http://www.nj.com/…

Loch Arbor residents say changes in school funding could leave their Jersey shore village bankrupt.

Loch Arbor residents are facing a five-fold increase in school tax to send 24 students to a neighboring town. The cost for one resident, who is paying $8,048 in property taxes, will more than double to almost $17,000.

That’s because Gov. Jon Corzine’s school funding reform act last year ended a decade-old arrangement that capped the school tax paid to Ocean Township.

The village of 280 has not paid the township more than $300,000 to educate its children. That will jump in July to $1.6 million.

Loch Arbour officials said the average Ocean Township homeowner will receive just a $300 reduction in taxes from the change.

The average home in Loch Arbor is assessed at $1.4 million.

$300k / 24 students = $12.5k / student
$1.6m / 24 students = $66.6k / student

According to this the average district cost per pupil in Ocean county was about $11.5k so the first value makes sense. The new cost is out and out theft on a more egregious scale than the tax alone.

If I’m reading this right the total cost per student is around $24K / year. That seems extraordinarily high. Perhaps bosco can fill in any gaps.

http://motorhomediaries.com/garden-state-meetup/

Dan Patrick is the man. On our first night on the road he organized a meetup of 10 Free Agents in Bordentown, New Jersey near McGuire Air Force Base where he is stationed. I met Dan over four years ago and we’ve kept up with one another online since.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to everyone but it sounds like I’ll get to see most of these folks again at the Free State Project’s upcoming Porcupine Freedom Festival in June.

Our new friends, from left to right are:

• Darian is the author of Bring a Gun to School Day and a involved with the Alliance of the Libertarian Left.
• Dan, mentioned above, will study economics and move to New Hampshire after he leaves the military this year.
• Laur runs the great swag shop, Armor for Activists, and is a talented graphic designer.
• Josh is active with Drexel’s Student Liberty Front and the Students for Liberty.
• Jim is running as an independent for the NJ Assembly and is active with the Campaign for Liberty.
• Corey, is an activist with Campaign for Liberty who seems rather determined to End the Fed.
• Ryan, a government school teacher, is influencing young minds and supports MPP’s attempts to decriminalize drugs.
• Megan, is skeptical of the Obama Administration based on her “You’re going to be disappointed” t-shirt.
• Antonio is a activism machine who runs several projects including Blog of Bile and jailedactivist.info.
• and finally, me.

This first meetup set the bar high for future events and we’d like to thank Dan for putting it together. If you’d like to help organize a Fr33 Agents meetup in your area please let us know in the comments or via e-mail.

http://www.indystar.com/…

On March 11, the boy, who is not named in the complaint, was dropped off at Creekside by his mother, Dianne Bell, who called to tell school officials her son was going to be late.

At the end of the day, the boy was told he was going to receive detention. At that point, the boy, who is described as having “affective disorder and has been diagnosed with autism, manic-depressive disorder and bipolar disorder,” became “frustrated and began to act out.”

“During this outburst he is saying outrageous things,” said the Bells’ attorney, Ronald Frazier, noting that the boy threatened to call members of his gang to retaliate against the teachers.

“They know there is no gang there,” Frazier said. “They know he has no way of acting on what he is saying. They are taking these idle threats and calling police.”

The Bells contend the school district failed to follow the guidelines they had set up to deal with the boy’s outbursts — techniques the family says would have given the boy a chance to cool off.

“When a child like (the Bells’ son) starts to have emotional problems, the (individual procedure) is supposed to be followed,” Frazier said. “It has specific steps that are to be taken in order to keep the child from melting totally down.”

Instead, school officials dialed 911.

Officer Kinkade arrived, according to the complaint, and reacted to the boy’s outbursts by grabbing him and forcing him to a bench in the school lobby.

When the physical force failed to control the 5-foot boy, Kinkade drew his Taser and shocked the boy two times until he lost consciousness, according to the complaint.

Government: providing only the highest quality of teachers and police.

The Police Department has an autism response team, but it was not dispatched. Kinkade is not a member of that team, according to the suit.

WHAT?!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

The Union Town Area School District in Pennsylvania is considering the use of tasers in the school district.

Homer [director of security] said the school has tried to be pro-active over the years in terms of security, and his job is to look within and outside of the school to stay ahead of trends in society, citing there was no school security 20 years ago but the ways of the world have made it commonplace.”We have to think of the future,” Homer said, adding that there had been recent incidents outside of the school where police would need Tasers, and it’s possible that similar incidents could make it into the schools.

One has to wonder about the possible reasons for an increase in violence, almost always in government schools. Could it be the terrible war on drugs and other victimless crimes? Could it be a culture of welfare and entitlements? Could it be wage and business regulations? What about inflation? All these things have contributed to breaking up the family unit, or to making the family poorer.

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate and total documented prison population in the world. Ending the war on drugs and the welfare state would go surely reduce violence in the classroom by returning upbringing rights where they belong: to the parent; putting kids into the institutional environment will undoubtedly drive some of them crazy. And abolishing state schools citizen factories would allow parents to decide how best to educate their children. As usual, the government “solution” (Taser) to a government-created problem (government schooling), ends up being worse than the original “problem,” as determined by politicians (lack of sufficient education in society).

So will TPS (tases per student) be a new stat parents look at when choosing a school?

I think this is another ‘treating the symptom instead of the problem’ scenario.

http://www.examiner.com/…

Six parents of chronically truant San Francisco schoolchildren – each of whom missed more than 50 days of class – were arraigned Tuesday before a superior court judge on infractions that charged the guardians with failing to make sure their kids receive an education.

The infractions, pursued by District Attorney Kamala Harris, carry a $100 fine. If the truancy continues, the next step would be misdemeanor charges of neglecting a child’s education, charges that could land a parent in county jail for up to a year with a fine up to $2,500, Harris said Tuesday.

The parents – Connie Wilson, Jamelia Kellom, Shanae Seastrunk, Kenneth Reed, Chanell Brown and Joshua Pomar – were the first to be prosecuted under stricter enforcement guidelines announced by Harris at the beginning of the school year.

The number of students skipping school in San Francisco has long been above statewide averages and costs the already cash-strapped district more than $5 million in state funding every year. One absence costs the San Francisco Unified School District about $42, according to district data.

Among the most common reasons for truancies, especially among elementary school children, are child care issues, drug abuse by parents, lack of transportation, family abandonment and the students ditching classes, according to school district Superintendant Carlos Garcia.

“You know, little kids, what rights do they have? I think we as a society need to stand up for their rights, the right to an education,” Garcia said.

1. Education is not a right. You don’t have a right to other people’s labor. Your existence doesn’t create an obligation for others to provide you with anything. Taxation is theft, period. 2. The absence wouldn’t cost anyone anything if there wasn’t compulsory government schooling. This whole “your actions cost us all” “problem” only exists because these power hungry, megalomaniacs who think they know better than everyone one else use guns to force people into participating in things they could be doing voluntarily. If the service was so important as these people like to claim why then wouldn’t the free market be able to provide it? If you look at it historically it could… what has changed? Could it be that religious and socialist idealists wanted to control the populous? Could it be that compulsory education was instituted not for the children but those in power who wish to propagandize their utopian values?