MySpace mom puts house on market

The mother who created a fake MySpace account that led to a teenager's suicide has put her house on the market and is preparing to move out of Dardenne Prairie, MO, according to an article in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Prosecutors allege that Drew defrauded MySpace by violating the company's Terms of Service when she used false information to create a MySpace account for a fictitious boy named Josh Evans.

Thomas P. O'Brien, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, claims jurisdiction in the case because MySpace is located in Beverly Hills, near Los Angeles.

The MySpace hoax led to the 2006 suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier, who lived four houses down the street from Drew.

The Drews' home was listed last week for $234,900. They bought it in April 2005 for $188,900, according to county records. The Drews made the purchase with the assistance of Megan's mother, Tina Meier, who at the time worked as a real estate agent.

Another neighbor, Christie Kriss, also wants the Drews to leave.

"I can't wait for them to be gone," Kriss said. "We hope she stays in California for like the next 20 years."

Drew faces a maximum 20 years in prison, but her attorney has told the Journal that if he does his job well she won't spend a day in jail.

Another neighbor, 18-year-old Blaine Buckles, said Tuesday he was glad the Drews are trying to leave.

"I don't really like living next door to them," he said.

Buckles attempted to revive Megan the night she ran up to her bedroom closet and hanged herself after receiving hurtful messages on MySpace from the fictitious Josh Evans. She died the next day.

Drew appeared briefly in court Monday. Neither she nor her attorney spoke to reporters following the hearing. She posted a $20,000 signature, or non-secured, bond, meaning she did not have to provide cash or property to be free pending

trial.

Decision reversed on high school newspaper

Last week, I ran an item about a high school principal's decision to shut down the school newspaper following an article and photo about flag burning. That decision has been reversed:

By Rob Rogers
Redding.com
Saturday, June 14, 2008

Shasta Union High School District officials reversed themselves Friday, saying they'll allow Shasta High to keep its journalism class and continue to publish the school's newspaper, the Volcano.

"I'm absolutely thrilled," said junior Amanda Cope. "It's excellent to have the paper back."

Cope, who was set to take over as editor-in-chief this fall, called Mike Stuart, district superintendent, earlier in the week, asking for a chance to prove she and the students she recruited could make the Volcano a serious, respectable publication.

"I volunteered an assurance that we would be legitimate and professional," she said.

Stuart said she made her case.

"We're going to give her that shot," he said.

The Volcano was shut down two weeks ago amid controversy after the paper ran a photo of a student burning an American flag and an editorial defending the practice.

Shasta High Principal Milan Woollard said that the decision to shut down the paper was based on financial issues and already had been made when the photo and editorial ran. He said the incident “cemented” his decision to shutter the Volcano.

The extra class section will cost about $13,000. Woollard said the challenge now is figuring out how to secure a faculty adviser.

Stuart said at this point it’s not known if Judy Champagne, the Volcano’s longtime adviser, will return to the job in the fall.

Champagne would say only that she’s pleased with the district’s decision to honor Cope’s hard work putting a staff together.

“I think it’s great news,” she said.

Stuart said Cope has the school year to build up the program. Then, school officials will look to see if class size and interest in the paper is enough to justify its continued existence.

Cope is confident she can do it. She plans to broaden the paper’s coverage to include articles and features that represent the varying interests of the student body — including international human rights and major test dates at the school.

Enterprise and Foothill high schools shut down their student newspapers a few years ago after their class enrollment dwindled, Stuart said. If students at Shasta High can’t generate enough interest during the next school year, the Volcano will exist only online, Stuart said.

West Valley High School in Cottonwood announced it would shut down its school paper, The Eagle Examiner, this fall for lack of interest. The school had only eight students enrolled for the class for August, Principal Karl Stemmler said.

It was a tough blow for the school. The Examiner is known as one of the best high school newspapers in the state, having won three George H. Gallup awards — one of the highest honors given in high school journalism.

However, the paper has been shut down before. In 2005, class enrollment dwindled and the paper was put on hiatus, only to be started up again the next year.

Stemmler said if interest returns and enough students sign up next year, the school will publish again.

“We’ll bring it back,” he said.

Cope worked hard to secure what she thought were enough students to fill the class at Shasta before the news of the closure came. She said she specifically sought out students who would bring professionalism and intelligence to the paper with the goal of “revolutionizing” the Volcano.

Stuart said now they have the chance to prove themselves.

“We’ll see how the kids do,” he said.

Missouri woman pleads not guilt in MySpace harassment case

Earlier this year, students in my communication arts classes at South Middle School discussed the case of a Missouri woman who opened a MySpace account, masqueraded as a teenage boy, and drove a 13-year-old girl to commit suicide. At the time, no charges had been filed against the woman.
Since then, federal charges have been filed against the woman and she pleaded not guilty today:

Lori Drew, accused of helping create a fake MySpace profile and using it to harass a 13-year-old Dardenne Prairie girl who later killed herself, pleaded not guilty this morning in federal court in Los Angeles.
The pleas were expected and a minor milestone leading up to what the real battle will be in the case – whether prosecutors' use of a law normally used to target computer hackers will work in a cyber bullying case.
Megan Meier, who struggled with depression, hung herself in her bedroom Oct. 16, 2006 , shortly after receiving this message: “The world would be a better place without you.” Megan thought it was from “Josh Evans,” a 16-year-old boy with whom she'd developed an online relationship, but officials said the boy was a creation of Drew and others designed to find out what Megan was saying about Drew's daughter, who was a former friend of Megan.
Drew's indictment on a felony conspiracy charge and three charges of illegally accessing MySpace computers was handed down last month. U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien said then that Drew and unnamed “co-conspirators” violated MySpace's rules and terms of service by using false information to set up the Josh account.
They then used that account to “harass” Megan, O'Brien said.

More schools separating the sexes

There is an old saying- Everything that is old is new again and that appears to be what is happening in education.
An article in today's Wsshington Post explores a return to separating the sexes at schools:

With encouragement from the federal government, single-sex classes that have long been a hallmark of private schools are multiplying in public schools in the Washington area and elsewhere. By next fall, about 500 public schools nationwide will offer single-sex classes, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, based in Montgomery County. That's up from a handful a decade ago. The approach is especially attractive to some struggling schools in the market for low-cost reform.

