Category: Education & Schools

While tragic, school shootings aren’t as common as claimed

In the wake of the Robb Elementary School mass shooting, many are claiming that school shootings in the U.S. are widespread. Two organizations refute this claim, arguing they are exceedingly rare.

“School shootings are so rare that in the United States in 2021 there was one school-shooting death for every twenty-three million Americans,” Ryan McMaken at the Mises Institute reports. “By comparison, approximately one in 350,000 Americans drown each year.”

McMaken, editor at Mises Wire, says, “Our children are far, far more likely to be killed in an automobile accident than in a school shooting,” but “no one in Washington is talking about highway deaths.

“School shootings are a tiny subset of homicides which are themselves not exactly a leading cause of death in the United States,” he added.

In 2019, there were roughly 16,700 homicides in the U.S., a rate of five victims per 100,000 people. By comparison, more than 100,000 Americans die of diabetes every year, he notes.

Of the 16,700 homicides in 2019, 17 were victims of shootings at K–12 schools, or 0.1 percent of all homicides. School-shooting deaths also occurred at a rate of 0.005 per 100,000 Americans.

In recent history, the most deadly years for school shootings were in 2018 and 2012. In 2018, there were 39 victims killed at schools, in 2012, 26 were killed.

“The data suggests policy makers should be far more concerned about children dying due to drunk-driving incidents, car accidents in general, suicide, drowning, cancer, or child abuse,” McMaken said.

According to a Crime Prevention Research Center report, “schools that allow teachers to carry guns are extremely safe.” As of 2019, 20 states allow teachers and staff to carry guns to varying degrees on school property.

“There has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a mass public shooting, between 6 a.m. and midnight at a school that lets teachers carry guns,” the report states. “Fears of teachers carrying guns in terms of such problems as students obtaining teachers guns have not occurred at all, and there was only one accidental discharge outside of school hours with no one was really harmed.

“While there have not been any problems at schools with armed teachers, the number of people killed at other schools has increased significantly – doubling between 2001 and 2008 versus 2009 and 2018,” the report points out.

Texas, being one of these states, has a School Marshall Program. The Texas Legislature created the program in 2013 after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. The bill was signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Perry. Initially, it allowed public school districts and open enrollment charter schools to appoint school marshals. In the next two legislative sessions, bills signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott expanded to include public two-year junior colleges and private schools in the list of institutions that can appoint school marshals.

“The sole purpose of a School Marshal is to prevent the act of murder or serious bodily injury on school premises, and act only as defined by the written regulations adopted by the School Board/Governing Body,” according to the Texas Commission of Law Enforcement.

Bosque County Sheriff Trace Hendricks has already called for schools to begin the process to implementing the program in his county. He is also offering assistance to help them do so.

“It is time to take aggressive and deliberate steps toward the enhancement of our security measures in order to better protect the lives our students and faculty,” he said in an open letter he published and sent to the heads of the school districts and school boards. “We must insure that our schools and the lives of our loved ones are as safe and secure as possible and that none are designated as a ‘soft target.’”

Hero Border Patrol Agent: Allow Teachers to Carry Guns for Classroom Defense

Jacob Albarado, the off-duty Border Patrol agent who rushed into Robb Elementary School during Tuesday’s attack to save his daughter, says teachers should be trained and armed for classroom defense.

Breitbart News reported that Albarado borrowed a shotgun from a local barber where he was about to get a haircut when he learned of the attack and charged into the school to save his daughter.

He found her alive and helped her and numerous other children get out of the building.

The school did not have an armed guard on duty when the attack occurred, and the gunman entered through an unlocked door.

The New York Post reports that Albarado wrote of his frustration on Facebook after the attack, saying, “I’m so angry, saddened and grateful all at once. Only time will heal their pain and hopefully changes will be made at all schools in the U.S. and teachers will be trained & allowed to carry in order to protect themselves and students.”

The commission that investigated the February 14, 2018, Parkland high school shooting noted that armed teachers could have made a difference in the outcome of that heinous incident.

Breitbart News observed that Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, head of the Parkland commission, said the investigation of the Parkland attack had changed his views on armed teachers — he went from opposing the idea to supporting it. He noted, “People need to keep an open mind to it, as the reality is that if someone else in that school had a gun it could have saved kids’ lives.”

