Tag: public schools

Supreme Court Backs Parental Rights Over School LGBTQ Books and Classes

In a landmark 6-3 decision on June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents have a constitutional right to opt their children out of public-school lessons involving LGBTQ-themed storybooks on religious grounds.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito held that Montgomery County, Maryland’s policy of requiring elementary students to participate in instruction featuring these books without allowing religious exemptions violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause.

Several of the titles at the center of Mahmoud v. Taylor have also appeared in similar lawsuits across the country, where parents, both Christian and Muslim, have sought to either remove the books entirely or at least retain the right to opt their children out.

The specific books that sparked the legal battle in Montgomery County included Uncle Bobby’s Wedding (kindergarten), about a girl adjusting to her uncle’s marriage to another man; Prince & Knight (first grade), a fairy tale romance between two men; and Born Ready (second grade), the story of a transgender child.

Other titles that have drawn objections include Love, Violet, about a girl nervous to give a valentine to another girl, and Pride Puppy, an alphabet book about a dog lost during a Pride parade.

Books challenged by parents elsewhere include Lawn Boy, Gender Queer: A Memoir, and All Boys Aren’t Blue, all of which feature explicit sexual content and gender identity themes.

Elementary and middle-grade books like King and King, Melissa (formerly George), and Julián Is a Mermaid have also faced legal and school board challenges.

Other contested titles include This Book Is Gay, ABC Pride, Heartstopper, Fun Home, It’s Perfectly Normal (a sex education book), Baby Be-Bop, The Drowning of Stephan Jones, and The Education of Harriet Hatfield.

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California’s Pro-Israel AB 715: A Horrific Affront to Free Speech

While freedom of speech is one of the most prized freedoms celebrated in American society and the West, since the outbreak of the Gaza War, Zionist sympathizers in both major political parties have tried to quash dissent regarding US support for Israeli imperialism. In a new attempt to crush anti-war sentiments and indoctrinate millions of students into becoming pro-Israel sycophants, the California State Assembly has unanimously passed and referred to the State Senate a bill that would threaten freedom of speech in California public schools.

The bill, which seeks to add to already existing anti-discrimination legislation, would ban comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany and language which “denies” Israel’s right to exist. After nearly two years of viciously slaughtering Palestinians, it has become clear to the United Nations, Amnesty International, and even once reluctant scholars that Israel is guilty of genocide. Therefore, comparisons between Nazi Germany and the State of Israel do not only seem valid, but necessary for adequately describing the severity of Israeli cruelty in occupied Palestine. Furthermore, the wording of “directly or indirectly denying the right of Israel to exist” is alarmingly unspecific. Many supporters of Israel, including those at the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), have equated denying Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish supremacist state with denying Israel’s right to exist at all. By declaring legitimate criticism or comparisons of Israel as anti-Semitic without any further debate or inquiry, California politicians seek to combat the growing trend of young Americans questioning the US-Israel relationship.

Fundamentally, this bill is a gift to authoritarianism in line with a host of other similar bills in the United States and throughout the West. Ironically, both the deep-blue California and the deep-red state of Florida are united in their endeavor to suppress criticism of Israel. Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law HB 187, officially adopting the incredibly flawed aforementioned IHRA definition of anti-Semitism into law. In the United Kingdom, government officials have encouraged the police to treat those who wave the Palestinian flag or shout pro-Palestinian chants as racist criminals. Elsewhere, Germany has conducted raids on the homes of activists, and France has ordered a ban on pro-Palestine protests entirely.

Thankfully, numerous organizations and individuals have denounced this bill and encouraged the people of California to place pressure on the Senate and Governor Gavin Newsom to reject this bill. On the left, groups like the Jewish Educators Addressing Actual Antisemitism, CODEPINK, and Jewish Voice for Peace Bay Area have condemned the bill. Other Muslim and Arab advocacy groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations California, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center Action, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, have similarly condemned the bill.

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The Absurdity of Government Grocery Stores Exposes the Flaws of Public Schools

Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary partly on his plan to open five city-owned grocery stores—one in each of New York’s boroughs. The idea is as absurd as it sounds, but it’s a useful lens through which to view another government-run institution we’ve accepted for far too long: the public school system.

