Texas children participate in exercises at the Jump Rope For Heart event at Moss Haven Elementary School.
Credit: Getty Images

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School officials are preparing for droves of anxious parents to join the fleet of buses carting children to a disused middle school in the neighboring town of Monroe. Chalk Hill Middle School, closed about a year and half ago, has been hastily refurbished in the three weeks since the December 14 attack and renamed Sandy Hook Elementary School.

With their children’s safety foremost on parents’ and officials’ minds in the wake of the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, the school has been outfitted with a new security system. Monroe Police Department officers will patrol the grounds, and all outside doorways and sidewalks will be under surveillance.

“I think right now we have to make this the safest school in America,” Monroe Police Lieutenant Keith White said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Parents wishing to remain with their kids, ages 5 to 10 in kindergarten through grade 4, will be allowed to accompany them to their classrooms and afterwards may stay in the school’s “lecture room” for as long as they like, according to a memo to parents on the school’s website. Counseling will be available for students and parents at the new school, about 7 miles south of the scene of the shooting.

“I’m not sure I’m ready yet to totally let them go,” Sandy Hook parent Sarah Swansiger said on CNN about her trepidation over the return to school.

When the students return around 9 a.m. Thursday, they will find all of the belongings they left behind when teachers and police evacuated them from Sandy Hook nearly three weeks ago after Adam Lanza burst through the school doors and opened fire.

They will be welcomed to a building that has been decked out as a “Winter Wonderland” with the help of thousands of kids from around the world.

“This does not look like the other elementary school,” Newtown School Superintendent Janet Robinson said emphatically.

In the meantime, no new details have emerged to explain why the 20-year-old Lanza, armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle, two other firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, targeted the school.

Described by family friends as having Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, Lanza shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their home about 5 miles from the school before driving to Sandy Hook and embarking on the massacre, police said. He then took his own life as police were arriving at the school, which had an enrollment of 456.

Police have offered no firm motive for the attack, and state police investigators have said it could be months before they finish their report.

The massacre in Newtown, a rural New England town of 27,000 residents about 70 miles northeast of New York City, stunned the nation, prompting President Barack Obama to call it the worst day of his presidency and reigniting an extensive debate on gun control. Obama has tasked Vice President Joe Biden with assembling a package of gun-control proposals to submit to Congress in the next several weeks.

The National Rifle Association, the most powerful gun-rights lobby in the United States, has rebuffed calls for more stringent firearms restrictions and instead called for armed guards to patrol every public school in the country.

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But among the normal sounds of a school day – teachers reading to children, the scratch of pencil on paper – students will hear new ones, including the murmur of grief counselors and the footsteps of police officers.

Four days after 20-year-old Adam Lanza strode into Sandy Hook Elementary school and gunned down a score of 6- and 7-year-olds, in addition to six faculty and staff, that school will remain closed. It is an active crime scene, with police coming and going past a line of 26 Christmas trees that visitors have decorated with ornaments, stuffed animals and balloons in the school colors of green and white as a memorial to the victims.

The massacre – one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history – shocked Americans, prompting some lawmakers to call for tighter restrictions on guns and causing school administrators around the country to assess their safety protocols.

Newtown police plan to have officers at the six schools scheduled to reopen on Tuesday, trying to offer a sense of security to the students and faculty, many of whom spent the weekend in mourning. Newtown Police Lieutenant George Sinko acknowledged it may be difficult to ease the worries of the roughly 4,700 returning students and their families.

“Obviously, there’s going to be a lot of apprehension. We just had a horrific tragedy. We had babies sent to school that should be safe and they weren’t,” Sinko said. “You can’t help but think … if this could happen again.”



DAY FOR ‘HEALING’

Newtown High School Principal Charles Dumais, in an e-mail to parents, said schools in the district would open two hours later than usual, with counselors available to students and their families.

“This is a day to start healing,” Dumais said.

While school officials have not yet decided when Sandy Hook students will resume their studies, the building that they will move into – the unused Chalk Hill School in the nearby town of Monroe – already showed signs of preparation.

