Tag: public schools

Ed-Tech Vendors Fleece Schools Out Of Millions Of Dollars For Software That Makes Kids Dumber

After the teachers in Los Angeles nearly went on yet another strike, they may want to study a recent scandal that reveals where some of the district’s money is going. According to a report in the Westside Current, a former Los Angeles Unified School District employee and technology vendor, Gautham Sampath, just pled “not guilty” to money-laundering charges after allegedly rerouting $3 million to LAUSD technical project manager Hong Peng to land a $22 million contract for his information software.

Assuming Peng is guilty in this instance — and the hilariously illiterate texts between her and Sampath would suggest she is — it is reasonable to conclude she has probably done the same with other tech vendors, paying gargantuan sums of taxpayer money for often shoddy, useless software and pocketing large sums for it. And she is far from the only person doing it. Sampath’s company, Innive, evidently has “government contracts in California and elsewhere in the country.” This means that all over the country, local and state governments are awarding multimillion-dollar bids to conmen with few legal repercussions.

To be clear, this is money that could have gone to teachers, counselors, and administrators. This is money that could have been kept by the homeowners paying extortion-level property taxes. This is money that families could have applied to alternative schooling options. 

But instead, this kind of corruption continues to siphon away taxpayer money without anyone realizing it. Years ago, I wrote about the expenses that consume most of a school district’s budget, namely extracurriculars, special education, and disciplinary programs. What I should have added to this list was technology. 

For the past couple of decades, school districts have raided their rainy day funds, issued bonds, and gone broke paying for iPads and Chromebooks, educational software, and specially trained personnel tasked with helping faculty use these products. And aside from a few district bureaucrats safely hidden in a nondescript office building that the district somehow owns, no one really knows how much any of this costs. Naturally, this lack of transparency makes it all too easy for embezzlement, laundering, and bribery.

Moreover, in my own experience of teaching high school English, most of these programs are usually worthless. I have no clue how much local districts are paying for so many research databases, note-taking apps, informational organizers, or AI tools, but I do know I never use them, nor do any of the teachers I’ve known.

Ironically, what’s worse than this useless software is the software we actually do have to use. Whether it involves recording grades, taking attendance, referring misbehavior, or compiling standardized assessment data for each student, these programs are, as a rule, terrible. They are poorly designed, convoluted, and frequently glitch and crash. Added to this are our online textbooks, which force users to click two dozen times through two dozen dropdown menus to open a particular text — and usually require a few periodic reboots afterward. 

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Supreme Court rejects Florida parents’ challenge to school that ‘socially transitioned’ daughter

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Florida parents challenging school officials who withheld their child’s “social transition” from them under a since-rescinded policy.

In 2018, the Leon County School Board adopted a policy empowering schools to develop a “support plan” for students who wished to be treated as the opposite sex, including withholding the news from parents if a student did not want them to know. The policy was changed in 2022 after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, but not before one pair of parents sued the school district for keeping them in the dark about “socially transitioning” their middle-school-age daughter.

CBS News reported that January and Jeffrey Littlejohn’s daughter, identified in court documents only as AG, had asked her parents to change her name and address her with male pronouns. They refused, allowing her only to adopt “J” as a nickname, so AG discussed her gender confusion with a school counselor. A “support plan,” complete with preferred name and pronouns, was established, but the Littlejohns were not notified until their daughter told them herself.

The parents sued in 2021 but lost through multiple appeals, based largely on the conclusion that the 2022 policy change rendered the issue moot. They had sought damages on the grounds that it was the school’s “course of conduct, not the contents” of the 2018 plan that were at issue.

So the Littlejohns appealed to the nation’s highest court, but Monday’s order list confirmed their petition has been denied without elaboration. How individual justices voted was not listed, but CBS noted that Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas previously urged the Court to resolve similar questions, indicating they most likely would have taken the case. If true, that would mean that all six remaining justices voted to deny the petition, as only four votes are necessary to hear a case.

The indoctrination of children with left-wing ideology on sexuality, race, and other agenda items has long been a major concern in American public schools and libraries, from book shelves to drag events to classroom materials to even “transitioning” troubled children without parental input. Many schools have also displayed hostility to the rights and employment of individual teachers who refuse to go along with such agendas. Across the nation, controversy has also erupted in recent years over schools and libraries adopting books that expose sexual themes and activity to children, often in graphic detail and with pornographic imagery depicting specific sexual acts.

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Wisconsin High School Teacher Placed on Administrative Leave After Whining That Shooter Failed to Assassinate President Trump

A social studies teacher at Kaukauna High School has been caught openly lamenting that the latest deranged assassin didn’t manage to take out President Donald Trump.

Patrick Meyer, identified as the taxpayer-funded educator pushing his anti-Trump venom on social media, posted a now-deleted rant on X following the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

According to screenshots shared by Libs of Tiktok, Meyer wrote:

“I am not impressed with recent presidential assassins. It’s f-king embarrassing. Booth, Guiteau, Czolgosz, Oswald must all be spinning in their graves! MAGAA (make Americans great assassins again)! Sad!”