The 2002 No Child Left Behind law cites single-gender classes as one "innovative" tool to boost achievement. But anti-discrimination laws banned widespread use of such classes, allowing them only in certain instances, such as sex education lessons. A change in federal regulations in 2006 gave schools more flexibility, allowing boys and girls to be separated as long as classes are voluntary and "substantially equal" coeducational classes are offered.

Principal kills student newspaper over flag-burning photo

A Redding, Calif. principal has shut down the high school newspaper for the upcoming school year after publication of a flag-burning photo. The following article is from the Redding Record Searchlight:

By Rob Rogers
Tuesday, June 10, 2008


The adviser calls it sabotage, the principal finds it embarrassing and the superintendent is offended.

The students see it all as a matter of freedom of speech.

Shasta High published its last issue of the Volcano, the student newspaper, before the end of classes last week with an image on the front page of a student burning the American flag and an editorial inside defending the practice.

"The paper's done," said Milan Woollard, Shasta High principal. "There is not going to be a school newspaper next year."

Shasta had been looking at cutting the paper already -- funds are tight as the school anticipates receiving fewer state dollars from Sacramento this fall, Woollard said.

"This cements that decision," he said.

Judy Champagne, the Volcano's faculty adviser, is upset that some of the students decided to use the newspaper as a platform to engender controversy during the last week of school. Planned for the paper was coverage of Shasta's prom and announcements of scholarship recipients and other news.

Those items made the paper, she said. The editorial and image of flag burning were added at the last minute.

"I think that the students were sabotaging what should have been a positive last issue," shesaid. "I think it's very sad that we're not going to have a paper."

Upsetting to Champagne, who's been the newspaper's adviser for years, is what she called a lack of news judgment from some of the students on staff. While flag burning may be a salient national issue, nothing has happened in the north state to make it a current, local issue.

Until now.

"I thought it was bad journalism," she said.

The editorial, written by Connor Kennedy, who graduated Friday, explained that a person has the right to burn the flag, that it's protected speech under the first amendment. Kennedy did not return a phone call made to his home Monday.

Administrators at the school and district level said students have a right to run the photo and print the editorial under the same right.

But all of them called it poor judgment.

"I think that they misused it (their freedom of speech)," Champagne said. "I think this was a game for them."

Mike Stuart, Shasta Union High School superintendent -- a U.S. Army veteran and paratrooper -- said just because the students have a right to defend and run the image doesn't mean the administration has to approve of it.

"Personally I find it offensive," he said. "Especially the last newspaper of the year. It's like a parting shot."

Stuart said it showed the students' immaturity.

"I think it was especially self-indulgent," he said. "I don't like it at all."

Kennedy, who won an award from the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution earlier this year for an essay he wrote, was president of Shasta's student union and helped organize a demonstration on campus last fall to protest the high school's decision to combine its junior and senior prom and the vote that led to the decision.

He and other students successfully argued the matter in front of the school board and forced Shasta administrators to hold a campuswide revote on the issue.

Woollard said he believes Kennedy and other students placed the photo and editorial in the paper simply to get a reaction. And it's what they've got, he said.

"I'm just embarrassed that the thing was ever done," he said.

Columnist complains about grinding and freak dancing

Teen dances are turning into sex shows, according to syndicated columnist Brent Bozell:

The freak-dancing wars are a symptom of a larger disease. In too many schools, parents and principals and chaperones are letting the inmates run the asylum. What should be a strict, clean, carefully observed behavior code is being challenged and ultimately rejected by students -- spoiled punks -- emboldened enough to defy and intimidate the adults who would enforce those codes. What's left is a tacky event where teenagers dress in expensive tuxedos and gowns and dance like they weren't wearing any clothes at all.

On the website Slate a few years ago, twentysomething author David Amsden attended a prom in Rockville, Md., as a journalist to observe the modern customs. It wasn't pretty. "Most, however, are dancing in a style you could call Rap Video Imitation Gone Wrong: the girls back into the boys, who proceed to lift up the girls' dresses in a way they apparently think is subtle, but in reality is anything but. Then they try, and fail, to move to the beat." One girl's dress was hiked up so far the author could see her bellybutton ring.

Bozell concludes by writing the following passage:

I simply refuse to believe that a school principal cannot issue a mandate -- yes, a mandate -- declaring that any student participating in this kind of behavior would summarily be dismissed from school. Period. Ah, but you can hear the Wobble-Knees already. What, specifically, is this kind of behavior? How do we distinguish between sexy dancing and sexual dancing? How do we know it's indecent, never mind obscene? Are there regulations banning it? If not, who are we to impose our morality on others? The hand-wringing would be endless -- embarrassingly, nauseatingly endless.

And you parents out there who condone this activity: You disgust me. If I were chaperoning one of these dances and a boy attempted to perform this kind of lewd activity on my teenage daughter, I'd have a solution. I wouldn't ask him please not to simulate anal sex on her. I wouldn't refer him to the contract he signed at school. I'd beat the stuffing out of him.

Teen job market is weak this summer

A New York Times article describes this summer's job market for teens as "weak":

School is out, and Aaron Stallings, his junior year of high school behind him, wanders the air-conditioned cocoon of the Woodland Hills Mall in search of a job.

Mr. Stallings, 18, says he has been looking for three months, burning gasoline to get to the mall, then filling out applications at stores selling skateboard T-shirts, beach sandals and baseball caps. He likes the idea of working amid the goods he covets. But so far, no offers.

“I’m going to go to Iraq and get a job,” he says acidly. “I hear they’ve got cheap gas.” He grins. “I’m just playing. But I’ve been all over, and nobody’s hiring. They just say, ‘We’ll call you tomorrow.’ And no one ever calls back.”

As the forces of economic downturn ripple widely across the United States, the job market of 2008 is shaping up as the weakest in more than half a century for teenagers looking for summer work, according to labor economists, government data and companies that hire young people.

This deterioration is jeopardizing what many experts consider a crucial beginning stage of working life, one that gives young people experience and confidence along with pocket money.

