current events

How tight is too tight for school? Administrators and teachers at a middle school in Petaluma, Calif., are asking themselves this question as they implement a new dress code policy around girls’ form-fitting pants. Kenilworth Junior High has been making national news for prohibiting girls from wearing tight-fitting pants because they’re “distracting to teenage boys,” according to KTVU-TV.

The concept of segregated proms in the South shocked people when the AJC and other newspapers wrote about it a few years back. The first question from readers was how this could still be happening.

There were three samurai swords, with blades 13 inches, 21 inches and 28 inches long. There were hundreds of rounds of ammunition. There were targets, a bayonet, knives, pictures of a bloodied body wrapped in plastic, and guns. Lots of guns. And there were plans to buy more.

A Florida school district has released video that appears to show a bus driver kicking an autistic student down the stairs. Wilkerson was fired after the Sept. 28, 2012, incident, which Tampa police say resulted in a broken ankle for the young girl, reported NBC affiliate WFLA.com. Wilkerson now faces aggravated child abuse charges, the station said.

About 35 sixth-graders at DSST Stapleton learned some hard lessons about cheating last month. The students were caught worming their way into an online instant assessment program in science and English (called “mastery checks”) and changing answers so their teachers would believe they had mastered subjects.

Two Ohio high school football players have been found guilty of raping a drunken 16-year-old girl in a case that roiled a small city and stirred reaction from activists online. Judge Thomas Lipps ruled Sunday in juvenile court that Steubenville High School students Trent Mays and Ma'Lik Richmond are guilty of attacking the girl after an alcohol-fueled party last August.

The Boston School Committee, in a momentous vote Wednesday, scrapped a school assignment plan developed under court-ordered desegregation almost a quarter-century ago and embraced a new system that seeks to allow more students to attend schools closer to home.

Thousands of New York parents have emailed state and city education officials in recent weeks protesting this plan to share student data with private companies — yet no parent has gotten any response. The most sensitive confidential data is being shared, including children’s names, emails, phone numbers, and photos, which will be stored along with grades, test scores, health conditions, disabilities and detailed disciplinary records.

Now that P.S. 64 Pura Belpre school in Mount Eden is set to phase out in three years, parents are concerned that children in the school are condemned. The kindergarten through fifth grade school is beset with feckless teachers, bullying, large classes and a lack of textbooks and homework, parents charged.

Teresa Armstrong is steamed. The Virginia mother of four has spent the last few weeks watching, reading and listening to politicians argue about the country's finances but fail to reach a deal to prevent impending across-the-board cuts to federal spending. She doesn't understand how they can bicker endlessly while the consequences for her daughter, Angela, hang in the balance.