Fashion Police
Several parents dressed down a suburban St. Louis, Missouri, school board last fall after they discovered that one of the chaperones on a field trip was a man wearing women’s clothes. Parents complained that they didn’t want their 4th graders exposed to his “controversial lifestyle,” according to the Los Angeles Times. District educators stand behind the father, a frequent volunteer at Castlio Elementary School. “This guy was not a disruption,” board member Jon Bennett told the newspaper. “He didn’t show up wearing a skintight leather dress and fishnet stockings.”
Limited Warranty
If schools in Georgia don’t like a new hire’s work, they can send the teacher back for improvement. The state university system announced that it will retrain for free any recent graduates of its 15 education programs if a district finds them unsatisfactory. The quality guarantee lasts for a teacher’s first two years of work, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Leap of Faith
What’s the secret to happiness? For many teens, apparently, it’s faith in God. A report published in December by the National Study of Youth and Religion, a group researching young Americans’ spiritual beliefs, finds that religious 12th graders have more positive attitudes than their less-religious peers. In the study, about 90 percent of religious high school seniors agreed with the statement “It feels good to be alive,” compared with 75 percent of nonreligious seniors, according to the Gannett News Service.
Out of Line
Teacher Fred Dezort crossed the picket line 22 days before the nine- week Cleveland teachers strike ended last fall. Now union officials are suing him for not returning $300 worth of grocery coupons they handed out to help ease protesters’ financial burdens, the Plain Dealer reports. The union wants Dezort to pay $25,000 in damages for keeping the coupons, received 11 days before he returned to work.
