Mean Kids Burn Down Principal's House, Poison Teachers

Payette, Idaho Principal Mark Heleker outside his house,
destroyed by kids at the high school seeking
revenge for discipline Heleker meted out.  

A certain subset of kids have always misbehaved and a sliver of those kids retaliate against their teachers or principals.

It never ends well.

If two recent incidents say anything, though, a few of these kids are escalating the battles to dangerous new heights.

At last report, three teenagers had been arrested and one was being sought after they burned down the principals house in Payette, Idaho, Raw Story reports.

Local high school principal Mark Heleker had suspended the students a few days earlier.

Heleker and his wife were sleeping in the house at about 1 a.m. February 22, when the couple's adult daughter returned from walking the dog and saw flames coming out of the home's garage, Raw Story reported. 

Had the daugher not been awake and walking the dog, the couple could have been killed in the fire, the local fire chief said.

The house was destroyed.

The four students involved were found out when Heleker's adult son found some suspicious posts on social media.

Police interviewed students and studied posts on Facebook and Snapchat, which led authorities to the four teens.  Each one arrested so far has been charged with felony arson.

I guess they're in bigger trouble than whatever led to two of them being suspended from school earlier.

The four had rampaged through town that night, vandalizing cars and other objects before setting the Heleker house on fire.

Meanwhile, in Florida, three middle school students are in trouble for poisoning their teacher's soda by pouring in a bunch of hot pepper flakes, according to CBS Miami. 

In that case, I supposed the three kids didn't realize how dangerous that could be, but the teachers started choking and suffering shortness of breath. Luckily, she recovered.

Like in the Idaho case, this teacher had earlier disciplined at least one of the kids involved.

I guess nowadays, some kids, if disciplined, will go to extreme measures to get even. Maybe they think it'll teach the teachers.

Of course, it doesn't work. The kids end up in extreme trouble with the law. Um, think ahead, kiddies!

Jerk Of The Week Slams 4th Graders' Bird Legislation Because Abortion

Fourth graders in New Hampshire wanted to
make the red tailed hawk the state raptor....

As part of a civics lesson, a group of fourth graders in New Hampshire asked the state's legislature to make the red-tailed hawk the state raptor.

Lawmakers shot down the idea, and complained that the legislation was a waste of time when they had more pressing matters with which to contend.

You can debate whether the lawmakers were right in saying the fourth graders were wasting their time, or whether they were shutting down a civics lesson, and turning the kids off from democracy

But, then, enter Republican Warren Groen who just had to make things worse by somehow tying the hawk to abortion:

"The (red-tailed hawk) mostly likes field mice and small rodents. It grasps them with its talons and then uses its razor sharp beak to rip its victims to shreds and then basically tear it apart, limb from limb. And I guess the shame about making this the state bird is it would make a much better mascot for Planned Parenthood."

Way go go Warren! Tying everything to abortion. You must be a real hit at cocktail parties.

Not surprisingly, parents whose kids were in the New Hampshire Statehouse listening to this jerk were not pleased.

According to the Huffington Post, Jodi Linnehan Kriner, the mother of one of the students, wrote a letter to lawmakers saying she was ashamed they are state representatives.

"If any rep can tell me how I should answer a question that was asked to me last nigth by my 10 year old son, Andrew, please let me know. He asked, 'Mom, what does Planned Parenthood have to do with red-tailed hawk tearing apart is prey, and why should it be the mascot,' she wrote.

Instead, the fourth grades got this
moron prattling on about abortion instead.  

Well, Andrew, good question! One I surely don't have an answer to. Neither does Groen, apparently, but he did double down on his comment in a phone interview with the Huffington Post. 

"The selective outrage about this I find quite curious....Every week in Manchester, the fourth grade class from 2025 is killed out.  Babies that would be 10 years old and in fourth grade 10 years from now are aborted in Manchester, and there's no outrage."

Even fellow Republicans are pretty fed up with Groen and his abortion stuff. He's kind of like a weird, sick version of Jan on the Brady Bunch always complaining about Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.   

Lawmakers say they are going to ask Groen during the next legislative session this week to apologize. He probably won't, because maybe he thinks anyone who believes he was out of line is an abortionist?

Stupid School News: School Finds Stupidest, Cruelest Possible Way To Punish Blind Kid

A school took away this blind kid needs to get
around and replaced it with a swimming pool noodle.
Just to be cruel, I think.  

Dakota Nafzinger, 8, of the Kansas City area is blind, and uses a cane to help him get around.

Like all eight year olds, he sometimes misbehaves. Though this isn't proven, school officials said he hit somebody with the cane.

If true, yeah, Dakota needed to be disciplined. But school officials decided on the most boneheaded solution possible: They took away his cane and gave him one of those swimming pool noodles to use as a substitute cane.

I guess the "logic," if you can call it that, is that if he hit somebody with a foam swimming pool noodle, he wouldn't hurt anyone since swimming pool noodles are in part design to hit other people with, I suppose.

