www.newrivervalley.com

A former Montgomery County schools library assistant is suing the school board, alleging religious harrassment.

In a federal court filing, Judith Scott said that her immediate supervisors at Blacksburg Middle School prayed for her, left "praise" notes on her desk more than once and asked her to take time from work to attend a religous conference.

Court documents say that Scott refused the religous overtones, but that her work environment became hostile.

You can see the whole complaint here.

A Pulaski Middle School teacher is on administrative leave after a Radford grand jury indicted her on charges of growing marijuana in her home.
Lisa Toler, of Radford, teaches seventh grade at Dublin Middle. She’s been there for three years, according the Pulaski County Schools’ human resources department.
Police said they found 19 pot plants at her house near Radford University in August. Police reports said she admitted to having about 15 plants.
Court records said that they also found a medicine bottle with suspected marijuana seeds inside, heat lamps and a book about growing the plants.
Joe Makolandra, director of Pulaski’s human resources, said Toler reported to his office on Monday and was placed on leave with pay. The school system was told about the charges on Dec. 12, he said.
Toler earns $34,100 annually.
The Pulaski school board is scheduled to meet on Jan. 8. They’ll decide if she continues to be paid while in leave.

New York's Gov. David Patterson wrote a commentary to CNN today asserting the need for an "obesity tax." He has suggested an 18 percent tax on sugared drinks and fruit drinks with less than 70 percent juice.

"No one can deny the urgency of reducing the rate of obesity, including childhood obesity. Obesity causes serious health problems like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. It puts children at much greater risk for life-threatening conditions such as cardiovascular disease and cancer," he wrote.

We must never stigmatize children who are overweight or obese. Yet, for the sake of our children's health, we have an obligation to address this crisis. I believe we can ultimately curb the obesity epidemic the same way we curbed smoking: through smart public policy."

I recently wrote about schools working to combat the obesity issue in a variety of ways. School lunches are filling up with vegetables and the like, Still, school nutrition workers point to flavored milks and juices as a draw that are both healthy and quickly chosen by children.

What do you think? Should extra sugary drinks be taxed? Would you be willing to shell out the extra money for you soda?

Here's a statement from the Virginia Education Association related to Gov. Kaine's planned cuts.

In light of the severe budget crisis facing our state and local governments, we understand the need to balance the state budget and we appreciate Governor Kaine’s efforts to minimize the cuts for public schools up until now.

We thank the Governor for cutting education less than any other program. However, we cannot cut one-half billion dollars from Virginia schools without adversely affecting what goes on in the classroom.

We recognize that cuts had to be made in these tough times, but the cuts we most object to are the $340 million of changes in the underlying funding formula, which will go forward long after this recession ends.

You can view the whole response, complete with their charts on funding, here.

Here's part of a press release from the governor's office today.

Education

My full proposal includes reductions in every area of state government, but I would like to discuss a few key areas here today.

The one area that has been held completely harmless in the first 3 rounds of expense cuts has been K-12 education. In fact, as we were cutting most state programs in the biennial budget passed last March, we increased funding for public education by approximately $1 billion for the biennium in accord with the normal re-benchmarking process. But, the revenue reductions necessary for 2010 are big enough that we cannot ignore the single largest state expenditure in this budget.

I believe it is prudent to allow our public schools to get through the current academic year without disruptive adjustments to their budgets. There will, of course, be the usual technical amendments in the current year for changes in enrollment and the sales tax revenues dedicated to public education. But, for 2010, I propose two adjustments in the way we fund educational activities outside the classroom.

First, I propose an adjustment in how the state funds educational support positions, those local school personnel who are not in the classroom. In the Standards of Quality, we use formulas to cap the state’s investment in teachers and other instructional personnel. The most common formula is the student-teacher ratio, i.e., the number of teachers that the state will fund per a certain number of students. This formula varies in different grades, but the basic concept is sound. The state contributes funding for positions up to some maximum and any positions beyond that ratio are funded purely by the local government.

The state has not used a similar methodology to cap funded positions among support personnel. As a result, the growth in state-funded support personnel has been much faster than growth in state-funded instructional personnel. Support positions are very important, but there is no reason that we should not set a reasonable staffing ratio for these positions, just as we currently use for teachers and other instructional personnel. In fact, the absence of any such ratio ensures that the support costs in educational budgets will continue to grow at an escalated rate. That trend will jeopardize needed instructional investments such as efforts to move Virginia teacher salaries nearer the national average.

To save over $340 million in fiscal year 2010, I propose that we place a funding cap on state spending towards support staff. The state will fund one support position for every 4.03 instructional positions. This ratio represents the 3-year linear weighted average of Virginia school divisions’ prevailing practices. Districts that hire more support personnel would do so with local funds, as is currently the case with those jurisdictions that hire more teachers than the prevailing ratio. Along with the cap, I am recommending a loss reduction clause to help mitigate loss of funds for jurisdictions that are most affected during the transition to this new policy.

