The Elementary School Murder Conspiracy

     Our criminal justice system isn't equipped or designed to deal with kids who haven't reached the ninth grade. This is particularly true when pint-sized offenders commit felonies. In the good old days, students got in trouble for chewing gum in class. Today, they're hauled out of school in handcuffs for assault, resisting arrest, drug possession, sexual crimes and the possession of firearms. But up until a case in Colville, Washington, no elementary school child had been arrested for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.

     On February 7, 2013, kids on a school bus saw a 10-year-old boy playing with a knife. The bus was en route to the Fort Colville Elementary School in Colville, Washington 75 miles north of Spokane. A search of this boy's backpack at the school produced the knife and a weapon even more shocking--a .45-caliber fully loaded pistol.

     When asked by a police officer what he was doing with the gun, the kid said that he and his 11-year-old buddy were going to "get" one of the girls in their class. Pressed for details, the boy revealed what they had intended to accomplish. According to the plan, the 11-year-old friend would stab the girl to death while the 10-year-old would use the gun to hold-off other kids and any interfering teachers.

     The Stevens County prosecutor, presented with the unusual and difficult facts of this case, decided to charge the fourth graders with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, tampering with a witness (holding off the crowd) and conspiracy to possess a firearm.

     In the state of Washington, individuals under the age of twelve are presumed incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. Under the law they are essentially insane. This meant that the state not only had to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the prosecutor had to establish the capacity to form specific criminal intent. If convicted, the young defendants in this case faced incarceration at a juvenile facility until they reached the age of eighteen.

     In speaking to the press, prosecutor Tim Rasmussen, in referring to what these boys had been thinking, said, "It's the kind of thing everyone would know is wrong. It gives me no pleasure to prosecute a kid."

     In May 2013 the younger defendant pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to three to five years in juvenile detention.

     On October 16, 2013, following a bench trial (no jury), Judge Allen Nielson found the 11-year-old defendant guilty of the same offense. On November 20, 2013 Judge Nielson sentenced him to three to four years detention in a juvenile facility.

     Judge Neilson called the older boy's actions a "brazen crime." According to the judge, the kid had made a "shrewd effort" to pin the entire plot on his co-defendant, the 10-year-old who had earlier pleaded guilty.

Crime and Stupidity in Lower Education

Maria Caya

     At nine in the morning on June 6, 2013, 120 fourth and fifth graders, on an end-of-the-year field trip, descended upon a bowling alley in Janesville, Wisconsin. The students and their teacher chaperons from Washington Elementary School took over River's Edge Bowl that morning.

     By 10:45 AM it became obvious that something was wrong with Maria Caya, one of the supervising adults. The 50-year-old teacher was acting so strange someone called her husband Steve to come and take her away. Steve picked up his wife at noon and drove her to the emergency room at Mercy Hospital and Trauma Center. Medical personnel determined that Caya's blood-alcohol level was at 0.27 percent, far higher than the state's driving under the influence law. The teacher admitted having consumed a bloody Mary that morning at six o'clock along with Ativan, a pill she took for anxiety. (One bloody Mary will not raise one's alcohol-blood percentage to 0.27.)

     On July 9, 2013, the school board unanimously voted to give Caya, upon her resignation from the school, a lump sum settlement of $18,452. The teacher took the money and resigned. In defending the payout, the school superintendent said that if they had fired the drunken teacher, and she had fought the dismissal, the legal costs would have exceeded the kiss-off money. Moreover, there was a chance Caya would have won reinstatement. School officers wanted this woman out of teaching, and this was the cheapest and most surefire way to accomplish that goal. (Of course there was nothing to stop Caya from applying for a job at another school district.)

Cynthia Ambrose

     On May 2, 2012, in Salinas Texas, Salinas Elementary School teacher Barbara Ramirez took 6-year-old Aiden Neely to kindergarten teacher Cynthia Ambrose. The boy was in trouble because he had hit another student.

