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Via Fox News:

Parents are outraged after young teenagers were instructed on graphic sexual acts during a Planned Parenthood sex education class at the local high school in Shenandoah, Iowa.

“It was horribly inappropriate,” Colleen Dostal told Fox News Radio. “To do that in a mixed-gender classroom, — I truly believe it was inappropriate.”

Dostal’s 14-year-old son was one of a handful of eighth graders in the class. The students, she said, were given instruction on how to perform female exams and the instructor used a 3-D, anatomically correct male sex organ to explain how to use a condom.

But Dostal said she was most upset over the instructor simulating sexual acts using stuffed animals designed to resemble STD’s.

“I do not understand why any adult with a classroom of children would show them sexual positions,” she told Fox News Radio. “I think that’s horribly inappropriate.”

As for the photographs, “I believe some of those photos were pornographic,” she said.
“Had we known this was going on, I would have sat in the classroom or I would have pulled him out,” Dostal said.

< rimshot >

Budget managers were anxiously awaiting word today on how big of a funding cut they will have to absorb over the coming months to bring state spending in line with recession-ravaged revenues.

“It’s going to be terrible,” said Sen. Jack Hatch, D-Des Moines, co-chair of the House-Senate health and human services budget subcommittee. He expects Gov. Chet Culver will order an across-the-board spending cut ranging from 3 percent to 5 percent through June 30 to offset flagging tax collections.

“I think there’s an expectation that there is a cut coming,” said Brad Hudson of the Iowa State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union. “The anxiety is how low or how high it is going to be. Everybody knows it’s coming, we’re just waiting to see what the number is.”

Hudson said many K-12 school districts have reserve funds and spending authority to make mid-year adjustments to weather the economic downturn and minimize the reliance on property taxes to backfill lost state aid.

From the Times-Republican:

Jonathan Narcisse’s vision of a better Iowa includes one where government is more accountable, tax reform promotes community stability and there is more investment in vocational education.

It also includes one where the minimum wage is repealed for teenagers and state departments are slashed.

“We cannot fix the state without doing some unpopular things,” he said as he revealed his 10-point plan in Marshalltown Thursday.

However, he said proposals such as repealing the minimum wage for teenagers should help them in the long run.

“How do you get your teenagers work experience if you don’t repeal the minimum wage for teenagers?” Narcisse asked. “Business owners can’t afford to hire teenagers, train them and subsidize their education to that level.”

Narcisse’s plan is called “An Iowa Worth Fighting For.”

Tags: culver, narcisse

From the Register:

Shortcuts to a teaching license are planned at the three state universities and a few Iowa private colleges.

The goal is to retrain educated workers who want to teach middle school and high school without forcing them to go to college full time for two years.

Iowa professionals have pushed for an easier way to transition to teaching, college officials said. State officials said alternative licensing programs produced a third of the nation’s new teachers.

“I really believe there is a market,” said George Maurer, director of the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners, which oversees teacher licensing. “A number of states have gone into this area.”

This is a plan that is long overdue.  The hoop-jumping required to be a “highly qualified teacher” in Iowa is ridiculously cumbersome.  The system, as it is now, virtually guarantees teachers with no experience outside the classroom.

Warrern Buffet couldn’t teach economics in HS, Bill Gates couldn’t teach computers, and John Wooden couldn’t coach HS basketball – all because they don’t have a teaching/coaching license! This program is a step closer to making such nonsense go away. School learning is good, but other experience should be valued a lot more.

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Tags: education

After the Iowa state legislature unexpectedly voted last week to stop funding all Phase One payments for districts across the state, several Iowa schools stand to lose substantial funding and face the possibility of being forced to renegotiate teacher contracts for next year.

Phase One money is a state funded program that helps districts supplement teacher salaries to increase teacher retention and help districts offer competitive salaries to beginning teachers. Some of the districts build the funding into the master contract salary scale and others pay out the salaries separately. Either way, area districts are looking at options for making up for the funding losses.

Established in 1988, Phase I funding was designed to help equalize teacher salaries among school districts, with smaller districts receiving a larger share of the funds.

On April 26, lawmakers voted to eliminate the program for fiscal year 2010, which begins July 1. Funding Phase I would have cost the state approximately $14 million.

Many teacher contracts stipulate that if Phase I funding became unavailable salaries could be reduced, resulting in immediate pay cuts for many Iowa teachers.

Tags: education

From the Register:

Cindy and James Dacus should know by early December the outcome of their months-long fight to restrict elementary students’ access to a book about two male penguins that raise a chick together.

Officials at Ankeny’s East Elementary School, where in late February the couple’s kindergartner found the book, “And Tango Makes Three,” denied the couple’s request to remove the book or move it to a parents-only section. The couple’s appeal to the school board is expected to be acted on next month.

“And Tango Makes Three” topped the American Library Association’s list of the 10 most challenged books in 2006 and 2007.

Point:

Nate Monson is project coordinator for Iowa Safe Schools, which promotes safe learning environments for all children, especially those who are gay, lesbian or transgender, as well as those whose parents are gay or lesbian couples.

Monson said putting a book such as “And Tango Makes Three” in a restricted area sends students the wrong message – that homosexuality is different and not OK. “Libraries are a place of diverse discussion, of all viewpoints,” he said. “That’s why we have libraries. It’s important to have literature such as this on the shelf.” [Emphasis added.]

It should go without saying that kindergarten is probably not the best place to have “diverse discussions,”  but apparently it actually needs to be said.    I’m not sure when Mr. Monson was last in a kindergarten classroom but he may be surprised to learn that these are not sophisticated houses of Socratic dialog.  Kindergartners are more interested in construction paper and Elmer’s glue than the big social injustices of the day.  And rightly so.

This, of course, is not an isolated incident.  For many nervous observers, the public school system seems more interested in creating activists rather than creating knowledge.  Its not difficult to find school policies that are explicitly hostile to traditional family values in the name of diversity.

Counterpoint:

Chuck Hurley, president of the Iowa Family Policy Center, which opposes gay marriage, said educators should heed parents’ concerns over what their children are exposed to in schools.

“If not, the parent needs to look for a school setting where the parents’ worldview will be respected,” he said.

“Thank God there’s some parents who have the care and love of their children to such a degree that they would stick their neck out in a PC world and ask that this agenda not be promoted in their child’s school,” he said.

Tags: culture, education, polk