On a fence opposite the building, a green sign with white lettering proclaimed “Welcome Sandy Hook Elementary!”

In Washington, the massacre prompted U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday to call a White House meeting with advisors to discuss ways to respond, a first step toward fulfilling the pledge he made a day earlier in Newtown. The administration’s plans to curb violence include but are not limited to gun-control measures, a spokesman said.

Police have warned it could take months for them to finish their investigation into the attack, which started when Adam Lanza killed his mother, Nancy, at home, before driving to the school armed with a Bushmaster AR 15 rifle and two handguns. After shooting 26 people at the school, he turned his gun on himself when he heard police approaching.

In total, 28 people died in the incident.

Many of the students and faculty of Sandy Hook and its neighbors will still have funerals to attend.

The first two victims, Noah Pozner and Jack Pinto, both 6, were buried on Monday, with the boys’ bodies laid out in white coffins. Jack was dressed in a New York Giants jersey with his favorite player’s number, while mourners left a teddy bear outside Noah’s service.

More funerals were expected on Tuesday, for victims including James Mattioli and Jessica Rekos. Each was 6 years old.

“It’s still not real that my little girl, who was so full of life and who wants a horse so badly and who’s going to get cowgirl boots for Christmas isn’t coming home,” Krista Rekos, Jessica’s mother, told ABC News on Monday.

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Brooklyn Prospect Charter School principal Dan Rubinstein told the Brooklyn Paper that he enacted the rule to cut down on hallway loitering.

“It’s a time, place, and manner thing,” Rubinstein said. “We don’t want students spending too much social time between class.”

Park Slope parents, who are anti-ice cream truck, but totally pro-hug, are outraged over the new policy. In fact, they’ve dubbed it a “spirit-crushing assault on kindness” according to the Brooklyn Paper (but banning ice cream trucks in the park isn’t?).

How this new rule actually came about seems to be a point of contention. Kids say it happened after students began group-hugging in the halls, blocking the paths to and from classes. Parents say it happened after a student reported feeling uncomfortable with a hug from an older student. 

Whatever the reason for the hug ban, students are less than amused with the new rule, calling it too strict, especially since they were recently forced to wear school uniforms. These kids are probably wondering what’s next — a hummus ban in the cafeteria? Well, kids… if your parents could have it their way, then probably yes.

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Researchers at Sydney University in Australia found that too much homework can often have the opposite effect on students. Instead of enhancing their intellect, they become bored and unhappy, leading to absolutely no academic advancement.

“What the research shows is that, in countries where they spend more time on homework, the achievement results are lower,” Dr. Richard Walker, from Sydney University’s Education Faculty, told The Telegraph.

The study found that 59 percent of 10 and 11-year-olds do less than two hours of homework per week. About 22 percent do three or four hours a week, and five percent complete seven or more hours of homework per week.

“At the moment homework (is often) an add-on because parents want it,” Walker added.

The one exception to the study was high school students in grades 11 or 12. Those students did prove to benefit from more than a few hours of homework each week.

However, recalling our own high school days, the last two years were exactly when we started blowing off homework all together.

More adventures in psuedoscience:

• While 17-year-old students are likely to benefit from homework, they aren’t likely to benefit from Plan B’s over-the-counter availability. A new study found that one in five pharmacies will deny access to the emergency contraceptive to 17-year-old’s, despite a federal mandate.
• A man in the U.S. has undergone the most extensive face surgery in history. You have to see these before and after photos.
• If those pictures make you blurt out an obscenity, have no fear. A new study found that cursing in the work place can actually boost relationships. Sh**, that’s cool!

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Admission to one of the specialized schools, like The Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Technical High School or Stuyvesant High School, is determined by the results of the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test. Approximately 28,000 students took the test, but only 5,360 students received an offer, according to the DOE.

Among those students that took the test, more than 730 black and Hispanic students were offered admission at specialized schools, compared to 642 in 2011 and 653 in 2010.  

