Category: Education & Schools

School Board Refuses to Fire Employees Who Don’t Comply With Washington State Vaccine Mandate

The Eatonville School Board voted Thursday afternoon in a vote of 2-1 not to terminate employees who would not comply with Democrat Governor Jay Inslee’s mandate for Washington state.

In August, Inslee implemented what was then the strictest vaccine mandate for state workers in the US and provided no option for workers to submit frequent testing in place of the COVID-19 vaccine. Since then, Mayor Bill de Blasio in New York City has done the same. Inslee also announced a vaccine requirement for all employees, on-site contractors and on-site volunteers in K-12 schools.
On Tuesday, Inslee fired nearly 1,900 state workers, including hundreds of first responders, that did not submit vaccination records, a requirement ordered by Inslee that had an October 18 deadline. Those numbers don’t include workers that were fired by their local governments or those that opted to quit or retire early after hearing about the mandate. Those numbers combined are predicted to be in the thousands.

The meeting was called to order at 3:39 PM and lasted barely four and a half minutes. Only one agenda item was discussed a motion to approve the non-disciplinary termination in accordance with the Governor’s proclamation mandating vaccination for state employees.

Ronda Litzenberger said she made the motion “with a heavy heart.” After the motion was seconded, Litzenberger said during a brief discussion, “…just for public record, to know that we have done everything in our ability as a school board to try to accommodate, and hopefully offer multiple opportunities for these individuals to really work with them. That is my understanding as a school board director, and it’s my hope that that has been the experience of every individual on this list. And we’re very grateful for the service that they’ve given to Eatonville School District.”
Paulette Gilliardi, assistant to the chair, concurred and turned out to be the only ‘yes’ vote after Litzenberger voted no. Before the vote, the other director Matt Marshall said, “I understand that we have a proclamation, but at some point, I can’t stand to watch us lose employees. And I know none of you want to see us lose employees either. And this is painful to put us between a rock and a hard place.”

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Virginia Parents Announce ‘Not a Domestic Terrorist’ March in Washington

 Parents take a stand against FBI crackdown on CRT opponents.

Parents and politicians are slamming the Department of Justice’s decision to bring in the FBI to investigate a spike in “threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff,” saying the Biden administration is likening their protests of “woke” policies such as Critical Race Theory — as well as mandatory mask wearing — to “domestic terrorism.”

“Dear @TheJusticeDept Merrick Garland and @FBI Director Christopher Wray,” Asra Nomani, vice president of investigations and strategy at Parents Defending Education, posted on Twitter. “This is what a domestic terrorist looks like? You are criminalizing parenting, and you owe the people of America a swift apology.”

She sarcastically signed the missive, “‘Domestic Terrorist,’ Asra Nomani.”

Nomani’s group has been researching how school boards across the US implement “woke” ideas into curricula, such as critical race theory.

In recent months, dozens of parents have taken a stand in school board meetings against the teaching of Critical Race Theory in classrooms and to protest mask mandates, causing some to wonder what the FBI and DOJ are actually investigating.

People hold signs and chant during a meeting of the North Allegheny School District school board regarding the district's mask policy, at at North Allegheny Senior High School in McCandless, PA.
People hold signs and chant during a meeting of the North Allegheny School District school board regarding the district’s mask policy, at at North Allegheny Senior High School in McCandless, PA.
AP

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Homeschooling Growing by Leaps and Bounds

Homeschooling numbers have increased over 300% in the last two years, according to federal government Census data.  This spike does not include Americans engaged in virtual learning through a public or private school program due to COVID protocols.  These are full-time homeschoolers.

The United States Census Bureau has been tasked with collecting data through nationwide surveys for over 80 years.  The data are intended for use by other government agencies and elected officials for policy decisions.  This is the first time the Census Bureau has sought to identify the total number of homeschoolers in America.  Previous surveys only marked children who were un-enrolled from public or private schools.  That rate usually hovered around 3.3% and was as high as 5.4% in 2019.