Little more than one-third of the 16- to 19-year-olds in the United States are likely to be employed this summer, the smallest share since the government began tracking teenage work in 1948, according to a research paper published by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. That is a sharp drop from the 45 percent level of teenage employment reached in 2000.

The rates among minority young people have been particularly low, with only 21 percent of African-Americans and 31 percent of Hispanics from the ages of 16 to 19 employed last summer, according to the Labor Department.

(New York Times photo)

Final episodes of "The Paper" set for tonight

The final episodes of MTV's "The Paper," a program about the ups and downs of a high school newspaper are scheduled to air today at 9 and 9:30 p.m.:

"The Paper" chronicles the staff of the Circuit, the student newspaper at Cypress Bay High School in Weston, Fla. The first episode introduced us to a half dozen new seniors who all wanted the top job of editor-in-chief for the year. The chosen one: Amanda. And they all hate her.

Fortunately, "The Paper" is cleverly edited and quite lively. That first episode was more "The Office" than "The Apprentice." It's a documentary, not a game show; there's no prize awarded in the final episode. So none of the characters seems to have an agenda or to be playing too much to the cameras --except the often hilarious moments when Amanda is alone, performing impressions to herself or philosophizing to her dog.

These are teenagers, anyway. (What outside world?) And they're normal teens, at that -- this is not "Laguna Beach." These kids have pimples and run for student leadership and worry about their schoolwork and talk behind each other's backs. OK, so last week's episode showed three of the guys at a spa exfoliating before the homecoming dance. Maybe MTV paid for that, or maybe that's what 17-year-old geeks do in south Florida. The beauty of "The Paper," though, is that most of its moments have a ring of truth I'm not sure I've yet encountered in reality TV.

Complete episodes are available at MTV.com.

Blogging encourages teen writing

The same Pew Research study that alarmed many about the effect text messaging and instant messaging are having on writing also included some positive information about teen bloggers. The blogging phenomenon is encouraging writing among teens:

Teen bloggers, however, write more frequently both online and offline, the study says.

Forty-seven percent of teen bloggers write outside of school for personal reasons several times a week or more, compared with 33 percent of teens without blogs. Sixty-five percent of teen bloggers believe that writing is essential to later success in life; 53 percent of non-bloggers say the same thing.

Bradley A. Hammer, who teaches in Duke University's writing program, says the kind of writing students do on blogs and other digital formats actually can be better than the writing style they learn in school, because it is better suited to true intellectual pursuit than is SAT-style writing.

"In real ways, blogging and other forms of virtual debate actually foster the very types of intellectual exchange, analysis, and argumentative writing that universities value," he wrote in an op-ed piece last August

.

Teachers gone wild on the internet

Today's Washington Post features an article on young teachers who do not have the common sense to be careful with what they post on their Facebook and MySpace pages:

One Montgomery County special education teacher displayed a poster that depicts talking sperm and invokes a slang term for oral sex. One woman who identified herself as a Prince William County kindergarten teacher posted a satiric shampoo commercial with a half-naked man having an orgasm in the shower. A D.C. public schools educator offered this tip on her page: "Teaching in DCPS -- Lesson #1: Don't smoke crack while pregnant."

Just to be clear, these are not teenagers, the typical Internet scofflaws and sources of ceaseless discussion about cyber-bullying, sexual predators and so on. These are adults, many in their 20s, who are behaving, for the most part, like young adults.

But the crudeness of some Facebook or MySpace teacher profiles, which are far, far away from sanitized Web sites ending in ".edu," prompts questions emblematic of our times: Do the risque pages matter if teacher performance is not hindered and if students, parents and school officials don't see them? At what point are these young teachers judged by the standards for public officials?

Facebook and MySpace can be wonderful sites for teachers, if used properly. When they are used in the fashion described in this article, it makes you wonder about whether these teachers belong in the classroom influencing young people.

Experts divided on text messaging/instant messaging as writing

A just-published study by the Pew Foundation shows wide disagreement among experts about whether text messaging and instant messaging are helpful or damaging to writing:

Some see it as a sign that young people are interested in the written word and simply need to be encouraged to expand their endeavors into more serious topics.

"I think it’s quite exciting to see so much writing going on in any form," said Richard Sterling, chairman of the advisory board of the National Commission on Writing. "It leads people to other parts of the spectrum."

Others say the tech-flavored style – heavy on horrid punctuation and shortcuts such as "LOL," for laugh out loud — encourages bad habits while contributing nothing to improved writing skills.

To think otherwise would be the same as suggesting that 18th Century telegraph operators were improving their own writing skills, said Michael Bugeja, director of Iowa State University’s Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication.

"I don’t even want to hear such nonsense," Bugeja said.

As someone who has taught English to teens for the past nine years, I find I agree with those who don't see text messaging and instant messaging as the death of all writing. At first, when I began to see the LOLs and TTYL in messages from students, I nearly panicked about the possibility for erosion of writing skills, but that is not taking place. I liken it to people who learn to write or speak in more than one language. I see few students who try to insert text messaging language into formal papers or formal language into text messaging.

There are always negative people who see each development in our culture as the end of mankind.

Let me know what you think.

Snow day call become internet firestorm

A phone call made by a teenager to a school district administrator's telephone asking why school had not been cancelled after three inches of snow fell has become a firestorm on the internet.
The following article comes from the Washington Post:

By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Snow days, kids and school officials have always been a delicate mix.

But a phone call to a Fairfax County public school administrator's home last week about a snow day -- or lack of one -- has taken on a life of its own. Through the ubiquity of Facebook and YouTube, the call has become a rallying cry for students' First Amendment rights, and it shows that the generation gap has become a technological chasm.

It started with Thursday's snowfall, estimated at about three inches near Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke. On his lunch break, Lake Braddock senior Devraj "Dave" S. Kori, 17, used a listed home phone number to call Dean Tistadt, chief operating officer for the county system, to ask why he had not closed the schools. Kori left his name and phone number and got a message later in the day from Tistadt's wife.

"How dare you call us at home! If you have a problem with going to school, you do not call somebody's house and complain about it," Candy Tistadt's minute-long message began. At one point, she uttered the phrase "snotty-nosed little brats," and near the end, she said, "Get over it, kid, and go to school!"