The case against government grocery stores is straightforward. Government providers have no incentive to spend money wisely or respond to customers’ needs. Unlike private businesses, which must compete for customers by offering quality goods at reasonable prices, government entities get paid regardless of performance. Tax dollars flow into the system whether the shelves are stocked or empty, whether the service is stellar or abysmal.

This lack of accountability breeds inefficiency and waste. Government employees, shielded by bureaucratic inertia and powerful unions, often see more tax dollars as the solution to every problem, rather than innovation or better management.

In the early days of the Soviet Union, state-controlled grocery stores and food distribution systems led to catastrophic mismanagement, with millions dying during the Russian famine of 1921 to 1922. Those weren’t just government-run, of course; unlike Mamdani’s proposed shops, they were government monopolies. But Venezuela’s recent experiment with government-controlled grocery stores has been a disaster, even with a degree of private competition allowed: Chronic shortages have left shelves empty and citizens queuing for hours for basic goods like bread and milk.

These disasters highlight how government control stifles competition, kills innovation, and leaves citizens with fewer alternatives when the system fails.

Now consider the public school system. It operates under the same flawed principles. Like Mamdani’s hypothetical grocery stores, public schools are funded by tax dollars regardless of their outcomes. In New York City, for example, public schools spend about $40,000 per student annually, yet the 2024 Nation’s Report Card shows less than a quarter of their 8th graders are proficient in math.

They face little pressure to improve because families are trapped by residential assignment, forced to send their children to the school dictated by their ZIP code. This setup gives government schools more monopoly power than a state-run grocery store would have. At least with grocery stores, you could drive to another one. With public schools, families without the means to relocate or afford private alternatives are left with limited options.

Mamdani’s campaign website calls for “public money” for “public” grocery stores, echoing the tired mantra of teachers’ unions, who argue that “public money” should fund only “public schools.” This rhetoric is a deliberate tactic to protect their monopoly, blocking school choice reforms that would allow parents to direct education funds to better options. The unions’ stance, like Mamdani’s, prioritizes government control over outcomes, ignoring the reality that too many public schools fail to deliver.

Teachers’ unions, like the grocery store unions Mamdani might envision, prioritize their members’ interests over those of students or families. They fight for higher salaries, better benefits, and less work, consistently resisting reforms such as merit pay or school choice that would introduce more competition or accountability. The National Education Association spent $66 million on political activities in 2021, largely to protect the status quo. This entrenched power structure ensures that the system serves adults, not children.

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Austrian Schoolchildren Forced to Learn Arabic to Communicate with Muslim Classmates

In a troubling revelation from Vienna, a concerned grandparent, Bernhard K., has exposed a growing crisis in Austria’s kindergartens. Speaking to the Austrian news outlet Heute, he described the stark reality at his grandson’s school, where only three of 25 classmates are fluent German speakers.

During breaks and after-school activities, the children revert to Arabic, leaving his grandson isolated. When asked how the boy copes, Bernhard’s response was shocking: “He’s trying to learn Arabic! How else is he supposed to communicate with his schoolmates?”

This is not an isolated incident but a symptom of a broader demographic shift. According to the Institute for Family Research, one in five children under 18 in Austria, roughly 340,000, lacks an Austrian passport.

Meanwhile, the number of native Austrian youths has plummeted from 1.6 million to 1.2 million. The rapid transformation is reshaping the nation’s schools and threatening the cultural fabric of its communities.

As The Gateway Pundit has previously reported, Muslims have now become the largest religious group in Vienna’s compulsory schools, comprising a striking 41.2% of all students across primary, secondary, and vocational education levels.

Meanwhile, just 34.5% of students now identify as Christian (17.5% Catholic and 14.5% Orthodox), more than 23% have no religious affiliation, and the remaining minority includes Buddhists (0.2%), Jews (0.1%), and others (0.9%).

“This is no longer immigration. This is displacement,” said Maximilian Weinzierl, national council member and leader of the FPÖ’s youth wing. “41.2% of Muslim students—that’s no longer a minority, that’s the new majority. What we as the FPÖ have been warning about for decades, but which was always dismissed as right-wing scaremongering, is now reality: Immigration has completely overrun our country.”