Homeschool families have been traditionally seen as a small minority and have been largely ignored by elected representatives.  In 2020, due to the COVID school closures, Census questions were modified to specifically identify the number of homeschoolers, and the results were shocking for many.  In October 2020, 11.1% of 22–23 million U.S. households reported being full-time homeschoolers, without any enrollment in a public or private school.  Besides Alaska, which reported 27.5% of households dedicated to full-time homeschool, Oklahoma led all states at 20.1%.  Other notable states included Florida at 18.1%, Vermont at 16.9%, Georgia at 16.0%, and Tennessee and Arizona at 13.0%.

There was little surprise at the exodus from public and private schools due to COVID mask mandates and health concerns in 2020.  What has been surprising is that many of these students did not re-enroll for the 2021–2022 school year.  No doubt the push for Critical Race Theory, and the loss of confidence in the traditional institutions’ ability to teach children via virtual technology, played a significant role in a shift toward full-time homeschooling.  The number of homeschool kids grew from 11.1% in 2020 to 16.5% in May 2021.  Homeschool numbers are continuing to rise, along with their potential political influence.  Homeschooling parents will undoubtedly have a larger impact on their local and state policymakers, and this is a good thing for America.

Two common points advocated by opponents of homeschooling are that homeschooling is inferior to a public-school education and that homeschooled children lack the social skills that other children learn in public- and private-school extracurricular activities.  However, one reason for the record growth in homeschool is due to the dispelling of some of these negative assumptions through social media connections and support groups.  All colleges and universities, including the Ivy League, accept homeschooled students and homeschooled students have traditionally performed better in college than public- and private-school students.

Not all pro-homeschool data have been published by homeschool advocacy groups.  For example, one study, published in the Journal of College Admissions, found that homeschoolers who attended the College of St. Thomas averaged 26.5 ACT scores versus 25.0 for private- and public-school students.  The researchers also found that homeschoolers finished their freshman year of college with an average GPA of 3.46 compared to 3.16 in the alternate group.

Communities around the country continue to dispel the popular misconception of a lack of socialization among homeschoolers.  Increased opportunities have come with the rising number of students.  Homeschoolers can partake in co-ops, organized sports, and any extra-curricular activity imaginable.  At least 29 states allow homeschool students to participate in public school interscholastic activities.  For example, in Oklahoma City, there are even homeschool junior high and high school football teams.

Homeschooling has many beneficial impacts on communities and public school districts.  More homeschoolers mean lower teacher-to-student ratios.  Smaller class sizes make it easier for teachers to address the needs and unique challenges of individual students.  Fewer students lowers the overhead for school transportation and administrative functions.  This should lead to a reduction in administrative faculty and drastically reduce education expenses, which homeschool proponents argue is the real reason why teacher unions are so opposed to homeschool growth.

Homeschoolers still pay public school taxes, which usually account for the greatest portion of state and county property taxes.  The purpose of these taxes is to ensure the proper education of future American citizens.  It seems reasonable that homeschool, private school, and charter school parents should be granted a reduction in education taxes.  Redirecting these funds to parents who are seeking alternative forms of education would help cover the costs of curricula, computers, technology, and other educational resources.

There are also many reasons why parents should be given the freedom of school choice.  Homeschools offer an alternative solution for parents whose children face situations like bullying (including cyber-bullying), poorly performing school districts, a need for flexibility and personalized education, chronic illness, and military moves.  Many parents have argued that the right of school choice is more important than ever, as public curricula veer away from traditional teaching methods toward Critical Race Theory and other forms of political and immoral indoctrination.

There is a definite rallying cry for the freedom of school choice, and many Americans are advocating for policy change.  Perhaps the 300% nationwide increase in the number of homeschool families will finally encourage policy change to protect parents’ right to homeschool their children.

Identity, Opposition and Hate.

Say hello to Shardé Nabors, Oregon project manager for a Seattle-based activist organization called Social Justice Fund NW. Curious readers may ask, “What sort of ‘social justice’ does Shardé advocate?” And the answer is, the destruction of the United States of America.

