Public School Policies

Although public schools strive to teach students about conservation and environmental care, all campuses certainly produce their own waste. With classroom papers, copies, trash, packaged lunches, electricity, and other resource needs, some public school leaders are striving to reduce each campus’ carbon footprint.

To help schools and students embrace a more responsible environmental approach, many school leaders are implementing new “green-focused” programs to improve both the performance of schools and the education of students.

This video reports on green-friendly schools worldwide.

Greener Public School Reform

To help boost individual school responsibility, there are an array of programs and renovations that aim to “green-ovate” public schools. With “green ovations,” public schools implement environmentally friendly technologies or changes to improve the energy savings and output of the school.

For example, as Fox News and Business reports, EcoMedia, an environmental media company, paired itself with the CBS Corporation to award three schools with new environmentally friendly makeovers. With over $600,000 dollars invested into new products and services to help revamp the three chosen schools, EcoMedia and CBS aim to help with “green ovations” such as:

• Solar and wind projects
• Energy-efficient lighting
• Green roofs
• Internal and external green upgrades

While EcoMedia and CBS sought to reward winning schools with green renovations, many experts assert that public schools across the country are striving to find ways to implement their own eco-friendly changes. Specifically, as USA Today reveals, rising energy

As the economy continues to struggle, some segments of society are still feeling the financial pain. Public schools across the country are still dealing with budget cuts that have forced them to make difficult decisions in recent years. When pressure from performance-based assessments is added to the mix, finding funding to teach kids to the standards becomes an even bigger challenge. Then, throw in the very real 21^st century need to bring more technology into classrooms – a need that doesn’t come cheap. How are America’s public schools coping with these changes?

Public Schools and Recessionary Funding

Public schools are funded through an array of measures, including local property taxes, state funds, and federal funds. However, as Intercultural Development Research Association explains, the majority of school funding is derived from local property taxes and state funds. The state funds for schools come from sources such as gas taxes, franchise taxes, and other additional taxes.

Source: National Center for Education Statistics

When a recession occurs, schools are hit by a loss from all three of these funding sources. For example, in areas with a high property tax, schools are generally provided with more funding; conversely, low property taxes usually result in schools with less funding. As many Americans report job loss and subsequent home loss, however, the amount of money taken in from property taxes is gradually decreasing. If individuals are not buying

Stirring up a raging political, social, and economic debate, the issue of school vouchers is a hot topic among community leaders, members, and educators. School vouchers, which essentially work as a scholarship, allow parents to redirect the trajectory of educational funding. Instead of applying tax dollars to schools directly, vouchers allow tax money to be sent to individual families. With this approach, parents and families can choose how their educational tax money is spent, allowing students to attend private or public schools, as the tax money can be used to pay for private tuition costs.

For proponents, vouchers offer students in failing schools access to greater educational opportunities in private schools. On the other side of the debate, many experts assert that vouchers, in the larger spectrum, will cause far more harm than good.

Vouchers and the Current State of Student Funding

While vouchers are still a relatively new concept and practice, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin approved of its state’s voucher program in 1998, which supported family-ownership of educational tax funds for approximately 15,000 children. With this private funding, children can choose from either public, private, or religious schools. This verdict was appealed to the United States Supreme Court after its passing, but the judges of the Supreme Court voted to not hear the appeal; therefore, Wisconsin has been able to continue its voucher approach to education for nearly a decade.

This video from The Young Turks discusses Louisiana's voucher program.

As teens transition through middle and high school, many parents witness their children exhibiting problematic behaviors as students try to assert more freedom and independence. Behaviors such as lying, stealing, not performing well in school, skipping class, or exhibiting general disruptive actions are common among teens.

Despite these issues, however, the vast majority of students struggling with troubling behaviors can improve and advance within one year if they receive early intervention. Early intervention strategies may be the key to solving issues and problems exhibited by teens. Public schools have developed action plans to improve teen behavior to achieve this early intervention. Paired with this, parents can implement specific strategies to help their teens work through some common issues and struggles during the middle and high school years.

Teens and Troubling Behavior

The Common Behavioral Issues

While many teens in middle and high school fall prey to the temptations of peer pressure, fitting in, and the lure of popularity, these pressures can often pull teens towards disruptive and negative behaviors that are evident both in and outside of school.

According to Parenting Teens, “Struggling t"ens (and even those not struggling) tend to project their smoke screens for various reasons. You may see them behaving with studied indifference to virtually everything. They may prefer not to be seen with the family. They may be withdrawn, irritable, difficult, and downright unpleasant.”

Often, "these attitudes are simply a developmental “phase” that "teens "exhibit as they move through puberty; however, schools and

According to statistics compiled by the Guttmacher Institute, the US has “one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world—almost twice as high as those of England, Wales, and Canada, and eight times as high as those of the Netherlands and Japan.” Because of the rising pregnancy rates among teens, in addition to the rising rates of sexual activity among teens, both parents and public schools are exploring the best sex education programs to benefit students.

This video discusses the issue of teaching sex education in school.

While sex education has historically brought forth great tension and debate between schools and communities, National Public Radio asserts that “providing effective sex education can seem daunting because it means tackling potentially sensitive issues. However, because sex education comprises many individual activities, which take place across a wide range of settings and periods of time, there are lots of opportunities to contribute.”

The Debate of Sex Education in Public Schools

While some Americans express mixed opinions on how public schools should teach sex education courses, National Public Radio (NPR) reports that the once heated debate over whether or not schools should even teach teens about sex has now dwindled: “A new poll by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government finds that only 7 percent of Americans say sex education should not be taught in schools. Moreover, in most places,