     With Barbara Ramirez looking on, Cynthia Ambrose told her class of twenty students to form a line, and as each student passed by the pint-sized bully, to hit him. When the first kid gave Neely a light pat, the 44-year-old Ambrose said, "Come on, hit him harder." The exercise came to a stop when the seventh kid in line hit Neely so hard in the back the boy started to cry. To the crying kid, Ambrose said, "See, that's how it feels to be bullied." 

     Barbara Ramirez, perhaps to keep a fellow teacher out of trouble, did not report the incident to school authorities until sometime later when she overheard Ambrose telling a kid who had been pinched to pinch the other kid back. Ramirez, for not immediately reporting the bullying exercise, was placed on three days leave. She also received a letter of reprimand.

     Bexar County prosecutor Patrick Ballantyne charged Cynthia Ambrose with the misdemeanor offense of official oppression. At her arraignment Ambrose pleaded not guilty.

     At Ambrose's trial, held in June 2013, Aiden Neely and Barbara Ramirez testified for the prosecution. The defendant took the stand on her own behalf. In presenting their closing arguments to the jury, the prosecutor referred to the teacher's behavior as child abuse. The defense attorney portrayed it as a well-intentioned classroom exercise that had gotten a little out of hand. The jury found Ambrose guilty as charged.

     In August 2013, district judge Sid Harle, before imposing his sentence, said, "[You are] absolutely a parent's worst nightmare. They send their children and entrust you with them." Judge Harle sentenced the former teacher to 30 days in jail, but said she could either serve her time on work release or spend weekends behind bars. The judge also placed Ambrose on probation for two years.

     Ambrose's criminal conviction did not end her teaching career. The Texas Education Agency suspended her for one year.

Malia Brooks

     Malia Brooks, a married mother of two, taught sixth grade at the Garden Grove Elementary School in Simi Valley, a suburban community north of Los Angeles. In November 2012 Brooks began a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old male student. The affair lasted four months.

     In February 2013, following an investigation by the Simi Valley Police Department, a Los Angeles County prosecutor charged Malia Brooks with one count of lewd act with a child, one count of oral copulation with a person under 14 and one count of genital penetration by a foreign object with a person under 14. Following her arrest the teacher was incarcerated in the Los Angeles County Jail on $2 million bond.

     In June 2013, Malia Brooks resigned from teaching and pleaded guilty to all three charges. At her sentencing hearing in August, Brook's attorney told the judge that his client had suffered a "manic episode" that had been brought on by her own teenage sexual abuse. The judge sentenced the former teacher to six years in prison.

The Infamous Hello Kitty Terrorist Case

    Picture ten thousand elementary school teachers and administrators being shaken through a massive intelligence strainer with openings just large enough for people with IQs over 80 to fall through. When imagining the three or four public educators who remain in the big sieve, think of the drooling idiots who run the kindergarten program at the Mount Carmel Area School District 88 miles northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The trouble is, you can't picture these people because on the surface they look and act like folks who have average intelligence and common sense. One would assume that because these educators are in positions of authority over children they can be trusted not to make mind-bogglingly stupid decisions. In public education, however, this is an invalid assumption.

     On January 10, 2013, as a five-year-old Mount Carmel kindergarten student and her classmates waited for their school bus, she and another girl her age were having a pre-schooler type conversation. One of the kids said that when she and her friend got home from kindergarten that day she intended to shoot her playmate with her pink-colored Hello Kitty gun, a toy in the general shape of a firearm that blew soapy bubbles. According to media reports, a "school official" overheard the insidious reference to gun violence and immediately searched the kid's backpack for the bubble-firing weapon. As it turned out the little girl was unarmed. But she wasn't out of the woods.

     The next day, the owner of the Hello Kitty toy and the would-be target of the bubble assault were interrogated by "school officials." (Presumably the Hello Kitty grilling was conducted by the elementary school principal and other education administrators experienced in interrogating terrorist suspects. It's doubtful these schoolhouse inquisitors warned the little girl her Miranda rights.)  The interrogators left the confused and frightened kid in tears. One of the poor girl's teachers told the pint-sized suspect that the police might get involved in her case. 