“So, earlier this week I made a post saying that it doesn’t sit right with me that there are white people who own property — multiple properities, at that — in the United States of America while black and indigenous people are experiencing homelessness. And I want to expand on that, especially for my new followers who are white, who followed me because of my anti-racist content. I’m glad that you’re listening to me, but I really want to make sure that you’re hearing what I’m saying. There will never be black liberation or indigenous sovereignty as long as the United States of America exists. If you want black folks around the globe and in this country liberated, if you want indigenous folks to be able to have sovereignty over the lands that their indigenous to, then the United States of America needs to cease to exist. And I don’t know if y’all are ready for that, I don’t know if that’s what y’all signed up for. I’m not sure if anti-racist work is just something you do to lessen the inconvenience of racism in your life, but I hope you’re ready for this. It’s not for the weak.”

That’s the kind of 501(c)3 tax-exempt “activism” she gets paid for. This is where the logic of the “social justice” narrative leads — hatred and destruction, advocating genocide as the Final Solution.

Saving Your Child From The Village

A reader comments on the “Gender Identity And Your Kids” thread:

There’s a certain kind of conservative who looks at this trend [the corruption of fandom by gender ideology obsessives — RD] and says, “Good riddance. Unplug it all. Now your lazy nerd kids can spend all day at the gym lifting weights, or learn to play a musical instrument, and won’t be wasting time on the fandom of some media-marketed TV show or book series.”

I totally understand this impulse as a utopian ideal, but I also think there’s a horrible lack of appreciation for how difficult it is to raise kids in a world where they are uncomfortable with participating (or forbidden to participate) in popular franchise fan culture. My children are homeschooled and constantly desperate for more peer interaction. When they meet other kids at the park, or the roller skating rink, or on vacation, they are bombarded with aspects of pop culture from which they are being excluded — and they know it. Last month my brother passed along a collection of books and comics that my nephew was reading, and within a few weeks my 9-year-old came to us to confess that one of the books had “the f-word” in it. It ended up featuring a protagonist who was a pre-op transgender boy. At at this point I’m not even sure if her uncle gave it to her out of ignorance, or if he knew but did it anyway as a way to subvert our overly protective parenting style. I don’t have the heart to start a confrontation over it, given the cultural and ideological stress I have with my siblings already. Do you have any idea how wretched I feel that I can no longer trust my own brother as a screen for children’s literature content?

Right now my girls are super-enthusiastic about a book series… and I know they are just a few books away from the one that introduces a lesbian character. We started watching a TV show… and I already know which season has the gay wedding. Every new property (whether it’s original or the rebooting of a Gen X classic) is simply obligated to pay out a wokeness tax now. I’ll let my children watch this stuff with my supervision sometimes, when we can talk about it along the way. But I can’t let them enjoy unsupervised spaces with peers, certainly not in virtual spaces, since those peers are not going to exercise similar discretion. I essentially have to ban my kids from having friends unless those friends are very carefully vetted and supervised, and now I feel trapped in a helicopter-parenting Defcon-alert holding pattern.

It’s hard to exaggerate how besieged the current culture makes me feel as a parent of two daughters leaving elementary school age. I have unceasing dread of a giant industry devoted to prying my children away from my world, my culture, and my values, and to convince them that I’m the sociological equivalent of the stock villains being defeated weekly in their prepackaged media products. I want to give my children the freedom to explore and discover friends without oppressive surveillance, but all of the friends they meet want to create secretive phone-driven modes of contact with them for private conversations. Am I doomed to become a CIA operative, using spyware to catch my preteen daughter having illicit chats about testosterone and top surgery? Will I be the stereotypical killjoy parent, demanding that my girls stop seeing any friends I regard as “a bad influence”? I’m staring into an abyss that has swallowed so much of my world and the things in it that I once loved already, and has designs on my girls as well.

I’ve given up on having any kind of fandom myself, except of a few retro franchises that I can pretend are “closed”. But even that no longer feels safe. What’s LGBT representation going to look like in the new Tolkien-verse show on Amazon? After feeding that fandom for years, do I suddenly have to start telling my own children to avoid interacting with anyone who acts too enthusiastic about Middle Earth? Is there any safe ground left? Will they come for Narnia next?

This devouring of a formerly apolitical childhood and adolescent culture of organic fan enthusiasm to transform it into a catechism for woke cant is an act of unspeakable cruelty to families.

