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Psaki: It’s OK to let children eat lunch in the cold ‘to keep kids safe’

White House press secretary Jen Psaki suggested Friday that it is OK for kids to eat their lunches outside in cold temperatures in an effort to maintain safety amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Asked whether the White House wanted school children to “get back to a more normal school experience,” Psaki insisted schools are having children practice social distancing measures, mask up, and eat their snacks and lunch in frigid outdoor temperatures in an effort to “keep their kids safe and keep students safe.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki speaks to reporters in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on December 10, 2021 in Washington, DC.

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California Schools Drop ‘D’ and ‘F’ Grades in a Shift to ‘Competency-Based’ Learning 

Some of the largest school districts in California are dropping “D” and “F” grades, moving towards what they call “competency-based” learning.

Oakland Unified, Sacramento City Unified, Santa Ana, Los Angeles, and other school districts across the state are limiting the use of “D” grades and phasing out “Fs” entirely.

Instead of failing an assignment or exam, students now have the option to retake a test and have additional time to complete an assignment.

Proponents of the move hope it will encourage students to learn and not worry about the fear of a low grade pushing them off the pathway to university.

Nidya Baez, assistant principal at an Oakland Unified high school, said:

Our hope is that students begin to see school as a place of learning, where they can take risks and learn from mistakes, instead of a place of compliance. Right now, we have a system where we give a million points for a million pieces of paper that students turn in, without much attention to what they’re actually learning.

Others also criticized the traditional grading method for its subjectivity and its psychological impact on school-aged children.

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CNN Staffer Charged with Enticing Women and Their Underage Daughters to Engage in Sexual Activity

A CNN employee was charged Friday on three counts that he used a facility of interstate commerce to abuse underage girls.

Officials said a grand jury in Vermont indicted 44-year-old Stamford, Connecticut resident John Griffin of attempting to entice the girls to engage in sexual activity. He appeared in New Haven federal court via Zoom, where Judge Robert Spector said he would file an order requesting his transfer to Connecticut.

“According to the indictment, from April to July of 2020, Griffin utilized the messaging applications Kik and Google Hangouts to communicate with people purporting to be parents of minor daughters, conveying to them, among other ideas, that a ‘woman is a woman regardless of her age,’ and that women should be sexually subservient and inferior to men,” according to the Department of Justice statement on the case.

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Epstein used Prince Andrew friendship to ‘lure’ victims, accuser claims

A woman who says she was repeatedly raped by Jeffrey Epstein claims the late pedophile used his close friendship with Prince Andrew to help lure his vulnerable victims, according to an interview Sunday.

Chauntae Davies told The Sun on Sunday how Epstein repeatedly bragged about how close he was with the Duke of York and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson — even adorning his home with their photos.

“I was very aware of Jeffrey Epstein’s friendship with Prince Andrew and Fergie right away,” Davies, now 40, told the UK paper.

“It was one of several bragging tactics he used to further induce his power and privilege. He bragged a lot.

“He had framed photos of them in his residences. He bragged about how he’d lent money to the duchess,” she said, referring to the $24,000 Fergie borrowed and in 2011 called “a gigantic error of judgment.”

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Twitter will now ban users that repeatedly claim vaccinated people can spread Covid

Twitter has quietly updated its “COVID-19 misleading information policy” to impose new sanctions on tweets about vaccines, PCR tests, and health authorities. These sanctions include removing and labeling tweets. Both types of sanctions also result in Twitter users accruing strikes on their account which can lead to a permanent suspension.

While the top of Twitter’s COVID-19 misleading information policy page currently states “Overview November 2021,” a December 2 archive of the page shows that the page was updated and the “Overview November 2021” text was added after December 2.

One of the most notable changes to this “COVID-19 misleading information policy” we noticed is related to claims about whether vaccinated people can spread the coronavirus. The policy now states that Twitter will label tweets with “corrective information” and give users a strike if they:

  • Claim that “the vaccines will cause you to be sick, spread the virus, or would be more harmful than getting COVID-19”
  • Post what Twitter describes as “false or misleading claims that people who have received the vaccine can spread or shed the virus (or symptoms, or immunity) to unvaccinated people”

This means Twitter users could now be sanctioned for sharing or discussing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) admission that “vaccinated people can still become infected and have the potential to spread the virus to others.”

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NYC Proposes New Rules to ‘Silence’ Parents Critical of Education Policies, Parents Say

Outgoing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is trying to leave behind him a rule that could potentially silence parents who criticize school board policies, according to two parents and board leaders.

In an op-ed published in The New York Post, Maud Maron and Danyela Souza Egorov said that a proposed regulation would allow the Department of Education (DOE) to “discipline and remove” parents elected to Community Education Councils (CEC)—New York City’s equivalent to a school board—if they “criticize the school district they are meant to hold accountable.” Maron is a former president of the CEC in District 2, and Danyela Souza Egorov is its vice president.

The proposed Chancellor’s Regulation D-210, which will be weighed by the DOE’s Panel for Educational Policy on Dec. 21, prohibits council members from engaging in conduct that “serves to harass, intimidate, or threaten.” Such conduct includes but is not limited to “frequent verbal abuse and unnecessary aggressive speech that serves to intimidate and causes others to have concern for their personal safety.”

The criteria used to determine what counts as a violation is vague, Maron and Egorov argued. The rule doesn’t explain how frequent is frequent or what kind of speech is unnecessary or aggressive. On top of that, an “Equity Compliance Officer” would be established to enforce the rule.

“This (no doubt expensive) bureaucrat would be charged with deciding who to target for removal for violating the newly expanded ‘code of conduct,’” they wrote, calling it “yet another administrative position to monitor parents.”

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