Written after the Parkland School shooting, but still applicable today

Israel Has Only Had 2 School Attacks in 44 Years, Here’s How They Make Sure Their Kids Are Safe

In the wake of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting that claimed 17 lives last week, there has been a renewed debate surrounding gun control and children’s safety, leading some to make a comparison to the changes Israel made in response to a terror attack more than four decades ago.

In 1974, Palestinian terrorists took over the Netiv Meir Elementary School in what has been called the “Ma’alot Massacre,” which left 22 children dead and many others injured.

The attack forced Israel to come up with a solution in order to prevent such a situation from ever happening again. The nation requires its schools to have a security system, and that policy is still going strong after 40 years.

The results are clearly evident, as there have only been two successful attacks at Israeli schools since 1974, according to Dr. Ted Noel, writing in American Thinker. Noel wrote that “in both cases, the bad guys were killed by armed teachers.”

According to Red State, Israel’s Ministry of Education funds school security, which ranges from shelters and fences to armed and trained guards at every gate.

To take it a step further, Israel also prepares its students and teachers for the slight chance a gunman does get through security by teaching them to be proactive in times of terror by barricading a door or sensing the ripe opportunity to get away safely.

The guards on the doorsteps of Israel’s schools are also trained to look for any suspicious activity, which usually deters anyone with ill intent from entering in the first place.

That added layer of protection, argues Noel, is a proactive step in shielding children from the gunman. Once the shooters are past school gates, the damage is irreversible and quick to happen since any and all faculty and students immediately become targets.

“The Israelis saw this and got busy,” Noel wrote. “They knew that the vast majority of terror attacks are stopped not by police, but by armed civilians.”

“So they started training teachers in firearms use,” he added. “Those teachers took out the bad guys in the two incidents since the Ma’alot Massacre.”

Noel wrote that once a shooter is no longer in a “free fire zone,” the situation — and the possible outcome — is likely to change, as he becomes a potential target.

“On top of that, he doesn’t know which of the staff might be ready to shoot, or where they might be coming from,” Noel said. “In short, only an idiot would try to shoot up a school with a trained staff of shooters.”

This sentiment was echoed by CNN‘s Steve Cortes, who suggested that guns may not be the problem in the U.S. as much as America’s lack of security when it comes to its children. Cortes compared Wednesday’s shooting not just with Israel, but a disaster that didn’t involve any bullets whatsoever.

“Since the awful Our Lady of the Angels elementary school fire of 1958, which killed 92 students and 3 nuns, there has not been a large casualty school fire in America,” Cortes wrote. “Why? Because we took myriad precautions since then: better fire exits, more extinguishers and sprinklers, routine fire drills, etc.”

“Water squelches a fire,” he added. “And only a gunman, I would argue, can stop another gunman.”

The recent conversation around gun control suggests that an added layer of protection would not only improve school security but also prevent the government from infringing on the Second Amendment, as well as prove that guns aren’t necessarily the problem — people are.

Cortes added to this idea when he argued that stricter gun control laws have failed the world, as seen in the 2015 Paris Bataclan nightclub attack and numerous other incidents, as those who wish harm upon others will always find a way to do so.

“Evildoers, by definition, do not respect our rules and will find ways to skirt them,” Cortes added, suggesting the only sure-fire way to combat these horrific acts is to improve school security and put America’s children first.

“Let’s value our children like the treasure they are and guard them accordingly,” he said. “How? Let’s start with key cards, fences, entry checks, biometric scanners, and — yes — armed guards, and a lot of them.”

Flashback 30 Years: Guns Were in Schools… and Nothing Happened

This article was originally published in 2018.

The millennial generation might be surprised to learn that theirs is the first without guns in school. Just 30 years ago, high school kids rode the bus with rifles and shot their guns at high school rifle ranges.

After another school shooting, it’s time to ask: what changed?

Cross guns off the list of things that changed in thirty years. In 1985, semi-automatic rifles existed, and a semi-automatic rifle was used in Florida. Guns didn’t suddenly decide to visit mayhem on schools. Guns can’t decide.

We can also cross the Second Amendment off the list. It existed for over 200 years before this wickedness unfolded. Nothing changed in the Constitution.

That leaves us with some uncomfortable possibilities remaining. What has changed from thirty years ago when kids could take firearms into school responsibly and today might involve some difficult truths.

Let’s inventory the possibilities.

