Friday Snippets: 12/19/08 - Can I Get a Vacation?
Justin Bathon on Friday, December 19, 2008 at 10:43AM
This is scary for Colorado's higher ed. institutions. Not likely, but scary.
Air quality standards for Indiana's schools? No more building by interstates I guess.
Super interesting case at the N.C. State Supreme Court over whether students are entitled to a summer vacation or whether the district can unilaterally assign them to year-round school.
The Missouri law that resulted from the Drew cyberbullying case is being used quite a bit already.
The Georgia Bible Class law is not really being used much.
Why teacher's unions get a bad name.
Judge rules that Montana's legislature made a good faith attempt to fix their funding issues.
Around the Blogosphere:
Religion Clause has an interestingly defiant football coach in Texas that insists on praying.
Karl Romberger has a variety of Pennsylvania goodies this week. As does Pam Parker for Texas.
Wrightslaw examines the meaning of "day" for special ed. purposes.
Kevin Riley at Leadertalk reflects on how bullies invaded his school.
NASSP has some new legislation introduced by Sen. Clinton that could help school leaders.
For your Friday Fun:
Now this was a good use of time. I like it when people take pride in our founding documents.
(HD) A More Perfect Union from Andrew Sloat on Vimeo.
Reader Comments (2)
Justin:
Whether a school district can mandate summer school is indeed a super interesting case. To my knowledge, this is also a case of first impression. My own view is that unless the S.C. statute mandates school during a particular time of year, there is no prohibition on a school district mandating summer school.
Such a decision, however, by one school district, is not practical because it can cause problems for parents who work. I suspect that if the BOE goes through with this plan, they will not remain in office very long.
Mitchell Rubinstein
Thanks for the comment, Mitchell. Yeah, I have not heard of a case along these lines before either. I don't know N.C. law, but just from my knowledge of several other state statutory schemes I don't think anything would prevent the school board from changing their mandatory attendance days to a summer schedule. It doesn't work the best with financial schedules that start July 1, but I understand the pressure the districts are under. Either way at this point, I would like to see the N.C. Legislature step in and help clarify things. This case could set some interesting legal and practical precedent, though.