TJUSD Board Meeting - May 08, 2014

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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - May 08, 2014

Postby CrustyOldFart » Sat May 24, 2014 9:05 am

Superintendent responds to teacher firing
Interesting situation brewing up in Bishop. Apparently a teacher posted a picture of a boy holding a fig leaf with the caption "Fuck the Police." Many community members mistook the fig leaf for a marijuana leaf. (It's hard to explain such shear idiocy, but apparently stupid happens.) The district superintendent decided to fire the teacher, claiming that the image was inappropriate and that anyone who would post such material is unfit to work as a teacher in his district. Obviously, the community became outraged over such an arbitrary misuse of power. Although there were those who supported the superintendent (let's just call them idiots), there are more who disagree with his decision (let's call these people Freedom Lovers). So at this point there's lots of arguing between the idiots and the Freedom Lovers and it's hard to say what the eventual outcome of this case will be. Hopefully the Freedom Lovers put the heat on and force the superintendent to resign and the school board to reinstate the teacher! I hate fascists who use their power to stifle free speech. There are little Hitlers like this all over the place and they do not deserve even the slightest iota of respect!
:curse:
Here's the disputed image:
Image
The meaning of this image is open to interpretation. That alone makes this an artistic statement, which is free speech and it is highly intelligent free speech at that. I, for one, want public school teachers to engage in public discussion of social issues and to discourage such discourse is to my way of thinking anti-intellectual, authoritarian, irresponsible, and goes against everything this country stands for.

The bottom line is that this teacher has one heck of a lawsuit against the school district for wrongful termination. He almost certainly will ultimately win. Some corrupt local judge might back the school district, but take the case to the state supreme court and the district will wind up paying out at least TEN MILLION dollars in legal fees plus the cost of the ultimate settlement. Most likely the district will cut a sweet deal behind closed doors with this guy to get him to shut up and go away. That's usually the way things are done in cases like this.

Lots of interesting comments left in response to this article!
LINK: http://www.sierrawave.net/30311/superintendent-responds-to-teacher-firing/
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - May 08, 2014

Postby a2z » Sat May 24, 2014 10:20 pm

The superintendent in Bishop ABSOLUTELY crossed the line on this one.
A person does not give up his or her right to free speech as a result of becoming a public employee. Free speech encompasses a number of different areas, each with its own specific rules. These include academic freedom, artistic expression, the rights of association (such as with a union), and political speech. One thing that is clear is that educational employees may not be dismissed, transferred, reprimanded, or have their employment rights infringed in any way as a result of exercising constitutionally protected rights of free speech.

The posting of this teacher can be seen as both artistic expression and political speech. All this teacher in Bishop needs to do is hire a good attorney and start kicking some ass!
LINK: http://www.educationrights.com/teacherconstitutionalrights.php
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - May 08, 2014

Postby wildrose » Sun May 25, 2014 8:44 am

School District Pays $70K to Settle Lawsuit Over Girl's Facebook Posts :mad2:
It seems that administrators sometimes have the misconception that the school can control every aspect of the lives of its employees and of the students that attend the school. This over-reaching can get a school in trouble. While this situation involving a student is trivial compared to the situation in Bishop, it shows that districts make themselves vulnerable when they pry into the private lives of students. Adults working for the district would have even more legal rights and be able to demand much more than $70K. I'm not sure if the superintendent in Bishop realized that he opened a can of worms on this one and that those worms could easily become venomous snakes unless he backs off! It would be a pity to see hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted on a legal case when that money would be better spent on the education of students!
The American Civil Liberties Union took on the case, saying Stratton’s constitutional rights were violated, including the right to free speech and privacy. They sued for, among other things, “emotional distress.”

“Students have a lot of free speech rights on campus, but they are even more enhanced when they are off-campus. So that made it a more egregious violation of Riley’s constitutional rights,” said Wally Hilke, an attorney at Lindquist & Vennum, which represented Riley in the case.

LINK: http://abcnews.go.com/US/school-district-pays-70k-settle-lawsuit-online-posts/story?id=23094873
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - May 08, 2014

Postby desertrat » Mon May 26, 2014 7:15 am

This proves our kids WANT a nanny state
BTW I posted this in the Cyberbullying thread under Technology and Gadgets too because it hits the nail on the head in so many ways. It seems that a certain segment of society (not just a group of coddled kids) want to be protected from anything that offends them. Anything that is edgy and which upsets them or "triggers" negative emotions is deemed as an emotional assault. This kind of thinking stifles free speech and is very dangerous. People like the STUPIDINTENDENT up in Bishop need to grow some balls and stop whimpering every time someone does something that might upset some little pussy. Firing someone over a Facebook post is about the most asinine thing he could do and he needs to realize that what he is actually doing is undermining our basic freedoms. That should be enough right there to get him fired since undermining our basic freedoms is treason in my book!
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - May 08, 2014

Postby wildrose » Mon May 26, 2014 9:17 am

18 Best High Schools in California
The trend I saw is that schools that have high numbers of students from affluent families stressed technology and global awareness. Schools with high numbers of students from low income families stressed values such as hard work, dependability, and determination. It seems it would be hard to compare schools that are so very different and yet somehow they ranked them. Music programs popped up a few times, but other than that the schools just offered the standard curriculum, which is what you'd expect. Of course, this begs the question as to how the local schools stack up. There's the schools in Ridgecrest, Trona, and Owens Valley. How good of a job are they doing at preparing students for the future?
LINK: http://www.citiesjournal.com/18-best-high-schools-in-california/
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - May 08, 2014