What changed? The mainstreaming of nihilism. Cultural decay. Chemicals. The deliberate destruction of moral backstops in the culture. A lost commonality of shared societal pressures to enforce right and wrong. And above all, simple, pure, evil.

Before you retort that we can’t account for the mentally ill, they existed forever.

Paranoid schizophrenics existed in 1888 and 2018. Mentally ill students weren’t showing up in schools with guns even three decades ago.

So it must be something else.

Those who have been so busy destroying the moral backstops in our culture won’t want to have this conversation. They’ll do what they do — mock the truth.

There was a time in America, before the Snowflakes, when any adult on the block could reprimand a neighborhood kid who was out of line without fear.

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Another School Shooting in a Place where teachers and staff were banned from carrying guns

A shooting at a Texas elementary school left [18] children and [2] teacher[s] murdered. While about 30% of school districts in Texas 2020 had armed teachers and staff, unfortunately, the Robb Elementary School in the Uvalde, Texas CISD doesn’t appear to be one of them. Their firearm regulations are detailed here. There are no provisions in their regulations for teachers or staff to carry.

The attack in Buffalo, New York illustrates once again how these murderers are attracted to places where the victims are not armed. In his manifesto, he wrote: “areas where CCW are outlawed or prohibited may be good areas of attack.”

Unfortunately, as we found in our 2019 study, despite 20 states allowing teachers or staff to carry guns, all the school shootings have occurred in schools that don’t allow them to carry. From the abstract of our study.

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Uvalde, Texas school shooting: 14 students, one teacher killed, suspected shooter dead, Gov. Abbott says
Salvador Romas,18, killed multiple children and a teacher at an elementary school in Uvalde, a small city located 80 miles west of San Antonio, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said

A mass shooting at a Texas elementary school killed 14 children and one teacher Tuesday and the suspected gunman was killed, Gov. Greg Abbott said.

Abbott identified the suspect as Salvador Romas, a Uvalde resident, who is also dead and acted alone, authorities said. He had a handgun and possibly a rifle when he opened fire at Robb Elementary School, he said. Two police officers were shot and wounded but were expected to survive, Abbott said.

“Texans across the state are grieving for the victims of this senseless crime and for the community of Uvalde. Cecilia and I mourn this horrific loss and we urge all Texans to come together to show our unwavering support to all who are suffering,” he said in a statement.

The shooter was likely killed by responding officers but the investigation was still ongoing, authorities said.

A law enforcement officer helps people cross the street at Uvalde Memorial Hospital after a shooting was reported earlier in the day at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday. (Billy Calzada/The San Antonio Express-News via AP)

The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers have been instructed to work with local law enforcement.

As the incident unfolded, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin told Fox News that the shooter had become barricaded inside. The school, located 80 miles west of San Antonio, serves students in the second, third and fourth grades.

“There is an active shooter at Robb Elementary. Law enforcement is on site,” the school posted on Facebook shortly after shots rang out. “Your cooperation is needed at this time by not visiting the campus.”

University Health in San Antonio said it received two patients – a child and a 66-year-old woman who is in critical condition. The condition of the child was not released. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been briefed on the shooting.

The agency is also coordinating with local and state authorities. Uvalde Memorial Hospital said Tuesday evening it was having an emergency blood drive on Wednesday, though it was not clear if the event is related to the shooting.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District first reported the school lockdown at 11:43 a.m. local time.

“Please know at this time all campuses are under a Lockdown Status due to gunshots in the area. The students and staff are safe in the buildings,” the district had said in a message to parents.

The district initially asked parents not to pick up their children and that students needed to be accounted for before being released. Parents were notified to pick up their children around 2 p.m.

All district and campus activities, including after-school programs and events have been canceled. Parents were being asked to pick up their children at their regular dismissal times at their school campus. School bus transportation has also been canceled.

Police officers will escort students to the parent vehicles.

BLUF:
“Get them into private schools if you can afford it,” she said. “Get them into homeschool co-ops or homeschool them yourself.”

As Parents Resisted Transgender Push, Teacher Suggested Sending in Child Services

Epoch Times Photo

If Erin Lee had known what her 12-year-old daughter would be exposed to during an afterschool “art club” last May, she would have never allowed her to go.

It began innocently enough. Lee received a text from her daughter asking if she could stay late for an “art club” at Wellington Middle School near Fort Collins, Colorado.

What happened next, though, would change their lives forever.