Well said. This is what totalitarianism means: the infiltration of politics (cultural and otherwise) into every aspect of life. In Huxley’s Brave New World, the Savage was the only sane person there because as an exile, he had been raised ignorant of the corrupt totalitarian culture and its values. I heard the other day about a family — a conservative Christian family — that has been devastated by gender ideology wreaking havoc in the lives of their children. It sneaked up on them. Catastrophe. I mean, honest-to-God destruction of young people’s bodies and souls, and of family relationships.

It used to be that it takes a village to save a child. Now, you have to work hard to save your child from the village.

‘Creepy’ should be ‘statist’ as in indoctrination instead of education

Anti-CRT Parents Sweep Connecticut School Board Primary, Besting GOP Incumbents

Five parents hell-bent on keeping critical race theory (CRT) out of the Guilford, Conn. school district swept the Republican school board primary Tuesday night, advancing to the general election in November.

Fending off a challenge from three old-guard Republican incumbents — who the anti-CRT parents accuse of rubber-stamping the racialized curriculum favored by the board’s progressives and the district superintendent — the cabal of five dominated the competition Tuesday, walking away with bids for the November ballot.

Political novices Timothy Chamberlain, Nick Cusano, Aly Passerelli, Bill Maisano, and Danielle Scarpellino outperformed their intra-party rivals by a three to one margin, according to figures provided to National Review.

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Comment O’ The Day

I remember when all the best people were ready to turn America upside down over nonexistent Russian collusion claims.

Probable Chinese spies claim ‘Raycissss!’

Stanford professors ask DOJ to stop looking for Chinese spies at universities in US.

While acknowledging that is important for the U.S. to address concerns of intellectual property theft and economic espionage, the Stanford educators wrote in their letter that the program has since “deviated significantly from its claimed mission.”

The professors stated that the China Initiative is “harming the United States’ research and technology competitiveness and it is fueling biases that, in turn, raise concerns about racial profiling.”

They pointed out that the program disproportionately targets researchers with Chinese origins, choosing to investigate them not based on evidence but simply for having a connection to China.

The program was started in 2018 to combat Chinese espionage but has since been criticized for investigating Asian individuals falsely accused of committing crimes.

“In many cases the federal response seems disproportionate and inappropriate. In some cases, federal agents associated with the China Initiative have prosecuted researchers without solid evidence,” the professors wrote. “Moreover, racial profiling – even when undertaken in pursuit of justice – is both inconsistent with U.S. law and with the principles underlying our society.”

Apparently some parents have been listening

BLUF:
Roy Speed, in Bethel, noted that many of those behind the most radical political experiment in history studied in little, rickety houses, in medium-sized, mostly uncultured cities or on the edges of sprawling farmlands. They read with the aid of candlelight. They were Zoom-less. They squeezed their studies in between milking cows and learning how to use a rifle. They were steeped in the greatest minds of the ancient world and the Enlightenment. 

The Founders did not have the benefit of any playground or tablet or teachers union, but they were free thinkers. The Constitution, Speed pointed out, “was largely the work of people instructed at home.” 

American Homeschooling Goes Boom: Meet the parents yanking their children — some five million of them — from schools that they say aren’t working.

In March 2020, as the coronavirus engulfed America, Kristen Wrobel got the news: “We heard on Friday that there would be no school for two weeks. Which just turned into no school.”

That was the last time her children — one in third grade, one in first —  were in a classroom.

In the beginning, they did the remote-school thing. Wrobel, a 42-year-old stay-at-home mom with a bachelor’s degree in software engineering, called it a “nightmare.” The Zoom sessions, the Italian lessons on Duolingo, the stuff she had to print out, the isolation, the tears, the nagging, the shuttling the kids between her house, near Burlington, Vermont, and their dad’s, a half-hour away.

“Everyone was freaking out all the time,” she said.

By May, at the risk of violating state truancy laws, Wrobel had stopped fighting and let her kids log on (or not) whenever they felt like it. It was, she said, “the darkest hour before dawn.”

That September, she started homeschooling. She didn’t like all the restrictions her kids’ private school had implemented: Students seated six feet apart. Masked. In wedding tents. Outside.