U.S. Rep. Tony Wied (R-WI) responded on this outrageous tweet:

“This type of disgusting rhetoric has no place in our society and does not represent our values in #WI08. It is not the example that our teachers should be setting for Northeast Wisconsin students.”

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Wisconsin School District Cancels All Classes on May 1 So Teachers Can Join Anti-ICE ‘Day Without Immigrants’ Protests

The Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin has officially canceled school for all students on Friday, May 1, due to a large number of teachers planning to participate in anti-ICE protests.

In a message sent to parents and posted on the district’s website, officials announced the closure due to expected low staff turnout for the “A Day without Immigrants” event, which is part of the far-left “May Day Strong” National Day of Action.

A whopping 70 percent of the district’s staff signed on to support canceling school for the protest.

The full announcement from the Madison Metropolitan School District website read as follows:

No school Friday, May 1

Our Madison Teachers Inc. (MTI) partners recently shared that they received 70% of staff signatures supporting participation in “A Day without Immigrants” as part of the May Day Strong national day of action.

After a conversation with MTI, we understand that we may experience low staff turnout and believe this will directly affect the safety of our community due to insufficient supervision and educational support for our students.

Once we were made aware of the anticipated staff absences, we reviewed options and scenarios to best support students and families. After thoughtful discussion and collaboration, it has been determined that:

  • School will be cancelled for all students on Friday, May 1.
  • There will be no after-school care.

However, all other activities, including events and athletics, will continue as scheduled.

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WHCD Shooting Should Force a Serious Conversation About Teacher Bias in K–12 Education

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, the suspect in the attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has been identified as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California.

Allen was taken into custody alive in the Hilton lobby near the security screening area.

But the more important part of this story is not just what happened—it is who the suspect is.

Allen is a highly educated professional. Reports indicate he attended the California Institute of Technology and recently earned a master’s degree in computer science. 

More importantly, he worked as a teacher and was even named “Teacher of the Month” in December 2024 at C2 Education in Torrance.

It’s not fair to say every teacher is responsible for this. That would be dishonest. There are many teachers who do their jobs well, focus on academics, and avoid pushing political views in the classroom.

But ignoring the broader pattern would be just as dishonest.

I spend a significant amount of time looking at how education functions in this country. The trend is clear. Schools have increasingly shifted away from neutral instruction and toward ideological influence.

Students are often exposed to one-sided narratives on complex political issues, with little room for disagreement or serious debate.

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North Carolina superintendent defends children’s Pride book featuring BDSM gear because children may see it ‘in their community’

A North Carolina school superintendent of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district was grilled by state lawmakers in the legislature after being accused of breaking state law having to do with parents’ rights and the inclusion of sexually inappropriate material in school libraries. When he was asked about a book that contained men dressed in BDSM, he didn’t take any issue with it and said that children may see it “in their community.”

Dr. Rodney Trice, superintendent of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, was being grilled by North Carolina Republican Majority Leader Brenden Jones in a viral clip that has spread on X.

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Home Education Must Be “Equivalent” to Public School: Lawmakers

Home educators in Connecticut are officially in the government’s crosshairs. In fact, under a new bill moving through the legislature, parents will need approval from child protection services to homeschool. And they will have to prove to bureaucrats that they are providing “equivalent instruction” to that offered by the government-school system.  Only about a third of children in the state’s public schools are even “proficient” in reading or math, federal data show. Suicide, mental problems, and other issues are off the charts and rising among government-educated children, too. So, it was not immediately clear why anyone would want homeschoolers to be subjected to “equivalent instruction.” 

The bill purports to require that every parent must send their child to a government school. The only exception is if the parent or guardian can “show that the child is elsewhere receiving equivalent instruction in the studies taught in the public schools,” the text of the Connecticut legislation declares. 

Lawmakers lambasted the provision. “What is equivalent instruction? Is it equivalent to Prospect’s education, Bridgeport, Waterbury, Greenwich, Darien, East Haddam? I don’t know,” argued Ranking Member Rep. Lezlye Zupkus, a Republican. Democrats on the committee dismissed the concerns.

To prove that parents are giving their children “equivalent instruction,” the statute purports to require that they keep records for three years. They are also required to provide a demonstration of their child’s work to government. Ultimately, the state Department of Education will provide “guidance” regarding what all of it means. 

Senator Heather Somers, also a Republican, warned this was a scheme to force homeschool families to do the same thing as government schools. “By homeschooling being evaluated and really being pushed to public school standards, this bill is pressuring families to mirror the public school system,” she explained, echoing other critics. 

The demands are especially ironic considering how well homeschoolers tend to do compared to their government-schooled peers. “Every single homeschooler that I’ve had the privilege of meeting, their kids are smarter,” Sen. Somers said. “They’re graduating early from high school. Some of them are taking college courses or actually getting two years of college before they even turn 18.”

The elephant in the room — the fact that the government is horrifically failing the children already in its school system — did not escape notice. “People are withdrawing their kids, they’re quitting their jobs, because they don’t feel their kids are safe in public school,” observed Representative Tina Courpas, a Republican. “To me, that is so basic.” 

