WAVE-TV

Emergency crews attend to those injured in a school bus crash Tuesday, June 11, in Louisville, Ky.

At least 35 people were injured Tuesday when a school bus crashed on a highway in Louisville, Ky., witnesses and authorities said. 

Most of the injuries appeared to be minor, Kristen Miller, chief of staff of the Louisville Metro Emergency Management System, told the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Thirty-one students and four adults, including the bus driver, were taken to hospitals for treatment, authorities said.

Louisville police said the cause hadn't been determined, but a truck driver who saw the crash, which occurred about 2:38 p.m. ET, told NBC station WAVE of Louisville that the driver lost control when the bus' left front tire blew out.

The bus then hit the center median wall on Interstate 64 near the Jefferson-Shelby county line and traveled a short distance before coming to rest, the witness said.

Seventy-three students from Waggener High School in St. Matthews were on two commercial buses returning from an early visit to a college campus, a spokesman for the Jefferson County schools told WAVE. The bus that crashed was carrying 42 students, he said.

Lettering on the bus indicates it belongs to Commonwealth Bus Service of Louisville. An NBC News search of National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration records shows no history of federal accident reports involving the company.

Watch the top videos on NBCNews.com

This story was originally published on Tue Jun 11, 2013 5:18 PM EDT

Jim Mone / AP

Rescue personnel gather near an entrance to Lilydale Regional Park above the Mississippi River during a suspension of search efforts to find a fourth child missing after a landslide swept over a group of children on a fourth grade field trip Wednesday, May 22, 2013, in St. Paul, Minn.

Authorities recovered the body of a Minnesota child who went missing after a gravel slide swept several members of an elementary school class on a school fossil-hunting trip into a pit, bringing the death toll in the incident to two.

Crews recovered the boy’s body on Thursday after bad weather briefly let up, St. Paul Assistant Fire Chief Jim Smith said, according to NBC News affiliate KARE.

The boy’s family had been notified, Smith said.

The fourth-graders from a St. Louis Park elementary school were hiking in Lilydale Regional Park on Wednesday when a steep slope soaked by rain gave way, authorities have said. Two trapped children were dug out by firefighters who clawed away gravel with their hands and shovels, they said.

“It appears they were walking along and the ground, after the rain we’ve had, was so soft and it gave way and they fell into what became a hole and the earth came on top of them,” St. Paul Fire Marshal Steve Zaccard said at a news conference, according to KARE.

Scott Takushi / AP

An emergency worker attends to a person on a stretcher, being evacuated out of a rockslide site by helicopter, on the West Side of St. Paul, Wednesday, May 22, 2013.

One of the children pulled from the pit later died, and has not yet been identified by authorities. One child injured in the slide has been released from the hospital and another remains in serious condition, officials said on Thursday.

“The slide had fallen down on top of them," Zaccard said. “One was partially buried, one was completely buried.”

The search for the missing student was suspended overnight as rescuers battled worsening conditions.

“Water is flowing right into the hole making it extremely dangerous for rescuers to work anymore,” Zaccard said. “We are working with our partners in Parks and Public Works to make the scene safe for what’s become a recovery effort for what might be a fourth victim.”

A man who identified himself as the missing child’s uncle said the student “liked geology,” according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

“Thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the children and to our first responders who continue to deal with the situation as it develops,” said St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman.

Classes went on at Peter Hobart Elementary, where the students were from, on Thursday, district officials told KARE

“This is an incredibly sad time for our schools and our entire school community. Our hearts go out to the families, friends, and everyone touched by today’s accident,” St. Louis Park Public Schools Superintendent Debra Bowers said in a statement. “We, like everyone else, want to understand how this tragedy occurred, but today we ask for your continued thoughts and prayers for everyone involved.”

Antonia Candelaria, 9-years-old

A  nine-year-old girl killed by the Oklahoma tornado was mourned at a memorial service Thursday, with her family taking comfort in the belief that she was with her best friend when she died.

