this year,” Williams said. “My parents are against it… All the teachers at the school are against it. I’m against it.”

Utah also wants to put ads on school buses to combat the state’s debt.

Neither idea is going over so well.

On cutting 12th grade:

“It is very shortsighted,” John Balden, president of the Utah chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, told ABC News. “Students don’t just play in 12th grade. They really do study. In higher education we find an awful lot of students unprepared for college. Twelfth grade is really a necessary grade.”

Many students actually use 12th grade to get everything in place and are thankful for the benefits the extra time provides.

What happens if Senior year gets the axe?

Yeah. The ‘Zero Tolerance Policy’ is working just fine….so fine in fact, that a twelve year old girl got arrested (arrested!!) for writing on her desk at school in New York. What she wrote wasn’t even remotely hateful or anything. Just professing her love for her friends and making it known that ‘Lex was here’. And-it’s not like she carved it in the desk-she used a marker, one that could easily have been washed off.

Still, she got arrested for it, taken out of the classroom in handcuffs and escorted by the police.

Now, hang on. What happened to a visit to the principal’s office? Detention? What has happened that doodling on your desk warrants handcuffs and a trip to jail for a 12-year-old?

….the case of the doodling preteen is raising concerns about the use of zero tolerance policies in schools.

Critics say schools and police have gone too far, overreacting and using well-intended rules for incidents involving nonviolent offenses such as drawing on desks, writing on other school property or talking back to teachers.

“We are arresting them at younger and younger ages [in cases] that used to be covered with a trip to the principal’s office, not sending children to jail,” said Emma Jordan-Simpson, executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund, a national children’s advocacy group.

Apparently, this isn’t the first case of arrest. There was another not too long ago in New York and one in Chicago:

One of the first cases to gain national notoriety was that of Chelsea Fraser. In 2007, the 13-year-old wrote “Okay” on her desk, and police handcuffed and arrested her. She was one of several students arrested in the class that day; the others were accused of plastering the walls with stickers.

At schools across the country, police are being asked to step in. In November, a food fight at a middle school in Chicago, Illinois, resulted in the arrests of 25 children, some as young as 11, according to the Chicago Police Department.

Really? You have to call in the police to stop a food fight? No, you (teachers, principal, etc.) step up and tell them to stop and move on. Throw in a detention if necessary, but not the handcuffs.

Is ‘Zero Tolerance’ giving schools an excuse to not take responsibility for their students? Just let someone else handle the situation?

Towards the end of the article, juvenile court judge Steven Teske is quoted as saying:

“There is zero intelligence when you start applying zero tolerance across the board,” he said. “Stupid and ridiculous things start happening.”

That’s the most sane thing I’ve heard about Zero Tolerance.

End of year DVDs are a popular classroom memento. After all, who doesn’t love a nice reminder of the highlights of the past school year? The classmates. The holiday parties. The science fair. The couch sex.

Yes, the couch sex. An Elk Grove, California teacher sent home a DVD that included a homemade sex scene. It’s unclear what precisely was on the DVD, since the parents only watched a few seconds before removing the DVDs from their players and immediately destroying the discs (*cough* yeah, right *cough*). Although the school district tried to keep the teacher’s identity under wraps, news agencies soon ferreted out her name and splashed it across the paper. The woman in question teaches the fifth grade, and the video was sent home to her 24 students. When the teacher realized what had happened, she phoned each family (in hysterics, of course) to apologize and asked that they destroy the video immediately.

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This morning we had parent/teacher interviews with both the girls’ teachers. I wont reveal the details of the discussions obviously but I will say that there is an issue with one of our children that is of some concern and we will be monitoring things closely, as will her teacher.

One of our kids is not playing nicely with some of her fellow students. She is doing well academically, but there are some shenanigans going on during the recess and lunch breaks that need to be addressed quickly.

My younger brother struggled to get along with some of his peers, and his troubles were exacerbated by a general lack of interest in school and a sometimes difficult relationship with his teachers (who were not at all curious about why he might not like school so they just stuck him in the corner and told him to be quiet… thank goodness modern education allows for different learning styles in students… but I digress).

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