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ROY, Utah – The two teens had a detailed plot, blueprints of the school and security systems, but no explosives. They had hours of flight simulator training on a home computer and a plan to flee the country, but no plane.

Still, the police chief in this small Utah town said, the plot was real.

“It wasn’t like they were hanging out playing video games,” Roy Police Chief Gregory Whinham said Friday. “They put a lot of effort into it.”

Dallin Morgan, 18, and a 16-year-old friend were arrested Wednesday at Roy High School, about 30 miles north of Salt Lake City, after a fellow student reported that she received ominous text messages from one of the suspects.

“If I tell you one day not to go to school, make damn sure you and your brother are not there,” one message read, according to court records. “We ain’t gonna crash it, we’re just gonna kill and fly our way to a country that won’t send us back to the U.S.,” read another message.

While police don’t have a motive, one text message noted they sought “revenge on the world.”

The suspects say they were inspired by the deadly 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo., and the younger suspect even visited the school last month to interview the principal about the shootings and security measures.

However, one suspect told authorities it was offensive to be compared to the Columbine shooters because “those killers only completed 1 percent of their plan,” according to a probable cause statement.

The teens had so studied their own school’s security system that they knew how to avoid being seen on the facility’s surveillance cameras, authorities said.

Whinham said the “very smart kids” had spent at least hundreds of dollars on flight simulator programs, books and manuals, studying them in anticipation of carrying out their plan to bomb an assembly at the 1,500-student high school.

While authorities said the suspects believed they could pull it off, experts said, it would have been a long shot.

Royal Eccles, manager at the Ogden-Hinckley Airport, about a mile from the school, said it would have been nearly impossible for the students to steal a plane or get the knowledge to fly one using flight simulator programs.

“It’s highly improbable,” Eccles said. “That’s how naive these kids are.”

Whinham said authorities searched two homes and two cars and found no explosives, but added that police continue to search other locations. The chief said it appeared that “a key component of their plan was not developed.”

“I wouldn’t want to say that they don’t have it or that they weren’t ready for it,” he said. “I’m just saying that we haven’t found anything that says they were ready for it yet.”

Whinham said it appeared the suspects, who have no criminal history, also had prepared alternate attack plans, but he declined to elaborate. He also declined to say whether any firearms were found during their searches.

“Most houses have firearms in them,” he said. “This is the state of Utah.”

While authorities have said they have not found any explosives, they charged Morgan on Friday with possession of a weapon of mass destruction.

The basis for the charge wasn’t immediately clear, though one of the elements of that offense is conspiracy to use a weapon, not necessarily possessing one. Prosecutors say they are considering additional charges.

Morgan has been released on bond, pending a court hearing Wednesday. The 16-year-old, whom The Associated Press isn’t naming because he’s a minor, remained held pending further court hearings.

Whinham said he knew both suspects personally, given the small size of the suburban Utah town of roughly 36,000 people. He said he had met with both of the suspects’ parents and they were “devastated.”

The 16-year-old suspect’s father declined comment Friday, and no one answered the door at Morgan’s home.

The plot “was months in planning,” said Whinham, who also noted Morgan told investigators the 16-year-old had previously made a pipe bomb using gun powder and rocket fuel.

In Colorado, Columbine Principal Frank DeAngelis confirmed Friday he met with the 16-year-old suspect on Dec. 12 after the teenager told him he was doing a story for his school newspaper on the shootings.

DeAngelis said he frequently gets requests from students doing research on the shootings, and the request from this one wasn’t unusual.

“He asked the same questions I get from many callers and visitors asking about the shooting,” DeAngelis said. He said the student wanted details about the shooting, the aftermath and the steps taken since then to protect the school.

Police said the student told them Roy school officials would not allow him to write the story.

DeAngelis said he was shocked when he got a call from Utah police on Wednesday asking if he had met with the youth. He said the interview raised no red flags but that he would do things differently with future requests.

“This was definitely a wake-up call. This is the first time this has happened,” DeAngelis said.

Police credit the suspects’ schoolmate with helping foil their plan, though Whinham said the school didn’t have any assemblies set, and the suspects revealed no specific dates to pull off the attack.

Sophomore Bailey Gerhardt told The Salt Lake Tribune she received alarming text messages from one of the suspects and alerted school administrators.

“I get the feeling you know what I’m planning,” read one of the messages, according to court records. “Explosives, airport, airplane.”

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Associated Press writer Steven K. Paulson in Denver contributed to this report.

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ANN ARBOR, Mich. – President Barack Obama called Friday for an overhaul of the higher education financial aid system, warning that colleges and universities that fail to control spiraling tuition costs could lose federal funds.