Antonia Candelaria is one of seven children who perished at the Plaza Towers elementary school in Moore, Okla. Her closest friend, fellow third-grader Emily Conatzer, was with her — a source of solace for her parents.

'I know Tonia and Emily were together and holding hands and taking care of each other," Antonia's mother said after learning of her daughter's death, according to Moore Schools Superintendent Susan Pierce.

Antonia's funeral was the first of three to be held in the next two days for children who died in Monday's storm, which claimed a total of 24 lives and damaged or destroyed 13,000 homes in the Oklahoma City suburb.

“She was a beautiful young lady on the inside and out,” said an obituary for Antonia published in The Oklahoman newspaper. “She had her own most special and beautiful way of looking at the world. She could find the positive, good and joy in everything.”

Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains

Tannen Maury / EPA

A monster tornado hit Moore, Okla., Monday afternoon, leaving at least 24 dead.

Launch slideshow

Nicknamed "Ladybug," she was “specially gifted in art as well as music” and “loved to draw, paint, color and make crafts,” the obituary said.

“We will miss our precious little Ladybug everyday but will rejoice for the day we will be reunited with her again someday," it added.

Authorities said Thursday they believe everyone who was missing after the twister has been tracked down and the death toll will stand at 24, including 10 children.

The victims include a mother who sought shelter in a 7-Eleven that collapsed, killing both her and her four-month-old son, and two sisters who were torn from their mother as she huddled with them in a bathtub.

Laurinda Vargyas, 30, told the Oklahoman that she was flopped around and when she landed, 4-year-old Karrina and 7-month-old Sydnee were gone.

She found the baby in a driveway, "just laying there helpless."

"All I could do was sit there and hold her. She was already gone. They say she didn't suffer. So I've got to find peace with that,” she told the newspaper.

Karrina's body was found later in the rubble of a neighbor's house. Varygas and her husband have two older children who were not harmed.

Beyond the human cost, the damage from Monday’s EF-5 tornado could top $2 billion, officials said late Wednesday as the focus shifted to huge task of clearing mile upon mile of of debris.

Moore Mayor Glenn Lewis said Wednesday he would propose an ordinance in the next couple of days to require all new homes to have storm shelters.

NBC News' Tracy Connor and Kate Snow contributed to this report.

Related content:

• 'She was always happy': Families grieve tornado victim
• The latest on the aftermath of the Oklahoma tornado
• Tornado victim separated from spouse: 'The house totally disappeared'

This story was originally published on Thu May 23, 2013 4:43 AM EDT

Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains

Destroyed vehicles lie in the rubble outside the Plaza Towers Elementary school in Moore, Okla., on Tuesday.

Launch slideshow

As evening drew to a close in Oklahoma, after a day of tireless searching for survivors among the debris left behind by a powerful tornado, officials said the operation could end by nightfall Tuesday.

"We will be through every damaged piece of property in this city at least three times before we're done and we hope to be done by dark tonight," Moore Fire Chief Gary Bird said at a news conference.

Emergency crews and National Guard troops picked through neighborhoods without recognizable streets in a grim, house-by-house search of the blasted-out husk of a city left behind by the ferocious tornado.

Authorities lowered the death toll to 24, less than half the figure they gave in the initial chaos after the twister, but there was still no full accounting of those missing. Nine of the confirmed dead were children, including seven in a flattened elementary school.

Four bodies were recovered, including a 3-month-old baby, at a local 7-Eleven.

Working with search dogs and under menacing skies, the crews meticulously combed the rubble in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, which took a direct hit when the tornado cut a 17-mile path of destruction on Monday afternoon.

Dozens of people were pulled from the wreckage in the initial hours after the storm, but there were no reports of additional survivors found Tuesday — only scraps of wood, shreds of clothing, shards of glass and metal and cars crumpled into each other and into buildings. Entire stretches of Moore looked as if they had been put through a blender.

