| Cyber bullying crackdown kicks off
The government has launched a campaign to help schools tackle cyber bullying. The campaign will cost 200,000 and features guidance and a short film to help schools deal with people who use the internet or mobiles to bully other children or abuse their teachers. The guidance includes tips on preventing cyber bullying, including: not responding to malicious text or emails, saving evidence of cyber bullying, reporting incidents, keeping passwords safe and not giving out personal details over the web. silicon.com Public Sector Get the latest public sector news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the PS newsletter today! Ed Balls, secretary of state for the Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), said cyber bullying is a "particularly insidious type of bullying" because it can follow young people wherever they go while the perpetrator can remain anonymous, making it even more stressful for the victim.
Schools strive to stem violence
Threatening messages that they exchange on teen-oriented Web sites spill over into school conflicts.
As city schools chief Andres Alonso tries to reform a troubled system, ensuring order is a necessary first step. Within the past month, he offered to install metal detectors in any middle or high school that wants them. Forty schools have asked for the devices so far, and Alonso said he expects more requests.
"The premise of a school is it needs to be a safe haven," Alonso said. "There are so many children who start out on the right path and become perpetrators or victims of incidents that make instruction an afterthought."
Teachers and administrators face monumental challenges trying to keep the violence of city streets outside school walls, and trying to educate children who in many cases are traumatized by the violence they've witnessed.
Retiring old-school drivers leaving a legacy, and a void
Blair Philips works on the front lines of a generational shift. As the fan club coordinator for veteran driver Dale Jarrett, whose 20-year career on NASCAR's premier series comes to an end this season, Philips is the one who takes all the phone calls and receives all the e-mails from faithful who don't want to see their hero go. They stem partly from a genuine affinity for Jarrett, a champion driver who cultivated a legion of followers with his genteel manner and North Carolina accent. But some also come from a very different place, one that has less to do with the pilot of the No. 44 car, and more to do with the sport he will soon leave behind. "People say, 'I don't know who I'm going to pull for now.' They just feel like this is a generation where there is no one to fill those shoes," said Philips, who added that the official Jarrett fan club numbers several thousand members strong.
Ballet back on its feet
For a decade or more, no company on the Philadelphia arts scene dramatized institutional failure more spectacularly than the Pennsylvania Ballet. Even in the years after a frantic save-the-ballet campaign kept it from closing down in 1991, the company defaulted on its mortgage for a building it had come to call an "albatross," vendors were left in the lurch, the front office became a revolving door, the repertoire was often recycled. But it appears that the 44-year-old Pennsylvania Ballet has taken an enormous leap - a financial and organizational grand jete - that will force culture vultures to find a different benchmark for failure. The first new Nutcracker in two decades, with new sets and costumes, closed Dec. 31 after taking in a record $2.42 million, while philanthropy covered most of the cost of mounting the production.
Housing slump hits Hovnanian hard
The Hovnanians have been building homes in New Jersey for almost a half-century, but the measure of their success was never more indelibly stamped than in a 1992 mishap, when the family's 123-foot yacht sank off Cape May. Outfitted with teak paneling, gold-plated fixtures and other luxuries, the $10 million sport-fishing boat seemed more worthy of an oil sheik than crafters of humble condos. .
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