Of course, a solid cane is how Dakota gets around, so giving him a humiliating noodle, and forcing him into danger and further humiliation from falls and other dangers is mystifying.

Did whoever decided to do this think whatever Dakota might have done wrong makes him deserve injury? Why are they setting up a situation where he might get bullied? Whatever happened to detention?

Of course, this pool noodle incident caused a big public outcry and the school hastily gave Dakota back his regular cane amid the horrible PR.

The North Kansas City School District issued a public apology.

My guess is the higher ups at the school were just as appalled by this as the general public was. It was likely some lower level employee who decided to impose his or her brand of "justice" discipline.

There's a minority of people in authority positions, be they teachers, cops, district attorneys, corporate bosses, politicians, who do this sort of thing. They're psychopaths, or maybe they were bullied as kids and this is their way of achieving vengeance, or they delight in being cruel.

Instead of meting out discipline as necessary and in appropriate dimensions, they think long and hard, it seems, on how best to endanger and humiliate others, just for the sport of it.

They're kind of like the mustache-twisting villains from bad melodramas. They'd be pathetically funny if they weren't so damaging to people.

It seems like schools attract psychopaths, judging from all the weird punishments and excessive discipline seen in some cases. Which must make it hard not only for the kids, but the vast majority of educators, who just want what's good for kids.

I hope the North Kansas City School District determines out who the psychopath was in Dakota's case and fire him or her.

The psychopathic minority among authority figures gives them all a bad name.  And nobody has quite figured out to deal with these awful people. Because if you punish them, they'll turn their wrath on you.

Apparently, it's not easy to deal with, or avoid or get around a psychopath. Which unfortunately means we're going to hear about more outrageous incidents, like the swimming pool noodle for the blind kid.

Great New Twist on Homecoming Queens, Kings

In this age of bullying and school violence, it's totally awesome to see a trend coming out of schools that make you really think the kids are alright.

A recent example of this comes from Unionville Community School in Tennessee. Recently, the school  had its annual crowning of the Homecoming King. There were three finalists, all of them popular, handsome, big with the girls. Typical homecoming king material.

When it came time to crown the king, the leading vote getter, Jesse Cooper and the two other finalists had other ideas.  They asked that the another classmate, Scotty Maloney get the honor instead, according to television station WKRN in Nashville.

Unionville Community School Homecoming King
Scotty Maloney with the Homecoming Queen recently

Maloney has Williams Syndrome, which interferes with his ability to speak and learn. But everybody at the school really likes him, so why not honor him, goes the perfect, wonderful logic

"I've been blessed with so many things," Cooper said. "I just wanted Scotty to experience something great in his high school days."

The boys that had been nominated for homecoming king said they were honored to be nominated, but something being named homecoming king isn't something you think about all the time for the rest of your life. But crowning Maloney King will be talked about forever.

These young guys have a great perspective. Another reason why I say the kids are alright.

The title of homecoming queen or king usually goes to the stereotypical popular Alpha student. But I have noticed a trend in which quite a few schools seem to be steering the honor to really, really nice kids, but ones that traditionally get cast aside.

It is so nice to see this new breed of homecoming queen and king get their day in the sun. Watch another great example in the video, below:

This Kid is the Anti-Cyber Bully

Readers of this here blog thingy know  I sometimes complain about, and advocate against,  kids who bully, particularly cyber bully, because of the extreme harm these bullies can cause.

Jeremiah Anthony of West Bloomfield High School in out in the Midwest is not one of these cyber bullies.

Jeremiah Anthony, the man behind the anti-cyberbullying
Twitter feed @westhighbro

Recognizing that doing the exact opposite of something destructive can have beautiful results, he and some of his friends started cyber complimenting people via Twitter and Facebook he knew in the school.

Using his Twitter account, @westhighbros,  Jeremiah and his co-conspirators tweet positive comments about and to people they perceives as needing a cyber-hug.

He's got a Facebook page that pretty much does the same thing. On Twitter, looking at @westhighbros posts, you can see Jeremiah at it every day. If he sees a Twitter feed of someone who seems to have a negative attitude toward themselves, he gives them a boost.

An example: One young woman tweeted, "Sorry, didn't realize I had to be perfect."

The response from @westhighbros was fast. It said: "But you are. We've said it before, we'll say it again. You're an excellent athlete and you've got an irresistable smile."

The @westhighbros Twitter account has gotten a lot of publicity in recent days because HooplaHa, a web site featuring inspiration and/or fun stuff they find, highlighted @westhighbro and made a video about Jeremiah and the reaction he's gotten from fellow students.

What I really like about Jeremiah Anthony's idea is it can virally spread from school to school, and we could end up with a zillion Twitter and Facebook accounts like @westhighbros.

So if anybody in some high school, or grade school or college, or anywhere, really is reading this, go ahead and copy Jeremiah's idea. I'm sure he won't mind.

Here's the video from HooplaHa, which further describes what's going on here: