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School efforts to regulate T-shirts with potentially disruptive messages have prompted two rulings by separate federal courts, with administrators winning one case but suffering a setback in the other.

A federal district judge in San Francisco earlier this month upheld administrators who barred students from wearing American flag T-shirts to avoid conflicts on Cinco de Mayo, a day when other students were celebrating their Mexican heritage.

U.S. District Judge James Ware found that there had been tensions between white and Hispanic students at Live Oak High School, in the Morgan Unified School District, including altercations on Cinco de Mayo in 2009.

When the 2010 day rolled around, administrators feared that the tensions would resume because a number of students wore T-shirts depicting the U.S. flag.

“The court finds that … school officials reasonably forecast that plaintiffs’ clothing could cause a substantial disruption with school activities,” Judge Ware said in his Nov. 8 decision in Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District.

He added that the assistant principal “was warned by two different students that they were concerned that plaintiffs’ clothing would lead to violence. These warnings were made in a context of ongoing racial tension and gang violence within the school, and after a near-violent altercation had erupted during the prior Cinco de Mayo over the display of an American flag.”

In the other case, a federal district judge in Omaha, Neb., allowed a lawsuit to go forward that challenges a school’s suspension of students who wore “rest in peace” T-shirts memorializing a recent graduate who was killed in gang-related violence.

School administrators said such shirts were a form of gang-related apparel and that they could attract more gang violence to the schools.

U.S. District Judge Laurie Smith Camp held that the shirt worn by student Dan Kuhr and others at Millard West High School in the Millard school district was not disruptive and was a form of expression protected by the First Amendment.

“A reasonable jury could find that defendants failed to demonstrate that school officials had anything more than an undifferentiated and remote apprehension of a disturbance when they suspended” one student wearing the shirt, Judge Camp said in her Nov. 8 opinion in Kuhr v. Millard Public School District. “The fact that [the student] had worn his shirts for several days without incident supports a finding that no disruption was likely to result.”

Congress wants pizza and french fries to stay in school lunch lines and is fighting the Obama administration’s efforts to take such foods out of schools.

The final version of a spending bill would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year. These include limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line, putting new restrictions on sodium and boosting the use of whole grains. The legislation would block or delay all of those efforts.

Lee and Collier school districts have already put into place many of the Obama administrations changes, such as serving more fruits and vegetables, but there are other standards that the districts would have been forced to take up removing 2 percent fat milk from schools and serving unflavored 1 percent or fat-free milk.

On an average day, the Lee district serves 48,000 lunches, and all meals include at least one fruit and one vegetable. The district spends $11.2 million a year on food for its 119 schools more than $1 million on fresh fruits and vegetables.

Collier and Lee, which removed all fryers from its schools five years ago, is in line to get a boost from the federal government to pay for the heathier fare. Last years $4.5 billion Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act increased the federal reimbursement rate for school lunches by 6 cents per meal. About 67 percent of Lees 80,000 students qualify for free or reduced-price meals through the federal government.

In its new spending bill, Congress wants to allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. USDA had wanted to only count a half-cup of tomato paste or more as a vegetable, and a serving of pizza has less than that.

Tomatoes, incidentally, are a fruit.

Nutritionists say the whole effort is reminiscent of the Reagan administrations attempt 30 years ago to classify ketchup as a vegetable to cut costs. This time around, food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes and lobbied Congress.

School meals that are subsidized by the federal government must include a certain amount of vegetables, and USDAs proposal could have pushed pizza-makers and potato growers out of the school lunch business.

Piling on to the companies opposition, some conservatives argue that the federal government shouldnt tell children what to eat. In a summary of the bill, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee said the changes would prevent overly burdensome and costly regulations and … provide greater flexibility for local school districts to improve the nutritional quality of meals.

School districts have said some of the USDA proposals go too far and cost too much when budgets are tight. Schools have long taken broad instructions from the government on what they can serve in the federally subsidized meals that are given free or at reduced price. But some schools have balked at government attempts to ban specific foods.