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CU Boulder class teaches ‘queering literacy’ methods for high school teachers

Aspiring high school English and social studies teachers can learn “queering literacy” methods at the University of Colorado at Boulder this upcoming fall semester.

“Queering Literacy in Secondary Classrooms” teaches students using “theories and practices of literacy teaching and learning that challenge multiple forms of oppression,” according to the course description.

“Using the tools of queer pedagogy,” this course will prepare education majors to “develop, and enact strategies for planning and implementing literacy instruction that moves beyond inclusion of differences in the English/language arts and social studies curriculum,” the course description states.

A professor who regularly teaches the course provided further insights on the content in a phone interview with The College Fix.

Professor Sara Staley described education as facing a “highly polarized political moment right now, especially around topics like DEI.” The current listed professor for the fall 2025 semester is Ashley Cartun.

Staley said she wants to support “teachers and students” who are “trying to create spaces of belonging in every classroom.” She said Colorado “laws and policies” require teachers to “create a safe, respectful, inclusive learning environment for a diverse population of students.”

She said, “a lot of research” shows teachers are not trained enough in “gender and sexual diversity.” Staley also co-runs the Queer Endeavor, a CU-Boulder program that works in “close collaboration with district and school leaders, K-12 teachers, and counselors” for LGBTQ education.

There is also “a lot of research that shows that school can be a pretty unwelcoming place for students who are different” especially for “queer and trans youths,” Staley said.

The class she teaches helps students learn about “diverse identities” and “what it looks like to read a book with a queer character in it” without reinforcing “negative stereotypes.”

Staley said, “queer pedagogy” is about “supporting students to think critically by asking questions of what they read.”

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California ordered to clean trans ideology out of classroom materials

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent a letter to California on June 20 ordering it to remove gender ideology references from educational curriculum and programs funded by a federal sexual education grant or face the loss of funding.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) reviewed materials created through California’s Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), a federally-funded sexual education program, and uncovered “egregious content” teaching young students they can change their sex. HHS noted the PREP program has mission of providing minors with medically accurate education rather than ideological agendas.

“After requesting, receiving, and reviewing California’s PREP materials, ACF uncovered egregious content teaching young students that gender identity is distinct from biological sex and that boys can identify as girls,” states an HHS press release. “The educational materials promoting gender ideology have nothing to do with Personal Responsibility Education and are outside the scope of PREP’s authorizing statute.”

The California Department of Public Health didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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New video footage blows up the ‘self-defense’ lie in Austin Metcalf’s brutal murder…

It was supposed to be an ordinary high school track meet in Frisco, Texas. Kids stretching, coaches meandering around, and parents huddled under tents waiting for the rain to pass. But then, in the blink of an eye, it turned into a bloody murder scene. All because a 17-year-old black kid named Karmelo Anthony brought a deadly weapon to a sports event and used it to stab 17-year-old Austin Metcalf to death.

You’d think that would be a clear-cut tragedy, right? Well, not if you’re a left-winger in America. The second this story broke, the usual race hustlers and propaganda media swooped in to twist Karmelo Anthony into their latest civil rights martyr. They tried to turn this vicious teen thug into the next Rosa Parks. Their version was a noble black teen, unfairly harassed by a racist white kid for daring to sit under the “wrong” tent, who was forced to defend himself from bigoted aggression.

It was a typical, ready-made narrative: brave black Karmelo refused to give up his seat, and evil white Austin got what he deserved. They spread it far and wide. Donations poured in by the hundreds of thousands. The mainstream press all but sainted the little thug who brought a deadly weapon to a school track meet. Who does that? Not an innocent victim. Not some misunderstood hero. A menace to society does that.

But now, right on cue, that carefully crafted defense story is falling apart at the seams, all thanks to chilling new surveillance footage that the Daily Mail got their hands on. The exclusive, unreleased video shows exactly what happened in the moments before Austin Metcalf was brutally murdered, and now we know there was no threat to his personal safety. No chaos. No racist mob forcing Karmelo to “stand his ground.” The video shows it was a calm scene until Anthony committed murder.

