Quick Hits

To fight truancy, Wise County judge trades hall monitors for ankle monitors: Wise County is going high-tech on truants. To keep tabs on students who are habitually absent, Justice of the Peace Terri Johnson can now place a GPS ankle monitor on them for 30 days. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

State revenue still sliding: Kentuckians can expect more state budget cuts or tax increases this summer, a leading lawmaker warned Tuesday as newly released data showed state revenues taking a nose dive in February. (H-L)

Player safety bill might be put off until fall: Efforts to prevent heatstroke among young athletes were in doubt Monday for this legislative session after the Senate Education Committee voted to defer the matter for study until fall.The move came despite testimony by University of Kentucky football coach Rich Brooks that many younger coaches in the state have little or no training in how to recognize heatstroke or what to do about it. (H-L)

University tuition increases capped: As expected, the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education Friday limited tuition increases at state colleges for the 2009-10 academic year. The University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville can boost tuition by no more than 5 percent.The state's regional universities Eastern Kentucky, Morehead State, Murray State, Western Kentucky, Northern Kentucky and Kentucky State can raise tuition by no more than 4 percent. The Kentucky Community and Technical College System was limited to increases of 3 percent. (H-L)

UK board OKs 5 percent tuition hike: The University of Kentucky Board of Trustees overrode opposition from some of its members Tuesday and voted to raise tuition by 5 percent, the maximum allowed under a state cap. (H-L)

West Jessamine student with MRSA has died: A West Jessamine High School student battling a drug-resistant staph infection died Tuesday morning at the University of Kentucky Hospital, according to a relative.Ryan Robinson, a junior, had been placed on life support after contracting methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, said Sam Pile, who coached the boy on the Jessamine Youth Soccer Association's Storm Soccer Club. (H-L)

Teacher's aide waives formal arraignment in sex-texting case: A Madison Middle School teacher's assistant who admitted that he exchanged inappropriate text messages with a student waived his formal arraignment Thursday in Madison County Circuit Court. (H-L)

Teachers Want Stimulus $ To Cover Loans: A group of Kentucky teachers asked lawmakers today to divert some stimulus money to a program which was supposed to give them free student loans. That program is out of money, leaving thousands of Kentucky teachers holding the bag on thousands of dollars in student loans. (Mark Hebert)

McClatchy To Eliminate 1,600 Jobs, 15 Percent Of Its Workforce: McClatchy Co. is shearing another 1,600 jobs in a cost-cutting spree that has clipped nearly one-third of the newspaper publisher's work force in less than a year. The layoffs will start before April. (Huffington Post)

University of Louisville: Financial Audit Update From Robert Felner Scandal, Open Records Request Fulfilled: Last Tuesday we discussed the financial audit of the University of Louisville’s College of Education and Human Development. That story revealed that UofL had not legally complied with our Open Records Request for a copy of the audit and we were reduced to linking to the audit’s executive summary, which was presented to the University’s Board of Trustees. Once that story went live, UofL’s legal counsel promptly and professionally complied by fulfilling our original request of the audit. (PageOne Kentucky)

The Robert Felner Scandal and Internal Damage Control at the University of Louisville: More on the Robert Felner front at the University of Louisville. Along with previously mentioned Open Records Requests, we’ve finally received copies of late 2008 emails regarding the Felner scandal and what we deduce to being expected internal damage control and CYA. (PageOne Kentucky)

Teacher Sex With Teenage Students Would be Felony Under S.C. Bill: South Carolina teachers who have sex with students 16 and older could be sent to prison for up to five years, under a bill that won initial approval from state lawmakers. (Ed Week)

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal of Student Armband Protest: The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to hear the appeal of an Arkansas school district over students’ black-armband protests against a school uniform policy. (Ed Week)

Amid protests, CMS sets stage for teacher cuts: The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board approved a plan Tuesday that could lead to laying off 456 teachers and 83 assistant principals. (Charlotte Observer)

Charter schools' biggest crisis: A place to call home: A Georgia public charter school is crammed into a rented church, while a school building nearby stands empty.The school is bursting at the seams. Desks are packed so tightly in trailer classrooms that a fourth-grader at the International Community School (ICS) can scarcely slip out for a drink of water without knocking into someone. (Christian Science Monitor)

"Trust Me," Says Michelle (Aphorism: When the Powerful Say Trust Me the Powerless Tend to Get Pregnant): To some Michelle Rhee is a superstar, taking on teacher unions and creating a merit-based pay urban school system. For others she is a chimera, filled with fanciful ideas, with a bloated ego, out to destroy the lives of teachers and kids, to satisfy her lust for power. (Ed In The Apple)

Students post videos of schoolyard brawls online: In schoolyards across the country, all it takes to attract a crowd are the words "Fight! Fight! Fight!" (Associated Press)

Vanderbilt study ties autism to digestive problems: Same gene could cause autism and gastrointestinal disorders. Research released this week revealed 118 families out of 214 selected to participate have at least one child with both autism and gastrointestinal conditions, according to Daniel Campbell, research assistant professor of pharmacology and the study's lead author. (The Tennessean)

Secular Education, Catholic Values: Catholic-turned-charter schools in Washington are at the cusp of what is becoming a popular exit strategy for urban parochial schools facing untenable operating costs. (NY Times, Andrew Councill photo)

Doctoral Candidates Anticipate Hard Times: Full-time faculty jobs have not been easy to come by in recent decades, but this year the new crop of Ph.D. candidates is finding the prospects worse than ever. (NY Times)

U.S. Backs Student in Strip-Search Case: Strip-searches of students in public schools are unconstitutional in all but narrow circumstances, the federal government told the U.S. Supreme Court in a brief in an important education case to be decided this term. The U.S. brief in Safford Unified School District v. Redding (Case No. 08-479) largely takes the side of Savanna Redding, who was a 13-year-old middle school student in 2003 when she was stripped-searched by school officials looking for prescription-strength Ibuprofen pills. (School Law)

Administrator Loses Case Over Surreptitious Phone Call: Call it the Revenge of the School Administrator's Scorned Wife. A New Mexico assistant principal made a "sexually explicit" phone call to his school secretary, as court papers put it. It isn't clear whether there was a romantic interest between the two, or whether the call was a form of sexual harassment. What is clear is that the assistant principal's wife had installed a recording device on the couple's home phone. (School Law)

Senate vote means end of DC Opportunity Scholarship Program: The U.S. Senate on Tuesday opted to kill D.C.’s federally funded school voucher program rather than risk sinking the $410 billion omnibus spending bill that will fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year. (DC Examiner)

35,000 college seniors apply to teach in low-achieving schools: Teach for America, a Peace Corps-style program, seeks to eliminate educational inequality, close the achievement gap and catalyze change in education. (San Jose Mercury News)