Texas: Tyler Teacher Is Dead After Being Stabbed in Classroom
A teacher was stabbed in a high school classroom in Tyler and later died. A 16-year-old student was arrested in the case. The police are not releasing the name of the student. The victim, Todd R. Henry, a 52-year-old music therapist, was stabbed once in the neck at 8:50 a.m. and died later at a hospital. A teacher aide immediately subdued the attacker, and no one else was injured. Angela Jenkins, a school spokeswoman, said the attack was not gang or racially motivated. “All reports suggest that it was a random act by an individual student,” she said. Mr. Henry worked with children who have disabilities or behavior problems at John Tyler High School, about 90 miles southeast of Dallas.
Thompson Takes Aim at Mayor’s Schools Record and Vows to Give Parents More of a Voice
Declaring that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s “corporate model” has failed students and parents alike, William C. Thompson Jr., the Democratic nominee for mayor, pledged on Tuesday night to hire educators to run the school system, shrink class sizes and get parents more involved in the education process.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 27, 2009
In Austin, so many parents are rushing their children to the Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas with swine flu symptoms that the hospital had to set up tents in the parking lot to cope with the onslaught.
In Memphis, the Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center emergency room got so crowded with feverish, miserable youngsters that it had to do the same thing.
And in Manning, S.C., a private school where an 11-year-old girl died shut down after the number of students who were out sick with similar symptoms reached nearly a third of the student body.
"It just kind of snowballed," said Kim Jordan, a teacher at the Laurence Manning Academy, which closed Wednesday after Ashlie Pipkin died, and the number of ill students hit 287. "We had several teachers out also. That was the reason to close the school -- so everyone could just be away from one another for a few days."
Unions Criticize Obama's School Proposals as 'Bush III'
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 25, 2009
To the surprise of many educators who campaigned last year for change in the White House, the Obama administration's first recipe for school reform relies heavily on Bush-era ingredients and adds others that make unions gag.
Standardized testing, school accountability, performance pay, charter schools -- all are integral to President Obama's $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" grant competition to spur innovation. None is a typical Democratic crowd-pleaser.
Labor leaders, parsing the Education Department's fine print, call the proposal little more than a dressed-up version of the No Child Left Behind law enacted seven years ago under Obama's Republican predecessor.
"It looks like the only strategies they have are charter schools and measurement," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. "That's Bush III." Weingarten, who praises Obama for massive federal aid to help schools through the recession, said her 1.4 million-member union is engaged in "a constructive but tart dialogue" with the administration about reform.
D.C. Teachers Rally Against Rhee, Union Head
Thursday, September 24, 2009; 7:41 PM
A small but vocal band of District teachers, angry about impending layoffs, rallied against Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and their own union president in front of the school system's central offices early Thursday evening.
"Our teachers are running scared right now, because they're not sure they'll have a job," said Malvery Smith, a second grade teacher at Turner Elementary School@Green in Southeast.
Smith, who has taught in the city for 14 years, was one of about 60 District educators in the plaza in front of school headquarters on North Capitol Street. They were joined by supporters and community activists.
Teachers protested Rhee's Sept. 16 announcement of a still-unspecified number of layoffs. It came more than three weeks into the school year and nearly seven weeks after the D.C. Council sliced $20.7 million from the 2010 DCPS budget. The cuts, which also hit other city agencies, were triggered by a continued decline in tax revenue.
Teachers who will lose their jobs are expected to be notified by Sept. 30.
Photographs: An Impoverished Education
Video: Apartheid Haunts South Africa's Schools