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Primary School Children Being “Sexualised” by Lessons on the “300 Flags of Pride”

Leaflets handed out at primary schools by the charity Swindon and Wiltshire Pride claim there are more flags representing sexuality and gender identity than there are for countries.

The material, signposted by the local council on social media, goes into detail about a “small selection” of 29 varieties.

It says: “While some might think [300] is too many, it’s all part of a drive to be more inclusive of the expansive breadth of identity within the community.”

Along with the rainbow LGBT Pride flag are a variety of offshoots, from the “intersex-inclusive Pride flag” to the “polyamory Pride flag” and even a black and white “heterosexual flag” for straight people, which it says can include transgender people.

The materials make up part of a free annual support guide produced by the charity, which also points to websites providing advice on controversial practices such as wearing a “binder to reduce apparent size of breasts”, the use of cross-sex hormones in under-18s, and information on “fetish spectrums”.

Parents of children at the primary schools told the Telegraph their concerns had been ignored by the local Labour council. …

One mother, a former teacher, said the guide being given out in primary schools was “really concerning”.

“Obviously the polyamory one, encouraging children to have multiple sex partners, they shouldn’t be sexualising children,” she said. “In the guide itself, under education, it states it is ‘for schools, teachers, and students’.

“A couple of sentences down, for example, it says ‘raise awareness of the lesser known identities across the fetish spectrum’,” she added, saying that was “inappropriate”.

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California Ordered to Cut ‘Gender Ideology’ From Sexual Education

The Trump administration has given California 60 days to remove all references to transgender or non-binary gender concepts from its federally funded sex education curriculum—or risk losing millions of dollars in federal funding.

In a letter sent on June 20, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said California’s Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) materials include “gender ideology” content not permitted under federal law.

Citing multiple lesson plans and teacher guides, the agency said the state’s curriculum teaches that gender identity is distinct from biological sex—something ACF says is outside the program’s statutory scope.

“The Trump Administration will not tolerate the use of federal funds for programs that indoctrinate our children,” ACF acting assistant secretary Andrew Gradison said in a statement. “The disturbing gender ideology content in California’s PREP materials is both unacceptable and well outside the program’s core purpose.”

Among the flagged material are lessons describing transgender, non-binary, gender-fluid identities, as well as references to social and medical gender transitions, including hormone therapy and “gender-affirming” surgeries.

ACF stated that these subjects fall outside the statutory framework of the PREP program, which is designed to educate youth on abstinence, contraception, and select adulthood preparation topics such as healthy relationships, financial literacy, and job readiness. Teaching about gender identity does not qualify, the agency says.

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Declining Enrollment Leaves 150 Chicago School Buildings Half Empty, Spending Tens of Thousands for Each Student

There are currently as many as 150 Chicago school buildings that are half empty, due to lower enrollment in the city.

The city has been run by Democrats for decades and their closest allies are the teacher unions. There is absolutely no excuse for this disastrous mismanagement of the city’s schools.

The pandemic, and the shuttering of schools for months, certainly didn’t help.

FOX News reports:

Chicago schools face enrollment crisis with 150 buildings half-empty

A new report showed that declining enrollment in Chicago leaves about 150 of its schools half-empty.

The report, authored by ChalkBeat and ProPublica, found that 47 schools are operating “at less than one-third capacity, leading to high costs and limited course offerings.”

Chicago Public Schools had roughly 325,000 students enrolled this year after losing 70,000 students from a decade ago, according to the report.

“District officials project that three school years from now, there could be as few as 300,000 or, in a best-case scenario, as many as 334,000 students. Those estimates are based in part on the city’s sharply falling birth rates. Citywide, from 2011 to 2021, the number of births dropped by more than 43%,” the authors of the report wrote.

While the city faces enrollment struggles, the city spends about $18,700 per student. Some schools are “double or triple” that number the report stated. One school that enrolled 28 students costs $93,000 students…

Frederick Douglass Academy High School, which has 28 students this year, reportedly costs $93,000 per student.

This is one of the reasons why more and more Americans are beginning to favor school choice, including homeschooling.

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