“I mean, there’s nothing,” said Robert Foster, whose family home was destroyed. “People are walking up and down the streets. It’s really upsetting to look at. We grew up there. That’s our whole childhood. And it’s all flattened now.”

Gov. Mary Fallin said there were 237 injured, but authorities cautioned that figure and the death toll could still rise. Even with the benefit of a full day’s light, people were only beginning to grasp the scope of the destruction in Moore and parts of Oklahoma City.

The Oklahoma University Medical Center admitted 59 children and 34 adults.

The National Weather Service said survey crews had found at least one area of Category EF5 damage — the highest classification for tornadoes, meaning winds had exceeded 200 mph.

Frank Keating, a former Oklahoma governor, said on MSNBC that as many as 20,000 families could be displaced.

“This was the storm of storms,” Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett said.

The first of the victims was publicly identified — Ja’Nae Hornsby, a third-grader who was killed when the tornado demolished Plaza Towers Elementary School. She was remembered by her family Tuesday as full of joy and fond of playing dress-up. Her relatives gathered at a Baptist church in Oklahoma City to console each other.

A second victim, Hemant Bhonde, 65, became separated from his wife when the tornado struck their home, his family told NBC News. Bhonde's body was recovered Tuesday, hospital officials said. His wife survived.

Tannen Maury / EPA

Firefighters examine the rubble of a home in a destroyed neighborhood in Moore.

As they took the measure of what they had lost, people in Moore also marveled that they were alive, and began to share stories of survival and of how they protected each other when the twister struck, announcing itself with roaring wind.

Children from Plaza Towers Elementary School, where seven children were reported drowned in a pool of water, told of hearing sirens and running into a hall for cover, some still carrying their math books.

A teacher, Rhonda Crosswhite, said she huddled with students in a bathroom stall and draped herself over them for cover as the storm hit.

“One of my little boys, he just kept saying, ‘I love you, I love you, please don’t die with me, please don’t die with me,’” she told TODAY. “But we’re OK. And we made it out, and it finally stopped.”

She said all her students were accounted for.

Damian Britton, a fourth-grader, credited “Miss Crosswhite” with saving his life. He estimated it took about five minutes for the twister to pass through before the students emerged from cover to survey the damage and check on their classmates.

“It was just a disaster,’’ he said. “There was just a bunch of stuff thrown around and the cars were tipped over, and it smelled like gas.”

At an afternoon news conference, Bird said that search dogs were no longer “making any hits” at the school. He said no one had been found there Tuesday but cautioned that the search was still active.

“They will not declare that structure clear until they are down to the ground and have been through every piece of rubble in that building,” he said.

One child was killed at Briarwood Elementary School, elsewhere in Moore, said police Sgt. Jeremy Lewis. There was no word on how the ninth child died. Besides the 19 deaths in Moore, five were killed in southern neighborhoods of Oklahoma City.

Charlie Riedel / AP

Zac Woodcock salvages items from the rubble of a tornado-ravaged rental home in Moore.

Authorities said they hoped to have every home, business and car in Moore searched by nightfall. They worked under the threat of still more severe weather. Forecasters said parts of Oklahoma and Texas, including Dallas, were at risk for more tornadoes.

The tornado Monday spent 40 minutes on the ground, said Rick Smith of the National Weather Service.

“We’ve seen numerous structures that are wiped clean to the foundation,” he said.

Smith said that the first severe thunderstorm warning had gone out 44 minutes before the tornado touched down, and the first tornado warning 16 minutes ahead. The weather service said the storm, at its widest, stretched 1.3 miles.

President Barack Obama called it “one of the most destructive tornadoes in history.” Speaking from the White House, he pledged the full help of the federal government and said there was no time to waste.

“In an instant, neighborhoods were destroyed, dozens of people lost their lives, many more were injured, and among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew, their school,” he said. “So our prayers are with the people of Oklahoma today.”

Fallin, after a helicopter tour that traced the tornado’s path, said searchers were having trouble because “the streets are just gone. The signs are just gone.”