     The five-year-old suspect must have spilled her guts because someone in elementary school authority suspended the kindergarten kid ten days for making a "terroristic threat." The Hello Kitty terrorist was also ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation. 

     This kindergarten student's stunned family acquired the services of an attorney who managed to get the school suspension reduced from ten days to two days. The psychologist brought in to profile the girl declared the kid perfectly normal.  The lawyer met with elementary school officials in hopes of getting the little girl's record expunged. After public rage over this incident, it was.

     The Mount Carmel school officials responsible for this child's abuse should have been fired and banned from public and private education for life. They were the ones who needed psychological evaluations. 

Mayhem On Kindergarten Graduation Day

     Just before eleven o'clock on Friday morning, May 31, 2013, as the attendees of a kindergarten graduation ceremony walked out of the Michael R. White Elementary School in Cleveland, Ohio, two teenage girls got into a fistfight over a spilled cup of punch. Instead of pulling the girls apart, family members from both sides, jumped into the fray as the kindergarten graduates looked on in horror.

     One of the combatants in the Friday morning gang brawl pulled out a hammer. (A hammer? Who brings a hammer to a graduation ceremony?) Another kindergarten parent weighed-in with some kind of club. Someone called 911. The caller, perhaps hoping for a fast response from the Cleveland Police Department, falsely reported that shots had been fired. (That usually brings the police flying, but not always.)

     Not long after the 911 call, police officers rolled up to the Michael R. White school to find a dozen people punching, kicking, and rolling around on the ground. Officers broke up the fight and arrested seven adults and one juvenile. There were scrapes and bruises, and some pulled-out hair, but none of the graduation day brawlers were seriously injured. The unnamed arrestees, most of whom were women, were charged with aggravated rioting.

      What would Mr. Rogers say to these kindergarten kids about their brawling parents? Perhaps it would be something like: "You are special, but your folks are jerks." 

Stupidity in Lower Education

     A Missouri mother is furious about how she was treated by school administrators and police officers who had her arrested for trespassing because she failed to sign a guestbook when she came to the elementary school to assist her special needs son. The mother, Niakea Williams, received a call from her son's teacher that he was having a medical episode. William's son, Michael, suffers from Asperger's Syndrome.

     Williams rushed over to Walnut Groves Elementary School in St. Louis County, Missouri, to help her son. School officers promptly let her inside…Williams provided assistance to her son, calming him down. Soon after, the principal came to the classroom and informed Williams that she violated school policy by failing to sign the guestbook. Williams replied that she was perfectly willing to sign the book. It was too late, the principal said…

     Police responded to the scene as if there had been a reported unauthorized entry into the school--even though staff had let Williams inside. Officers with the Calverton Park Police Department arrested Williams and took her to the station. The school was on lockdown for 12 minutes, and a letter was sent out to parents explaining what happened…[What happened was this: an idiot has been put in charge of the Walnut Groves Elementary School. Moreover, officers with the local police department were not very bright either.]

Robby Soave, "Parent Comes to School to Help Son, Principal Calls Cops and She's Arrested," The Daily Caller, March 25, 2014

Mentally Unfit For The Classroom

     Ashley Barker started teaching first grade at the Laurel Elementary School in central Florida's Polk County in the fall of 2011. In November, just two months into her first year at the school, Barker began asking, through emails to her principal, for days off due to illness. At first Barker reported a problem with kidney stones, then later that month, informed the principal that she was undergoing a medical treatment for a cyst.

     In January 2012, Barker, via email, informed her boss that due to a brain infection, her body was shutting down. After reporting to the school that she was dying, and probably wouldn't make it through the night, Barker made a remarkable recovery.

     The elementary school teacher's next series of emails requesting paid sick leave involved the declining health of her father. According to Barker, her dad suffered from a heart problem that was life threatening. At one point she reported that he didn't have much time to live. By November 2012, Barker had sent 120 illness related emails to the principal who had authorized 35 days of paid sick leave.