Postby CoolChick » Sat May 31, 2014 7:24 am

School Lunch Hysteria? :roll2:
School nutrition standards might be a little too strict. Food has to taste good or else kids won't eat it.
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - May 08, 2014

Postby a2z » Wed Jun 04, 2014 9:56 pm

School Dress Codes Are So Unfair - Rebell!!! Fight the Patriarchy!!! :laugh:
Video One: The young lady explains what happened:
Suspended for Shorts at Beaconsfield high school

A couple nice comments left in response to this video:
I think chicks that age should be allowed to crawl on all fours to school wearing nothing but kneepads, gloves and the Brazzers logo tattooed on each ass cheek. Hey, if there's a stir among the boys; fight the patriarchy and their incessant objectification of women! Having dress codes and keeping teen hormones in check, naaahhh...pretty much Nazi Germany.
----------
This girl will be a huge success in life. It's a bullshit world and she's a world-class bullshiter. 

Editorial/Article: “QUIT SHAMING GIRLS”: Teacher Orders Girl To Stop Wearing Shorts, Launches Viral Protest
LINK: http://clashdaily.com/2014/06/quit-shaming-girls-teacher-orders-girl-stop-wearing-shorts-launches-viral-protest/#ihVYwJUm1PcZ0FV9.99
Video Two: Interesting take on the situation that seems to be grounded in reality as opposed to being grounded into some kind of progressive dogma about our "unfair and patriarchal" society.
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - May 08, 2014

Postby sandman » Thu Jun 05, 2014 4:54 pm

Harmless High School Prank That Occurred Completely Off Campus Turned Over To School Police Officer
Some HS kids wrote a fake letter using school letterhead that was delivered to parents of girls attending the school. The letter explained that a "mandatory vaginal inspection" would soon be held and that any female who failed to participate would receive a fail mark and seniors would not graduate if they missed the required inspection. A copy of the actual letter is included at the page linked to below. This is for the most part a harmless prank, but the school is making a big deal over it and has involved law enforcement.
All well and good, if you're the sort of person who believes that no bad joke should go unpunished. Obviously, the lack of on-campus misbehavior ties the district's hands. This explains its decision to hand it to the liaison officer, who can move freely between these two worlds and use the combined force of school policy and criminal statutes to nail the dastardly perpetrators who amused mostly themselves with this effort.

LINK: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140517/07133727269/harmless-high-school-prank-that-occurred-completely-off-campus-turned-over-to-school-police-officer.shtml
If a similar letter were written about a "mandatory penis inspection" everyone would consider it a silly joke, but since females are "targeted" by the letter it all of a sudden becomes a big deal. In fact, a commenter provided the following support for this assertion:
So how come the "Mandatory Penis Inspection" letters were never turned over to the Police? Why not? Because the Police would just laugh and laugh, like the rest of us. Some examples:
Carlmont High School http://imgur.com/ZLv0b
Camberwell High School http://images.bluegartr.com/bucket/gallery/2ee9442bf2256c10ade2dfa69c40ff1a.jpg
Mount Baker High School http://imgur.com/egkyxDy
Lowell High School http://imgur.com/gallery/r49C60m

Apparently this is a fairly standard prank letter and most people are intelligent enough to dismiss it as a prank. Some might consider it to be bad taste and others might find it humorous, but in either case most people don't get all worked up over it and treat it as some sort of crime. Then again in our Politically Correct culture more and more people probably are viewing this as something serious and might even consider it to be sexual harassment or some kind of bullying. Of course, anything that makes anyone even a little bit uncomfortable nowadays is called bullying in order to legitimize taking action against the "assailant" no matter how trivial the matter may actually be.
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Re: Student Pranks

Postby wildrose » Fri Jun 06, 2014 7:57 am

Harmless high school pranks are for the most part recognized for what they are. Most school officials react appropriately most of the time. Naturally every now and then a school official over-reacts to a harmless student prank and the most outrageous cases wind up in the news. But the mistake is to assume that schools are run by idiots just because a tiny percentage of situations get handled inappropriately. Judging all schools by what happens at the worst tenth of a percent of schools is a big mistake, but that's the kind of mistake that's commonly made in our society as a result of the way the news media handles these aberrant situations where some goofball school official uses poor judgement.
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - May 08, 2014

Postby cactuspete » Sat Jun 07, 2014 8:36 am

sandman wrote:Of course, anything that makes anyone even a little bit uncomfortable nowadays is called bullying in order to legitimize taking action against the "assailant" no matter how trivial the matter may actually be.

This whole anti-bullying fad has gotten out of hand!
Image
Teachers had this same basic set of tips before this anti-bullying stuff became popular. Not that I'm sick of hearing about bullying (and especially cyber-bullying), but it does seem to be the case that the definition of bullying has been expanded to include many things which clearly aren't bullying. Conflation has occurred and now the definition of bullying is so expansive that it seems to be applied to just about anything that makes people uncomfortable including normal conflict, disagreeing with someone, using a word which some person finds objectionable for some arbitrary reason, telling jokes of just about any kind, expressing one's opinion, etc.
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