Black Youth Denied Chance To Walk Across Stage Because Of Autism

Sinclaire Coffer, a 17-year-old high school student with autism, is fighting to be allowed to graduate from North Springs Charter High School in Sandy Springs, Ga.,after the state Board of Education ruled against it, WSB-TV reports.

While Coffer has passed every other portion of the state's graduation exam, he has failed the math portion five times.

"We’ve gotten a private tutor," his mother Linda Coffer told WSB-TV. "He’s taken classes that are offered by the school in summer and throughout the school year.”

According to Fox 5 Atlanta, Coffer applied for a waiver which would have allowed him to graduate despite failing the exam. The state Board of Education, however, voted to deny his request.

Still, the student's family maintains that he is unable to pass the math portion of the exam due to his diagnosis, rather than a lack of hard work.

"Once he starts it, and he learns it, he can do it. But when you walk away, he forgets the steps," Coffer's mother told Fox 5 Atlanta.

Newscore reports that Georgia recently changed a law to require all students pass the math exam in order to graduate. However, those changes will not go into effect until next year. Meanwhile, Coffer's family has not been given a reason for the board's decision.

Source http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/14/sinclair-coffer-student-autism-denied-graduation_n_1514948.html?ref=mostpopular

Teacher Has Sex With Student In Her Classroom Supply Closet.

Kacy Christine Wilson, a 28-year-old former teacher at Osceola High School in Kissimmee, Fla., is being accused of pulling a 16-year-old student out of class and thenleading him to a closet to have sex, WOFL-TV reports.

According to a police report obtained by WOFL, Wilson called the unnamed teenager's teacher to claim he had left something in her classroom. The incident allegedly occurred when he arrived at her room.

The Orlando Sentinel reports that detectives began investigating a possible relationship between Wilson and one of her students in October. At the time, she refuted the accusations, resigned from her position and then moved to Colorado.

But last month, the victim admitted to the relationship, leading to Wilson's arrest in Colorado, after which she was extradited back to Osceola Counting and is now held on $85,000 bond.

Back in April, 29-year-old Jeffrey R. Sears Jr. allegedly had sex with 15 and 16-year-old students in the classroom, in his car and at his home. He was also accused of having a "sexual encounter" with a student in a school stairwell.

The Baltimore Sun reported that the encounters -- for which prosecutors pursued a 10-year-sentence -- occurred over a two-year period.

Source http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/07/kacy-christine-wilson-former-teacher-pulls-student-sex-in-closet_n_1496839.html?ref=mostpopular

Parents Deals Hard With Their Children, Before The System Has Too!

Punish children by humiliating them in public?

Maybe it's because the weather has been unseasonably calm this year, but there has been a rash of examples of parents forcing their children to stand out in the open with signs declaring the ways in which the youngsters have misbehaved.

Most recently, in Illinois yesterday, Montrail White watched from his parked car while his 8-year-old daughter, Melissa, stood outside the High Mount School wearing a home-made sandwich board sign which read "I like to steal from others and lie about it!!"


It's not a brand new approach (every year or so a desperate parent makes the news like this ) but there a rash of these incidents over the past few weeks -- and a chorus of supportive comments from other parents on the news sites that cover them -- hints at a form of discipline that is gaining traction. In a moment when so much else in life is lived out loud and in public, it would follow, in a backwards and disjointed kind of way, that the method of discipline as old as The Scarlett Letter would seem fitting in a modern age.

Which may be why in Miami earlier this month, Tarvon Young, a fifth grade student at the Richard Allen Leadership Academy stood outside that school for 90 minutes every day holding a sign that said "I was sent to school to get an education. Not to be a bully... I was not raised this way!"

Tarvon's mother might well have gotten the idea from another Miami family, specifically that of 7th grader Michael Bell, Jr. who spent much of his March spring break walking the local streets with a sign that said "Hey, I want to be a class clown is that wrong?" The flip side explained that the boy was failing civics, language arts and math, and asked passersby to honk three times if they think failing is bad.

That same month, 12-year-old Jose Gonzalez was ordered to stand on a Denver street corner by his father, Joseph, as punishment for taking $100 from a cousin's wallet. "I am a thief. I took money from a family member," his sign read.

And a few weeks earlier, 13-year-old Natia Wade held a similar sign in Memphis, saying "I steal from my family", after she swiped her mother's debit card to reactivate the cell phone that her mother had taken away.

Most of the parents say they say they were at the ends of their ropes. "He has been screwing up in school, behavior and academics and right now I am trying to send a message to him," Michael Bell Sr. told the local TV news. "Right now, this is the only thing I have left to try and reach him,"

Some, though, were trying to stop a problem before it became repetitive. "He's a good kid," Joseph Gonzalez told UPI.com. "This is the first time he's done something like this, I hope it will be the last."






Source http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-belkin/humiliating-children-to-teach-them-_b_1435315.html

Lack Of Control, Leads To A Fight Between Students.

Authorities paid a visit to Dekaney High School in Houston, Tex., after what students called an "outrageous" brawl broke out in the cafeteria, KHOU-TV reports.

"All these people came and just started hitting everybody," student Maya Rodriguez told the station. "After a while, I got hit and everybody just started fighting. So I hit back..."

A student caught the riot on cell phone camera, and told KTRK that students were throwing items like milk cartons in the cafeteria and trash cans in the halls.





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