The “art club” was actually a meeting of the school’s Genders & Sexualities Alliance (GSA) club, a group dedicated to supporting homosexuality, transgenderism, and other nontraditional ideas about gender and sexuality.

When the leader told Amanda (name changed to protect the minor) she must be “queer” if she didn’t feel sexually attracted to anybody, and that she must be “transgender” if she didn’t feel fully comfortable in her own body, the shy little girl suspected something wasn’t right.

According to Amanda, that same leader told her not to tell her parents about what would be discussed that day.

The woman in charge, Kimberly Chambers, who works as a “health equity initiatives coordinator” for Larimer County and director of the pro-LGBT organization SPLASH Youth of Northern Colorado, also handed out her personal contact information to the children and urged them to contact her anytime.

Chambers’s organization has boasted of teaching children ages 12 to 16 about “polyamory”—relationships with multiple sexual partners simultaneously—and other controversial ideas.

During the afterschool GSA club, according to Amanda, Chambers explained to the children that their family homes may not be a “safe space,” but that there were “resources” available. She also handed out transgender flags and stickers that Amanda understood were supposed to represent the children in the club.

As soon as Lee picked up her daughter at school, it was clear that something was “off,” the mother told The Epoch Times in a series of interviews about the incident.

Amanda, looking confused, showed her mother the transgender paraphernalia she had received from Chambers. The transgender flag represented her, Amanda told her mom.

“My heart started racing and my mind blacked out,” Lee recounted. “I was in so much shock that I struggled to get out any words.”

Even though the GSA leader at school had told Amanda it was OK to lie to her parents, Amanda knew better. Over the days that followed, she told her parents everything, Lee said.

Amanda’s parents could hardly believe what they were hearing. Lee, who has described herself as an “ally of the LGBTQ community” and said she has a history of voting “pretty progressively on social issues,” was appalled.

But that would be just the beginning of an ordeal that continues to haunt the family.

Amanda never went back to the school after that. Instead, her parents put her in a local Christian school, even though it meant Lee would have to work nights to afford it. But as Lee and her husband saw it, there was no other choice.

Despite that Amanda was pulled out of Wellington Middle School, the family’s difficulties grew.

After the lesson, Amanda began to wonder whether she might truly be queer and transgender. Her mental state began to rapidly deteriorate, her mother said.

Multiple family members confirmed to The Epoch Times that prior to what Lee describes as the “grooming” of her daughter at school, Amanda never showed any signs of “gender dysphoria,” the term used by psychiatrists to describe discomfort with one’s biological sex.

Afterward, though, it was hard for the girl to shake the idea.

Lee and her husband, who was outraged by the ordeal, struggled for months with how to talk to their daughter about what had happened.

“We didn’t want to say something that would push her further into this dark hole or further into this transgender label,” Lee said. “And we did exactly what the trusted adults who indoctrinated her told her we would do. We played right into their narrative.”

Weeks after the incident, as her mental state got worse, the parents decided to take Amanda to a therapist. The therapist also ended up being “queer” and sought to affirm the young girl’s confusion about her gender.

By December, between the COVID isolation and the questions surrounding her gender, Amanda’s mental state was spiraling downward, Lee said.

The pediatrician immediately prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs for depression—medications that Amanda has since been weaned from—in an attempt to deal with the crisis.

“I don’t know if that fear will ever go away,” Lee said about her own concerns. “I don’t expect to ever stop being struck with sadness about what happened.”

Fighting Back
The more she thought about the whole ordeal, the more Lee realized she had to do something.

First, she contacted Chambers, the woman who Lee says “groomed” her daughter and who also sometimes works as a substitute teacher for the district. “Her response was alarming,” Lee said. “It was delusional. She doubled down on her actions.”

Next, she contacted the principal, who seemed empathetic but confirmed that secret GSA meetings with children were an intentional part of creating a “safe space” at school.

There are more than two dozen self-proclaimed LGBT children in the small middle school, according to social media posts by SPLASH. And the district is determined that they be “affirmed” without parental involvement, Lee said.

After all that, Lee spoke out at a school board meeting and contacted all its members by email. None responded. When she was finally able to sit down with two of them, they both “supported everything that transpired and refused to address any of my concerns.”

Finally, exasperated and realizing her first call would have been to the police if this had occurred on a playground or any other setting, Lee contacted the sheriff’s office.

While law enforcement was deeply sympathetic to her plight, and urged her to speak out loudly, there was nothing they could do from a legal perspective, Lee said.

