Tag: public schools

Iowa Passes School Screen Time Limits Law

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed House File 2676, known as the MAHA ( Make American Healthy Again) bill, on May 20, 2026. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended the signing.

The bill includes a large health-policy package, but possibly the most notable reform is the elementary school screen time limit which limits screen time during the school day for elementary school students. As part of the reform, the bill requires that schools limit daily device exposure for young students, increases required physical activity during the school day, and implements healthier school lunch standards.

Other reforms in the bill include restrictions on SNAP eligible foods, removal of certain food dyes from school meals, permission for over-the-counter ivermectin, and nutrition education requirements for medical professionals.

The screen time limit is the most unique reform as research is now showing that excessive screen time negatively effects the intellectual, physical and social development of children. The bill requires that schools rebalance time toward more physical movement and in-person engagement.

The law requires a cap of 60 minutes a day of screen time/digital instruction for K-5 students with exceptions for special education needs/individualized programs. It also balances this with the requirement minimum of two hours of physical activity per week. This is a statewide, uniform statute which will require every public school to adjust curricula, schedules, and teaching activities.

Other states have passed laws to limit cell phone usage in schools, but none have put a limit on instructional technology usage other than restrictions of which programs and social media may be used while in school.

Iowa ties the law to physical health, fitness, and chronic‑disease prevention, alongside fitness tests and activity requirements while other state laws frame bans strictly on distraction, bullying, or mental‑health issues. Iowa’s ban also specifies “instructional screen time,” not just usage of technology in school.

Implementation of the law needs to be planned and provided to schools. It is not clear about the definition of digital instruction nor does it provide steps for monitoring technology minutes in schools.

It is also possible that there could legal challenges to the law from those promoting local control or from commercial vendors who currently provide technology in the schools.

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Oregon Under Fire For Grant Program That Won’t Give Money To Schools With Too Many White Kids

Two nonprofits are demanding an investigation into Oregon’s allegedly anti-white education grants.

Defending Education and Do No Harm (DNH) filed a joint complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against Oregon’s education department and Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC) on May 28, according to a Defending Education press release. The complaint accuses an Oregon grants program of being racially discriminatory.

The U.S. Department of Education, Oregon’s Department of Education, and HECC did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

“What stands out most about Oregon’s system of public school funding is the sheer blatancy of the discrimination – explicit racial quotas and race-based bonuses for distributing public funds written into Oregon law and policy. This race-based essentialism has no place in Oregon or elsewhere in the United States,” DNH Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kurt Miceli told the DCNF.

Oregon’s Department of Education awards the Charter School Equity Grant to schools where at least 65% of students are disabled and/or students belong to “[r]acial or ethnic groups that have historically experienced academic disparities,” according to the grant’s text.

This violates the “‘color-blind’ mandate” of both Title VI and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, the complaint alleges.

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Beware, AI cameras in the classroom filming your children and gathering personal data

There’s a new and dire threat to privacy that parents of school children need to be aware of and be prepared to fight against.

AI surveillance in the classroom.

Frank Landymore of Futurism.com reports, in a May 18 article, on a sinister plan hatched by the University of Washington to film pre-school children during class time. If this is going on in Washington, you have to believe it’s going on, at least in the planning stages if not already happening, across the 50 states.

The article reports that a planned University of Washington study would’ve had preschool teachers wear cameras to “record first-person footage of everything in the classroom,” including the children they were instructing, and use that footage to train AI models.

Remember, those behind the global technocracy movement believe the only value a human being will hold in the new society they are trying to create, is the data sets they produce. This was stated in the wide open a few years ago by World Economic Forum adviser Yuval Noah Harari. Without your personal data to be stolen, manipulated, and sold for profit, you are nothing to them but a useless eater.

Part of the plan is to create a “digital twin” of every person on earth as an anchor to the new digital control grid.

So why wouldn’t the Epstein class of entitled billionaire elites who harbor perverted, twisted views of children, want a daily video record of everything your child does in school? Every word uttered. Every facial expression. Every action and reaction. Year over year for comparison’s sake. Then they can use this data to create algorithms that predict everything your child will grow up to become before he or she is 10 or 12 years old?

Harari, an Israeli historian and chief adviser to the WEF, has said that if he had access to artificial intelligence when he was younger, he believes he would have discovered he was a homosexual at age 11 or 12 instead of at 17. In fact, a Newsweek article from September 8, 2017, made the case that AI can predict “with startling accuracy” whether a person is gay or straight.

But this particular story, in the case of Washington State, has a positive outcome. It exemplifies the kind of parental awareness and bold activism that is needed to shut down the illegitimate use of AI technology in the classroom.

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The Public School Mess

For most of my life, I’ve wanted to do two things: teach and write. I’ve now done both, but I’ve been more successful at one than the other. I went to college to be a teacher. It took me five and a half years to get my degree and teacher certification. It took me a year and a half of substitute teaching to get a teaching position. I taught 9th-grade English and, later, World Geography at a majority minority high school southwest of Houston. I was teaching there on 9/11. I quit two years later. I lasted all of five years. It took me longer to get my degree and teacher certification than the time I was actually on the job. 