Not so long ago, that might have been the end of it -- a few choice words by an agitated administrator (or spouse). But with the frenetic pace of students' online networking, it's harder for grown-ups to have the last word. Kori's call and Tistadt's response sparked online debate among area students about whether the student's actions constituted harassment and whether the response was warranted.

Kori took Tistadt's message, left on his cellphone, and posted an audio link on a Facebook page he had created after he got home from school called "Let them know what you think about schools not being cancelled." The Web page listed Dean Tistadt's work and home numbers.

The Tistadts received dozens more calls that day and night, Dean Tistadt said. Most were hang-ups, but at one point, they were coming every five minutes -- one at 4 a.m., he said. At the same time, his wife's response was spreading through cyberspace.

Within a day, hundreds of people had listened to her message, which was also posted on YouTube. A friend of Kori's sent it to a local television news station, and it was aired on the nightly news program. As of yesterday, more than 9,000 people had clicked on the YouTube link. Hundreds of comments had been posted on the Facebook and YouTube pages, largely about what constitutes proper and polite requests for public information from students.

One Oakton High School student said in a posting yesterday that the crank calls to the Tistadts' home were out of line but that Kori's call was appropriate. "I am not happy that [Dean Tistadt] gambled multiple times with our safety just so we might have a bit more knowledge crammed in our heads at school," he wrote.

A Westfield High School student agreed: "thank God someone stood up for us at last!"

Some were just as adamant the other way. A student from James Madison High School in Vienna wrote: "It's called a home phone number for a reason. My dad is a physician and I can't tell you how irritating it is to get calls at all hours of the night from people who think they are entitled to immediate attention . . . leave the poor guy alone."

Kori, a member of the Lake Braddock debate team who said his grade-point average is 3.977, said his message was not intended to harass. He said that he tried unsuccessfully to contact Dean Tistadt at work and that he thought he had a basic right to petition a public official for more information about a decision that affected him and his classmates. He said he was exercising freedom of speech in posting a Facebook page. The differing interpretations of his actions probably stem from "a generation gap," he said.

"People in my generation view privacy differently. We are the cellphone generation. We are used to being reached at all times," he said.

Kori explained his perspective in an e-mail yesterday to Fairfax County schools spokesman Paul Regnier. Regnier said, also in an e-mail, that Kori's decision to place the phone call to the Tistadts' home was more likely the result of a "civility gap."

"It's really an issue of kids learning what is acceptable and not acceptable. Any call to a public servant's house is harassment," Regnier said in an interview.

Kori said that he was called into the principal's office to discuss the matter but that he was not punished.

Candy Tistadt did not return phone messages, but Dean Tistadt credited Kori for having the "courage of his convictions to stand up and be identified." He also credited him for causing the high volume of crank calls, not to mention considerable grief and embarrassment for his wife.

"This has been horrible for her," he said, adding that he and his wife both learned a hard lesson about the long reach of the Internet.

Another community bans internet harassment

Two articles have been posted on this blog in the past week about the situation in St. Charles County, Mo., in which a teenage girl committed suicide as a result of a fictional internet boyfriend created by a former friend's mother.
Since that incident occurred in November 2006, the community in which it took place has passed a law outlawing internet harassment. Another community, nearby Florissant, has followed suit, according to an article in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The Florissant City Council voted unanimously Monday night to add harassment over the Internet to the city's definitions in its anti-harassment ordinance, saying it "is important to recognize a new form of harassment that has developed with extensive Internet usage in our society."

Councilman Tim Lee said he introduced the harassment measure at the behest of the mayor. It allows for up to six months in jail and a fine for violators and goes into effect in 10 days.

"It makes a statement," Lee said. "We're not going to tolerate this kind of thing in the city of Florissant."

The expanded definition of harassment follows a similar measure passed last week in Dardenne Prairie, where Internet harassment is now a misdemeanor a year after a 13-year-old girl killed herself there.

When her parents went public earlier this month with their claim that Megan Meier hanged herself after becoming upset about messages received from a fictitious MySpace account created by neighbors, the story made news — and brought outrage nationwide.

Columnist favors year-round schools

In a column in today's Los Angeles Times, Charles Fleming says he favors the concept of year-round schools:


By Charles Fleming
November 25, 2007
This winter, for the first time in years, my two daughters will experience vastly different winter breaks. Katie is a senior at North Hollywood High, which has just reverted to a traditional school schedule. She will be out of school from Dec. 14 to Jan. 7. Frankie is a junior at John Marshall, on the "A Track" of a nontraditional, year-round schedule. She'll be out of school from Dec. 21 to March 3. March 3!

Katie will spend her break at home, finishing college applications and studying for exams. Frankie will spend hers with family friends in Paris, eating pain au chocolat and studying at the Alliance Francaise. Which one sounds better to you?

The Los Angeles Unified School District's year-round school schedule was designed to reduce student overcrowding. Using some weird algorithm of occupancy, the "multitrack" plan eliminated traditional downtimes such as spring break and summer vacation and kept classrooms full for 51 weeks of the year -- leaving rooms vacant only during the last week of December. Experts say the program increased total classroom occupancy by 50% without requiring any new classroom construction. There are currently 199,000 kids -- 29% of the district's students -- going to school on 141 multi-track campuses, according to the LAUSD.

On this schedule, A Track kids like Frankie study from late August to late June, with a big break in January and February and a somewhat shortened summer vacation. Similarly, C Track kids study from early July to late April, with a big break in November and December, and B Track kids take up what's left over, attending school all year except for two long breaks, from late August to late October and late February to late April. Kids on the year-round schedule also have a slightly longer school day than other kids -- but in the end, their school year is 17 days shorter.

Now, however, most campuses are phasing out year-round schooling, and all will have done so by 2012. Education experts seem to agree that year-round schools are an effective stopgap measure at best, but are otherwise unacceptable. Many, noting that Los Angeles has more multitrack schools than New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami and Houston combined, have written that year-round schools produce lower grades, lower attendance and higher dropout rates.

