“Everyone is concerned,” said Superintendent Dr. Barry Carroll after the decision was announced. “The school district is concerned, and the board is concerned.”

Carroll said he wants people to understand that this was an isolated incident and in no way reflective of Elkmont High School. School board president Anthony Hilliard felt the same way.

“Elkmont is a great school and offers a great education,” Hilliard said. “This is a black eye for all of us.”

Details of the hazing weren’t released, nor were the names of those involved, but Hilliard said some of the testimony was “difficult to comprehend.”

According to federal law, school districts are required to provide an education to all students until the age of 17, even if the student is expelled. State law also requires school districts to provide an education to special education students until they reach the age of 21.

Hilliard said all of the seniors are at least 17 years old, but two are special education students. Limestone County is required to offer them an education whether it be through a home schooling schedule or an alternative school.

Carroll said those arrangements will be decided at a later date.

Lachell Boyd’s Sherwood Elementary students wrote letters to business leaders, persuading them to donate $1.65 million for the school.

Sherwood Elementary School has received promises of $1.65 million worth of gifts in two years, and all can be traced to one teacher who taught persuasive writing to her fifth-grade students.

In less than a year, a $1.5 million, multipurpose building for physical education classes is expected to rise on the school site off Robin Hood Lane, partly the gift of Lance Forsdick Jr., president of Grace Construction Co. in Memphis.

Forsdick is one of a half-dozen CEOs who have been inspired to give in the last two school years after receiving letters from the students of Lachell Boyd.

The quietly confident Boyd has been the subject of national news coverage.

“I want the children to have high expectations,” Boyd says. “And to have someone respond to their writing is great. It encourages them to write more.”

Todd Bradley, executive vice president of Hewlett-Packard’s $42 billion personal systems division, gave a $100,000-plus computer lab to Sherwood after receiving a letter from one of Boyd’s students in 2009.

Peter Davoren, head of the Turner Construction Co. in New York, this summer gave $50,000 for playground equipment after receiving a letter this year from one of Boyd’s students.

Forsdick received a letter from Daniel Spencer and was so impressed with the boy’s sincerity, he made a date to meet him and Boyd for lunch and a school tour.

“He was dead-on with his assessment” of the need for physical education facilities at the school,” Forsdick said. “They are doing the absolute best they can with the space they have.”

“In two to four weeks, we ought to have some preliminary drawings and a budget, and I’ll be armed to begin visiting with potential donors,” said Forsdick, whose company’s recent projects include the Canale Arena at Christian Brothers University and the Performing Arts Center at Lausanne Collegiate School.

Boyd, who doesn’t tell her age — she says she started teaching at Sherwood 12 years ago and that readers can do the math — is one of the teachers Memphis City Schools plans to use as a role model in its $90 million project with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

This summer, Supt. Kriner Cash made Boyd a full-time member of the Gates team in Memphis, hoping she will help teachers navigate a process that will make tenure harder to earn and could displace hundreds who are considered better suited for other work.

“We want teachers to be involved and we want their voice,” Boyd said.

By the spring of 2012, at least one-third of a teacher’s job evaluation will be based on student test scores, an unnerving proposition in a district where at least one-third of students change schools every year, often midyear.

The new performance standard will be two years of academic progress for one year of instruction, based on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System database. The system shows predicted progress of individual students based on their previous test scores. And teachers can be identified by their students’ scores.

Boyd is proof that two years growth in one year for students is possible, says Sherwood principal Tonya Miller, citing Boyd’s TVAAS scores.

“She is the example of what possibilities there are for children when they are paired with and taught by effective, committed teachers,” Miller said.

Forsdick calls Boyd a “dynamo,” and said that Sherwood impressed him.

“The school was clean; the spaces were well-lit, the kids were well-behaved,” he said. “… After touring the school and meeting those children, it made me think there is hope for these kids.”

Herbert Wheeler, finance director for Huntsville City Schools, said that the latest proration will impact the district somewhere between $1.8 and $2.1 million dollars.
That impact may be largely padded by an $8 million loan the school board approved earlier this month, Wheeler said. The loan, which was initiated to ensure that employees get paid, was finalized on Wednesday.

“We’re going to have to manage it,” Wheeler said of the cuts. “We’re in shock and we’re saddened. We’re disappointed that we had to do this, but we will deal with it. We will make payroll.”

Gov. Bob Riley announced the cuts, which equal about $113 million statewide, because the state’s anticipated claim against BP for the Gulf oil spill will not be paid out as expected. That delay comes on the heels of a lawsuit Attorney General Troy King filed against the oil company.

This suggests that school boundaries would have to be radically expanded or redrawn to give more deprived children an equal opportunity of winning a place.

Thousands of children across England were forced to take part in random ballots to get into the most sought-after schools this year.

The policy – introduced by Labour three years ago – is designed to stop middle-class parents buying expensive homes near the best state secondaries to secure places.

Ed Balls, the former Labour schools secretary, later admitted they could be “arbitrary” and “unfair” but an independent review of the system last year said councils should be free to impose them.

Research by the Telegraph found lotteries were employed by at least one school in 25 local authority areas.

Brighton was the first council to introduce a city-wide lottery system in 2007.

Under its plan, six district catchment areas were established with one or two schools in each. Places at over-subscribed schools were allocated by random ballot.

Although any pupil can apply for any school, those living within the catchment area are given priority.

Today’s study, which examined the first two years of the Brighton system, said there had been “winners and losers” but concluded that the overall number of poor pupils in the best schools had not increased.

The report, by the Institute of Education, London, and Bristol University, said the way new catchment areas had been established meant that families in the poorest neighbourhoods still had “little chance of accessing the most popular schools” in the city centre.

“Some students are attending less academically successful secondary schools than they might have expected to; for others the reverse is true,” it said. “The location of these winners and losers largely derive from the design of the catchment areas rather than the impact of the lottery where it applies.”

The study – being presented at the British Educational Research Association annual conference at Warwick University on Friday – added: “It seems unlikely that the reforms [will] substantially lower social segregation across schools even in the long-run in this city where differences in the quality of housing stock across areas are deeply entrenched.”

The report’s authors said: “The main lesson of our analysis is that the introduction of a lottery on its own is not enough to equalise access to the high-performing popular schools.

“The drawing of the catchment area boundaries is central to the outcome of the reform.”

Brighton Council said it would be reviewing its lottery system in 2012 but dismissed claims that it had been a failure.

“The aim was to create a system that is fairer to more people than the previous system and ensure children could get places at a school that’s near to them,” said a spokesman. “We argue that these aims have been achieved.

“The report is not critical of the use of random allocation but does comment on the effect of catchment areas. However it uses too small a sample of pupils over the first two years and we do not think this is enough to arrive at a significant conclusion.

“Catchment areas in the city have changed since the research was conducted and the report acknowledges that the retained sibling link affects the efficacy of the findings. We are reviewing the system in 2012 which was agreed when it was adopted.”