The driver on the bus goes puff, puff, puff…
How comfortable are you with a marijuana smoking bus driver bringing your kids to school? Students at a school in upstate New York are being forced to deal with it.
Cynthia DiDomenicantonio, a bus driver for the Shenendehowa School District in Clifton Park, was fired from her job for failing a drug test.
An Appeals Court however, decided the firing was “too severe a punishment”, and have ordered the school to reinstate DiDomenicantonio.
Via the Times Union:
The state’s highest court on Tuesday unanimously upheld an order requiring the reinstatement of a Shenendehowa bus driver who was fired after she failed a random drug test for marijuana.
The Court of Appeals ruling supported the conclusion of an arbitrator who determined the firing of Cynthia DiDomenicantonio on Nov. 10, 2009, was too severe a punishment for the district employee of 10 years.
The school district, represented by attorney Beth Bourassa, had argued that it had adopted a zero-tolerance policy for positive drug tests. The bus driver’s attorney, Daren Rylewicz, countered that such a policy did not exist.
The arbitrator — who became involved after the bus drivers union, the Civil Service Employees Association, challenged the firing — found the dismissal violated the collective bargaining agreement.
The arbitrator ordered DiDomenicantonio reinstated — minus six months of back pay, follow-up drug testing and substance-abuse counseling.
The school district has now gone from having a zero tolerance drug policy, to having zero ability to enforce rules on employees using drugs.
Read that again – the union and the courts thought that a school bus driver caught using drugs, should get no more than a slap on the wrist.
Buckle your seatbelts kids…
Responding to complaints from local parents, Shenendehowa School district in upstate New York has severed ties with the local Planned Parenthood, over a controversial health education class. The classes, taught in 46 schools throughout 12 counties, are offered to middle school and high school aged students, though the focus is on teaching abstinence to middle school students. The lessons clearly provide a different definition of abstinence than some parents would prefer.
Via the Times Union:
In October, a small group of parents raised objections after they learned some students were allegedly told that abstinence allowed for oral sex and that some high school classes had condom demonstrations.
Furthermore, the parents were not provided an opportunity for their children to opt out of such lessons. Maureen Shifler, a district parent who led the charge against Planned Parenthood explains:
Shifler said a primary concern among the two dozen parents allied to her cause centered around the way abstinence was presented to children and that some parents were not given proper notification about their right to opt out of the coursework. She said that children were being lulled into a false sense of security and that they could still be exposed to sexually transmitted diseases.
Darren Cosgrove, a community educator for Planned Parenthood, placed the blame squarely on school officials:
Cosgrove said teachers gave glowing reviews to the program and that criticism of the coursework is often based on a misunderstanding about what goes on in the classroom. He said district officials requested the condom demonstration years ago and that most schools allow parents to opt out of the program if they don’t want their children to participate.
… the program is more advanced for high school students, who learn about disease prevention and birth control methods.
Is encouraging kids to view oral sex as an acceptable form of abstinence counter intuitive to disease prevention?
Check out the article for a closer view of the Planned Parenthood ‘Sex Education Kit’.
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