As a parent, then, I am supposed to applaud Katie's return to the traditional school schedule and to wish Frankie were on it too. Most parents I know hate the year-round schedules. They want their kids in school from September to June, and out in summer, with a traditional winter recess for the holidays and a traditional spring break for Palm Springs and Cabo.

I don't. I think the year-round schedule, and especially the A Track, is terrific.

Both of my daughters, in addition to taking summer family vacations, working summer jobs and enjoying the traditional summer hang-time with friends, have gotten excellent value out of their winter breaks, or "intersessions." Katie used one year's holiday to go on an extended class visit to Spain and still had time to squeeze a semester's worth of "health and life skills" into a slightly more intensive six-week class during the intersession -- like attending summer school in the winter. The next year, she toured college campuses in Washington, Oregon and Northern California and still had time to prepare for a tae kwon do black-belt examination in the spring. (She passed.)

Frankie did something similar, eliminating her health and life skills requirement by taking an intersession course at Belmont High one year and fulfilling a physical education requirement by taking yoga at Los Angeles City College another. She still had time to do a driver's training course in advance of her 16th birthday. (She got her license.)

There have been other A Track attractions too. The earlier fall semester start means final exams come before the winter holiday break, not after, so the holidays aren't ruined by studying for -- or not studying for, but worrying about -- finals. The longer school day also means longer class times, which means more time to concentrate on individual subjects. (My daughters surprised me by listing that as an attribute.)

It's not just my kids. One of Frankie's friends spent last winter in China with his father. Another will spend this winter living with an Argentine family and studying Spanish in Buenos Aires. Several of Katie's friends took internships at Universal Studios during last year's intersession, while others attended intersession music classes on campus or scheduled daylong rehearsals for the school's spring performance of "Guys and Dolls." Another friend spent the winter in San Francisco working on a theater production of a musical written by her parents. She also exhibited her art at a gallery show during the same period.

The system isn't flawless, of course. My daughters have complained that year-round occupancy means no downtime for maintenance of the school. Classrooms, cafeterias and bathrooms that are never empty don't get cleaned, painted or repaired often enough. Because the tracks are divided by ZIP Code, both girls say, the tracks get Balkanized along ethnic lines. B Track at Marshall, for instance, draws from a heavily Armenian area and becomes heavily Armenian, while C Track draws from a Latino neighborhood and is more heavily Latino. That shouldn't matter, but when students from one track return to find kids from the other track sitting at "their" lunch tables, territorial squabbling and fighting break out.

The girls also complained that some teachers refused to treat the winter break as a real break, assigning homework and research and scheduling tests for the first day back at school. (Katie spent part of last winter reading "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." I failed to see a problem in this.) Other teachers, however, accompanied their students on intersession trips to Europe.





Of course, not every family can pay for the kid who wants to go abroad, or arrange activities or supervision for the one who wants to stay home. Families with young children, especially, find a paucity of day camps and day-care programs in January and February. As a work-at-home dad for most of my daughters' school years, I have often wondered how single, working parents work around L.A. Unified's scheduling oddities like "professional development days," "pupil-free days," "shortened days," "minimum days" and "reverse minimum days." I don't know how those parents manage having their A track kids out of school for two months in the middle of winter.

But I know what it's meant to me. Because my wife is a teacher and I am self-employed, we've all had our summers free for long family vacations. And this winter, I'll visit the Louvre and Le Deux Magots and hang out in Paris with Frankie, and not miss the traditional school schedule at all.

(Charles Fleming is an adjunct professor of journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. He is coauthor of the recently published nonfiction book "My Lobotomy.")

Community fights back in MySpace suicide case

A few days ago, Room 210 Discussion offered a post on a St Louis-area community that was outraged by the suicide of a teenager following her cyberspace relationship with a fictitious boy named Josh.
The backlash of the St. Charles Journal article that started the controversy continues and it has reached nationwide, including an article in the Los Angeles Times, which tells how the community is fighting back against the adult whose MySpace prank led to a teenager girl's death:

After their daughter's death, Tina and Ron Meier begged their other neighbors to keep the story private. Let the local authorities and the FBI conduct their investigations in privacy, they pleaded.

But after waiting for criminal charges to be filed against Drew, neighbors learned that local and federal prosecutors could not find a statute applicable to the case.

This community's patience has dried up. The furious neighbors -- and in the wake of recent media reports, an outraged public -- are taking matters into their own hands.

In an outburst of virtual vigilantism, readers of blogs such as RottenNeighbor.com and hitsusa.com have posted the Drews' home address, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and photographs.

Dozens of people allegedly have called local businesses that work with the family's advertising booklet firm, and flooded the phone lines this week at the local Burlington Coat Factory, where Curt Drew reportedly works.

"I posted that, where Curt works. I'm not ashamed to admit that," said Trever Buckles, 40, a neighbor whose two teenage boys grew up with Megan. "Why? Because there's never been any sense of remorse or public apology from the Drews, no 'maybe we made a mistake.' "

Local teenagers and residents protest just steps from the Drews' tiny porch. A fake 911 call, claiming a man had been shot inside the Drew home, sent law enforcement officers to surround the one-story, white-sided house. People drive through the neighborhood in the middle of the night, screaming, "Murderer!"

The Drews, who have mounted cameras and recording devices onto the roof of their house to track the movements of their neighbors, declined to comment for this article.

The decline of high school dances

In a column in the Chicago Sun-Times, Betsy Hart of www.betsysblog.com offers a critique of high school dances, which she says features dancing that seems to be more like foreplay:

BY BETSY HART www.betsysblog.com

Note to my kids: Get ready -- I'm going to chaperone every high school dance you attend.

My resolve actually preceded this week's Wall Street Journal article, "Freaked Out: Teens' Dance Moves Split a Texas Town." The front page piece just reinforced it.

According to reporter Susan Warren, Karen Miller was a chaperone at a high school dance in Argyle, Texas, a few years ago when she first saw couples doing the "freak dance." What that means is a girl's backside is essentially backed up to a boy's pelvis, and they bump and grind to the beat of the music in a sexually provocative way.

Other adults around Miller seemed oblivious. Miller separated at least one such young couple. The result? Mayhem.

