Traditional public school systems do not have a lock on the educational market. Affording college tuition or even high school tuition can be a factor in whether to choose public school or a private school, as private schools are far more expensive. However, there are so many grants and loans out there, that you shouldn’t let your dreams be thwarted over a lack of college funds. In addition, you may find many more choices for schooling that can fit into your budget without even having to take out loans.

Take a Look at Alternative Choices First

If you can’t afford a 4-year program, look for 2-year or certificate program to complete. Get skills that can put you in demand in the job market in your area. By targeting jobs that are hiring or due to expand in hiring, you have a better chance of putting your education to use. Think of going to a vocational training program or taking online classes. If you are in high school, you have the option to be home schooled, go to a magnet school, or a private school. Don’t assume that your only career path is a traditional 4-year college degree, unless that is something you’ve always dreamed of doing.

Find the Funding

Next, once you’ve narrowed down your choices, according to your lifestyles and dream, attempt to find your financing sources. You should do this early for college, like as soon as you enter your senior year in high school. Many programs do have funding, but application to get it is usually a lengthy process and needs to be completed by specific deadlines. Think ahead and look for funding at least one year, if not more, before you try to enter a program in any school. If the financing is first come/first served and you apply early, you will be the first in line if you qualify.

Trenton, NJ, United States (AHN) – Trenton Public Schools officials are working to continue bus service for students after transportation workers started a sick-out late in the week.

As state budget wrangling continues, the district is moving ahead with plans to privatize its school bus service, contending it could save about $2 million.

About half (15) of the district’s 29 transportation workers reportedly called in sick Thursday, though the number was reduced to about a third (9) Friday according to a school official. The 29 are a part of 196 school employees who recently learned they would lose their jobs to reduce the district’s school budget.

A report in the Trentonian stated 300 to 400 students missed school due to the school bus situation.

“So each of the (seven) drivers had to make three different runs, but that only covers 21 schools. There are 36 schools. Some students have to go to special schools as far out as Neptune. It’s a terrible mess. Kids are calling on the phones, left to stay at home, no way to get to school. Their parents have to take a bus to work, so they drop their child off, counting on a school bus to take them to school. Often they’re not picked up,” a source told the paper.

A school official admitted as much in a letter posted on the district’s website and sent home with students.

“We are experiencing a job action among our bus drivers,” interim superintendent Raymond Broach wrote. “This is causing delays in the pickup and delivery of our students and in some cases, (we’re) not picking up at all.”

With the drivers losing their jobs anyway, they will likely not be punished for their actions and the district will call upon drivers from other companies it has deals with — Rick Bus Co. and Delaware Valley Bus Line — to cover the gap in service, according to a report on nj.com.

Trenton Public Schools may get $12 million in additional school funding due to a recent action by the state legislature, but will still seek an outside vendor for its school bus service.

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Andover, MN, United States (AHN) – Two national civil rights groups are planning on suing the Anoka-Hennepin school district if school officials don’t properly address anti-gay harassment. The Southern Poverty Law Center and National Center for Lesbian Rights say they have proof that students in the district have faced harassment for being gay or perceived as gay and that harassment violates federal law.

Lawyers for the two civil rights groups which sued the district earlier this year in a separate case sent a letter Tuesday to Anoka-Hennepin superintendent Dennis Carlson warning of possible legal action.

According to the letter the two groups have had the district, the largest in the state under investigation for some time and found that students who are or perceived to be gay or lesbian are in jeopardy and in a hostile environment when they’re at school. They were originally contacted by students and alumni who sought help.

Sam Wolfe an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights group said Anoka-Hennepin is breaking federal law by allowing such a culture to exist.

“On a daily basis they’re going into the schools and into the hallways — other kids are calling them names, such as ‘faggot’ and other names about either their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity,” Wolfe said in an MPR report. “And it’s a continual thing.”

The letter goes on to list examples of harassment of at least three unnamed current or former students. It remains unknown how many other clients could be represented by the groups if a settlement can’t be reached.

Wolfe said his group will sue Anoka-Hennepin unless district officials compensate his clients and repeals a district policy that requires staff to be neutral in dealing with sexual orientation. The so called “neutrality policy” allows sexual orientation to be discussed but stipulates teachers to remain neutral.

“The policy ties the hands of these teachers,” Wolfe said. “Some of these kids are being relentlessly harassed.”

District spokeswoman Mary Olson said school district leaders believe their policy is legal.

In a Star Tribune report she said people have different view points on whether “homosexuality is appropriate.” She added, “I don’t think by eliminating the neutrality policy we’re going to eliminate bullying.

The board stance is they don’t see a connection between the two. However civil rights proponents hope with the threat of a lawsuit they will reevaluate their position and repeal the policy.

