School Day

Within hours of Samantha Pawlucy's return to Charles Carroll High School, the teacher she said publicly humiliated her over a Romney T-shirt returned as well, reading from a letter at a brief assembly. Lynette Gaymon, Pawlucy's former geometry teacher, visited the school Tuesday morning, the district's spokesperson confirmed. The teacher read from a letter she wrote, originally distributed to teachers with the intention of having it read aloud to students, a person attending the assembly said.

ON TUESDAY morning, supporters will rally behind Port Richmond sophomore Samantha Pawlucy as she returns to Charles Carroll High School after being harassed by her geometry teacher for wearing a Romney/Ryan T-shirt. Local political candidates (of course!) and others will gather outside the school as Samantha, 16, reads aloud the First Amendment and then leads everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance before the school day kicks in. Hopefully, she'll enter Carroll to cheers instead of the jeers she endured on Sept.

Adapted from a recent online discussion. Question: My cousin is getting married in a city about six hours from my home. My boyfriend went to undergrad there and has a few friends in the area. Our plan is to make a long weekend out of it and see his friends on Friday and attend the wedding on Saturday. My mother told me it was rude to see entirely different groups of people when in town for a wedding; that if we were planning to arrive early we should be spending the time with my family.

Siobhan A. Reardon is president and director of the Free Library of Philadelphia Every day, the Free Library of Philadelphia works to advance literacy, guide learning, and inspire curiosity for all who come through our doors. And at 3:15 each weekday afternoon, our branches throughout the city welcome a rush of some of our most creative, curious, and clever customers - Philadelphia's students. Whether they attend public, charter, private, or parochial school, these students gather together daily at the Free Library to read, interact, learn, and grow.

CHICAGO - Negotiators were back behind closed doors Tuesday on the second day of Chicago's teachers strike, but publicly the teachers union and school board couldn't even agree on whether they were close to a deal. The union issued a statement saying negotiators had returned to the bargaining table and were discussing one of the most serious remaining issues, a new teacher-evaluation system. But the union said that it had signed off on only six of 48 articles in the contract, and that the two sides had "a considerable way to go. " "To say that this contract will be settled today is lunacy," union president Karen Lewis said.

By Charles Lane Keep the following numbers in mind for the next time a public-sector union official starts lecturing you about social justice. In Chicago, 85 percent of the roughly 400,000 public school students are African American or Latino. A similar share lives at or near the poverty line: about $27,000 for a family of three. The average Chicago public-school teacher earned almost triple that: $76,000 a year, according to the school district. In contract negotiations this year, the Chicago Public Schools offered an average raise of 16 percent over four years.

CHICAGO - Elfega Cazares isn't taking sides in the standoff between the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools over contract talks. Like many of the immigrant parents in the city's Pilsen neighborhood, she knows her children stand to lose the most if teachers walk off the job next Monday. "It is very important that we stay in school so we can be prepared to be someone in life," Cazares said, her 10-year-old son Francisco Vasquez translating for her from Spanish. But students across the city, most of whom return to school Tuesday, could find themselves out of the classroom again Sept.

There were few surprises in a consultant's analysis of the Philadelphia School District, but the report made it even clearer that the system needs to undergo radical changes. The Boston Consulting Group suggested new labor contracts and a more aggressive approach to closing schools in the sweeping 118-page report to the School Reform Commission, which was made public last week. Jerry Jordan, head of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, called the report a "boilerplate menu of silver-bullet education reform ideas" that was put together without input from actual school workers.

The Philadelphia School District has agreed to pay $35,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that a male police officer at Harding Middle School inappropriately touched a 13-year-old girl's chest during a weapons pat-down, according to a copy of the settlement agreement obtained by The Inquirer. A district spokesman confirmed that the case was settled but would not comment on the terms. According to the suit, filed by the girl's father last fall, about 100 students were ushered into the auditorium as the school day began.