The election year proposal was also a political appeal to young people and working families, two important voting blocs for Obama. But the initiative faces long odds in Congress, which must approve nearly all aspects of the president’s plan.

Speaking to students at the University of Michigan, Obama said the nation’s economic future would depend in large part on making sure every American can afford a world-class education.

“We are putting colleges on notice,” Obama said. “You can’t assume that you’ll just jack up tuition every single year. If you can’t stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down.”

Obama first announced the outlines of the financial aid proposal during Tuesday’s State of the Union address. His plan targets what is known as “campus based” aid given to colleges to distribute in areas such as Perkins loans or in work study programs. Of the $ 142 billion in federal grants and loans distributed in the last school year, about $ 3 billion went to these programs. His plan calls for increasing that type of aid to $ 10 billion annually.

He also wants to create a “Race to the Top” competition in higher education similar to the one his administration used on K-12 to encourage states to better use higher education dollars in exchange for $ 1 billion in prize dollars. A second competition called “First in the World” would encourage innovation to boost productivity on campuses.

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SALT LAKE CITY – A Utah high school student bragged to police that he was smarter than the Columbine killers and was plotting with an older student to set off a bomb during a school assembly and escape in a stolen plane, court documents say.

Dallin Morgan, 18, and the 16-year-old boy were pulled out of school Wednesday and arrested after authorities learned of the plot, Roy police spokeswoman Anna Bond said Thursday.

The students prepared by logging hundreds of hours on flight simulator software on their home computers, and they planned to take a plane at Ogden Hinckley Airport after the bombing, Bond said.

The juvenile hinted at the plan in text messages to a friend, writing that both suspects wanted “revenge on the world” and “we have a plan to get away with it too.”

He hinted at the plan by writing “explosives, airport, airplane” and added, “We’re just gonna kill and fly our way to a country that won’t send us back to the US,” according to a probable cause statement police filed to make the arrests late Wednesday.

The Associated Press isn’t naming the 16-year-old because he is a minor.

The juvenile told investigators he was so “fascinated” by the 1999 Columbine High School massacre that he visited the Littleton, Colo., school and interviewed the principal about the shootings that killed 13 people. Roy police said the principal, Frank DeAngelis, confirmed that the boy made his visit Dec. 12.

Morgan was being held on $ 10,000 bail at Weber County jail on suspicion of conspiracy to commit mass destruction. The juvenile was in custody at Weber Valley Detention Center on the same charge. Prosecutors were weighing possible additional charges.

Both students had “absolute knowledge of the security systems and the layout of the school,” Bond said. “They knew where the security cameras were. Their original plan was to set off explosives during an assembly. We don’t know what date they were planning to do this, but they had been planning it for months.”

School officials said there were no imminent plans to hold a school assembly.

Local and federal agents searched the school, two vehicles belonging to the suspects and their homes but found no explosives. The FBI is examining the suspects’ computers, police said.

The parents of both students “woke up in the middle of a nightmare,” Bond said. “They’ve been very cooperative.”

The other Roy High School student who received text messages tipped authorities to the plot Wednesday, said the school’s safety specialist, Nate Taggart.

The student “came forward and had some suspicions but not a lot of information — enough that it gave administration the ability to make some connections and identify the students involved,” Taggart said.

The school has about 1,500 students.

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Associated Press writer Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

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ROY, Utah – Utah authorities say two Roy High School students have been arrested on conspiracy charges after authorities uncovered a plot to use explosives during a school assembly.

Eighteen-year-old Dallin Morgan was arrested Wednesday and booked into the Weber County Jail, and a 16-year-old boy also was taken into custody.

School administrators and police say they learned the students had collected maps of the school and documents about security systems. Officials say the students had a detailed escape plan that included using an airplane from the Ogden Hinckley Airport and used flight simulator software to prepare.

Local and federal agents searched the school, two vehicles and two homes, but found no explosives. The FBI is also examining computers.

School is in session Thursday.

Roy is 35 miles north of Salt Lake City.

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ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The first major nutritional overhaul of school meals in more than 15 years means most offerings — including the always popular pizza — will come with less sodium, more whole grains and a wider selection of fruits and vegetables on the side.

First lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the new guidelines during a visit Wednesday with elementary students. Mrs. Obama, also joined by celebrity chef Rachael Ray, said youngsters will learn better if they don’t have growling stomachs at school.

