Suspended for sharing caffeine gum; other schools still stupid too

How dumb do you get? A girl was actually suspended for sharing gum with caffeine in it ("Student suspended for sharing caffeine gum," May 27, 2006). "What if the gum had been given to a student with a heart condition?" Amy Palermo, the school system's superintendent asked.

Good question. What if she was allergic to milk and another student gave her something with milk in it? And then she died? And didn't go to Heaven because she never accepted Jesus Christ as her personal savior?

Of course, schools are a paragon of healthy dieting. No, really. Cookies? French fries? Sloppy joes? You don't beat lunches like that. The school mentioned above apparently even allowed caffeine to be sold from soda machines after school let out. As long as those kids with heart problems die on the way home, right?

And you know those big yellow cheese wagons that schools send children home in? "A recent study shows that at least 500,000 of our nation's school buses are amongst the worst polluting vehicles on the road today and pose a health hazard for our childeren who ride them" ("Nation's School Buses Worst Polluting Vehicles," May 27, 2006). Apparently, the worst are in South Carolina ("S.C. hits bottom rank in school bus pollution," May 26, 2006), where many of the worst things in the United States come from:

South Carolina ranks dead last in the nation in the amount of pollution, including soot and diesel exhaust, spewed into the air by its fleet of aging school buses.

That is according to a school bus report card issued Wednesday by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

South Carolina's buses received a grade of D for soot pollution and was rated poor in smog-forming exhaust, the two major categories of emissions ranked in the report.

Nevermind the stupidity of locating schools and housing miles and miles apart (hell, I had to drive half an hour to my high school—the school bus took more than 45 minutes). Why don't we hand them cigarettes too? The South still has a big tobacco industry. It's better to hook them while they're young.