Yes, many parents side with her and the new superintendent of schools there, Jason Ceyanes, who according to the Journal is cracking down on "sexually suggestive dancing -- and skimpy clothing. . ." in this growing and increasingly affluent Dallas suburb.

But another very active group of parents is ticked at him for "ruining" their children's recent homecoming "by making provocative dancing off-limits" writes Warren. One angry mom complained that she spent $400 on her daughter's dress "only to have her leave the dance after a few minutes because it was such a dud," she writes.

No, I'm not making this up.

Angry parents are even unearthing "dirt" on the superintendent and calling him a hypocrite. (He's divorced, after an earlier marriage and fatherhood at 17. One might better argue that his voice of reason also is the voice of experience.)

But my decision to one day chaperone any dances my four kids are allowed to attend arose not from the Journal article about that Texas town, but from a dear friend telling me about her own recent experience chaperoning a high school dance here in the Chicago suburbs. In recounting the sexually grinding moves of the kids, she said, "What I saw in the darkened gym was much more 'foreplay' than dancing."

Ouch.

Meanwhile, who knows high school dances better than DJs?

Writes Warren, "The problem is so widespread at school dances that DJs are feeling the heat, too." They may try to change the pace of the music when they see the kids getting worked up but "there's only so much a DJ can do," said one.

Back to Ceyanes. He fears that allowing the kids to get sexually aroused at the dances could be dangerous to students. (I would add, especially girls.) Duh. That may be one reason many schools around the country have banned, or tried to ban, such dancing altogether.

If the "$400 dress girl" had been sexually assaulted in the parking lot after the festivities because the dance wasn't a "dud," would her mom be happy, or suing the school?

It consistently stuns me that some of the very same parents who will carefully protect little junior and junioress from every scrape and bump early on, who will trail them carefully to super-safe playgrounds and rarely leave them to play unattended even in their own backyards, will then abandon their children to real dangers, including sexual ones, later on.

Why? Because they are proud of the public foreplay their children are engaging in? Because "sexiest child" is yet another competition for parents to engage in? Because they want their kids to "like" them?

Forget these reckless moms and dads. For those parents who want to act like parents, this information should be our own bucket of cold water.

Our response to our children's school dances could be, should be, a metaphor for how we raise them from the start: Find out what's going on, turn up the lights at all times, and always be ready to protect them from themselves whether they like it (or us!) or not.

Fake MySpace account leads to teen's suicide

Messages left on a fake MySpace account led to the suicide of a St. Louis area girl. Following is the story as it ran in the St. Charles Journal:

By Steve Pokin
Tuesday, November 13, 2007 2:55 PM CST


His name was Josh Evans. He was 16 years old. And he was hot.

"Mom! Mom! Mom! Look at him!" Tina Meier recalls her daughter saying.

Josh had contacted Megan Meier through her MySpace page and wanted to be added as a friend.Yes, he's cute, Tina Meier told her daughter. "Do you know who he is?"

"No, but look at him! He's hot! Please, please, can I add him?"

Mom said yes. And for six weeks Megan and Josh - under Tina's watchful eye - became acquainted in the virtual world of MySpace.

Josh said he was born in Florida and recently had moved to O'Fallon. He was homeschooled. He played the guitar and drums.

He was from a broken home: "when i was 7 my dad left me and my mom and my older brother and my newborn brother 3 boys god i know poor mom yeah she had such a hard time when we were younger finding work to pay for us after he loeft."

As for 13-year-old Megan, of Dardenne Prairie, this is how she expressed who she was:

M is for Modern

E is for Enthusiastic

G is for Goofy

A is for Alluring

N is for Neglected.

She loved swimming, boating, fishing, dogs, rap music and boys. But her life had not always been easy, her mother says.

She was heavy and for years had tried to lose weight. She had attention deficit disorder and battled depression. Back in third grade she had talked about suicide, Tina says, and ever since had seen a therapist.

But things were going exceptionally well. She had shed 20 pounds, getting down to 175. She was 5 foot 5½ inches tall.

She had just started eighth grade at a new school, Immaculate Conception, in Dardenne Prairie, where she was on the volleyball team. She had attended Fort Zumwalt public schools before that.

Amid all these positives, Tina says, her daughter decided to end a friendship with a girlfriend who lived down the street from them. The girls had spent much of seventh grade alternating between being friends and, the next day, not being friends, Tina says.

Part of the reason for Megan's rosy outlook was Josh, Tina says. After school, Megan would rush to the computer.

"Megan had a lifelong struggle with weight and self-esteem," Tina says. "And now she finally had a boy who she thought really thought she was pretty."

It did seem odd, Tina says, that Josh never asked for Megan's phone number. And when Megan asked for his, she says, Josh said he didn't have a cell and his mother did not yet have a landline.

And then on Sunday, Oct. 15, 2006, Megan received a puzzling and disturbing message from Josh. Tina recalls that it said: "I don't know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I've heard that you are not very nice to your friends."

Frantic, Megan shot back: "What are you talking about?"

SHADOWY CYBERSPACE

Tina Meier was wary of the cyber-world of MySpace and its 70 million users. People are not always who they say they are.

Tina knew firsthand. Megan and the girl down the block, the former friend, once had created a fake MySpace account, using the photo of a good-looking girl as a way to talk to boys online, Tina says. When Tina found out, she ended Megan's access.

MySpace has rules. A lot of them. There are nine pages of terms and conditions. The long list of prohibited content includes sexual material. And users must be at least 14.

"Are you joking?" Tina asks. "There are fifth-grade girls who have MySpace accounts."

As for sexual content, Tina says, most parents have no clue how much there is. And Megan wasn't 14 when she opened her account. To join, you are asked your age but there is no check. The accounts are free.

As Megan's 14th birthday approached, she pleaded for her mom to give her another chance on MySpace, and Tina relented.

She told Megan she would be all over this account, monitoring it. Megan didn't always make good choices because of her ADD, Tina says. And this time, Megan's page would be set to private and only Mom and Dad would have the password.

'GOD-AWFUL FEELING'

Monday, Oct. 16, 2006, was a rainy, bleak day. At school, Megan had handed out invitations to her upcoming birthday party and when she got home she asked her mother to log on to MySpace to see if Josh had responded.