Black students received 6 percent of the offers, and Latinos accounted for 8 percent.

Of all of the students that the specialized high schools admitted, Asian students were offered the most entries, with 2,490, or 46 percent. White students were offered 23 percent of the slots.

One education official told Metro that the numbers represented definite progress, but that the DOE has more work to do.

NYC’s crown jewel of schools

At Lower Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School, considered by many to be New York City’s crowned jewel of schools, 51 black and Hispanic students got offers, more than double the number in 2010 and 2011. The number was also more than in any year from 2007 to 2011. Asian students were the majority of accepted students, securing 576 spots at the school.  White students were offered 184 places in the incoming class.        

Follow Emily Anne Epstein on Twitter @EmilyAEpstein

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Chanting “Hell no, Joe won’t go” and “We want Joe back,” they also cursed former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who was charged on Saturday with sexually abusing eight young boys over a period of nearly 15 years.

Two other university officials have been charged with failing to report an incident in 2002 when Sandusky allegedly was seen sexually assaulting a child.

Paterno, who has been head coach for 46 years, was dismissed Wednesday by the university’s board of trustees along with university President Graham Spanier hours after the U.S. Education Department announced an investigation of conduct at Penn State.

The students filled two city blocks near the campus and turned over a media van before earth-moving equipment was brought in to right the vehicle. Members of the crowd also damaged at least two light poles.

Scores of police and state troopers, some in riot gear, tried to clear the streets, and some officers used a chemical spray to disperse the demonstrators. Crowds thinned somewhat after a light rain began to fall.

At least three people were escorted away by police but it was not immediately clear if they were arrested. A police spokeswoman had said she was not aware of any arrests.

“I haven’t seen this kind of student outrage about anything since I’ve been here,” said Caroline Celoquin, a senior from Westchester, Pennsylvania.

Asked how she felt about Paterno being fired, Nicole Atlak, a freshman from Toms River, New Jersey, said: “Absolutely disgusted. From a student’s perspective, it’s like where do we go from here? We no longer have a president. We no longer have a 45-year legacy.”

A student with a bullhorn addressed the crowd, saying: “I think it’s only fair to let him (Paterno) ride out the season because this is the house that Joe built.”

While most of the students were protesting the decision, some said they understood the move by the board of trustees and did not condone Paterno’s failure to report the alleged sexual abuse to police. Still, the majority seemed more upset that Paterno was not allowed to complete the season, as he had wanted.

Paterno won more games than any other major college coach in history. He told a grand jury investigation that when he was informed in 2002 of his assistant coach’s alleged sexual abuse of a boy, he passed the information on to the athletic director but did not follow up. The alleged abuse continued for several more years.

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In the midst of a “student work group,” college students sat on the pavement into the early morning hours to discuss what they wanted out of the protest. Within minutes, it was clear that each student had very different demands and ideas of what has gone wrong with the current system.

“Basically, every semester they are raising tuition by, like, $300,” said Chris, a Hunter College student who didn’t want his last name used. “I understand if they have to raise tuition, but doing that every semester as a multi-year plan is going to screw so many people out of college.”

Linnea M. Palmer Paton, a grad student at NYU, heard about the protest on Saturday and decided to join to promote environmental awareness.

“Our economic policies are forcing people to give up their agrarian life style,” she said. “And we do that on top of allowing ourselves to buy goods from countries that either exploit their workers or whose environmental standards are so low that many of their people suffer from health conditions.”
 

Students encouraged each other to protect their textbooks and notes in a safe spot within the park, reach out to professors and ask other students to join the protest. The protesters acknowledged that there are many different messages
floating around the camp, but said they discuss their differences during
daily “people’s general assemblies.”

Columbia University professor Todd Gitlin spent the 1960’s protesting the Vietnam War and corporate aid to the apartheid regime in South Africa. He said the protesters would need more than anger to sustain the movement.

 “They may have some sort of sentiment, but that isn’t enough to maintain any momentum or win allies or accomplish anything,” Gitlin said.

