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college
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Schools
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college
Wondering where the tax money you pay into the NYC public school system is going? Well, part of it goes to pay the salaries of about 700 teachers who are forced to sit in special rooms that are located all over the city. All day. And do nothing. Sometimes for years at a time. [Rubber Room via BuzzFeed]
tender
Paying With Pennies Lands Middle Schoolers In Detention
29 Readington Middle School students earned two days detention after paying for their lunch with pennies. School administrators took the penny treatment a sign of disrespect towards cafeteria workers, who eventually collected 5,800 pennies."At first it started out as a joke, then everyone else started saying we're protesting against like how short our lunch is," student Alyssa Concannon said.More »
The Humane Society of America has sued the USDA in an attempt to close a loophole that allows downer cows who aren't otherwise ill into the food supply. They claim the loophole increases the risk of introducing mad cow disease to humans, and leads to abuse against the cattle—like with, oh, say, a forklift. [Wall Street Journal]
personal finance
Tennessee May Soon Require Financial Literacy Classes For High School Students
The Tennessee State Board of Education is expected to pass a bill on January 25th that will make Tennesee the eighth state (after Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, South Dakota, and Utah) to require that its high school students take a personal finance class before graduation. More »
glitch
Turbo Tax Accidentally Donates Your Money To The Oregon State School Fund?
A glitch in tax prep software may have resulted in unexpected generosity toward the Oregon's State School Fund this year. Oregon's state constitution requires that surplus revenue in the state's general fund be refunded to the taxpayers at the end of the year. Now some taxpayers (including reader Erich, who sent this in) didn't get their checks because they say Turbo Tax involuntarily donated the "kicker" to the Oregon State School Fund. Whoops!"We are getting calls from people who are saying that they used some kind of an electronic software program to file their tax returns and that they did not check the box to donate their kicker," said Rosemary Hardin, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Revenue. "When we bring up their tax return, that box is checked."More »
education
Ohio Study Provides Snapshot Of State Of High School Finance Education
Now that Ohio has made personal finance basics a mandatory requirement to graduate from high school, people are starting to look at the problem of who teaches it and what it consists of (just look at the comment threads in the two related posts below to see the wide spectrum of opinions and personal experience anecdotes). A new Ohio State University study has found that the current level of teaching is all over the place—and the people teaching it have widely varying levels of knowledge about the subject matter. More »
education
"Checkbook Math" Being Phased Out Of High Schools
We may indeed have a nation of financially illiterate youths, but despite cries for increased financial education in public high schools, the one program that's historically addressed this—"checkbook math"—has never enjoyed a reputation as a "real" math class because the actual math skills involved are so basic, and it's being phased out as most students avoid it because, as one student says, it "doesn't look good for colleges." More »
junk food
Congress Set To Ban Soda, Junk Food From Schools
Snickers and Cokes would be a thing of the past at school cafeterias and vending machines if the Senate approves an ambitious amendment from Senators Harkin (D-IA) and Murkowsky (R-AK). The amendment to the Farm Bill would establish strict federal guidelines limiting the sale of deliciously unhealthy treats brimming with sugar, salt, and fat.The nutrition standards would allow only plain bottled water and eight-ounce servings of fruit juice or plain or flavored low-fat milk with up to 170 calories to be sold in elementary and middle schools. High school students could also buy diet soda or, in places like school gyms, sports drinks. Other drinks with as many as 66 calories per eight ounces could be sold in high schools, but that threshold would drop to 25 calories per eight-ounce serving in five years.More »
health
What Are They Feeding The Kids At School?
The always feisty Center For Science In The Public Interest has released a school lunch report card and while no state received an "A", only Kentucky and Oregon are close to the CSPI's standards. Oregon went from an F to an A-, but it wasn't easy: More »
grandstanding
DermaRite Will Distribute 10,000 Hand Sanitizer Pens To NYC Kids
Maybe this whole MRSA thing has gone too far: Brooklyn state assemblyman Dov Hikind has arranged for the DermaRite corporation, based in New Jersey, to distribute ten thousand units of its gel-based hand sanitizer in a "compact and easy to use" pen-shaped dispenser to city schoolchildren. More »
debate
Should Soda Makers Stop Marketing To Kids Under 16?
The Center For Science In The Public Interest (CSPI), and the International Association of Consumer Food Organizations (IACFO). have joined together to start the "Global Dump Soda" campaign. More »
pizza hut
School District "Doubles As A Giant Pizza Hut"
Childhood obesity epidemic? What? " As the nation's only school district now licensed to make pizza under the Pizza Hut name, Corona-Norco gets all the supplies from Pizza Hut: frozen dough, sauce, cheese, pepperoni — even the oil squirted onto the dough. More »
schools
School Recommends Kids Eat Cheese Doodles
In school, we were taught a simple chant: "Good better best, never let it rest, till your good is better, and your better is best." However, one school district isn't trying very hard when it comes to helping students make healthy eating choices. More »
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