ATLANTA – The warden of the Clayton County Correctional Institution wants permission to spend money for a “management tool” – satellite TV to keep his 226 inmates occupied watching football.

Warden Frank Taylor is asking the Clayton County Commission to let him sign up for direct-broadcast satellite service for less than $100 a month. It would be funded with money collected at the prison’s commissary and pay phones, which last year amounted to $41,000.

“The reason is ‘Monday Night Football’ is now on cable,” he said. “Although it might seem funny, when you have 90 percent of inmates watching something, it is a management tool for the institution.”

He said, inmates only get two TV channels, often with poor reception.Taylor asserted that every state prison already has cable or satellite television, but the Georgia Department of Corrections says that isn’t so.

“Our televisions have antennas,” said department spokeswoman Tracy Smith.

Teacher on YouTube doing cheerleader routine resigns

MESA, Ariz. – A high school teacher captured in a YouTube clip performing a cheerleading routine in front of her class has resigned.

English teacher and cheerleading coach Cristina Mallon “has elected to resign” from the Higley Unified School District, district spokeswoman Sara Bresnahan said Tuesday.

Last month, the district placed Mallon on paid administrative “as a standard district procedure” after the video surfaced. In it, she is seen performing a seemingly harmless cheer with pompoms inside a classroom as students hoot and cheer.

An edited version of her performance runs on YouTube. It made it all the way to network television, airing on NBC’s “Today” show.

Mallon returned from her suspension a few weeks later. She was again in the spotlight after a student’s father complained about a book she assigned, “Jake Reinvented.”

From Associated Press reports