This troubling trend is impacting not only student health, academic performance and social well-being but also school finances, with districts spending thousands annually on enforcement, education, drug testing and prevention efforts.
At least 27 school districts in the past 18 months have started restricting backpacks, according to news reports. Though security experts are skeptical the measures make schools safer, they’ve become a common response to school shootings and to fears sparked by students showing up to school with guns.
Saturn's shared calendar purports to help high school students organize their academic, extracurricular and social lives. But school districts say it may put personal information at risk.
"We're excited and maybe a little bit nervous," Hardin County Schools Superintendent Teresa Morgan says as she and her team get ready to make room for an influx of 24,000 to 37,000 residents over the next decade.
State Superintendent Ryan Walters has launched a very public campaign of criticism against Tulsa Public Schools and Superintendent Deborah Gist, threatening the district's accreditation and comparing Tulsa public schools to a bus that Gist is driving off the road into a tree.
The Tempe Union High School District, the Columbia School District and the Laramie County School District 1, are among the systems experiencing sudden turnover in the early days of the 2023-24 school year.
Marty Pollio, superintendent of Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky, said he had to make the most difficult decision of his career: cancel the second and third days of school to solve issues involving their bus routes.
"The most important thing in education, in my opinion, is staring into the eyes of an inspiring human teacher," Cheyer said during a recent webinar hosted by the National School Boards Association. "Again, a lot of it comes from motivation."
The keyword as students head back to school in Alaska's Mat-Su Borough School District is "STAR." Actually, it's an acronym—but not one of the really dull ones.