District officials, meanwhile, saw nothing wrong with what had occurred, she said. Indeed, some expressed shock that a parent would be upset over the incident.

As Lee fought back, school officials were working on their next move.

Among other tactics, documents and communications obtained by The Epoch Times revealed a discussion about the possibility of reporting the parents to child-welfare authorities.

When Chambers was informed by the art teacher that Amanda’s parents had not been sending her to school since the incident, Chambers wrote back urging her to consider filing a report and have child-protection officials visit the home.

“If that persists, you’ll want to talk to admin about doing a well-child check or whatever is within the policies of the school,” Chambers wrote, describing upset parents as “barriers” and citing an “extreme case” in which a family did not allow their transgender child to leave the home unsupervised.

Lee was flabbergasted after receiving the documents.

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San Antonio-area school district will now allow qualified teachers to carry a concealed firearm on campus
Teachers who want to carry will have to complete 40 hours of training

A small school district about 25 miles east of San Antonio will now allow certain qualified teachers and staff members to carry a concealed firearm on campus.

The La Vernia Independent School District Board of Trustees unanimously approved the Guardian Program on Monday.

In addition to already having a license to carry, staff members who want to become guardians must complete 20 hours at a firing range, 20 hours of classroom training, pass annual psychological exams, and take random drug tests, KSAT reports.

About 80% of La Vernia ISD staff supported the Guardian Program in a survey that was taken before the board approved it, according to the local news outlet.

Aside from the Guardian Program, Texas schools can also have one school marshal per 400 students who can carry a firearm.

New Maine GOP Platform Includes Banning Sex Education, Critical Race Theory in Schools

AUGUSTA, Maine (WGME) – Maine Republicans adopted new positions Friday that could change what kids learn in school.

The Maine GOP laid out its platform on several issues over the weekend during the Republican State Convention, including gubernatorial candidate Paul LePage’s proposal to eliminate state income tax. Also outlined Friday were Republicans’ long-standing goals, including welfare reform and enactment of “right to work laws” that limit the power of labor unions.

It was culture war issues in schools that dominated the changes to the state party platform. Some of the specifics include banning sex education and critical race theory in schools, as well as banning teaching genders other than male or female, with the party calling it “child sexual abuse.”

Lawmakers also want to ban books that encourage students to choose their own gender, sexual orientation or pronouns.

The Maine Democratic Party slammed the Republican Party’s new platform, calling it hateful and anti-LGBTQ, but members of the GOP say they are sticking up for families.

Speaker of the House Ryan Fecteau accused Republicans of attacking their fellow Mainers.

New Maine GOP platform includes banning sex education, critical race theory in schools (WGME)

“It shows that they are more interested in attacking fellow Mainers and relaunching culture wars from the last decade than actually dealing with real issues affecting Maine’s hardworking families,” he said.

Kansas Senate Overrides Governor’s Veto On Transgender Sports Ban Bill

The Kansas Senate on Monday voted to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto on The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, a bill that would ban biological male athletes from competing in women’s school sports across the state.

Also known as SB 160, the legislation “requires interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, or club athletic teams or sports that are sponsored by public educational institutions” to ban male students from joining teams or sports “designated for females.”

It does not ban female athletes or girls from participating in men’s or boys’ sports.

The bill was introduced by Republicans in February 2021 and vetoed by Kelly on April 15.

However, the Senate voted 28–10 on Monday to override the governor’s veto, and it now heads to the House for lawmakers to vote to sustain or override the veto.

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Perhaps because these ‘intellectuals’ all remind us so much of SloJoe™ and his crap-for-brains

Study: Anti-intellectualism has become an identity for some rural Americans.

A study identifying anti-intellectualism as a growing part of rural identities has sparked a discussion about the best ways of encouraging rural communities to engage with scientific expertise.

The study, which originally appeared in the January 2022 issue of Political Behavior, found that people with a rural social identification are more likely to view experts and intellectuals as outsiders, according to its author, Kristin Lunz Trujillo, a post-doctoral candidate at the Covid States Project of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Northeastern University.