She figured she’d send her kids back to the school in 2021, after everything had gone back to normal.

That was then. Now? “There’d have to be a revolution in schooling.”

She’s hardly alone. Wrobel is one of hundreds of thousands of moms and dads across the nation who have decided to become the principals of their very own, very small elementary schools. 

The number of kids going to school at home nationwide has doubled over the past two years. In 2019, there were about 2.5 million students learning at home. Today there are nearly 5 million. That means more than 11 percent of American households are educating their children outside of traditional schools.

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Bill to Ban Teaching Critical-Race Theory Goes Into Effect in Texas

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Going into effect Wednesday is HB 3979. The bill abolishes teaching critical-race theory in public schools.

So how will this affect your child or your child’s teacher?

Administrators in the largest school district in the area, CCISD said not much is going to change and, like any other day, it’s business as usual.

“Our teachers will be teaching business as usual in line with our state standards,” said Kimberly James, Deputy Superintendent for CCISD.

State standards set by the Texas Board of Education via TEKS, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills.

The district also says it’ll continue to also follow CCISD board policy that’s already in place which includes that “the board relies on staff to present various sides of controversial issues….So that students can develop and make informed judgments in their daily lives.”

House Bill 3979 has been referred to as a critical race theory bill because, among other things, it bans teachers from teach anything that says a race or sex is inherently racist or oppressive, that an individual by virtue of their race is racist or oppressive, and that an individual bears responsibility for actions committed in the past and that no one should be made to feel guilty for their race or sex.

The bill is still being amended in the special session which ends next week. If not signed, it will keep House Bill 3979 as is.

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SEGREGATON NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER!
-Alabama governor George Wallace, 14 January 1963 inaugural speech.

What did Kipling write?
“And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire”

American University offers separate classroom, saying it’s a ‘safe space for Black Students.’

American University [Washington D.C.] has created a Black-only course section, or classroom, for a class on racism, which freshmen are required to take.

Many universities use course sections to break larger cohorts into smaller-sized classrooms.

According to The Eagle, the university added a Black affinity course section to AUx2, a class where students learn about “race, social identity, and structures of power.” In the course, students will “evaluate how racism intersects with other systems of oppression.”

The student newspaper states that all-Black sections of the course began during the spring 2020 semester, an addition that had been considered for a few years.

“We’ve definitely heard from Black students and other students of color that the material can be a lot for them because it is part of their lived experiences,” Izzi Stern, the AUx program manager told the student newspaper. “And we wanted to create a space where they could be together in community and have an overall positive experience with the course.”

On the university’s webpage, a former AUx2 peer said this:

“The AUx Program is fundamentally shifting the culture, and students, of American University, while simultaneously fulfilling the institutions’ commitment to social justice and equity. I could not be more enthusiastic about my support for the transformative impact of the AUx2 course.”

Julien Hector a sophomore at American University, told The Eagle, “Having an all-Black space truly changes the way you interact in that space and the level of comfort you feel.”

Hector later on in the student newspaper article, went on to question why American University had not added more affinity groups based on race. The article goes on to say that AU might be adding affinity groups not just based on race, but based on other defining characteristics such as gender identity.

SloJoe believes POTUS possesses powers that he doesn’t have

Biden threatens action against governors who refuse to force masks on school children

During a speech given by President Joe Biden on Wednesday regarding COVID-19 response and vaccination programs, Biden slammed states that have banned the requirement of masks in school, announcing that government action will be taken against these states and their governors.

Oregon students next

Leaked documents show Baltimore high schoolers perform math, reading at grade school level

Baltimore (WBFF) – An alarming discovery out of Baltimore City Schools. Project Baltimore has obtained student assessment data that North Avenue does not release publicly. That data shows some students who could soon graduate, are performing at an elementary school level, academically.Project Baltimore, over the years, has heard from many parents who say their children are being pushed through Baltimore City Schools without getting the education they need. Julie Gaskins told us back in 2018 that her seventh grader was doing math and reading at a second-grade level.Project Baltimore also spoke with Gregory Gray, a Baltimore City Schools father, back in 2019.

