Tag: education

Arizona Senator Facing Child Molestation Charges Sponsored Kindergarten Sex Ed Bill

An Arizona state senator facing multiple felony child molestation charges was one of several sponsors of a Democrat-led bill calling for sex education classes for pupils as young as kindergarten age.

Although the bill, SB1340, died in committee last January, Sen. Otoniel “Tony” Navarette was a key sponsor of the legislation that would have required all schools in Arizona to teach sex education instruction starting in kindergarten.

The bill’s other sponsors were Arizona Sens. Lela Alston, Kirsten Engel, Rosanna Gabaldon, Sally Gonzales, Juan Mendez, Jamescita Peshlakai, Athena Salmon, and Raquel Teran.

According to the proposed legislation, dubbed then as the “Safe and Healthy Students Act,” the bill sought to provide “sex education that is medically accurate and age-appropriate for pupils who are in kindergarten programs and in grades one through twelve.”

Other key provisions included a focus on helping pupils “gain knowledge” on the various developmental aspects of adolescence, “including how pregnancy occurs,” to help pupils develop skills in decision making regarding sexuality and relationships, and to discuss groups, such as LGBTQ, that “historically have been more vulnerable to sexual abuse and assault,” as well as matters involving “affirmative consent.”

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Oregon Suspends High School Graduation Standards To Make ‘Equitable’ Rules For ‘Students Of Color’

Oregon Governor Kate Brown (D) signed a bill last month suspending proficiency requirements for high school graduates for the next five years.

Brown quietly signed into a law a bill suspending her state’s proficiency requirements on July 14. Oregon is expected to go without proficiency standards for high school graduates until new rules are crafted and implemented in 2024. Those new rules will likely not apply to high school graduates until 2027; however, as Oregon education officials are reluctant to change standards for students that have already entered high school, according to The Oregonian.

The governor’s office did not announce her signing of the bill in a signing ceremony nor in a press release. The signed bill did not appear in the legislative database as signed until July 29, an uncommon occurrence for a bill that was signed over two weeks prior. A spokesman for the governor said that suspending proficiency requirements would aid the state’s minority students.

“Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color” stand to benefit from the legislation, Brown’s deputy communications director Charles Boyle told The Oregonian in a statement. “Leaders from those communities have advocated time and again for equitable graduation standards, along with expanded learning opportunities and supports.”

Oregon’s proficiency requirements mandate that all high school graduates demonstrate a roughly 10th grade level competence in reading, writing, and math. Those standards were first suspended last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic as students were taken out of classrooms and school was moved almost entirely online.

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Minnesota fourth-graders are told not to tell their parents about ‘equity survey’ on race and gender OR skip questions (even if they don’t understand them)

A class of fourth graders in Minnesota were given an equity survey about race and gender, but were allegedly told by a teacher not to tell their parents about the questions that they were asked even if they didn’t understand them. 

The survey was conducted at Riverview intermediate school in the Sartell-St. Stephen School District in Minnesota by the Equity Alliance of Minnesota, and comes amid a national debate on how to teach history and current events specifically focusing on matters of race. 

Student Hayley Yasgar addressed a school board on July 19 and told them she felt ‘very nervous and uncomfortable’ when her teacher instructed her not to talk to her mother about the survey. 

She also says she was not permitted to skip any questions even if she didn’t understand them, in a video of the meeting posted by Alpha News.

One question said: ‘Do you currently identify yourself as female, male, transgender (transgender people have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from their assigned sex. For example, they were born male but now identify as female), or something else?’ 

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Racial Advocacy Group To White Texas Parents: Sign Our Pledge Not To Send Your Kids To Ivy League Schools Or We’ll Doxx You

A “racial advocacy group” in Dallas issued a press release in which they told whites to pledge that their children would “not apply to or attend any Ivy League School or US News & World Report Top 50 School,” urged the white parents to “encourage friends, neighbors, and family members to do the same” and then threatened, “Please note Dallas Justice Now will be publicly announcing the names of those who have and have not signed the pledge.”

