If you’re pregnant you’re out says Louisiana charter school

Hmm:

A Louisiana charter school is changing a policy that kicked pregnant students out of class and required them to be home-schooled, the school’s board chairman said Wednesday.

No one at Delhi Charter School in rural northeast Louisiana realized there was anything wrong with the policy until the American Civil Liberties Union’s state chapter threatened to sue, said chairman Albert Christman. The policy has gotten “everybody up in a roar,” he said.

The school required students who were suspected of being pregnant to take a pregnancy test. If they refused, or tested positive, they had to be home-schooled. The ACLU said the policy violated Title IX of the 1972 federal education law, which requires equal opportunities for both sexes.

Too many schools do not realize pregnant students should receive equal treatment, the National Women’s Law Center said in a June report.

Gee, I wonder what would happen to a student at the school who broke one of the school’s policies–perhaps the people who enacted this policy should be kicked out of the school system. The policy is here and here’s the full policy on pregnancy (go to page 130):

  If an administrator or teacher suspects a student is pregnant, a parent conference will be held. The school reserves the right to require any female student to take a pregnancy test to confirm whether or not the suspected student is in fact pregnant. The school further reserves the right to refer the suspected student to a physician of its choice. If the test indicates that the student is pregnant, the student will not be permitted to attend classes on the campus of Delhi Charter School.

If a student is determined to be pregnant and wishes to continue to attend Delhi Charter School, the student will be required to pursue a course of home study that will be provided by the school. Students engaged in home study will be required to meet all of the school’s ordinary, high academic standards in order to be promoted.

Any student who is suspected of being pregnant and who refuses to submit to a pregnancy test shall be treated as a pregnant student and will be offered home study opportunities. If home study opportunities are not acceptable, the student will be counseled to seek other educational opportunities.

In an interesting bit, the section on sex education includes this:

Whenever sex education is offered, such education will be available also to any student in the school, regardless of the student’s grade level, who is pregnant or who is a mother or father.

I guess it wasn’t updated.

I also think this guy needs to find another job:

Louisiana Department of Education spokesman Barry Landry said he did not know the state’s policies for pregnant students or whether they apply to private and religious schools getting tuition vouchers.

Senator Brown doesn’t want the state to follow the law

This is just weird:

US Senator Scott Brown today criticized the state’s welfare department for sending voting registration forms to 478,000 people on public assistance, saying the mass mailing was a ploy to boost the ranks of Democratic voters and benefit rival Elizabeth Warren’s campaign.

…

“I want every legal vote to count, but it’s outrageous to use taxpayer dollars to register welfare recipients as part of a special effort to boost one political party over another,” the senator said in a statement. “This effort to sign up welfare recipients is being aided by Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and it’s clearly designed to benefit her mother’s political campaign.”

The Globe notes:

The state’s Department of Transitional Assistance last month sent registration forms, along with prepaid return envelopes, as part of a settlement over a lawsuit accusing the Patrick administration of violating the federal “motor voter” law.

It requires states to provide voter registration at motor vehicle and public assistance offices.

So, either Brown wants the state to defend against the suit, which will  cost money (probably more than what the mailing cost) and which the state might lose, or he wants the state to disobey the law.

Go here also.

Update: It seems Brown has decided to jump into the crazy stream with both feet:

“It’s been disturbing for a lot of people to learn that the state’s welfare department undertook an unprecedented voter registration drive at the behest of Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and the organization she represents,” he said. “It is clear that this was done to aid Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaign. Professor Warren has more than $13 million dollars in her campaign account, and if she wants to mail every welfare recipient a voter registration form, she should do so at her own expense, not taxpayers’. She should immediately reimburse the state for the cost of this mailing and stop playing politics with the taxpayers’ money.”

Obviously it was Elizabeth Warren who got the Motor Voter law passed in 1993, got Demos to start this program in 2004, and made President Bush push for compliance:

Nevermind, too, that the Republican Bush administration pushed for compliance with the act, or that Demos has worked with 18 states since 2004 to ensure they provide the voter registration compelled by it.

Wow, Warren really planned her  campaign in advance.