Up in smoke: Amsterdam’s mayor to ban marijuana at school
Russia Today
December 12, 2012
Employees put a sign forbidding people to smoke cannabis. (AFP Photo / Marcel Antonisse)
Amsterdam is to become the first city in the Netherlands where students will be formally banned from smoking marijuana at school. The city’s mayor introduced the law after receiving complaints from teachers that students showed up to class stoned.
Under the current ‘policy of tolerance’ towards drugs, marijuana is considered a soft drug and though it is technically illegal, there is no active prosecution against the individual using it. Police cannot prosecute people for possession of small amounts, with up to five grams being deemed acceptable for personal use.
Some schools have already had prohibited smoking but done so as individual institutions, rather than city ordained legislation.
“This year we have introduced a ban on smoking. We have since become a smoke-free school,” Jolanda Hogewind, head of the Calvijn met Junior College, was quoted by Dutch national newspaper, Volkskrant, as saying. “If a student still smokes on the schoolyard, we warn once. In a second time we send a letter, and if the student persists in his behavior, we invite parents to a meeting,” said the director.
When the law is put in force, schools will be able to involve the police if teenagers are caught smoking on school premises.
However, some supporters of the initiative, like Hogewind, say that schools must be free to maintain their own rules.
All previous attempts to ban marijuana from schools have not succeeded, as the Council of State insisted that it was technically impossible to ban something which is illegal. But recent changes in drug law make this possible. The city will now be able to declare starting January 1 “no toking zones” – areas like schools and playgrounds where weed-smoking will be forbidden.
The law may also affect tourists as some 44 of the city’s 220 cannabis cafes – Amsterdam’s popular attraction among guests of the city – will have to close because they are less than 250 metres from a school.
Earlier there have been calls to introduce a national “weed pass” that would have blocked tourists from buying marijuana. But the initiative was widely opposed by Amsterdam.
Last month, the city major Van der Laan allowed coffee shops to stay open for tourists.
The capital will still have more coffee shops than The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht put together, local Parool newspaper reported.
The government is also planning to raise the age at which teenagers can buy cigarettes to 18.
Kids get in trouble for teacher’s topless photo?! [video]
Adam VS The Man
December 7, 2012
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Teen Fights Back Against the Mandatory Wearing of School ID Badges With RFID Tracking Chips [video]
Conscious Life News
November 25, 2012
Andrea Hernandez was told she’d be expelled from John Jay High School’s Science and Engineering Academy in San Antonio starting next week if she insists any further on disobeying a new policy that requires students to wear ID badges equipped with tiny Radio Frequency Identification (“RFID”) chips. A judge gave Hernandez a temporary restraining order from the school district and ruled on Wednesday that the principal’s orders to make the surveillance mandatory were a violation of the student’s speech and religion.
John Whitehead, a constitutional attorney, speaks with RT’s Kristine Frazao about his case.
Kids eat shit…literally [video]
Adam VS The Man
October 31, 2012
AVTM #13 Halloween Cancelled
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw2JjuC_y4A
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RFID Microchips for Texas Students [video]
The Truther Girls
October 12, 2012
Some schools in Texas are now forcing students to wear badges that contain RFID microchips so they can be tracked at all times. This is supposedly to prevent truancy, which causes the school to lose funding. But is this the only agenda at work, and isn’t there a better solution to the truancy problem?
https://rt.com/usa/news/texas-school-id-hernandez-033/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools
http://living.msn.com/family-parenting/the-family-room-blog-post?post=cad8ae0…
http://ahsmatrix.com/2011/11/u-s-academics-rank-a-low-19th-in-the-world/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/may/06/ritalin-adhd-shocks-child-psych…
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
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Barbarian fans, if you are looking for Arron he’s here now:
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Major teacher strike in Chicago: Thousands to hit streets
End the Lie – Independent News
September 10, 2012
Twenty-nine thousand teachers and staff in Chicago will strike for the first time in 25 years on Monday. As some 350,000 students are left behind, parents worry over their children’s safety without proper supervision in potentially dangerous areas.
After more than 100 meetings and over 400 hours in negotiations, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) declared they would strike after 11th-hour talks failed late Sunday night. Although both sides claimed to have made strides towards reaching an agreement, CTU President Karen Lewis said there were still issues upon which the two sides could not reach a consensus.
“We have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent a labor strike,” she said Sunday night at a press conference. “In the morning, no CTU members will be inside our schools.”
“This is a difficult decision and one we hoped we could have avoided,” she said. “We must do things differently in this city if we are to provide our students with the education they so rightfully deserve.”
The sticking points in negotiations were a new method of teacher evaluation based on student performance which they feared would lead to layoffs, and rising costs of pensions already promised to retired teachers. Also at stake was a rezoning of school districts that teachers felt would damage the system, and an extension of the Chicago school day, reportedly one of the shortest in the nation.
The Chicago School Board and Mayor Rahm Emanuel had already agreed to a 16 per cent wage increase over four years, countering the CTU’s original demand of 30 per cent. The School Board also offered multiple benefit proposals and a rehiring system for teachers from schools that might be closed due to rezoning.
Chicago School Board President David Vitale said the city had made its “best offer” to the Union.
“This is about as much as we can do,” Vitale said. “There is only so much money in the system.”
“This is not a small commitment we’re handing out at a time when our fiscal situation is really challenged,” he added.
The Chicago Public School system is facing a projected budget deficit of $3 billion over the next three years, a number complicated even further by teacher retirement pensions.
Mayor Emmanuel called the strike an unnecessary and painful move, especially since the two sides had come close to an agreement.
“This is totally unnecessary, it is avoidable and our kids do not deserve this,” Emmanuel said at a press conference Sunday night.
The city’s contingency plans include $25 million of funding for 144 out of 675 schools to open for a half day of supervision, including breakfast and lunch. The schools are not allowed to hold classes without certified teachers under state law. The plan also asks for community centers and churches to aid in sheltering children.
Union officials are concerned over the plan, calling it a “train-wreck”, according to a Reuters report, worried that many of the people supervising children are without proper training, CTU said. Parents are also uneasy about putting students from different schools together in neighborhoods which have suffered from gang-related shootings this summer.
“This is not a strike I wanted,” Emanuel said. “It was a strike of choice … it’s unnecessary, it’s avoidable and it’s wrong.”
The Chicago debate echoes national education concerns as public school systems in many states are introducing new teacher evaluation models that include using student test scores to determine performance in 2012. The list includes Arizona, Louisiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Florida. Teachers unions have traditionally been opposed to such measures.
Source: http://rt.com/usa/news/teacher-strike-chicago-school-766/
Hamilton teachers will wear black to protest Bill 115
by Flannery Dean and Julia Chapman
CBC News
September 11, 2012
Hamilton high school teachers will wear black on Wednesday to protest new legislation that freezes their wages, bans strikes for two years and ends their ability to bank sick days.
The Ontario legislature passed Bill 115 Tuesday morning, which imposes a contract on elementary and secondary teachers across the province, as well as 50,000 support staff.
Many local public high school teachers will wear black in protest, said Chantal Mancini, chair of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federations (OSSTF) local 21 bargaining unit.
The OSSTF has also asked its members to withdraw from volunteer and extracurricular activities on Wednesday.
Most teachers are feeling “demoralized” and “as if somehow they have no rights,” Mancini said.
PN 