     In January 2013, Barker reported to her principal that one of her fellow teachers had threatened to kill her. (The accused teacher strongly denied the charge.) A week after the accusation, Barker claimed that a man wearing a ski mask had threatened her life if she pursued the case against the other teacher. She said the masked man had ambushed her in the school parking lot.

     Detectives with the Polk County Sheriff's Office investigated Barker's accounts of the threat by the teacher and the masked man, and were unable to confirm, through other witnesses and various leads, that the crimes had taken place. In May 2013, when confronted by skeptical detectives, Barker confessed that she had made up the threats against her life. She also admitted that her requests for sick leave had been based on lies. She was never ill, and her father had not been dying of a bad heart. She had made these stories up to get out of work.

     The superintendent of the Polk County School District suspended Ashley Barker without pay. The school administrator also planned to recommend dismissal. Barker acquired an attorney and warned that if they fired her from the Laurel Elementary School, she would fight the dismissal in court.

      Ignoring the suspended teacher's threat to fight a dismissal, the school superintendent fired Ashley Barker.

Catholic Priest Casts Out Harry Potter Books

     In August 2019, at the St. Edward Catholic school in Nashville, Tennessee, Reverend Dan Reehill ordered the middle school librarian to remove all of the library's Harry Potter books. The priest, in justifying taking books out of the school that students liked, said he had consulted exorcists in the United States and Rome who recommended the literary purge.

     According to Father Reehill, "The curses and spells used in the Harry Potter books are actual curses and spells which risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the persons reading the texts."

Getting a Taste of Blood

     In March 2013, in Sola, Norway on the country's western coast, kindergarten teacher Inger Lise Soemme Anderson pulled off a show-and-tell stunt that in its degree of stupidity matches what we have come to expect in U. S. education. Anderson came to class one day with a vial of her own blood which she poured onto a plate. The teacher invited her students, kids between the age three and six, to dip their fingers into the red liquid. At least twelve kids touched their teacher's bodily fluid. When the students asked how to clean their bloody fingers, Anderson illustrated the solution by inserting one of her fingers into her mouth. Her students, as one might expect, followed suit.

     While putting someone else's blood into your mouth is on its face disgusting, it's also a good way to contract a dangerous blood transmitted disease. If an American teacher did what the Norwegian teacher was accused of, she would be charged with child endangerment.

     The head of the Norwegian school fired the teacher who was a temporary employee. A judge ordered Anderson to undergo tests for Hepatitis B and AIDS. If the results of these tests came back, this information was not published.

      Mind boggling cases like this are particularly disturbing because they reveal how difficult it is to shield vulnerable children from teachers who are either incredibly stupid or perverted.

Idiocy in Lower Education Has No Bounds

     A 9-year-old boy in Kermit, Texas was suspended from school after he told a classmate he could make him disappear with a ring from Mount Doom, a fictional location in J.R.R. Tolkein's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series. The fourth-grader had recently watched the film, The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies and it sparked his imagination. According to his father, "My son lacks the magical powers to threaten his friend's existence. If he did, I'm sure he'd bring him right back."

     School officials at Kermit Elementary School took swift action and suspended the boy for making a terroristic threat.

"Texas Student Suspended Over Hobbit Ring," Fox News, February 3, 2015 

Active Shooter Drills

The American Academy of Pediatrics announced recently that active shooter drills in elementary and middle schools seriously traumatize children and should be terminated. It's amazing it took the so-called experts this long to realize what anyone with common sense already knew--these stupid, needless exercises scared the hell out of kids.

The Burp Heard Across the Classroom

     In Albuquerque, New Mexico, when a 13-year-old student "burped audibly" in physical education class, the PE teacher called a school "resource officer" to deal with the disruption. The resource officer summoned a city police officer who came to the school, handcuffed the boy, and hauled him off to a juvenile detention center.

     The burping boy, while not charged with a crime, was suspended for the rest of the school year. (This took place in December 2011.) While in custody, the boy's captors gave him a risk assessment test. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being extremely dangerous, the boy scored a 2. My guess is that if Mr. Rogers had taken this test, he would have scored a 2 as well. Perhaps the Dalai Lama would have pulled a 1. The kid's parents filed a lawsuit.