“My son is really in desperate need of tutoring in math,” Gray told Project Baltimore. “And, how did my son pass if he didn’t know none of this math?”

Now, Project Baltimore has obtained student assessment scores from just one class, in one high school, that show how widespread the problem appears to be.

iReady is a system schools use to measure at which grade level a student is performing. In Baltimore City Schools, iReady assessments are given in math and reading, three times a year, to measure a student’s progress. The scores we obtained show some students are performing 10 grade levels below their age.

Fox45 News is not disclosing the school or the class to protect student identities. But we can report the iReady scores are for 11th graders in math and reading. Nine students completed the reading assessment, but only two scored at a high school level. One scored at a seventh-grade level. The other six scored at an elementary school level. In math, seven students completed the assessment. Two scored at a high school level. The rest, who are high school juniors in Baltimore City Schools, scored at an elementary level, including one student doing math at a first-grade level.

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All the work the black community did for desegregation and the far left ‘woke’ crowd segregates them right back again

Parent files complaint against Atlanta elementary school, alleges it’s segregating classes

ATLANTA — A parent has filed a federal complaint against her child’s school, alleging it segregated classes based on race.

She said it was a practice put in place by the school’s principal, who thought she was doing what was best for all students.

Atlanta Public Schools confirmed to Channel 2′s Tom Jones that it has wrapped up its investigation into the allegations and has taken action.

Parent Kila Posey still can’t believe a principal thought separating students by race was a good idea.

“We’ve lost sleep like trying to figure out why would a person do this,” Posey said.

She told Jones she was stunned when she learned about classes segregated by race at Mary Lin Elementary School last year.

A practice put in place and condoned by principal Sharyn Briscoe, according to Posey.

“First, it was just disbelief that I was having this conversation in 2020 with a person that looks just like me — a Black woman,” Posey said. “It’s segregating classrooms. You cannot segregate classrooms. You can’t do it.”

Posey said she found out the school was putting Black students in two separate classes with two separate teachers.

The white kids were placed in six classes with six different teachers.

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They schools have been educating indoctrinating snowflake students for many years.

College Op-Ed Claims “Right To Safety” Trumps Second Amendment

I’ve heard a lot of bad arguments regarding a lot of things in my life. One is this idea that there’s a right to safety. In other words, the government exists in part to provide safety for each individual and anything that someone thinks makes them unsafe is something the government should outlaw.

Yeah, it sounds ridiculous.

However, it gets worse when people use that to try and justify anti-Second Amendment positions, like an op-ed in The Daily Cougar, the student newspaper at the University of Houston, does.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s new permitless carry  law should not happen due to the recent increase in mass shootings.…

This law will put so many of us in danger, considering it is already extremely easy to get a gun in this state.

We take the mentality that guns bring us freedom and that they are part of our identity to the extreme. With a society that prioritizes guns so much already, making unlicensed carry legal is unnecessary and poses a big safety risk.…

Humanity needs to become a bigger priority in this state. This means that stricter gun control is necessary. Our government should listen to its people and make them feel safe, rather than allowing a law as dangerous as permitless carry.

This is in an op-ed entitled, “Permitless carry infringes on the right to safety.”

The thing is, no such right exists. You can get hurt doing anything. You could walk down the street, step wrong, and sprain your ankle. Is that a violation of your civil rights? I had a nasty ankle sprain while hunting at a state wildlife management area. Did the state of Georgia violate my civil right to safety because they didn’t level out the woods?

Of course not.

The thing is, this “right to safety,” whether it’s espoused as such or not, is really just about one group of people getting to feel safer, as noted in the last quoted paragraph.

The problem, however, is these people are putting their own feelings of safety above those of others. They want to feel safe. They don’t care if you feel safe or not.

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A Teacher’s Union is Suing a Mother For Repeated Attempts to Know What Her Kindergartener is Learning

On Monday, Nicole Solas, a Rhode Island mom whose daughter will be going into kindergarten, was sued by chapters of the National Education Association (NEA) for submitting multiple requests to find out what her daughter was learning when it comes to lesson plans on concepts such as transgenderism and Critical Race Theory (CRT).