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DeSantis’ Office Releases Examples Of Rejected CRT-Inspired Math Textbooks

Florida’s Department of Education released examples of critical race theory in mathematics textbooks, including one book that claimed conservatives are more racially prejudiced than liberals, according to a press release.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office announced Monday that the state’s education department rejected 41% of the math textbooks for reportedly including “indoctrinating concepts” and Common Core standards, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation. Florida’s education department released examples of CRT material Thursday after they received multiple requests from the public to view the alleged controversial books, according to a press release. VVVVVVVV

https://www.fldoe.org/academics/standards/instructional-materials

^^^^^^^^^^^

“These examples do not represent an exhaustive list of input received by the Department,” the presser reads.

One textbook showed students a bar graph that measures racial prejudice by political identification. The graph shows that conservatives are reportedly more racist than liberals, citing data from the debunked Race Implicit Association Test.

A separate page highlighted the concept of “social-emotional learning,” which is steeped in the tenets of critical race theory.

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Observation O’ The Day

“It’s troubling that a Biden administration official would break down in tears because of a law that protects parental rights,” Pushaw said. “Why is it so important to her for teachers to instruct children in grades k-3 about transgenderism and sexuality?”

Why?
It’s not ‘education’, but indoctrination and these people are simply grooming children for use in their pagan rites. As I see it, the worship of Baal, and all that goes with it, was never eradicated, but went underground. And today, it’s never been easier to determine who the worshippers are.

DeSantis Press Sec Finishes Psaki off After She Cries About How Mean Parental Rights Laws Are

Democrats still haven’t figured out why they took such a shellacking in Virginia and why the culture war is not going their way.

First, it was critical race theory. Now, liberal Democratic politicians seem to think that American parents want their very young children to be force-fed classroom instruction about sex and all kinds of radical leftist thought. But if they want another wedge issue that is going to alienate them from the American public, they’ve certainly found it here. Because if there’s anything that will rile up parents more, it’s trying to do things to indoctrinate their kids.

So when White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki embraces the wrong side of the issue, it’s another big red flag for those parents as to where Joe Biden and the Democrats are lining up. Not to mention that Psaki seems to be going over the slide as we count down her final days in the White House — she’s lying and losing it more. She loses it big time over this issue — or at least she pretends to, breaking down crying during Jessica Yellin’s “News Not Noise” podcast over parental rights laws, like the one passed in Florida.

Psaki railed against the law, saying that it was not a reflection of the direction in which the country is going, calling the laws “political games” and “harsh and cruel.”

“This is a political wedge issue and an attempt to win a culture war,” Psaki claimed. “And they’re doing that in a way that is harsh and cruel to a community of kids…I’m going to get emotional about this issue because it’s horrible,” she said, crying (or fake crying). “This is an issue that makes me completely crazy…It’s like kids who are bullied and then all these leaders are taking steps to hurt them and hurt their lives and hurt their families,” Psaki said, claiming that the laws were going after parents and it was “outrageous.”

She’s crazy, alright, and needs some help, quickly, because this has nothing to do with any kind of reality. But, of course, I suspect she knows that and this is all performance art. She’s a horrible actress.

Just a reminder of what the Florida law that she’s crying over and claims is so horrible says:

The legislative text of the House version of the bill reads, ‘Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.’

That’s what Psaki is purportedly crying over. That’s what she claims is somehow attacking kids. Sorry, I have no patience with this when it’s both ignorant of what the law says and, I suspect, insincere.

DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw pointed out how “troubling” Psaki’s reaction was. “It’s troubling that a Biden administration official would break down in tears because of a law that protects parental rights,” Pushaw said. “Why is it so important to her for teachers to instruct children in grades k-3 about transgenderism and sexuality?” Democrats have also lied about the law, falsely naming it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill when it says no such thing.

She claims: “It isn’t a reflection of where the country is.” On that, she is very wrong. 52 percent of likely voters in the Democratic primary say that they are also against the kind of teaching that the bill prohibits. It is most certainly a reflection of where the country is — tired of woke liberal and radical thought. Tired of people taking the power out of the hands of the parents to direct the upbringing of their children. Tired of Democrats who think they have more say in the lives of kids than do their parents.

Bill would allow Ohio school staff to carry guns with 20 hours of training

(WJW) – There’s a new push for Ohio lawmakers to approve a bill that would allow educators to carry guns in school.

It’s called House Bill 99 and it would give Ohio schools the authority to put guns in the hands of school staff with only 20 hours of training.

“We have some serious concerns about HB 99 which would essentially gut training requirements for any school employees who are authorized to carry weapons on school property,” said Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association.

DiMauro said right now, an Ohio teacher must undergo basic peace officer training at 700 hours in order to carry a gun in school.