Dallas Justice Now (DJN) wrote to their “White Allies”:

Talk is not enough. Commit yourself towards taking action and making sacrifices to correct centuries of injustice. Open up spaces for Black and LatinX communities by refusing to send your kids to Ivy League and US News & World Report Top 50 schools and encourage friends, neighbors, and family members to do the same. Imagine if those hundreds of thousands of spots at these institutions were occupied only by marginalized communities. Imagine the opportunities. We can achieve true equity within our lifetimes but only if white folks are willing to sacrifice their privileges.

The release continued with the “Dallas Justice Now Pledge”:

As a white person with privilege both from my whiteness and my neighborhood I recognize the need to make sacrifices for the purpose of correcting hundreds of years of murder, slavery, discrimination, and lack of educational and economic opportunities perpetrated upon people of color. I understand that access to top schools is a key component in economic and social advancement. Therefore, I commit that my children will not apply to or attend any Ivy League School or US News & World Report Top 50 School so that position at that school is available for people of color to help correct historical wrongs.  If I do not have children under 18 then I will commit to encouraging my white privileged friends, neighbors, and family members with children to sign the pledge and holding them accountable until they do so. 

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Meet the CDC-Backed Groups That Want To Teach Trans Ideology to Kindergartners

Justin Thiel, 31, was ready to send his oldest daughter to kindergarten at the public school in his rural Nebraska town. He made a sudden change of plans once he read the new sex education standards adopted by the state.

“I signed her up for a Christian school the day I read the standards,” Thiel told the Washington Free Beacon.

The National Sex Education Standards, which provided a roadmap for Nebraska Department of Education, teach kindergartners the names of reproductive body parts and define gender identity and reproduction. Children in Grades 3-5 are taught about masturbation, hormone blockers used to transition pre-pubescent children, STDs, and the differences between cisgender, transgender, nonbinary, and “gender expansive.” Grades 6-8 are taught about abortion, contraception, and differences between vaginal, oral, and anal sex. Grades 9-10 must teach “reproductive justice,” which entails unlimited abortion access.

Dr. Susan Greenwald, a retired pediatrician in Nebraska who worked with childhood victims of sexual abuse for 35 years, said the standards are closer to “grooming” than age-appropriate education.

“The first thing out of my mouth was, ‘holy s***—what pedophile wrote this?'” Greenwald told the Free Beacon. “This is grooming 101. If you were a pedophile and wanted to teach your kid to be a victim, this would be what you use.”

The Nebraska curriculum takes a number of exact phrases and guidelines from the National Sex Education Standards’ Second Edition, which was released in 2020 by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), Advocates for Youth, and Answer. The three groups rake in millions of dollars each year from the federal government and abortion-focused charities. State and local education departments from Nebraska to New York have adopted the curriculum, but parents, doctors, and government officials are starting to push back against lesson plans that focus on hormone therapy, abortion, and gender transition.

Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts (R.) is publicly feuding with the state’s department of education. The governor calls the curriculum unworkable and is hosting town halls across the state for hundreds of parents to voice their concerns about the sex education standards.

“The people pushing this are not the parents—they’re advocates,” Ricketts told the Free Beacon. “I tell parents, ‘Don’t settle’—there’s no fixing these standards. They have to be scrapped.”

The Nebraska Department of Education, which consists of elected members separate from the governor, defended the process for drafting the curriculum as “transparent.”

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Biden Admin Linked Radical Handbook Instructing Teachers To ‘Disrupt Whiteness’ As Part Of School Reopening Guidance, Admits ‘Error’

The Biden administration has admitted the Department of Education made an “error” after Fox News revealed that the DOE promoted a radical handbook from the Abolitionist Teaching Network as part of its COVID-19 school reopening guidance. The Fox News report added that the ATN instructs teachers to “disrupt whiteness” and that an ATN founder sees it as her mission to “trouble [white teachers’] internalized White supremacy and anti-Blackness.”

The ATN handbook, titled “Guide for Racial Justice & Abolitionist Social and Emotional Learning,” is linked in the Biden administration’s Department of Education “Ed COVID-19 Handbook” which is designed to guide teachers in “reopening safely and meeting all students’ needs.”

The guide promotes the “historic American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP),” and provides “resources” to schools looking to spend the $122 billion in ARPA funds earmarked for public schools to help correct the “disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, students with disabilities, English learners, students who are migratory, students experiencing homelessness, students in correctional facilities, and students in foster care”

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