From The Columbus Dispatch: Mount Vernon (Ohio) schools have agreed to settle a federal lawsuit with the family of a boy who says his eighth-grade teacher burned a cross on his arm with a laboratory instrument and taught religious-based theories in the classroom. The district and its insurance carrier have agreed to pay Zachary Dennis and his family $5,502 and their attorneys $115,500. The Dennises sued teacher John Freshwater, whom the district is trying to fire, and the Mount Vernon school board, superintendent and a principal last year. The boy was burned at Mount Vernon Middle School.