Expressions of grief and support came from across the world. Pope Francis said on Twitter: “I am close to the families of all who died in the Oklahoma tornado, especially those who lost young children. Join me in praying for them.”

Queen Elizabeth II extended her deepest sympathies, and House Speaker John Boehner ordered flags at the Capitol to half-staff.

Relief efforts sprang up. The NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder and its star player, Kevin Durant, each pledged $1 million. Others helped as they could: Miles from Moore, people went on Facebook to post family photos that had landed in their yards, hoping to match them with their owners.

Aerial pictures of the destruction brought to mind Joplin, the Missouri town virtually wiped off the map two years ago when an EF5 tornado killed 158 people and caused $2.8 billion in damage.

The twister cut a path similar to a tornado outbreak that ravaged Oklahoma and Kansas on May 3, 1999, killing 46 people and damaging or destroying more than 8,000 homes. Wind in that outbreak was clocked at 318 mph, the fastest ever recorded on earth.

Officials in Moore complained earlier this year about foot-dragging by the federal government over $2 million in federal grants for “safe rooms” in 800 homes to protect them from severe weather.

A spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency told NBC News the agency was looking into the claim.

The city’s website also said, however, that Moore faced only a 1 to 2 percent chance of a tornado on any spring day, and that if a tornado did strike, there was less than a 1 percent chance that it would be as strong as the 1999 tornado.

Monday’s storm beat those odds. Alfredo Corrales and Viviana Lune rode it out in a shelter beneath their house. Corrales told TODAY that they had hunkered down there and heard voices above, and popped open the door to find several neighbors asking to come in.

The wind was so strong, Corrales said, that he and a neighbor had to hold the cellar door shut. When they emerged, they found a rewritten landscape.

“I saw basically nothing,” Luna said. “There were no fences there anymore, trees were snapped in half, roofs of houses were gone. Everything from people’s houses and even from neighborhoods across the street was laying in our yards. Half of the roof is torn off, the garage is caved in — it's just a total mess.”

More on the Oklahoma tornado:

How to help Oklahoma tornado victims

Tornado survivors: A 48-hour window of opportunity

‘The school started coming apart’: Trapped students had nowhere to hide

‘Bless you for posting’: Facebook group reunites tornado victims with photos, documents

Curse or coincidence? Scientists study Tornado Alley's past and future

NBC News' Jeff Black, Tracy Connor, Becky Bratu and Kristen Welker contributed to this report, as did NBC News contributor Alex Hannaford and The Associated Press.

This story was originally published on Tue May 21, 2013 8:55 PM EDT

Sue Ogrocki / AP

A child calls to his father after being pulled from the rubble of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., on Monday.

When the sirens began blaring and teachers at Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., heard that a monstrous tornado was roaring toward their 57-year-old school and its youngest students, there was nowhere to hide.

They crouched in hallways and bathrooms, waiting, hoping and praying. Then "the school started coming apart," one neighbor who sought shelter at the school told the Associated Press. A teacher told NBC station KFOR that she draped herself on top of six children in a bathroom to shelter them.

The massive twister scored a direct hit at 3 p.m. (4 p.m. ET), tearing off the roof of the mostly one-story public school, a cinder-block building that had no chance of withstanding shrieking winds that may have topped 200 mph -- the powerful outer edge of what the National Weather Service said was at least an EF4 tornado, the second-most-powerful rating.

By Tuesday morning, the death toll at the school stood at seven. Officials said the children drowned in a pool of water at the decimated school. Rescuers were continuing to dig through the school’s rubble, from which several children were pulled out alive Monday evening.

It's unclear if any other children were killed or trapped alive.

Hysterical parents who had converged on the sprawling pile of broken concrete and twisted metal were later taken to a church to await word on the fate of their youngsters.

The two-mile-wide tornado wiped out entire city blocks of Moore, the hardest-hit Oklahoma City suburb, killing at least 24 people, the state medical examiner office confirmed. Many of the dead are children.