“What the bill would do is put a maximum of 20 hours training in that state standard, completely tying the hands of the experts who are tasked with the training regimen,” said DiMauro.

The Buckeye Firearms Association supports the legislation.

“The current requirement has shut down security programs all over the state and there are a lot of schools right now that are wide open and defenseless,” said Dean Rieck, Executive Director.

In addition to teachers, the bill would allow janitors, cafeteria workers and support staff to carry a gun with 20 hours of training.

Rieck said he believes the legislation will give complete control to districts about security in their schools.

“A lot of schools that have security programs with armed personnel are in rural areas where they are far from law enforcement. It could take 15-20 minutes for them to show up,” said Rieck.

Under the proposed legislation, it would still be up to each individual district to decide what they would require.

“There is no state that allows for teachers to be authorized to carry weapons that have a training standard as low as what is being proposed in House Bill 99,” said DiMauro.

The bill has passed in the House. It’s currently in Senate committee but has not been voted on.

5 percent of Denver’s Black, Latino 3rd-graders are reading at grade level.

While the Denver school board was busy late last month focusing on adult-centered concerns like stripping the district’s innovation schools of future flexibility, an advocacy group received some detailed data showing just how dire Denver’s academic emergency has grown.

Transform Education Now (TEN) filed a Colorado Open Records Act request and the resulting data provides a deep dive into how profoundly Denver Public Schools students are struggling in reading and math in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

The numbers are bad across the board, and deeply alarming when you disaggregate them by race and ethnicity. This disaggregated data, which is public information, wasn’t released until TEN requested it. Little wonder: it shows that whole cohorts of kids are struggling mightily and those are the very same kids who can least afford to fall farther behind their peers and state standards.

The data came with some caveats from district officials. Not all students at any grade level were tested. Some 58 percent of third-graders were tested in “English Language Arts” and 54 percent in math. (If I were a district or building administrator viewing these numbers, I’d demand that all kids get tested post-haste.)

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Ohio Republicans follow Florida’s lead with bill banning sex education in grades K-3

Republican lawmakers in Ohio have put forward their own version of Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill, legislation that prohibits teachers from giving lessons on sexual orientation or gender identity at younger grade levels.

H.B. 616, introduced by Republican state Reps. Jean Schmidt and Mike Loychik, states that no public school community school, or private school that accepts vouchers, shall “teach, use, or provide any curriculum or instructional materials on sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade.

For students in grades four through twelve, discussion of these topics in “any textbook, instructional material, or academic curriculum” is restricted to material that is “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

“The classroom is a place that seeks answers for our children without political activism,” said Schmidt in a statement to the Columbus Dispatch. “Parents deserve and should be provided a say in what is taught to their children in schools.”

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Good!

NBC Report – Florida Teachers Who Promote Gender and Sexuality Lessons With Kindergarten Students Are Quitting in Protest

It looks like the Disney corporation may be getting a new batch of applicants as NBC reports that LGBTQ elementary school teachers, those who generally advocate for the promotion of kindergarten gender and sexuality discussions, are quitting their jobs in Florida.

As shared by fourth grade lesbian teacher Nicolette Solomon (pictured below), “so many kids” throughout her elementary school — even those she did not teach directly — came out to her.”

Apparently, if the LGBTQ teachers are correct, there are thousands of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender and queer elementary aged students in Florida entering the school system every year, and the grooming teachers are now panicked they will not be able to guide them in their sexual exploration.

[Tweet Link – Story Link]

(Via NBC) – On Monday, the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second largest teachers labor union, slammed the measure, calling it an “assault” on students and teachers.

“Make no mistake, this bill will have devastating real-world consequences—especially for LGBTQIA+ youth who already experience higher rates of bullying and suicide,” Randi Weingarten, the group’s president, said in a statement. “And for teachers and school staff who work tirelessly to support and care for their students, this bill is just another gross political attack on their professionalism.” (more)

Yikes, I don’t know what is more alarming…  Teachers quitting because they are not allowed to give sexual education discussions to Kindergartners, or the realization that it’s not an uncommon practice for teachers to talk to kindergarten students about their sexuality.

I had no idea the schools were filled with inbound confused 4 to 9 year olds looking for teachers to help them navigate their private parts.  I always thought the teachers were asking for boxes of Kleenex because the kids had runny noses.