Why did he suddenly think she was mean? Who had he been talking to?

Tina signed on. But she was in a hurry. She had to take her younger daughter, Allison, to the orthodontist.

Before Tina could get out the door it was clear Megan was upset. Josh still was sending troubling messages. And he apparently had shared some of Megan's messages with others.

Tina recalled telling Megan to sign off.

"I will Mom," Megan said. "Let me finish up."

Tina was pressed for time. She had to go. But once at the orthodontist's office she called Megan: Did you sign off?

"No, Mom. They are all being so mean to me."

"You are not listening to me, Megan! Sign off, now!"

Fifteen minutes later, Megan called her mother. By now Megan was in tears.

"They are posting bulletins about me." A bulletin is like a survey. "Megan Meier is a slut. Megan Meier is fat."

Megan was sobbing hysterically. Tina was furious that she had not signed off.

Once Tina returned home she rushed into the basement where the computer was. Tina was shocked at the vulgar language her daughter was firing back at people.

"I am so aggravated at you for doing this!" she told Megan.

Megan ran from the computer and left, but not without first telling Tina, "You're supposed to be my mom! You're supposed to be on my side!"

On the stairway leading to her second-story bedroom, Megan ran into her father, Ron.

"I grabbed her as she tried to go by," Ron says. "She told me that some kids were saying horrible stuff about her and she didn't understand why. I told her it's OK. I told her that they obviously don't know her. And that it would be fine."

Megan went to her room and Ron went downstairs to the kitchen, where he and Tina talked about what had happened, the MySpace account, and made dinner.

Twenty minutes later, Tina suddenly froze in mid-sentence.

"I had this God-awful feeling and I ran up into her room and she had hung herself in the closet."

Megan Taylor Meier died the next day, three weeks before her 14th birthday.

Later that day, Ron opened his daughter's MySpace account and viewed what he believes to be the final message Megan saw - one the FBI would be unable to retrieve from the hard drive.

It was from Josh and, according to Ron's best recollection, it said, "Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you."

BEYOND GRIEF INTO FURY

Tina and Ron saw a grief counselor. Tina went to a couple of Parents After Loss of Suicide meetings, as well.

They tried to message Josh Evans, to let him know the deadly power of mean words. But his MySpace account had been deleted.

The day after Megan's death, they went down the street to comfort the family of the girl who had once been Megan's friend. They let the girl and her family know that although she and Megan had their ups and down, Megan valued her friendship.

They also attended the girl's birthday party, although Ron had to leave when it came time to sing "Happy Birthday." The Meiers went to the father's 50th birthday celebration. In addition, the Meiers stored a foosball table, a Christmas gift, for that family.

Six weeks after Megan died, on a Saturday morning, a neighbor down the street, a different neighbor, one they didn't know well, called and insisted that they meet that morning at a counselor's office in northern O'Fallon.

The woman would not provide details. Ron and Tina went. Their grief counselor was there. As well as a counselor from Fort Zumwalt West Middle School.

The neighbor from down the street, a single mom with a daughter the same age as Megan, informed the Meiers that Josh Evans never existed.

She told the Meiers that Josh Evans was created by adults, a family on their block. These adults, she told the Meiers, were the parents of Megan's former girlfriend, the one with whom she had a falling out. These were the people who'd asked the Meiers to store their foosball table.

The single mother, for this story, requested that her name not be used. She said her daughter, who had carpooled with the family that was involved in creating the phony MySpace account, had the password to the Josh Evans account and had sent one message - the one Megan received (and later retrieved off the hard drive) the night before she took her life.

"She had been encouraged to join in the joke," the single mother said.

The single mother said her daughter feels the guilt of not saying something sooner and for writing that message. Her daughter didn't speak out sooner because she'd known the other family for years and thought that what they were doing must be OK because, after all, they were trusted adults.

On the night the ambulance came for Megan, the single mother said, before it left the Meiers' house her daughter received a call. It was the woman behind the creation of the Josh Evans account. She had called to tell the girl that something had happened to Megan and advised the girl not to mention the MySpace account.

AX AND SLEDGEHAMMER

The Meiers went home and tore into the foosball table.

Tina used an ax and Ron a sledgehammer. They put the pieces in Ron's pickup and dumped them in their neighbor's driveway. Tina spray painted "Merry Christmas" on the box.

According to Tina, Megan had gone on vacations with this family. They knew how she struggled with depression, that she took medication.

"I know that they did not physically come up to our house and tie a belt around her neck," Tina says. "But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a 13-year-old - with or without mental problems - it is absolutely vile.

"She wanted to get Megan to feel like she was liked by a boy and let everyone know this was a false MySpace and have everyone laugh at her.

"I don't feel their intentions were for her to kill herself. But that's how it ended."

'GAINING MEGAN'S CONFIDENCE'

That same day, the family down the street tried to talk to the Meiers. Ron asked friends to convince them to leave before he physically harmed them.

In a letter dated Nov. 30, 2006, the family tells Ron and Tina, "We are sorry for the extreme pain you are going through and can only imagine how difficult it must be. We have every compassion for you and your family."

The Suburban Journals have decided not to name the family out of consideration for their teenage daughter.

The mother declined comment.

"I have been advised not to give out any information and I apologize for that," she says. "I would love to sit here and talk to you about it but I can't."

She was informed that without her direct comment the newspaper would rely heavily on the police report she filed with the St. Charles County Sheriff's Department regarding the destroyed foosball table.

"I will tell you that the police report is totally wrong," the mother said. "We have worked on getting that changed. I would just be very careful about what you write."

Lt. Craig McGuire, spokesman for the sheriff's department, said he is unaware of anyone contacting the department to alter the report.

"We stand behind the report as written," McGuire says. "There was no supplement to it. What is in the report is what we believe she told us."

The police report - without using the mother's name - states:

"(She) stated in the months leading up Meier's daughter's suicide, she instigated and monitored a 'my space' account which was created for the sole purpose of communicating with Meier's daughter.

"(She) said she, with the help of temporary employee named ------ constructed a profile of 'good looking' male on 'my space' in order to 'find out what Megan (Meier's daughter) was saying on-line' about her daughter. (She) explained the communication between the fake male profile and Megan was aimed at gaining Megan's confidence and finding out what Megan felt about her daughter and other people.