Cases For Home Schooling

     In Tucson, Arizona, a judge sentenced elementary teacher Joseph Chanecka, 44, to seven years in prison and lifetime probation after the defendant pleaded guilty to possessing 300,000 child pornographic images on his computer. The judge could have sentenced Chanecka to 25 years behind bars but gave him a break because he had already lost his home, fiancee, and their newborn son. Chanecka said he was "extremely sorry" for his "foolish behavior."

     In Toms River, New Jersey, detectives arrested a 38-year-old elementary computer science teacher charged with one count of endangering the welfare of a child, and one count of second degree sexual assault. On the same day, in Orlando, Florida, a 50-year-old elementary teacher was arrested for child molestation. This teacher was already in custody for downloading images of child pornography.

     In Shawnee, Oklahoma, police arrested a former "Teacher of the Year" for taking photographs of some of her third grade students dancing around in bras and panties. (Bras?) The kids were attending a pizza party at the teacher's home.

     In Philadelphia, members of a police special victims unit arrested three boys--ages ten and eleven--on charges of attempted rape, deviant sexual intercourse, and unlawful restraint in connection with an incident that allegedly took place in an elementary school restroom. The complainant was an 8-year-old boy the defendants had allegedly bullied. After this incident, students in the West Philadelphia school had to go the the restroom in pairs.

     A tenured fourth grade teacher at the Wilson Elementary School in Granite City, Illinois was charged with possessing heroin and drug paraphernalia. She posted her $15,000 bond and was released.

     In Boone County West Virginia, a kindergarten teacher, after being pulled over for running a stop sign, consented to a search of her car which led to a charge of possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver. The teacher admitted to consuming hydrocodone while on her lunch break.

     In Alabama, it's a violation of the state's ethics law for a legislator to accept a gift from a citizen. The law was expanded to include public school teachers and their students. According to the director of  the Alabama Ethics Commission, "Something of relatively insignificant value--a candle, a coffee mug--is fine. It just can't be a $50 gift to Cosco or Target." Education spokesperson Kathy Kilgor told reporters that elementary school teachers do not like this new rule. "That was a little bit, I think, hurtful, condescending, to think we couldn't accept something from a caring student. That's kind of important to them. Not only is it hurtful to us, it's hurtful to the child."
 
     A second grade teacher in Nanuet, New York broke the news to her students that the Santa thing was a crock. I assume this educator believed it's never to early to lay life's truths on her naive students. You know, prepare them for the "real world." But why did she stop with the Santa myth? Why didn't she tell them that in a few years at least half of them will be obese, on drugs, under-employed and divorced? And that all of them would eventually die? After that, none of them would give a crap about Santa and his flying reindeer.         

An Elementary School Teacher's Bad Joke

    Radlett, Hertfordshire, a community of 8,000 in southeast England, is home to the Newberries Primary School, a private institution attended by 203 children ages 4 to 11.

     On Thursday, October 10, 2019, while teaching French to a class of 28 eleven-year-olds, the Newberries teacher reportedly told her students that "You better finish off your work quickly, or I'll ship you all off to the gas chambers." Eleven of the kids in the classroom were Jewish, and when one of them challenged the tongue-in-cheek threat as offensive, the teacher apologized and said that she had just been kidding. The teacher also asked her students not to tell their parents about her highly inappropriate joke.

     Several of the kids, as one would expect, did tell their parents about this teacher's poor taste in humor. Word of the incident circulated quickly throughout the school and the community. Several parents threatened to take their children out of the Newberries School if this teacher wasn't immediately fired.

     The next day, the head of the Newberries Primary School announced that this teacher had been sacked.

     Even if viewed in the most favorable light--an example of lower education stupidity--this person was unfit to teach. Of all the subjects not to joke about, particularly to children, this teacher picked one of the worst. Off to the gas chambers? What in the world was this woman thinking?