Exactly what transpired at Plaza Towers in the minutes before the tornado unleashed its destructive power has yet to be described. School officials evacuated fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders to a church about a quarter-mile away before it touched down, but the younger students – kindergartners through third graders – remained at the 440-student school, according to KFOR in Oklahoma City. It was not immediately known why school officials divided the students.

Bing (top) | AP (bottom)

Before and after aerial photos of Plaza Towers Elementary School.

But Mayer Nudell, a security and safety consultant, did not fault the decision to ride out the storm at the school.

“For something like a tornado, it’s fairly academic,” he said of the options that school officials would have had once the sirens began. “You don’t go out, and you don’t have much warning.”

Despite the carnage at the school, “shelter in place” has emerged as a staple of disaster planning and the strategy of choice for a range of emergencies, including tornadoes. And studies show it has a good track record of saving lives.

On May 3, 1999, for example, when another monster tornado roared through Moore, some 300 students and their parents were attending an awards ceremony in the West Moore High School auditorium. Though the twister badly damaged the school and tossed 150 cars in the parking lot like tinker-toys, those who hunkered down in the school’s hallways suffered only a few superficial injuries.

But there are experts who say that having a large number of people crowded into a big building is a bad idea when maximum-force tornadoes are sweeping through an area.

Chief among them is Joe R. Eagleman, a professor emeritus of the University of Kansas and author of “Severe and Unusual Weather,” a meteorology standard since it was first published in 1983.

He agrees that there was likely insufficient time between the first warning and the time the tornado hit the school, constructed in 1966, for Plaza Towers administrators to consider sending students home. “If time is short, being caught out in the open is not good,” he said.

But he said dispersing the students to their homes would have improved their odds.

“If there is sufficient warning time, the homes would be typically safer because they are smaller buildings and offer more opportunity to get in a downwind corner of the likely approach,” he said.

Eagleman is widely credited with debunking what was the prevailing school of thought on tornadoes for much of the last century: that the safest spot to take shelter is the southwest corner of a building. The reasoning behind the fallacy was that, since most U.S. tornadoes travel from west-southwest to the east-northeast, a twister would hurl debris into the northeast corner of whatever building it hit, likely taking out anyone cowering there.

But Eagleman conducted an extensive study after an EF5 tornado hit Topeka, Kan., in 1966, and found that the southwest corner – the direction from which a tornado was most likely to approach – was in fact the most dangerous area to hide.

“It used to be a rule that the southwest corner was the safest, no questions asked, but it was not based on any data,” he said.

Once Plaza Towers officials made the decision to have the students and teachers shelter in place, the school’s disaster plan would have kicked in. The staff and student body would likely have been well-coached, given the school’s location in “Tornado Alley” and Moore’s history of destructive tornadoes, though Eagleman noted that “it varies all over the place as to what the planning has been for severe storms.”

In any case, students would have been moved into a hallway or small room away from the southwest corner of the building and any windows and instructed to either sit or crouch.

“You want a place that is structurally secure, without windows, so you don’t have to worry about flying glass,” said Nudell, who also is an adjunct professor of security management at Webster University in Webster Groves, Mo., and co-author of “The Handbook for Effective Emergency and Crisis Management.”

Both men said the school’s construction would have been important to its ability to withstand a powerful twister.

“The buildings that are made of reinforced concrete are typically very sturdy,” Eagleman said. “Those made with concrete blocks are not.”

But given the destruction visible after the tornado swept through Moore, it’s possible that no building would have withstood the intense pressure that the tornado brought to bear on the building, Nudell said.

Nudell also cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the emergency planning or safety of the school.

“When you get a tornado like the one that it sounds like hit Oklahoma, sometimes all the preparation and planning in the world doesn’t help you,” he said.

NBC News' Erin McClam and Tracy Connor contributed to this report.

Related stories: 

• Monster tornado tears through Oklahoma
• Six of the worst tornadoes in US history
• Full coverage of Oklahoma tornadoes from NBC News

Glenn Hartong / Cincinnati Enquirer via AP

Parents and other family members cross under a police line to check on their children, on April 29, at LaSalle High School in Cincinnati, where a high school student pulled out a gun and shot himself in a classroom on Monday.