“As parents, we try to prepare decent meals, limit how much junk food our kids eat, and ensure they have a reasonably balanced diet,” Mrs. Obama said. “And when we’re putting in all that effort the last thing we want is for our hard work to be undone each day in the school cafeteria.”

After the announcement, the three went through the line with students and ate turkey tacos with brown rice, black bean and corn salad and fruit — all Ray’s recipes — with the children in the Parklawn Elementary lunchroom.

Under the new rules, pizza won’t disappear from lunch lines, but will be made with healthier ingredients. Entire meals will have calorie caps for the first time and most trans fats will be banned. Sodium will gradually decrease over a 10 year period. Milk will have to be low in fat and flavored milks will have to be nonfat.

Despite the improvements, the new rules aren’t as aggressive as the Obama administration had hoped. Congress last year blocked the Agriculture Department from making some of the desired changes, including limiting french fries and pizzas.

A bill passed in November would require the department to allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. The initial draft of the department’s guidelines, released a year ago, would have prevented that. Congress also blocked the department from limiting servings of potatoes to two servings a week. The final rules have incorporated those directions from Congress.

Among those who had sought the changes were potato growers and food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools. Conservatives in Congress called the guidelines an overreach and said the government shouldn’t tell children what to eat. School districts also objected to some of the requirements, saying they go too far and would cost too much.

The guidelines apply to lunches subsidized by the federal government. A child nutrition bill signed by President Barack Obama in 2010 will help school districts pay for some of the increased costs. Some of the changes will take place as soon as this September; others will be phased in over time.

While many schools are improving meals already, others still serve children meals high in fat, salt and calories. The guidelines are designed to combat childhood obesity and are based on 2009 recommendations by the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences.

Vilsack said food companies are reformulating many of the foods they sell to schools in anticipation of the changes.

“The food industry is already responding,” he said. “This is a movement that has started, it’s gaining momentum.”

Diane Pratt-Heavner of the School Nutrition Association, which represents school lunch workers, said that many schools won’t count pizza as a vegetable even though they can. Students qualifying for subsidized meals must have a certain number of vegetables and other nutritious foods on their lunch trays.

“Most schools are serving fruit or vegetables next to their pizza and some schools are even allowing unlimited servings of fruit or vegetables,” Pratt-Heavner said.

Celebrity chef Ray said she thinks too much has been made of the availability of pizza and French fries. The new rules will make kids’ lunch plates much more nutrient dense, she said.

“The overall picture is really good,” she said. “This is a big deal.”

The subsidized meals that would fall under the guidelines are served as free and low-cost meals to low-income children and long have been subject to government nutrition standards. The 2010 law will extend, for the first time, nutrition standards to other foods sold in schools that aren’t subsidized by the federal government. That includes “a la carte” foods on the lunch line and snacks in vending machines.

Those standards, while expected to be similar, will be written separately and have not yet been proposed by the department.

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Online:

USDA school lunch rules: http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Governance/Legislation/nutritionstandards.htm

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Find Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

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According to the Chicago Sun-Times, a bill signed into law by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn on Tuesday changes the amount of information given to parents on how schools rank in terms graduation rates, standardized test scores, teacher performance and more. These more detailed so-called “report cards” will be available to the public beginning next year with the goal of offering more transparency of the state education system.

Similarly, the law also details the State Board of Education will have to prepare extensive reports for each district, as well as every single school. With this major step towards offering more information on public education quality and access, here are some other recently enacted laws that also seek to reach this goal:

The Performance Evaluation Reform Act of 2010

In early 2010, Gov. Quinn signed the Performance Evaluation Reform Act of 2010, a law that improves on how teachers and principals are evaluated. It requires every school district in the state to use student performance as a large factor in these evaluations and also pushes for further cooperation between districts and teachers’ unions to meet these requirements. The Patch added the law has also led to the formation of the Performance Evaluation Advisory Council to develop new evaluation models using the law’s guidelines.

Senate Bill 7

On June 13, the governor signed a landmark bill, which enacts sweeping education reform in the state, reported ABC Local. The education reform bill specifically emphasizes higher standards for teacher accountability, gives districts more authority on extending the school day and year, as well as the ability to fire poor-performing teachers, and makes it more different for teachers’ unions to strike. Chicago has leaped forward with implementing a longer school day, according to the Huffington Post, and the extended day will include more instructional classroom time and mandatory recess.

Illinois DREAM Act

The Chicago Tribune reported in August the state moved ahead with its own version of the DREAM Act, a measure that creates a privately funded scholarship program for immigrants and children of immigrants without regard to their documentation status. Unlike the federal measure of the same name, Illinois’ act does not provide a path to citizenship but instead aims to provide better access to higher education, according to Fox News. To qualify, individuals must have attended an Illinois school for the past three years, be an immigrant or a child of at least one immigrant, and received a high school diploma.