As any honest medic will tell you, masking to to keep you from spreading your viruses & germs, not to keep you from catching someone else’s If you’re not sick, masks are useless.

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Virginia: Child COVID Cases Have Dropped by 93% Since Youngkin Lifted School Mask Mandates

Newly reported cases of COVID-19 in Virginia’s children have dropped by a whopping 93% since Governor Glenn Youngkin ordered an end to school mask mandates upon taking office this January.

A graph from the Virginia Department of Health charting newly reported COVID-19 cases in Virginians aged 0-19 was recently released showing the wild success of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s executive order bringing an end to Virginia’s school mask mandates, which were enforced on children against the will of their parents.

Despite hysterical warnings from those who claimed countless teachers and children would die were face freedom restored to Virginia’s youth, newly reported COVID cases in the state’s 0-19 age bracket have dropped by a whopping 93% since Governor Youngkin’s executive order restoring parental rights went into effect. Though a number of left-wing school districts resisted Youngkin’s order, claiming that state law allowed them the right to forcibly cover kids’ faces, Youngkin later signed a bill passed by the state’s legislature that made face freedom in schools the law of the land.

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Armed school staff bill advances in Ohio statehouse

Constitutional Carry may be the biggest Second Amendment-related bill to win approval in Ohio this year, but hopefully it won’t be the last. Nearly four months after the Ohio House approved a measure that would once again allow for school districts across the state to have trained and vetted volunteer staff serve as an armed first line of defense against attacks on school grounds, the state Senate is now taking up the issue.

House Bill 99 received its first Senate hearing Wednesday in the Veterans and Public Safety Committee, with bill sponsor Rep. Thomas Hall, R-Madison Township, saying local schools need to be able to make decisions to protect students.

“At the end of the day, what we are talking about here is empowering our local schools to make the best decision for their students and educators so that our children feel safe and are safe in Ohio schools,” Hall said. “We have worked tirelessly on this bill to do our part in protecting our schools and our communities.”

For several years districts across the state were able to have armed school staff in place with no issue, but after several parents sued the Madison School District (with the help of Everytown for Gun Safety), the Ohio Supreme Court ultimately ruled that under current state law all armed school staff must undergo more than 700 hours of law enforcement training.

Under HB 99, those training standards would be dropped to a much more reasonable 20 hours, with 4 hours of annual training. Those volunteering to protect their school don’t need to waste hours of their time learning about processing evidence, defensive driving, and a host of other activities that police officers regularly perform but armed school staff members would never have cause to do. These staff members aren’t cops, and they’re not supposed to be. They only reason they’re carrying on campus is to stop a deadly attack aimed at students or staff members. Period.

The duty of those volunteers was one of the points raised in opposition to the bill by one police union in Ohio, whose representative warned that teachers may have to abandon their students if there is a threat on campus.

“If a school employee, regardless of her position, is carrying a firearm, they are considered on duty according to [the Ohio Revised Code],” Mike Weinman testified on behalf of the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio. “When armed, the teacher’s primary responsibility is no longer teaching but an armed first responder. She will be required to abandon her students and respond to whatever threat may be in the building at a moment’s notice.”

Six school districts and two county sheriff’s departments, however, testified in favor of the bill. “Trust the locally elected officials to do their jobs and govern on behalf of the people who elected them and put them in their positions. Trust that they care for the safety and well-being of their students and staff,” Ira Wentworth, superintendent of Indian Valley Local Schools, testified. “The school boards and those staff members who are selected and volunteer to conceal and carry are not the bad guys; they are the good guys wanting to protect others from the bad guys. Put your trust in the good guys.”

There are currently thousands of Ohio educators who have undergone the three-day FASTER training course and who were already carrying on campus before the state Supreme Court decision disarmed them on the job, and as far as I’m aware of there had been no issues reported in any of the districts that had set up an armed school staff policy. Many of these school districts are rural or smaller in size, and simply don’t have the budget to have a school resource officer in every building. In some districts it might take police ten minutes or more to arrive on campus, even in the most dire of circumstances, and that’s far too long to wait for an armed response when there’s someone actively attacking the students inside the school.

HB 99 would restore some sanity to the current law, and would be a huge boost to student safety in those districts that choose to have armed school staff members in place. I’m really glad to see the state Senate start to move on this bill, and I hope that, just like Constitutional Carry, it too will soon be sent to Mike DeWine’s desk for his signature.