An Ohio student was in critical condition after shooting himself in an apparent suicide attempt that took place during a class Monday at an all-male Catholic high school in Cincinnati, police said.

The student, whose name has not been released at the request of the parents, pulled out a semi-automatic handgun shortly after 9 a.m. on Monday during an honors-level leadership class at La Salle High School, according to authorities.  

Then, in the same room as 22 other students, he tried to end his life, police said.

The school was immediately placed on lock down and no other students were injured.

The youth was taken to a nearby hospital where the student is "fighting for his life," Greg Tankersley, La Salle's director of community development, told reporters.

Tankersley said the teen is an honors student who has completed more than 80 hours of community service and is working to become an Eagle Scout. 

Following the incident, the family released a statement:  “We thank all of you for your thoughts and prayers. We ask that the media please respect our privacy at this time so we can do what we need to do for our son and our family. We also ask that friends of our son and family please refrain from Facebook and Twitter comments. We appreciate the heroic efforts of UC Medical Center staff as they care for our son.”

Authorities have thus far not commented on how the student brought the gun into a classroom. Late Monday police swept the school with K-9 units as a precaution.

Distressed 911 calls from students reveal the chaos and panic that ensued following the single gun shot. Many in the room were unaware at the time that it was a suicide attempt and thought it could be an active shooter.

"We're at La Salle High School and there is a guy with a gun," one student frantically told the Hamilton County 911 dispatcher.
Groups of students huddled together throughout the high school as authorities arrived. 

School officials praised Green Township Police and the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office for quickly responding and securing the scene. After the scene was deemed secure, students who had gathered in the gym were allowed to leave with parents. Counselors were also on hand to speak with the kids.

Classes will resume Tuesday with an all-school prayer service at LaSalle, officials said.

"We think it's important to have our young men back in the building so we can talk about it with them and help them deal with this situation," said Tankersley.

Mike Austreng / Cold Spring Record via AP

Cold Spring Police Chief Phil Jones, left, and Rocori School District Superintendent Scott Staska hold bulletproof white boards in Cold Spring, Minn., on April 22. Rocori schools are among the first in the nation to acquire the kevlar whiteboards which can be flipped quickly to provide some protection for teachers and students in the event of a shooting.

COLD SPRING, Minn. — A Minnesota school district where two students were killed in a 2003 shooting unveiled a new device Tuesday aimed at adding a last-ditch layer of safety for teachers and students: bulletproof whiteboards.

The Rocori School District has acquired nearly 200 of the whiteboards, made of a material touted by its manufacturer as stronger than that in police-issue bulletproof vests. The 18-by-20-inch whiteboards can be used by teachers for instruction and used as a shield in an emergency.

Police Chief Phil Jones demonstrated the whiteboards Tuesday in a school gym by leveling a karate kick at one, whacking it with a police baton and stabbing it with a knife — all with no apparent effect.

Jones didn't fire his gun at the whiteboard, saying it would have been unsafe and inappropriate at the school. But he said he'd tested it earlier by firing several rounds at it.

"We put this board to the test, and quite frankly, that was the day I became a believer," Jones said.

The manufacturer, Maryland-based Hardwire LLC, has been working on armor protection devices for military vehicles and personnel for years. The company turned its attention to school security after the Connecticut elementary school shootings in December that killed 20 children and six educators.

Company officials said the whiteboards are already in schools in North Dakota and Maryland, and are being rolled out in Pennsylvania and California. Jones said Rocori schools are the first to use them in Minnesota.

At least one security expert questioned whether the boards would be effective. Bill Nesbitt, president of school security consulting firm Security Management Services International, wasn't familiar with the whiteboards but said his initial reaction was that they may provide a false sense of security. The prudent thing to do would be to retreat from danger rather than hide behind a whiteboard, he said.

