Was It Worth It, Ma'am?

Morons of the week: the Iowa teachers who strip searched 5 teenage girls in their search for $100.

Their stupidity would be excusable if there hadn't been some big Supreme Court case this summer that touches on almost exactly this point. But wait--there was.

ProTip from a Union Guy: Please don't ask your students to strip naked in front of you. Just.......don't.

Read more here, if any.

I Have Stared Into the Soul of Madness....

....and it's trying to talk policy with the Department of Education.

Here in Washington State we only pay for 1/2 day of kindergarten for students. Some schools are starting to have full-day K added incrementally, but because of our low poverty numbers we're way, way down on that list for additional money from the state.

So we thought we'd try the model where we ask parents who are interested to pay a monthly fee for the other half of the day, something we've seen other schools in our area do. We were all set to go forward last year when our financial guy discovered that if we charged for a half day we'd lose our Impact Aid money from the federal government, which is several thousand dollars per student.

Fast forward to this year. We're losing teaching positions, and if I could offer full-day K in my school I'd be able to save some jobs. Plus, I have kids who *need* that full-day experience, and I've got parents who are more than willing to pay--the only problem is the Department of Education.

Tried my state level impact aid coordinator. He turned me down flatly. I explained that the K students would still get their free half day that the state has deemed is the "free and appropriate public education" (FAPE) for K students; that didn't matter. If we charge them for a service that they wouldn't get otherwise, the other half of the day, then we lose our impact aid funding.

I went to the next level above him. This gal said she understood and was very sorry, but there was nothing she could do.

Now I've got Rep. McMorris-Rogers office involved trying to convince the DoE to see things our way. My bottom line is that DoE's ruling is making it so that I can't offer my military kids a service that many other schools can, and that's not fair to them or their families.

Good times.

Read more here, if any.

The Internet is Really Really Great…..for Porn

Another week, another pair of stories about the sexual follies of teachers in Washington State. The first comes from the November 13th edition of the Spokesman-Review (no online access available), and it’s way too familiar a story:

A teacher who used Rogers High School computers to talk about his fantasies of having sex with—and even raping—teenagers is still being paid a year after he was removed from the classroom.

Social studies teacher Peter Perkins was sent home a year ago today. His salary and benefits have cost taxpayers nearly $69,000 since then.

Spokane Public Schools documents allege that Perkins photographed and twisted the nipples of bare-chested high school boys in a bathroom, wrote about his fantasies of raping a student, engaged in explicit online chats using district computers, and downloaded graphic files titled “Teen Muscle Boy” to a publicly owned computer. In all, there were 13 allegations of misconduct.

Perhaps the saddest part of this story is that Mr. Perkins is an openly homosexual teacher in a town where that’s way too rare. In a city where the late Jim West and Richard Curtis both threw away their political careers and contributed to a general air of homophobia, Perkins could have been a powerful role model. Instead he plays right into the most horrific of stereotypes about gay men, and that’s a damned shame.

Down in Richland it’s a decidedly more pedestrian bit of lechery as 58-year old music teacher Allan Eve is arrested for having sex with one of his students in the band closet.

Thank you for exiting the profession, sir, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

I take these things kind of personally. The sexual escapades of men like these make all male teachers look bad, and for a guy like me who works in the primary grades that’s poison. To hell with both of them.

Read more here, if any.