"(She) stated she, her daughter and (the temporary employee) all typed, read and monitored the communication between the fake male profile and Megan …..

"According to (her) 'somehow' other 'my space' users were able to access the fake male profile and Megan found out she had been duped. (She) stated she knew 'arguments' had broken out between Megan and others on 'my space.' (She) felt this incident contributed to Megan's suicide, but she did not feel 'as guilty' because at the funeral she found out 'Megan had tried to commit suicide before.'"

Tina says her daughter died thinking Josh was real and that she never before attempted suicide.

"She was the happiest she had ever been in her life," Ron says.

After years of wearing braces, Megan was scheduled to have them removed the day she died. And she was looking forward to her birthday party.

"She and her mom went shopping and bought a new dress," Ron says. "She wanted to make this grand entrance with me carrying her down the stairs. I never got to see her in that dress until the funeral."

NO CRIMINAL CHARGES

It does not appear that there will be criminal charges filed in connection with Megan's death.

"We did not have a charge to fit it," McGuire says. "I don't know that anybody can sit down and say, 'This is why this young girl took her life.'"

The Meiers say the matter also was investigated by the FBI, which analyzed the family computer and conducted interviews. Ron said a stumbling block is that the FBI was unable to retrieve the electronic messages from Megan's final day, including that final message that only Ron saw.

The Meiers do not plan to file a civil lawsuit. Here's what they want: They want the law changed, state or federal, so that what happened to Megan - at the hands of an adult - is a crime.

THE AFTERMATH IS PAIN

The Meiers are divorcing. Ron says Tina was as vigilant as a parent could be in monitoring Megan on MySpace. Yet she blames herself.

"I have this awful, horrible guilt and this I can never change," she said. "Ever."

Ron struggles daily with the loss of a daughter who, no matter how low she felt, tried to make others laugh and feel a little bit better.

He has difficulty maintaining focus and has kept his job as a tool and die maker through the grace and understanding of his employer, he says. His emotions remain jagged, on edge.

Christine Buckles lives in the same Waterford Crossing subdivision. In her view, everyone in the subdivision knows of Megan's death, but few know of the other family's involvement.

Tina says she and Ron have dissuaded angry friends and family members from vandalizing the other home for one, and only one, reason.

"The police will think we did it," Tina says.

Ron faces a misdemeanor charge of property damage. He is accused of driving his truck across the lawn of the family down the street, doing $1,000 in damage, in March. A security camera the neighbors installed on their home allegedly caught him.

It was Tina, a real estate agent, who helped the other family purchase their home on the same block 2½ years ago.

"I just wish they would go away, move," Ron says.

Vicki Dunn, Tina's aunt, last month placed signs in and near the neighborhood on the anniversary of Megan's death.

They read: "Justice for Megan Meier," "Call the St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney," and "MySpace Impersonator in Your Neighborhood."

On the window outside Megan's room is an ornamental angel that Ron turns on almost every night. Inside are pictures of boys, posters of Usher, Beyonce and on the dresser a tube of instant bronzer.

"She was all about getting a tan," Ron says.

He has placed the doors back on the closet. Megan had them off.

If only she had waited, talked to someone, or just made it to dinner, then through the evening, and then on to the beginning of a new day in what could have been a remarkable life.

If she had, he says, there is no doubt she would have chosen to live. Instead, there is so much pain.

"She never would have wanted to see her parents divorce," Ron says.

Ultimately, it was Megan's choice to do what she did, he says. "But it was like someone handed her a loaded gun."

Massachusetts Catholic school bans Harry Potter

A Massachusetts Catholic school has removed all Harry Potter books from its library, according to an article in today's Boston Globe:

But last month, students found that their favorite series had "disapparated" from the school library, after St. Joseph's pastor, the Rev. Ron Barker, removed the books, declaring that the themes of witchcraft and sorcery were inappropriate for a Catholic school.

"He said that he thought most children were strong enough to resist the temptation," said one mother who asked that her name not be used because she did not want her family to be singled out. "But he said it's his job to protect the weak and the strong."

The removal at St. Joseph's is the first reported instance that the wildly popular series has been banned in the Bay State, according to the American Library Association. But British author J.K. Rowling's series, which many educators credit with inspiring a generation of children to pick up a book, has been as controversial as it has been popular. Groups in at least 17 other states have tried to ban the books since the first one was published in 1998, prompting the library association last year to name the Harry Potter collection "the most challenged books of the 21st century."

Maine school board approves birth control for middle schoolers

A school board in Portland, Maine, has approved a measure that would allow middle school students to receive prescription birth control without their parents' knowledge:

The proposal, from the Portland Division of Public Health, calls for the independently operated health care center at King Middle School to provide a variety of services to students, including immunizations and physical checkups in addition to birth-control medications and counseling for sexually transmitted diseases, said Lisa Belanger, an administrator for Portland’s student health centers.

All but two members of the 12-person committee voted to approve the plan.

The school principal, Mike McCarthy, said about 5 of the school’s 500 students had identified themselves as being sexually active.

Washington Post article explores fall fundraisers

Fall seems to be the time for fundraisers and more fundraisers at American schools. An article in today's Washington Post explores the phenomenon:

Parents in the Washington area know -- as do their co-workers -- that fall is when a fourth "R" appears in the region's school curriculum: retailing. According to Michigan-based Sally Foster Inc., this region is its most-active single territory in the country, with more than 500 schools signed up to peddle its paper and other product lines. This week, as fall fund drives come to an end, schools and PTAs are tallying their sales not just of Sally Foster products but of cookie dough, magazine subscriptions, candy and countless other fundraising offerings, too.

Nationally, such product campaigns amount to $1.3 billion dollars of extra school funding a year, according to the Association of Fund-Raising Distributors and Suppliers. Schools in this area typically raise an average of $10,000 a year from Sally Foster sales, according to Matt Maher, the company's sales director for the Atlantic Coast Region. Some make as much as $35,000, he said. Sally Foster, like most of the programs, splits the profit evenly with schools.