Jones and Scott Staska, the Rocori superintendent, noted that the boards are a supplement to a broad plan that includes lockdown drills and school resource officers.

In 2003, a 15-year-old boy brought a gun to Rocori High School and fatally shot 14-year-old Seth Bartell and 17-year-old Aaron Rollins. The gunman, who is serving a life sentence, was convinced by a teacher to put the gun down.Rollins' father, Tom Rollins, said he doesn't believe the whiteboards would have saved Aaron or Seth. But he said it's a good idea, adding that if the teen gunman had decided to keep shooting, such a board may have helped other students.

"He still had seven more shells in his gun, so who knows what would've happened," Rollins said.

A Virginia judge convicted a high school student accused in a sex-tape scandal on Thursday.

The teen was accused of recording girls while he and his friends had sex with them.

Two other boys already pleaded guilty to unlawful filming, but attorneys for the third boy fought the charges.

He and his two best friends allegedly recorded several sex tapes with girls their age. The defense argued the case is about expectations of privacy, claiming the girls caught on camera knew there was a chance they could be recorded.

One of the explicit videos was recorded in an elementary school parking lot, and the 17-year-old girl involved took the stand. She was asked if she knew a camera was present. She broke down crying as she explained that she made it clear she did not want to be recorded.

More news from NBCWashington.com

Another girl testified that in a separate incident she chased a boy with an iPhone into a bathroom, and the boy tried to convince her he hadn’t been recording.

The two teens who pleaded guilty also took the stand against their friend, who is a student at West Springfield High School in Springfield, Va.

The Fairfax County judge convicted the boy of two felony counts of unlawful filming, but acquitted him of distribution of child pornography and another charge.

The Indiana Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously upheld the nation's broadest school voucher program, which gives poor and middle-class families public funds to help pay private school tuition.

Opponents, including the state teachers' union, had sued to block the program on grounds that nearly all the voucher money has been directed to religious schools.

Voucher systems have drawn criticism across the United States from critics who say they drain money from public schools and subsidize overtly religious education. Supporters say they offer families greater choice on where to educate their children.

In a 5-0 vote, the Indiana justices said that it did not matter that funds had been directed to religious schools, so long as parents - and not the state - decide where to use the tuition vouchers.

"Whether the Indiana program is wise educational or public policy is not a consideration," Chief Justice Brent Dickson wrote. The program is constitutional, he wrote, because the public funds "do not directly benefit religious schools but rather directly benefit lower-income families with school children."

The U.S. Supreme Court used similar reasoning in a 2002 ruling upholding a voucher program in Cleveland. Since then, voucher programs have been challenged in state, rather than federal, court. But opponents have found it an uphill climb.

Just last month, a state appeals court in Colorado upheld a voucher program that helped parents in one of the wealthiest U.S. counties pay private school tuition. The case is on appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court. Another closely-watched voucher case is pending in the Louisiana Supreme Court; a ruling is expected soon.

The Indiana voucher program is considered the broadest in the United States because it is not limited to low-income students or those attending failing schools - and because it is available to children statewide. A family of four with a household income of $64,000 a year is eligible for vouchers worth up to $4,500 per child.

Though more than half a million students in Indiana are eligible for the vouchers, just 9,000 enrolled this school year. Most are from urban communities with struggling public schools, but a sizeable slice live in rural and suburban neighborhoods as well.

Republican Governor Mike Pence has pushed to expand the program by opening eligibility to special-needs students and children in military families if their household income is as high as $85,000 for a family of four.

The Indiana legislature is also considering a bill that would give vouchers to kindergarten students who meet the income guidelines. The program currently requires students to spend a full year in public schools before they are eligible for a voucher.

Nationwide, vouchers are used by more than 100,000 students in a dozen states, including Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Wisconsin. Several other states use tax credits or education savings accounts to help families pay private school tuition.

Public school advocates have complained that the vouchers subsidize parochial schools that use an explicitly faith-based curriculum.