Grade School Kid Exercises His Constitutional Right To Possess Paper

     A little boy, in May 2014,  got himself into big trouble at an exclusive, private school for pointing an object that represented a gun. Eight-year-old Asher Palmer rolled up a piece of paper, called it a gun, and pointed it at other kids….Officials at the special-needs school in New York City then expelled him.

     The Lang School is a ritzy, private institution that specializes in educating students with language difficulties. In 2014, annual tuition was $51,500. [Parents who spend that much a year for a kid's elementary eduction have a special need themselves--common sense.] "Asher is exactly the type of student Lang is supposed to be serving," the boy's frustrated mother, Melina Spadone told The New York Post. "Why they did this doesn't make sense."

     The principal at Lang, Micaela Bracamonte--who called herself the "head of school" reportedly informed school employees that eight-year-old Asher "had a model for physically aggressive behavior in his immediate family." The boy's mother wasn't sure who that model would be, but she said she imagined that Bracamonte was referring to her husband who had been an American soldier during the Gulf War. "I find it offensive and inappropriate," the angry mother told The Post.

     Spadone explained that her son, a first grader, fashioned the rolled-up piece of paper after he talked with his father about weapons in the military. Asher's teachers didn't take the piece of paper away. Instead, they just warned him not to point the menacing piece of paper at anyone. [Remember what they say--there is no such thing as an unloaded, fake toy gun.]

     Eventually the boy pointed the piece of paper at another kid. School officials claimed that Asher declared that he would "kill" a girl, apparently in separate incident. Consequently, Bracamonte alleged that the little boy had a "concrete plan" for killing another student. [Perhaps he had reached out to a second grade hit man armed with an eraser.] The boy's mother suggested that her eight-year-old son wasn't using the word "kill" literally.

     The angry mother said she and her husband, in the past five months, had spent $120,000 for tuition and one-on-one tutoring at Lang School with the understanding that their son would attend the school long-term. 

The Fifth Grade Fake Beer Party

A superintendent says a Michigan teacher on March 6, 2014 gave non-alcoholic beer to a classroom of fifth graders as part of a history lesson. The superintendent says the teacher allowed Hyatt Elementary students in Linden, Michigan to sample O'Doul's that was brought to school by a student to represent ale common in the 1700s and consumed at the time because of the scarcity of clean water. The superintendent said the teacher made an "inappropriate choice." [Yes, the real thing would have been much more authentic.]

"Michigan Teacher Gives Fifth Grade Students O'Doul's Non-Alcoholic Beer," the Flint Journal, March 17, 2014  

Birthday Cake or Your Teacher's Lap Dance?

     A 42-year-old teacher performed a "full contact" lap dance on a middle school student in front of his Texas classmates….Felicia Smith's performance on the boy celebrating his 15th birthday took place in February 2014.

     The teen told investigators that he sat in the chair next to Smith's desk as she moved back and forth on his crotch and touched him over his body. Near the end of the dance, the student said Smith sank to her knees and put her head between his legs. The incident reportedly happened in front of the other students during class.

     The student admitted that he spanked Smith's buttocks a couple of times….As music played, Smith said, "I love you, baby. Happy Birthday."…

     Police claim that Smith said the students persuaded her to grind on the teen….Smith was removed from teaching in the Aldine Independent School District...

Michael McLaughlin, "Teacher Accused of Giving Student a Birthday Lap Dance," The Huffington Post, April 26, 2014

A Second-Grader's Walk on the Wild Side

     In the fall of 2013, Jason and Damia Dillard enrolled their 7-year-old daughter Samaya in the Jefferson Elementary School not far from their home in the Sacramento suburb of South Natomas, California. Samaya had been a good student at St. Hope Public School 7, a Sacramento charter institution. The Dillards made the change because Jefferson Elementary was much closer to their home.

     At 9:30 AM on December 18, 2013, Samaya did something that upset her second grade teacher, Lupe Rodriguez. When Samaya knocked over a glass of water (I presume on purpose), the teacher flew into a rage. She grabbed the back of Samaya's chair and dragged it and the girl out of the classroom and out of the building. The student, wearing a pink and gray sweatshirt and blue jeans, sat outside where it was 46 degrees.