For additional savings of nearly $27.5 million, I propose eliminating state general support for school construction grants. I also propose to use $55 million in Lottery Funds currently directed toward school construction to cover base instructional expenses. This proposal is not meant to downplay the importance of modern facilities for our public schools, but eliminating the modest state contribution to school construction is preferable to eliminating classroom funding.

Middle and high-school students can compete an online competition designed to teach them about consumer pitfalls.

The LifeSmarts contest, sponsored by the National Consumer Leauge, asks teens throughout the nation to test their knowledge of personal finance, health and safety, the environment, technology and consumer rights and responsibilities. Local teams can compete online for a chance to attend Virginia's state competition in early March.

"With LifeSmarts, teens learn to avoid common consumer pitfalls, navigate government, and understand credit-card jargon before they sign the dotted line," said Celia Ray Hayhoe, Virginia's LifeSmarts coordinator and a Virginia Cooperative Extension family resource management specialist at Virginia Tech.

The winning state team receives an all-expense, three-day paid trip to St. Louis, Mo., for the national competition on April 25. Last year's winning state team from Spotsylvania High School placed third in the nation.

For the first time this year, students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade can participate online in a Junior Varsity competition. The top two Virginia teams in the junior varsity competition will be invited to the Virginia LifeSmarts competition in March to vie for the state junior varsity title.

An adult coach must register any team online before it can participate. Entries will be accepted until Feb. 6.

The preliminary "Safe routes to school" travel plan for students at two Blacksburg schools has officially been approved.

On Friday, the Virginia Department of Transportation gave the town of Blacksburg, Montgomery County Public Schools and the YMCA to go-ahead to apply for up to $100,000 to educate the public about alternatives to driving to school and safe ways to walk, and up to $500,000 to construct pathways to accomplish more walking.

Some options discussedincluded lowering the speed limit in school zones and adding sidewalks around the areas of Gilbert Linkous Elementary and the New School.

Both the town and the YMCA will submit their applications by Dec. 31. They won't know whether they received the money until May.

Five Pulaski County schools top the list of the most polluted schools in the state, according to a special report from USA Today.

Newbern and Dublin elementaries, Pulaski High and Middle and the Southwest Virginia Governor's School each is listed among the top 10 most polluted. Other nearby schools on the list include McHarg Elementary in Radford City and Belview Elementary in Montgomery County.

And, Just 174 other schools nationally  have  a worse outside air quality than Newbern, the study showed.

The newspaper used a model from the Environmental Protection Agency to track the highest industrial pollution. Data indicated that the air outside  Newbern had one of the highest levels of dangerous toxic chemicals, most of which have never been tested for their effects on children.

Americans apathetic about ethics; students cheat - Associated Press

During the past year, 30 percent of U.S. high school students have stolen from a store and 64 percent have cheated on a test, according to a new, large-scale survey suggesting that Americans are too apathetic about ethical standards

Lessons from 40 years of education reform - Wall Street Journal Opinion

We must start with the recognition that, despite decade after decade of reform efforts, our public K-12 schools have not improved ... I believe the problem lies with the structure and corporate governance of our public schools.

Advocate: Rating system can obscure problems - Cleveland Plain Dealer

Going to college for less (Passport required) - New York Times

With higher education fast becoming a global commodity, universities worldwide — many of them in Canada and England — are competing for the same pool of affluent, well-qualified students, and more American students are heading overseas not just for a semester abroad, but for their full degree program.

A University of Virginia study has found that as much as $17 million in state money given to public education could have been misallocated because of incorrect student census reporting.

State law says that 1.125 percent of tax and sales receipts are supposed to be given to school districts based on the number of students they have.

Most school districts report that data based on a survey done every three years.  In a mailing this summer, residents in Montgomery County were asked to identify the number of school-aged children they had.

Researchers at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at UVa.  compared their own population estimates with the 2005 census figures reported by 98 of the state's 132 school divisions -- including Giles, Floyd and Pulaski counties -- and found that the way the data is culled varies widely.

Researches excluded localities with colleges, including Montgomery County and Radford City.

The third options they explore is to appoint their center to provide annual estimates of the school-age population using annual population and other estimates.

Using that formula, some New River Valley school districts would receive more state dollars, but others would dip a bit.

Floyd County reported 2,517 students and received about $1.9 million, whereas the researchers found the county had 2,907 students and should have received about $2.1 million.  Giles County schools offiicials would get $2.287,710 for the 3,107 students as opposed to $2.3 for 3,074 students. In Pulaski, schools would get $4.3 million for 5.959 students under the school's study. It received $4.5 million for 5,905 students, according to the traditional method.

"By comparing our population estimates with the counts reported by the school divisions, we found that four school divisions counted accurately, 27 reported too many children (and thus got too much money) and 67 reported too few children (getting too little money)," said researcher Susan Perrone said. "Martinsville reported 575 more children than we would have expected, and Portsmouth reported 5,072 too few. As a result of under- and over-counting across the state, the amount allocated ranged from $582 to $928 per child.”

The study has been handed to school leaders and is expected to be given to state lawmakers, the Associated Press said.