"Just because the Indiana Supreme Court said it's OK by our constitution doesn't mean this is a good idea," said Teresa Meredith, vice president of the Indiana State Teachers Association and a plaintiff in the case. "I don't believe it's a wise use of public money. It's still, at the end of the day, funding religious instruction" with tax dollars.

Supporters of the voucher program predicted that the ruling would clear the way for a rapid expansion of vouchers in Indiana and nationwide.

"Kids and parents won today," said Robert Enlow, president of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, which supports voucher programs nationally. "Other states should look at this victory and see that the education establishment's ability to obstruct families' freedom to choose is waning."

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles Unified School District has agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement with 58 current and former students at a school where an ex-teacher was accused of taking bondage-style photos of pupils, a lawyer for the district said on Tuesday.

The settlement would resolve nearly half of the 129 claims filed by former students of Miramonte Elementary School, attorney David Holmquist said.

Holmquist, who represents the school district, declined to disclose the amount of the settlement, which must be approved by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, but said it totaled millions of dollars.

"When we set up this early resolution process back last summer, the goals were to promote healing in the community and provide for the emotional health needs of the students into the future," Holmquist said. "It's in everybody's best interest, but primarily the students'."

The Los Angeles Times reported on its website that the district would pay a total of $30 million to settle the claims, with each student receiving about $470,000.

Allegations of abuse at Miramonte last year touched off protests by infuriated parents and prompted Los Angeles County school officials to temporarily replace the entire staff at Miramonte during an exhaustive investigation.

Mark Berndt, the first of two former Miramonte teachers accused of molesting students there, made headlines when he was charged in January 2012 with 23 counts of lewd acts on children, all aged 10 and younger.

Berndt is accused of taking bondage-style photos of students, some with large, live "Madagascar-type cockroaches" on their faces. In others, students were seen with spoons of semen held to their faces, according to authorities. He has pleaded not guilty.

The investigation began after a company that does photo processing turned over pictures to detectives. Authorities said a search turned up hundreds more photos.

Berndt, who taught at Miramonte for more than 30 years, was fired by the school district in early 2011, shortly after the investigation began. He could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted.

In February 2012, then-Miramonte teacher Martin Springer was charged with three counts of lewd acts on a child. Springer also pleaded not guilty.

Holmquist said dozens of claims filed by parents or guardians were not part of the settlement agreement, but that the district was seeking to resolve the remaining cases.

A Pennsylvania high school senior faces assault charges after he allegedly broke a school nurse’s hip while in a drunken rage.

Since Wednesday was an exam day, seniors were allowed to arrive late at Pennsville Memorial High School, Salem County.

Pennsville Township Police told NBC10’s Chris Cato that the 17-year-old and his friend Manpreet Singh, 18, used the opportunity to get drunk.

The 17-year-old, who wasn’t identified because he is a minor, began to act belligerent in class.

"They took him from the classroom and took him to the principal's office," said police Lt. A.J. Cummings.

Sources told Cato that when the boy was confronted with a Breathalyzer test that he went nuts and shoved the principal. He then allegedly burst out the office door, knocking down school nurse Marilyn English.

English, 68, suffered a broken hip and remained in South Jersey Healthcare Elmer Hospital Friday night.

"I'm doing as well as can be expected for the type of injury it is," English said by phone.

She told Cato that the boy never stopped. Police sources said he kept going right out of the building. Police said they later picked him up around 11:20 a.m. but not before he kicked an officer.

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The 17-year-old faces three assault charges, disorderly conduct and alcohol charges while Singh, who police say supplied the alcohol, faces an alcohol charge.

The Pennsville School District had no comment on what discipline both teens could face.

Neither teens' parents wanted to talk to NBC10. The minor’s mother slammed the door on Cato and Singh’s mother had no comment.

As for the school nurse hurt during the teen’s alleged rage, English told Cato that she hoped the action of a couple students didn’t reflect on the majority of students saying this was an "isolated" and "abnormal" incident.