Lawmakers should focus on fixing the government’s schools. “If this committee did nothing else for the next two years other than make our public school safe, that would be a big win,” the lawmaker continued. “But this bill doesn’t address that problem. Instead, it cuts off people’s options to solve a problem that this state has created for them.”

Under the new legislation that has already cleared several important hurdles, the homeschooling community in the state would also need to be cleared by Child Protective Services (CPS) to obtain permission to homeschool. The Home School Legal Defense Association says this is a major change.

“One of the most troubling aspects of the proposal is the idea that parents could need permission from a child welfare agency before teaching their own children at home,” noted Ralph Rodriguez, associate attorney for HSLDA. “That represents a significant shift in how homeschooling families are treated under the law.”

Lawmakers, too, were perplexed by the decision to get the CPS involved in approving homeschooling. “The child advocate … stated publicly yesterday to me in a hearing that she agrees the real cause of these tragic events is a catastrophic failure of the Department of Children and Families,” said Education Committee Ranking Member Sen. Eric Berthel, referring to two tragic cases in which children died despite child-welfare officials being involved.

“All of this begs the question: Why would we want DCF to be involved at all in the monitoring or regulation of homeschoolers when the agency has demonstrated they cannot handle the cases they are already monitoring?” added Sen. Berthel. Other critics suggested the bill against homeschoolers was an effort to blame innocent people for the failures of government.  

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Appeals Court Sides With Texas on 10 Commandments in Classroom, Overruling Lower Court

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state of Texas can require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms, marking a victory for upholding the nation’s Christian foundation of the law.

The 9-8 decision overrules a preliminary injunction put in place by a federal district court judge in November, who concluded that “displaying the Ten Commandments on the wall of a public-school classroom as set forth in S.B. 10 [Senate Bill 10] violates the [First Amendment’s] Establishment Clause.”

The First Amendment says in part that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” But the Supreme Court has ruled that the Amendment’s protections apply to state law.

In the 5th Circuit’s majority opinion, Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan wrote, “To Plaintiffs, merely exposing children to religious language is enough to make the displays engines of coercive indoctrination. We disagree.”

“S.B. 10 authorizes no religious instruction and gives teachers no license to contradict children’s religious beliefs (or their parents’). No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin.”

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No whites allowed: School district sends kids ‘of color’ on cross-country ‘social justice’ field trip

A California school district recently organized a field trip that excluded white students and maintains several other race-based policies, documents reveal.

Albany Unified School District (AUSD) hosted the trip to Virginia for “young men and women of color” to visit Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and discuss issues such as “social justice,” according to documents obtained by parental rights group Defending Education (DE) and shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation. The trip was approved by the board of education and cost the district $42,845.

“This unique mentoring program encourages Albany High School young men and women of color to develop social, personal, and academic success skills,” the document from the board reads. “Students gather in a safe, supportive, and empowering environment to voice their needs and challenges. The students engage in enriching discussions on social justice, education, leadership, mental well-being, and self-awareness. This mentoring program is transforming the lives of young men and women of color to make a significant global impact in society.”

Along with college tours, students visited the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial and the Black Heritage Trail.

The district maintains several other programs geared specifically toward non-white students and staff, documents show.

AUSD’s 2025-2026 Local Control and Accountability Plan names “Young Men of Color and Young Women of Color Programs” that aim to “provide social emotional supports to most underserved students.” The programs are part of a $1,257,234 “social emotional/mental health” support effort.

The same plan details the district’s intention to provide staff with “professional development” programs centered on “culturally responsive/anti-racist pedagogy.” These teaching practices are necessary to support “student groups who are persistently and historically underserved,” the document states.

Another document from 2026 includes a goal of “Recruit[ing] and Retain[ing] a Diverse, High Quality Staff,” DE found. The Superintendent Report detailed plans to “strengthen inclusive hiring,” expand “equitable recruitment pipelines,” and implement “affinity-based supports.” The report mentioned a “Black Teacher Project” to help in these race-based hiring and retention efforts and suggested the district would track staff demographics as an indicator of success.

AUSD did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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Supreme Court Rejects Massachusetts Case Over Hiding Student’s Gender Identity

Supreme Court justices on April 20 declined to take up a case involving a Massachusetts schoolgirl whose parents say officials wrongly hid their daughter’s purported identity as a male from them.

At least six of the nine justices declined to accept a petition to rehear a lower court verdict in the case, which was brought by the girl’s parents in 2022 against the Ludlow, Massachusetts, school district.

The vote count on the petition and how each justice voted were not disclosed, nor were any comments offered by the justices.

“Today’s denial by the Supreme Court is a missed opportunity to defend parental rights,” Jim Campbell, chief legal counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, who was helping represent the parents, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“Social transition, including going by inaccurate or nonbinary pronouns and a different name, is a major intervention in a child’s life that puts the child on a difficult-to-escape pathway to medicalized transition, carrying the risk of life-altering damage. No school district should make important mental health decisions on behalf of parents and conceal those decisions from them, especially in opposition to the mental-health care that those parents have chosen for their children.”

An attorney representing the school officials did not return a request for comment by publication time.

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