Following widespread national media attention, outrage continues to grow surrounding the controversial suspension of a 16-year-old Florida student who reportedly helped disarm a gunman on a school bus, potentially saving at least one life. School officials dispute those reports. Now, however, a national youth-rights organization has officially become involved in the case to advocate on [...]
CAPE CORAL, Fla. – A national youth rights group is prepared to sue the Lee County School District, not for money, but to expunge the suspension given to a teen many are calling a hero. This comes more than a week after a Cypress Lake High School student was suspended after he wrestled a loaded [...]
A Florida high school student is alleging school officials violated her rights when they banned her from participating in an anti-bullying observance and then suspended her from school. In April of last year, DeSoto County school student Amber Hatcher, then 15, was making plans to participate in the National Day of Silence. The event is [...]
What happens if you give a thousand Motorola Zoom tablet PCs to Ethiopian kids who have never even seen a printed word? Within five months, they’ll start teaching themselves English while circumventing the security on your OS to customize settings and activate disabled hardware. Whoa. The One Laptop Per Child project started as a way [...]
Weeks after Northside Independent School District in San Antonio rolled out its new “smart” IDs that tracks students’ geographic locations, the community is still at odds with the program. The “Student Locator Project,” which is slated to eventually reach 112 Texas schools and close to 100,000 students, is in trial stages in two Northside district [...]
If there’s one belief that unites Americans, it’s that First Amendment freedom of speech is a good thing. Everybody should have it: cigarette companies, SuperPACs, hate groups, Todd Akin, Cher, and Nichole Ritchie. Teenagers, not so much. They might say something wrong. Better to shut them up. The last time the issue of impudent teen [...]
Can’t attend the upcoming rally in Washington, DC against corporal punishment in our schools? You can still share your views. During the second day of the event, NYRA Executive Director Bill Bystricky will join other activists in reading comments submitted from across America. If you have a personal experience with corporal punishment in school, send [...]
The most basic right people of any age have is the right to physical safety, the right not to be harmed or touched against your will. Yet there are public schools in America where students are routinely hit by the very authority figures entrusted to keep them safe. Even in 2012, corporal punishment is still [...]
MAY 15–Two parent chaperones at a Colorado high school prom sprayed Lysol on students engaged in “dirty dancing” and called several teenage girls “sluts and whores” for making it appear “they were advertising butt sex,” according to cops. The bizarre incident last month at the Manitou Springs High School resulted in harassment charges being filed [...]
Matt Smith, principal at Garrett High School in Indiana, recently expelled a student for Tweeting a swear word on his own time. In response, NYRA’s new Executive Director sent Smith the following message: Dear Mr. Smith, I was disappointed to hear reports that your school chose to expel a student for a Tweet he wrote [...]
Fun fact: Florida is one of 19 states where hitting kids who are participating mandatory public schooling with a paddle is completely legal in some districts. While some schools seek parental permission, those signatures—or lack thereof—may not hold much weight when a principal gets peeved: Last year, the principal at Joyce Bullock Elementary sent home [...]
2012-02-15 Windy City Times http://www.windycitymediagroup…..36212.html JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A federal district court ruled today that the Camdenton R-III School District must stop censoring web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities through discriminatory filtering software. The ruling orders the district to not block content based on the viewpoints expressed by [...]
14th February 2012 Student Press Law Center http://www.splc.org/wordpress/?p=3199 Unless an outbreak of common sense sweeps through the Statehouse, Indiana is about to become the most frightening place in America to be a kid. House Bill 1169, pushed by the special-interest lobbyists for school administrators, would unleash school principals to control essentially anything their students [...]
This is part of the Youth Rights 101 series. Please check out Youth Rights 101: Introduction for the rest of the series and more information. How are young people’s free speech rights violated? Look no further than the meme of “washing” a child’s mouth out with soap if she utters a swear word. Many probably [...]
February 8, 2012 The Moral Liberal http://www.themoralliberal.com/2012/02/08/eleventh-circuit-affirms-ruling-against-former-valdosta-state-president-in-victory-for-student-rights/ ATLANTA, February 8, 2012—In a victory for student rights, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued a unanimous decision late yesterday in the case of Barnes v. Zaccari, holding that former Valdosta State University (VSU) President Ronald M. Zaccari may be found personally [...]
02/8/2012 Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/arizona-state-senate-to-c_b_1260291.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications In what has to be the most hilariously unconstitutional piece of legislation that I’ve seen in quite some time, senators in the Arizona state legislature have introduced a bill that would require all educational institutions in the state — including state universities — to suspend or fire professors who say [...]
JOINT STATEMENT IN OPPOSITION TO BOOK CENSORSHIP IN THE TUCSON UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT January 30, 2012 The undersigned organizations are committed to protecting free speech and intellectual freedom. We write to express our deep concern about the removal of books used in the Mexican-American Studies Program in the Tucson Unified School District. This occurred in [...]
the First Amendment Center http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/student-loses-case-involving-religious-message-in-speech January 27, 2012 A school district in Craryville, N.Y., did not violate a former middle school student’s First Amendment rights when the principal told her to omit religious sentiments from her speech at a graduation-type event, a federal court has ruled. The student, known in court papers as A.M., [...]
December 13, 2011 – 01:00 PM TBD http://www.tbd.com/blogs/tbd-on-foot/2011/12/d-c-college-students-may-lose-access-to-residential-parking–13914.html This morning, Tim McBride leaned forward before members of the D.C. Council with a big smile on his face. He spoke into his microphone to Ward 3 D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh, who led the morning’s hearing on several pedestrian and parking proposals starting at 10:30 a.m. [...]
November 28, 2011 – KMBC.com – http://www.kmbc.com/r/29869667…..etail.html Emma Sullivan Tweeted Insult About Governor During School Trip PRAIRIE VILLAGE, Kan. — In the uproar over a Prairie Village teenager’s tweet about Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback during a school trip, it is the governor who is apologizing. “My staff over-reacted to this tweet, and for that, I [...]
NYRA’s mission centers on challenging age discrimination against young people, both in law and in attitudes and supporting the basic freedoms afforded to young Americans in the Bill of Rights.