     After sitting outside for almost an hour, Samaya decided to take a walk. She left the campus through a fence gate and walked down a busy road that crossed over Interstate 80.

     As the 7-year-old walked over the interstate, the teacher who had expelled her from the building realized the student was not where she had left her. When school official didn't find the girl inside the school or on campus, they called her parents and the police.

     While no one from the police department responded to the call, the parents rushed to the school in two cars, and from there began driving around in a frantic search of their daughter.

     As the panicked parents drove around aimlessly looking for their missing daughter, Samaya paid a visit to a Walmart store. At a nearby shopping center, about two miles from the school, she entered the On the Border Mexican Grill and Cantina and asked for a glass of water. The restaurant employee, after Samaya drank her water and walked off, called the police and reported a young girl wandering around the area without parental supervision. No one from the police department came to the restaurant to investigate.

     About two and a half hours after Samaya was dragged out of the school by her angry teacher, her father came upon her walking along a street not far from their house. According to Mrs. Dillard, the incident traumatized her daughter who felt that she had been abandoned.

     Samaya's parents enrolled her in another school and have threatened to sue the Natomas United School District. School administrators placed the teacher on paid administrative leave. (I couldn't find an update of this case on the Internet but would be shocked if the school fired her. In California, to qualify for dismissal, a teacher has to do a lot worse than this.)
     

Idiots In Lower Education

Marie Waltherr-Willard's Fear of Kids

     Marie Waltherr-Willard, a Spanish/French teacher, began teaching French in 1976 at Mariemont High School in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2009, after 33 years at the high school, the language teacher was transferred against her wishes to a middle-school where she had to teach 7th and 8th graders Spanish. The move took place after the high school French program went online.

     In the middle of the 2010-2011 school year, Waltherr-Willard abruptly retired and began receiving her monthly pension payments based on an annual retirement income of $70,000. In June 2012, the retired teacher filed a federal lawsuit against the school district under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Her disability: a pathological fear of young children, a phobia she said had been diagnosed in 1991.  The former teacher claimed that by forcing her to teach middle-schoolers, her employers had discriminated against her by refusing to recognize and take into consideration her disability. The plaintiff's attorney claimed that, as a result of her forced early retirement, his client lost $100,000 in potential income.

     According to the plaintiff, being around middle-school school kids had shot her blood pressure up to stroke levels. Moreover, the little buggers pushed her into a state of general anxiety, mental anguish, and gastrointestinal illness. The civil trial was scheduled for February 2014.

     A U.S. District Court judge dismissed Waltherr-Willard's ridiculous lawsuit in June 2014. In February 2015, the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld that decision. (Lawsuits like this remind us there are too many lawyers.)

The Red Pen Alert: Abusive Grading

     The idea that marking up a student's test or homework with red ink upsets kids who don't appreciate criticism, isn't new. (Ever since Mister Rogers started telling children that they were all extremely special, most of them can't handle the sad truth that 90 percent of us, on a good day, are ordinary.) Since 2008, hundreds of schools across the country have replaced the insidious red grading pencils and pens with writing instruments that produce colors that are less aggressive and mean. (I can't imagine a kid who got an F on a test feeling better about himself because the F is written in a nice shade of blue.)

     Education researchers at the University of Colorado published a study that confirmed the theory that marking up a kid's work in red as opposed to more neutral colors caused unnecessary anger and embarrassment. Red ink splashed all over a paper supposedly makes the lousy student feel more harshly criticized. Assuming this is true, so what? What's wrong with criticism with a little zip? If students are offended by red ink, they can solve the problem by doing better work. (Maybe the geniuses at the University of Colorado should come up with strategies for that.) I'd like to get my hands on that study, and in red ink, write: "You people are idiots?" (Is that too harsh?)