Staff writer Chris Umpierre contributed to this report.

interesting statistics relating to Grand Blanc’s recall of Rep. Paul Scott.

The Journal Sentinel’s Criag Gilbert writes: Enlarge Rep. Paul Scott loses recall effort gallery (12 photos)

“There have now been 32 recall elections in US history involving state legislators.

And 11 of them took place this year.”

Wisconsin is home to one of the country’s most famous recall elections. In August, efforts to shift control of the state’s Senate by recalling six lawmakers drew widespread attention and millions of dollars.

The ousting of Scott and an Arizona lawmaker Tuesday cap off “a year like no other in the history of this rarely-used election device,” Gilbert writes.

FIVE PAUL SCOTT RECALL MUST-READ STORIES

Paul Scott recalled: The rise and fall of Michigan’s Republican wunderkind

Full coverage of Paul Scott recall; first Michigan lawmaker recalled in 28 years

History of a recall: Timeline shows events leading up to Tuesday’s recall election against state Rep. Paul Scott

All eyes turn to Michigan’s 51st District as Paul Scott recall campaign enters final days

Special interest groups spend thousands on Rep. Paul Scott recall effort as Supreme Court keeps issue on November ballot

For all of Mlive’s coverage of the recall, .

Also check out the graphs in the link, which show how unprecedented the recall’s use has become.

Another interesting piece of data from the Recall Elections Blog, which tracks recall activity around the country: Scott is the 17th state lawmaker in U.S. history to lose a recall vote.

The IRS is seeking to improve paid tax preparer training for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). To pursue this goal, the IRS has expanded the EITC compliance program.

One of the measures undertaken by the IRS is targeting returns of any federally authorized tax professional with a consistent record of EITC errors. The objective is identification of the cause for errors. Possible reasons for inaccurate EITC claims are lack of knowledge about qualifications for the credit or intentional disregard for accuracy.

In order to reduce EITC problems, the IRS will identify whether mistakes continue for tax return preparers with previously high error rates. Potential IRS responses range from mandating extra tax preparation education to barring a tax practitioner from the industry.

Any individual working in registered tax return preparer employment with EITC claims will encounter IRS scrutiny. Both new and experienced tax professionals with questionable EITC claims can expect contact from the IRS, either in writing or with personal visits. In some cases, a tax preparer professional may undergo an IRS audit of EITC due diligence compliance.

To avoid EITC errors, a formal registered tax return preparer study course is essential because it thoroughly covers all aspects of tax preparation. In addition, the IRS offers online tax training specifically addressing EITC tax rules.

The Return Preparer Toolkit section of the IRS website describes common EITC errors in order for tax preparers to improve due diligence procedures. Many specific situations are covered in the Frequently Asked Questions section.

More education about the EITC is available from online tax school courses. Every tax practitioner benefits from this refresh of information. These courses also count toward hours needed for RTRP continuing education requirements.

The IRS estimates that between 24 and 29 percent of all EITC claims have errors costing the government approximately $13 billion to $16 billion each year. Although some mistakes are caused by inaccurate interpretation of the law, most errors are believed to originate because tax return preparers accepted fraudulent information from taxpayers or made incorrect assumptions.

According to IRS evaluations, about 60 percent of EITC errors fall into these three categories, which now demand extra attention from every tax practitioner: (1) incorrectly claiming a qualifying child, (2) married individuals filing as single or head of household, and (3) maximizing the credit with inaccurate reporting of business income or expenses.

IRS Circular 230 Disclosure

Pursuant to the requirements of the Internal Revenue Service Circular 230, we inform you that, to the extent any advice relating to a Federal tax issue is contained in this communication, including in any attachments, it was not written or intended to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of (a) avoiding any tax related penalties that may be imposed on you or any other person under the Internal Revenue Code, or (b) promoting, marketing or recommending to another person any transaction or matter addressed in this communication.