Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

The Sequoia Union High School District in California is upset with the Summit Preparatory High School, a charter school seeking to operate under the district’s jurisdiction. Why? In the school’s current sophomore and junior classes, there are no students in the “far below basic” category in English on the state standardized test results.

“This was not the intent of the charter school law,” said Sequoia Superintendent Pat Gemma.

Gemma wants Summit to recruit more failing students in its freshman classes. This shouldn’t be difficult, since a district with such an institutional attitude probably has a lot of failing students.

Click here to read:

1) EIA Exclusive: Latest NEA Membership Numbers, All Categories Plus Fee-Payers
2) EEOC Followed Trail in Alaska Harassment Case
3) Teamsters Won’t Challenge Election; Something in the Works?
4) EIA Coverage of the NEA Representative Assembly Begins July 1
5) Last Week’s Intercepts
6) Quote of the Week

At 5’7″ and 185 pounds, high school senior Anna Brown had trouble passing her physical education classes at Max S. Hayes High School in Cleveland. But she was physically imposing enough to trap PE teacher Karen Bartlett in her office for 45 minutes, “chest-butting” her twice to keep her from leaving, and snatching her cell phone from her.

Bartlett finally managed to escape, and Brown was arrested on suspicion of abduction, criminal trespassing and committing a criminal act on school property.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Headline and lede from this morning’s Pittburgh Post-Gazette:

Teacher accused of having sex in school gets $58,000 package

“McKeesport Area School District has reached a $58,000 settlement with a teacher who district investigators said had sex with another teacher in a classroom and a men’s room during school hours.”

The backstory is here.

“You know how they can drag out with appeals and everything else,” said district Solicitor Jack Cambest. “If you get the same resolution of getting those individuals out of the classroom, sometimes it’s quicker and more economic to do it other ways.”

So, McKeesport teachers, why waste time with all those bothersome negotiations for retirement benefits? Just have sex at work! You’ll receive a four-month paid vacation and a lump sum payment of $58,000! Even these guys can’t beat that.

I can’t find an education story that inspires me to write, so I thought I would just mention that the title of the television show Lost appropriately describes how I feel when I watch it — particularly during last night’s season finale. Jonathan Storm of the Philadelphia Inquirer gets it right:

“It’s not hard to imagine two or three consecutive subpar episodes dissolving the throng that has put it into America’s top 15 TV shows and made it an international phenomenon,” Storm wrote.

It’s no secret that Disney executives hated Lost when it was pitched to them. According to a Wall Street Journal story, it “kindled bad memories of Twin Peaks,” which was a huge cult hit that “devolved into an incoherent mess.”

Dancing dwarves, anyone?

NYC Educator is hosting the 68th edition of the Carnival of Education. Plus points for the photo of a crooning Alfalfa.