Radical Anti-Bullying Advice From a Knucklehead

     Gabrielle Jackson was a sixth grader at the Central Middle School in Moline Acres not far from St. Louis, Missouri. Gabrielle complained to her mother, Tammie Jackson, that bullies at school were making lewd and insensitive comments regarding her large bust. Tammie called the school district to report the sexual harassment of her daughter and was not pleased with the response to her complaint. Over the phone, an unidentified employee of the school district suggested that the 13-year-old student have her breasts surgically reduced. Presumably the anti-bullying expert didn't provide this mother specifics regarding just how small the breasts would have to be to disinterest bullies. Moreover, if the plastic surgeon got carried away and made them too small, kids might bully her for being flat chested.

Zero Tolerance for Paper Guns

     On January 22, 2013, Melody Valentin, a fifth grader in a Philadelphia elementary school, inadvertently took a folded piece of paper to school that roughly resembled a handgun. Her grandfather had fashioned the toy weapon. When Melody realized what she had brought to school, she threw the paper gun into a classroom trash can. A fellow student who witnessed Melody's attempt to ditch the contraband, squealed. The teacher seized the evidence, hauled the offender to the front of the class, and gave her hell for being so reckless with all of their lives. Later that night, the distraught girl's mother found her daughter in the bathroom crying. As a result of the negative attention, some of her classmates were calling her a murderer.

     This example of schoolhouse hysteria came on the heels of an incident in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania involving a pre-schooler suspended for threatening to shoot a playmate with her pink Hello Kitty soap bubble gun. School officers called the incident a "terroristic threat."

     I'm afraid these school employees are so stupid they are immune from ridicule and embarrassment. (Still, I try.) Obviously there are bright, competent elementary and middle-school teachers and administrators, but just how outnumbered are they by all the fools and idiots?

Pay-to-Pee: Stupidity In Lower Education

     Two Vancouver, Washington third graders said they wet their pants after their teacher would not let them use the bathroom. The students, both girls, said the reason for the denial was that they hadn't accumulated enough pretend money to pay for the privilege. The unidentified teacher will not be punished as a result of an internal investigation of the incident by representatives of the teacher's union. A separate investigation of the incident has been triggered by a mother's complaint….

     The alleged incidents occurred May 15 at Mill Plain Elementary School. The pretend money is designed to teach students about the value of money. [Here's an idea: to demonstrate the value of money, the teacher can refuse to pay her union dues. The next day, the students can discuss the lesson with their new teacher.] Students earn the fictional funds by doing their homework, for example, or by being nice to others. [In real life you don't get paid for that.] They can spend it to buy pizza [take that, Mrs. Obama!] or pointless items like a squirt gun. [If a kid brings this purchase to school, he'll need real money for bail.] Students say they must also use the fake cash to pay for bathroom breaks.

     The unidentified teacher expects a seemingly high imaginary price for toilet time: $50. [Hey, if you ever had the urgent need to go, $50 is peanuts. If this teacher were smart, she'd charged the little buggers real money for bathroom breaks.]

     A statement by Evergreen Public Schools said that all students, including students who don't have enough fake money are allowed to use the bathroom in cases of an emergency. [Really?]

Eric Owens, "Pay-To-Pee Teacher Faces No Discipline," The Daily Caller, May 25, 2014   

Hellementary Education

     A Florida kindergarten teacher who video-taped a boy as he beat other students on three occasions was suspended without pay. Duval County Public School officials accused Rita Baci of failing to protect her students as she recorded the beatings with her cellphone in November 2014. School administrators hit Baci with a 15-day unpaid suspension at a school board meeting on February 12, 2015.

     The 65-year-old classroom veteran was also reprimanded for using her foot to push a student out of her class and leaving him unattended in the hallway…The video Baci took showed one boy being hit about his face and body several times. Another kid was shown being kicked as he tried to hide under a table. A third student was punched and slapped on video.

     Baci said she had taken the videos for evidence of the boy's aggressive behavior in her classroom at the John E. Ford Montessori School in Jacksonville. She showed what she had recorded to an assistant principal before meeting with the disruptive child's parents. She also let other students watch the videos….

"Florida Teacher Suspended After Filming Kindergartner Beating Other Students," Fox News, February 15, 2015