Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Schools roundup

  • “Attorney parents of ‘mathlete’ lose again in legal battle over right to select son’s algebra teacher” [Martha Neil, ABA Journal, earlier]
  • One reason NYC doesn’t close schools amid brutal winter storms? They’ve got a food program to run [Business Insider; James Panero, NYDN]
  • Should Gov. Deval Patrick, CNN host Piers Morgan apologize to townspeople of Lunenburg, Mass.? [Chuck Ross, The Federalist]
  • Kansas school-finance suit tests whether litigators can end-run elected officials on taxes and spending [WSJ, compare Colorado]
  • Lenore Skenazy (who’ll speak at Cato Mar. 6) on the Wellesley “Sleepwalker” sculpture flap: “Once we equate making people feel bad with actually attacking them, free expression is basically obsolete” [WSJ]
  • “School Found Liable After Child Sneaks Onto Roof And Falls” [Erik Magraken; British Columbia, Canada]
  • National Research Council issues report on Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) [Zachary Schrag first, second, third, fourth posts]
  • Vergara v. California: notwithstanding the hoopla, bringing more lawsuits might actually not be the best way to save American education [Andrew Coulson]

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2 Comments

  • Yet more evidence that public schools are, first and foremost, welfare dispensaries. If the kids happen to learn some math or reading, that’s great, but they will definitely learn that a benevolent government is there to fulfill their needs.

    This is not the first time I’ve heard the “we must stay open so the kids get their free hot meals” justification for not closing schools. Is it an unintended admission that other welfare programs — I am looking at you food stamps — simply don’t work? After all, low income kids who might be getting their only hot meals at school almost certainly come from families receiving (or qualified for) food stamps. That was the case for Dasani, New York’s recent progressive cause celebre. Why, then, are these kids not being fed at home such that schools must stay open in near blizzard conditions?

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