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Honolulu, HI, United States (AHN) – A shooting at a Hawaii middle school on Monday ended with one student injured.

According to KITV, a 14-year-old was showing a gun to his friends at Highlands Intermediate School when one student brushed the weapon away with his hand, causing the gun to go off.

The bullet went through a student’s jacket, ricocheted off a wall and grazed another student’s hand and leg. Only one student was injured, and the teen who brought the weapon was taken into police custody.

The gun, a .45 caliber Glock semi-automatic pistol, was registered to a man who had lost it in December but did not report it stolen or missing until Monday, KHON reported.

Classes at Highlands Intermediate School, located in Pearl City, continued as normal after the accident, prompting concerns from some parents about how school officials handled the emergency.

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MANSA, Zambia (IRIN) – An absence of boarding facilities for high school pupils in Zambia’s northern province of Luapula is forcing children to share lodgings with their peers – unsupervised by adults – leading to teenage pregnancies and HIV/AIDS infections.

Many children live a long way from school and prefer to rent accommodation nearby. Grade 12 pupil Dorcas, 17, stopped attending the Mabumba High day school, about 20km east of provincial capital Mansa, after becoming pregnant.

“We were staying the three of us [girls], then we started sharing the house with three guys and that is how we paired ourselves. We just wanted some form of emotional support; life is really tough out there. So, the whole of last year we were living together with the guys and would have [unprotected] sex almost every night but everything was OK,” she told IRIN.

“When I missed [my periods] early this year, I decided to go to Mansa General Hospital for a [pregnancy] test and the results were positive… I left school because everyone was laughing at me. They were saying ‘this one is a married woman’ after they knew [of my pregnancy].”

Mabumba High School enrols some of its 690 pupils from as far away as the capital Lusaka and about 500 of the children are responsible for their own accommodation arrangements.

“We couldn’t find a place in a proper boarding school in Luapula. Everywhere we went, we were told ‘the places are full’, and that’s how my mother decided to bring me here. She sends money every month for rentals, food and groceries,” Margaret Chanda, 16, a Grade 12 pupil from Ndola in the Copperbelt and attending Mabumba High School, told IRIN.

She shares a two-room grass-thatched hut with her friend and pays US$5 a month.

Wamunyima Chingumbe, a Health Ministry director in Mansa District, said the absence of boarding facilities at day schools had led to teenage pregnancies and made pupils vulnerable to contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs). After malaria, STIs were the most common ailments recorded at makeshift boarding high schools.

Higher STI rates

“In terms of HIV/AIDS and other STIs, quazi-boarding schools record higher numbers of pupils with STIs compared to schools with [official] boarding facilities,” Chingumbe said.

“Mabumba High School once recorded 13 HIV-positive female cases and four HIV-positive male cases out of an enrolment population of about 600 pupils,” Chingumbe said.

“On the other hand there are very few cases of HIV-positive/STI cases recorded [at official] boarding schools, and this could be attributed to the fact that pupils are confined in one place and dormitories are out of bounds for the opposite sex,” he said.

Government investment in universal primary education has not been matched in the high school sector, and the 2008 scrapping of qualifying examinations for Grade 10 has put more pressure on school facilities, with more and more pupils continuing their education. The province has 23 high schools, six of which are day schools.

Elizabeth Mushili, coordinator of the Mansa District Women’s Development Association, a gender-based advocacy group, wants the government to equip all schools with boarding facilities.

‘Free-range lifestyles’

“These children adopt confused, free-range lifestyles. We are of the view that government should have been more considerate and constructed dormitories for both girls and boys at these high schools. Or better still, they [government] should have built more day high schools to cut down on the distances [between the schools].

“Early pregnancies are very common because of lack of parental care; no one is looking after these children and, hence, they can do anything,” Mushili told IRIN.

“We have pupils, especially girls, who get abused by male adults for sexual exploitation; we have many children around 13,- years carrying their own children and dropping out of school in Mabumba and Chembe [another day high school in Mansa where children use makeshift accommodation],” she said.

Luapula is one of Zambia’s poorest provinces: it has a poverty level of 75 percent, compared with the national average of 64 percent. According to UNAIDS the national HIV prevalence for sexually active adults aged 15-49 is-.3 percent.

“Many of us end up sending our children to these weekly-boarding schools like Mabumba because we have no money to send them to boarding schools. We are poor,” Joseph Mutale, a small farmer in Mansa, told IRIN.

“I give my son a tin of maize [for grinding into the staple maize meal] every month and 10,000 kwacha [US$2] to buy relish but he keeps on complaining about other things that I can’t afford to give him,” he said.

Pupils attending boarding high schools pay up to $300 for a three-month term, but day schools like Mabumba only charge $40 a term.