Rachel Bogart provides an in-depth look at current environmental issues and local Chicago news stories. As a college student from the Chicago suburbs pursuing two science degrees, she applies her knowledge and passion to both topics to garner further public awareness.

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WASHINGTON – Schoolchildren’s favorite lunch — the ubiquitous frozen pizza — is about to get healthier.

First lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack are expected to announce Wednesday that most school meals, including pizza, will have less sodium, more whole grains and more fruits and vegetables as sides. The popular pizzas will still be on school lunch lines but made with healthier ingredients.

Mrs. Obama and Vilsack were making the announcement at an elementary school in Alexandria, Va., with celebrity chef Rachael Ray.

The new rules, the first major nutritional overhaul of school meals in 15 years, won’t be as aggressive as the Obama administration had hoped. Congress last year blocked the Agriculture Department from making some of the changes the department had sought, including limiting french fries and pizzas.

A bill passed in November would require USDA to allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. The initial draft of the department’s guidelines, released a year ago, would have prevented that. Congress also blocked USDA from limiting servings of potatoes to two servings a week. The final rule to be announced Wednesday will have to incorporate those directions from Congress.

The congressional changes had been requested by potato growers and food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, among others in the food industry. Conservatives in Congress called the guidelines an overreach, saying the government shouldn’t be telling children what to eat. School districts had also objected to some of the requirements, saying they go too far and would cost too much.

The new guidelines would apply to lunches subsidized by the federal government, and a child nutrition bill signed by President Barack Obama in 2010 would help school districts pay for some of the increased costs. Some of the changes could take place as soon as the next school year, while others would be phased in over time.

The guidelines are also expected to limit the total number of calories in an individual meal and require that milk be low in fat. Flavored milks would have to be nonfat.

While many schools are improving meals already, others are still serving children meals high in fat, salt and calories. The guidelines are designed to combat growing childhood obesity and are based on 2009 recommendations by the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences.

The subsidized meals that would fall under the guidelines are served as free and low-cost meals to low-income children and long have been subject to government nutrition standards. The 2010 law for the first time will extend nutrition standards to other foods sold in schools that aren’t subsidized by the federal government, including “a la carte” foods on the lunch line and snacks in vending machines.

Those standards, while expected to be similar, will be written separately and have not yet been proposed by USDA.

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– The financial conditions of many U.S. colleges and universities will likely not improve much this year, as states continue cutting funding for public schools, students become more price sensitive, and areas for other revenue remain stretched, a lead rating agency said on Monday.

“During the past year, public and political scrutiny of colleges and universities, both not-for-profit and for-profit, has escalated and we expect that the sector will remain under the microscope in 2012 and beyond,” said Moody’s Investors Services in a report outlining why it is maintaining a “mixed outlook for U.S. not-for-profit private and public colleges and universities, mirroring our 2011 outlook.”

While undergraduates continue to enroll, “demand for some graduate programs and professional schools … is softening,” Moody’s said, noting that “evolving demand trends for undergraduate and graduate programs highlight flight to quality and affordability.”

Worries about affordability and unmanageable student debt levels are currently sweeping the country, as public schools push up tuition charges to compensate for fewer dollars coming from states.

“While state funding has been declining as a share of public university revenue for three decades, the declines of the last few years have been the sharpest ever,” Moody’s said, noting that 35 states expect to cut appropriations for four-year public universities this year.

Private and public colleges and universities are also under pressure from fewer donations and smaller research grants and contracts, especially from the federal government, Moody’s found.

Many institutions are expecting their endowments to grow mildly this year, as well.

“For private colleges and universities that have weaker market positions and are less selective, we are observing clear signs of deterioration of net tuition revenue and growth of tuition discounting,” Moody’s said.

(Reporting By Lisa Lambert; Editing by James Dalgleish)

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MIAMI – State funding for higher education has declined because of a slow recovery from the recession and the end of federal stimulus money, according to a study released Monday.

Overall, spending declined by some $ 6 billion, or nearly 8 percent, over the past year, according to the annual Grapevine study by the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University. The reduction was slightly lower, at 4 percent, when money lost from the end of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act was not taken into account.

The funding reductions, seen across nearly every state, have resulted in larger class sizes and fewer course offerings at many universities and come as enrollment continues to rise.

A report released by the National Science Board last week found similar reductions in state higher education spending, with nearly three-quarters of the nation’s 101 top public research universities experiencing cuts in state funding between 2002 and 2010.