Palmer Paton said she hopes Occupy Wall Street will at least serve as a reminder to her generation that it must find a political voice.

“Numbers say that we don’t vote that much and I think that’s very dangerous, not only for democracy but also our society,” she said. “If you don’t have an informed democratic society that actually goes out and votes and continues a public dialogue about what is right and just and fair, then you end up with corporate control of the government.”

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“The big question is causation. Does living in the dorms cause you to do
better? Previous studies were just looking at those that live in the
dorms versus those that don’t,” explains Dr. James Murray, who
co-authored the study with Dr. Pedro De Araujo. “The problem is that
students that care more about school may be more likely to want to live
at school. So, they may perform better, because they happen to be the
better students anyway. But we actually found that living on campus
caused students to do better, at least in terms of GPA.”

The researchers also found that campus life had a positive effect even
after the student moved out of the dorms. “Students who once lived on
campus were more likely to study with their peers after they moved off
campus, but not necessarily while they lived on campus,” explains
Murray. “So, if you’re a freshman living on campus, you’re not more
likely to study with your classmates, but you formed those relationships
in the early years and were able to make use of them later.”

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Nearly 500 students have signed up to be “sugar babies” on the dating site SeekingArrangement.com, claims site creator Brandon Wade.

The site matches wealthy “daddies” with cash-strapped undergrads.

“NYU is the top school because the students have a high rent on top of tuition,” said Wade.

NYU tuition, on top of room, board and book fees, can cost a whopping $58,000 a year, and some coeds are desperate for alternative ways to support themselves in an already pricey New York City, he said.

NYU students aren’t alone in seeking “benefactors.” Hundreds of students from top schools like the University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan, and even Harvard University use the site, looking for sugar daddies or sugar mommas, according to Wade. He said he determines the number of college students based on those who join with .edu email addresses.

“When a sugar baby goes to a good school, she tends to boast,” he said.

“I love New York and I’ll do whatever it takes to make it here,” advertised one NYU sugar baby.
“I’m 23, graduated from NYU last year and have been (literally) a starving artist ever since.”

New York City is the most popular city on the site, with Los Angeles not far behind, said Wade.

 “It’s a relationship and dating website, there’s no money for sex,” Wade said. “People don’t want to sit across from a dumb blonde who can’t hold a conversation.”

Cough it up
   
Sugar babies can create profiles on Seeking Arrangement free of charge, but a basic sugar daddy membership costs $50 a month and “Diamond Club” daddies pay $2,160 a year to belong to the highest tier of the site.

Follow Emily Anne Epstein on Twitter @EmilyatMetro

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Chad Miller, a Columbia University alumnus who utilizes social media in both his academic and extracurricular pursuit, says Google+ might find its home in the classroom. “A professor can create a Circle composed of his/her students. Within five minutes, everyone can be sharing links, posting pictures, embedding videos…all related to the topic at hand. You simply drag items into your status box, and they are ready to be shared.”

The Hangout feature in Google+ could be the future of extra help or tutoring. It allows up to 10 people to meet in a video chatroom. Even the laziest of college students will no longer have an excuse to avoid seeking homework help.

Miller says, “If a professor senses that many students are having the same difficulty with a specific part of an assignment/project, or if a certain response would benefit a larger amount of students, the professor can simply let students know that there will be a ‘hangout’ study group at a specific time.”

The Sparks feature is another way students can connect about classes and projects. Classmates can share information with just a click within circles of peers who might share the same majors, fraternities, teams or clubs.

It’s those kinds of options that could entice professors to use Google+ over Facebook. If Google+ is where students are logging on to connect with classmates and find information about projects, they could be more inclined to stay there to socialize, too. Hold on, Facebook users- if the word “dislike” automatically pops in to your head, don’t worry. Miller doesn’t foresee people saying TTYL to Facebook just yet. Instead, he predicts they will be able to co-exist. After all, Pepsi and Coke do it. Chevy and Ford do it. Even Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan do it. Still, the question remains… can there only be one social media mogul?  

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