Defilement

Zambian law classifies sex with anyone under 16 as defilement, and is punishable by a prison term of up to 25 years.

“We have many children below 16 years who are very sexually active. It is defilement [of a minor] but she will not see it that way. There are many defilement cases going on here; they are contracting many diseases especially STIs; some are falling pregnant,” a teacher at Mabumba High School, who preferred anonymity, told IRIN.

Luapula’s provincial education officer Florence Kanchebele told IRIN the government had begun constructing boarding facilities at two day schools – in Ponde and Lukwesa, and acknowledged the problems associated with learners renting accommodation close to schools. She said some pupils engaged in “what may be termed as ‘marriages of convenience’ with other pupils and sometimes, community members due to economic reasons”.

The school authorities were still responsible for their children outside school hours and landlords were “instructed to protect the pupils, report to the school any bad behaviour by such pupils, and sensitize the pupils on the dangers of HIV/AIDS, STIs and early pregnancies,” she added.

Ruth Mwewa, a landlord for several pupils from Mabumba High School in the past, told IRIN: “No teacher has ever approached me to talk about these pupils’ behaviour. Two of the girls I have kept here got pregnant and stopped school. The girls are especially a big problem because they are forever found with boys or married men who come with cars.”

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– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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Shelton, CT, United States (AHN) – A Connecticut honors student who was banned from his high school prom after a creative proposal backfired has had the ban reversed.

The incident sparked hundreds of thousands of people to post support notes on Facebook and the matter garnered more than 10,000 tweets on Twitter. The incident also sparked a national debate as it made headlines around the world.

As of this morning, the Facebook page for “Let James Tate Go To Prom” was “liked” by more than 195,000 people, and another page selling Tate-for-prom-king-type T-shirts is growing.

Finally, officials at Shelton High backed down from their hard-line stance against James Tate.

After nearly a week of international pressure, on Saturday Beth Smith, the headmaster of the public high school, gave in to what she called “international notoriety” and reversed the school’s decision, allowing Tate to take his date, Sonali Rodrigues, to the prom.

Tate a senior, was banned from the prom by school administrators after he posted cardboard letters on the side of the school that read, “Sonali Rodrigues Will You Go To Prom With Me? HMU [Hit Me Up] – Tate.”

His school considered the move a safety risk and trespassing. The school has a policy that anyone suspended after April 1 isn’t allowed to attend special events.

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Canal Winchester, OH, United States (AHN) – Two Ohio boys were kicked off the school bus for passing gas and being a disruption.

The incident happened on Thursday and according to one of the boys’ father caused riders to laugh, heckle and of course roll their windows down.

James Nichols in a report with the Columbus Dispatch said they boys were considered repeat offenders because a driver had warned them after a similar indiscretion weeks ago.

However this time officials at Canal Winchester Middle School intervened and deemed it was an obscene gesture that violated the student code of conduct. They were banned for a day from riding.

Nichols on the other hand calls the whole thing “laughable” the kids would be subject to disciplinary action for something natural and unintentional. His wife who was recently hospitalized with gastro-intestinal issues was offended by the whole thing.

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Stanford University became the latest Ivy League school on Friday to reinastate the Reserve Officers Training Corps. 

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Koriyama, Fukushima, Japan (AHN) – School authorities in Fukushima started removing the topsoil from playgrounds on Wednesday. The soil was exposed to radiation leaks from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor plant.

School authorities decided to remove the surface soil because tests showed that radiation levels exceeded 3.8 microsieverts per hour at the elementary and junior high schools and 3 microsieverts at the nurseries. The Education and Science Ministry set limits at 3.8 microsieverts.

Soil will be removed at 15 elementary and junior high schools, and 13 nursery schools in the prefecture.

The removed soil will be sent to local landfills.

On Wednesday, Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited the port of Minamisanriku, where more than 1,350 residents are missing or dead. This is the imperial couple’s first visit to the region, although they have been to other earthquake-affected areas in the south.

The town has about 20,000 residents. Over 3,800 houses in Minamisanriku were destroyed by the magnitude 9 tremor. About 200 residents still live in a local gymnasium.

The royal couple will visit the Iwate and Fukushima Prefectures next week.

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Houston, TX, United States (AHN) – Three students were injured after an accidental shooting at a Texas elementary school. Tuesday.

According to authorities, a 6-year-old boy brought a loaded firearm to Betsy Ross Elementary in northeast Houston. During lunch, the gun accidentally discharged a single bullet, striking the student in the leg and harming a 5-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy.

Local television station FOX26 said the students were not critically injured, but were taken from school on stretchers.

The school was temporarily placed on lockdown during the situation.

Approximately 471 students attend Betsy Ross Elementary.

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