School Survival

MONROE, N.Y. (AP) - School officials apologized after an X-rated font was used on a third-grade spelling packet handed out to parents. The font showed male and female stick figures in provocative poses to form the letters of the alphabet.Officials with the Monroe-Woodbury School District in Orange County apologized last week after parents at Pine […]

BANGOR, Maine (AP) - A book of rhymes handed out to kindergarten classes across Maine is being criticized by some parents as inappropriate. "Schoolyard Rhymes" is a compilation of 50 verses included in bags given to 18,000 pupils through the Read With ME literacy project supported by Gov. John Baldacci and his wife Karen.Karen Baldacci, […]

Six-year-old suspended 10 days for bringing squirt gun to school. With pic of bright orange plastic squirt gun. Hooray for zero tolerance!=======KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A Missouri mother is angry that her first-grader was suspended from school over a plastic toy gun."I asked her, 'You're going to suspend my son for 10 days for this? […]

A shortage of flags, questions about patriotism, and confusion among teachers have greeted a new state law requiring public school students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom. Some teachers said they were unprepared for the requirement and not sure what directions to give students. For many, the biggest issue has been a […]

When he was yanked from his family's minivan and shoved to the ground by two large men, Brandon thought he was being mugged.Then he saw the gun."It freaked me out," the 13-year-old Surrey youth said yesterday. "I didn't know what to think."It wasn't until he felt handcuffs clamp his wrist that he realized the men […]

NEW YORK - A depressed Hunter College student who swallowed handfuls of Tylenol, then saved her own life by calling 911, was in for a surprise when she returned to her dorm room after the ordeal.The lock had been changed.She was being expelled from the dorm, the school informed her, because she violated her housing […]

President Clinton's impeachment nemesis Kenneth Starr is staying busy. Monday, the former Independent Counsel is expected to file a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the suspension of a high school student disciplined for holding a banner across the street from campus reading, "BONG HITS 4 JESUS."The incident occurred in January 2002, as […]

NEW YORK (AP) -- Public schools take a lot of criticism, but a growing, loosely organized movement is now moving from harsh words to action -- with parents taking their own children out of public schools and exhorting other families to do the same.Led mainly by evangelical Christians, the movement depicts public education as hostile […]

A growing number of schools around the US are banning birthday cakes, saying the tradition has become too unhealthy.Millions of students go back to school next week as their annual summer holiday comes to an end.But one thing will be missing from classrooms across the country.For generations American children have brought homemade cakes and cupcakes […]

The mother of a member family in Boerne, Texas, needed to drive her 14-year-old daughter to her summer job. Knowing the trip would take just a few minutes, the mother left her 10-year-old at home alone. By accident, the 10-year-old dialed 911, then hung up.Not long after, a police officer visited the family's home to […]