“It’s quite severe,” said Jose-Marie Griffiths, chairwoman of the National Science Board committee that produced the report and vice president for academic affairs at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island. “The question is, are they ever going to recover to the level they were before? I think all of us are somewhat concerned because the future is a little bit uncertain.”

Only nine states reported increases in total state higher education spending, including the federal stimulus money. In the 41 states where there were funding reductions, declines varied drastically, from about 1 percent in North Carolina to 41 percent in New Hampshire. The hardest-hit states include Arizona, Wisconsin and Louisiana, where spending reductions were nearly 20 percent or higher as federal stimulus money dried up.

James Palmer, editor of the Grapevine survey, said state capacity to finance higher education had also been reduced by diminished tax revenues.

In a statement, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association said states with the largest declines will likely see higher tuition rates and more pressure to recruit out-of-state students. That raises concerns about access to higher education, particularly for those students who need financial aid, another area where state support has declined.

Educating more students from out of state and less access will have “implications for the availability of an adequately trained workforce in those states,” the organization said.

The group specifically highlighted California, where a $ 1.5 billion spending reduction, including stimulus funds, over the past two years represents 26 percent of the national decline.

Florida is another state that has seen sustained spending cuts. Over the past five years, state support for higher education has declined 17.5 percent, according to the study. As the state proportion of funding has declined, universities have relied more on tuition, now nearly 50 percent of their operating budget.

Overall state funding appropriations in Florida are about the same as they were 10 years ago, after having risen leading up to 2007-2008. Meanwhile, enrollment has increased by more than 24 percent.

To compensate for the loss, Florida universities have merged departments, instituted hiring freezes and used more adjunct professors, among other actions.

“Each university has been diligent in developing cost-saving strategies to help offset — but not fully replace — the budget shortfalls,” according to a brief from the Board of Governors, which oversees Florida’s State University System.

The National Science Board noted the funding decline could have implications for how well the United States is able to educate its workforce and be competitive in a globalized, knowledge-based economy.

Already, the United States has been trailing Asia in science and engineering degrees. Fifty-six percent of all engineering degrees were awarded in Asia in 2008, compared with 4 percent in the U.S. The United States produced 248,000 graduates in the fields of natural science and engineering, while China produced 1 million, a dramatic increase from 2000, when they awarded 280,000. South Korea, Taiwan and Japan produced 330,000 natural science and engineering graduates in 2008 — again, a larger number than the U.S., even though their population is smaller.

“Right now our aspirations for higher education I think far exceed the vitality of our economy,” Palmer said, referring to the push to increase access to college and degree completion. “In other words, we can’t depend on that state funding as the way we’re going to meet those goals.”

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COMMENTARY | Arizona education officials are being accused of racism for cutting courses and banning textbooks from the Mexican-American Studies program, according to Yahoo! Shine. If the class truly supported ethnic diversity by teaching unbiased material about another culture, the courses should be reinstated. But if the course encourages racism and fosters bigotry, it violates the law and should not be a part of a public school curriculum.

The Arizona state superintendent of schools determined last week that the Chicano history and literature classes encouraged racial unrest and violated a state law prohibiting courses promoting resentment or are designed solely for a specific ethnic group. While protestors outside the school waving banners are angry about the elimination of the Latino instructional classes, they are dismissing a valuable part of the curriculum debate. The law protects students of all races from attending classes in an educational environment which allows one race to be placed above another.

A class only about white history should be equally offensive to those who believe in an ethical and well-rounded education. Unless the school district also offers history courses specifically designed to teach black history, Asian history and women’s studies, there is an inherent bias in permitting the Chicano history and literature courses to continue at the Tucson Unified School District. One books used in the class, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Paolo Freire notes a racial solidarity tone prohibited by state law.

Tucson’s director of Mexican American Studies program feels that the school district caved into pressure from a racist state legislature, according to the Los Angeles Times. If the school continued to violate the anti-discrimination state law, they would face a penalty of $ 15 million. The school district appealed the Arizona Superintendent of school John Huppenthal’s mandate to terminate the classes, but the decision was upheld in court, according to Shine.

Terminating the Chicano specific courses does not mean an end to educating students about local, state and national achievements by Mexican Americans. Traditional history classes or short courses focusing on specific historic periods or topics could include detailed lessons about a variety or minority groups. For decades history textbooks were very lax in relaying anything about the contributions of women and minorities. Supplemental reading material and research assignments can enhance the formal text and offer a deeper appreciation for all minority groups which help build and shape this great nation.

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