Why didn’t I stay longer? There is a very long list of reasons, far too many to list here. Had the public school system been the one I had graduated from 10 years before, I might have stayed in the classroom. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The public school system is a mess and has been for decades. People wonder why public school teachers today have purple hair and like to talk about their sexuality with their students. They wonder where the normal teachers are. The normal teachers quit like I did. It’s simple, really. When you chase away the people who want to be there, like me, you’re stuck with what’s left, including the purple hair people. 

Don’t believe me? The turnover rate for the state I live in, Texas, is 12%. Twelve percent of all teachers hired do not return for a second year. In the state’s largest district, the Houston Independent School District, the turnover rate is 15% higher! Nearly 30% of all teachers hired by Houston I.S.D. do not return for a second year. This absurdly high turnover rate is one of the many reasons that Houston I.S.D. is being run by the state right now and not the school district.

What is the problem? Why do so many teachers quit? What can be done to improve the public school system, if at all? The main problem, as I see it, is that teachers are no longer valued. They’re appreciated a couple of times a year, but they’re not valued. Teachers are interchangeable. Today, teachers are seen as the hired help. If one quits, you just find another. No big deal. My school district, the district I graduated from, did not see me as a teacher. I was a babysitter at a “problem school.” The district would never say that in public, but that was the very clear implication. 

Students are believed over teachers. Teachers are expected to solve all the problems thrown at them without help or backup and without stopping the lesson. If the problems aren’t solved, it’s the teacher’s fault. In fact, it’s ALWAYS the teacher’s fault, ALWAYS. Misbehaving student? Teacher’s fault, poor classroom management. Lack of supplies? Teacher’s fault, they didn’t bring enough. Not enough copies for the classroom? Teacher’s fault, they used up their allotment before the end of the month. Higher than average failure rate? Teacher’s fault, the lessons aren’t interesting enough. Do you see a pattern? I certainly do. It turns out that constantly being told you’re terrible at your job and that you’re wrong about everything is not conducive to teachers wanting to return for another year. 

I would hope that this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone reading this. Teachers do not teach for the money. I promise you, they don’t. I didn’t. I taught because I was good at it and I enjoyed it until I didn’t. Why complain? Teachers get the summers off. Surely that’s enough time to recover. It might be if teachers were paid during the summer. They’re not. Not unless they’re teaching summer school. Teachers are paid for nine months. They stretch nine months of pay to cover all twelve months. I know, I’ve done it. Who gets paid all twelve months? Administration. All the paper pushers sitting in their nice offices, making twice or three times what the average teacher makes, miles from any school, making sure they justify the continuation of their job, those are the ones who take an ever larger chunk of the money the school district receives. Those are the ones who need to go. Every last school district in the U.S. needs to be DOGED. Every last one. 

There has been a fundamental shift in public education in the last twenty to thirty years, moving from student accountability to permissiveness, under the guise of equity and inclusion. Everyone, from the students to the faculty to the staff, is allowed to live their truth. Now, it’s okay for students to run wild, talk back to the adults, and assault the teachers. Anything goes nowadays. It’s not even babysitting, it’s chaos with an educational imprimatur. What happened? 

Progressives happened. They rule with emotion, not logic. If they hear something they don’t like, they ignore it. Boys in the girls’ locker room? What’s the big deal? The boys identify as girls; it’s sexist to kick them out. The girls should be more understanding. It’s never a progressive’s fault, either. They mean well. They just want everyone to be happy and equal. Yes, equally miserable. 

With progressives in control, there is no one to enforce standards and accountability, so there are no standards or accountability. The agency supposedly created to enforce educational standards, the U.S. Department of Education, has been an absolute disaster. After its creation, the U.S. was no longer #1 in the world in terms of education. Today, according to the World Population Review, the U.S. is 38th in Math and 24th in Science. 

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THEY’VE LEARNED NOTHING: California Democrat Governor Candidate Tom Steyer Says ‘I’m Totally in Favor of Trans Athletes in High School’

Democrats learned absolutely nothing from the 2024 election and this proves it.

During a recent podcast appearance, Tom Steyer, the liberal billionaire Democrat running for governor of California, said that he is ‘totally’ in favor of trans athletes in high school.

This technically violates two public sentiments on this issue. Not only do people not want trans athletes in high school sports, people don’t want minors to be allowed to transition genders at all.

The 2024 election made the public’s position on this crystal clear but the Democrats just don’t care.

FOX News reports:

California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer defended transgender athletes competing in high school sports in a podcast posted on Sunday, arguing that excluding transgendered youth from athletics would worsen the emotional and mental health struggles many already face.

“I’m totally in favor of trans athletes in high school,” Steyer told “I’ve Had It” podcast host Jennifer Welch.

“When you understand the vulnerability, the stress, the danger of being a trans kid, and you understand almost half of them try to commit suicide, then you think, ‘We’re gonna punish those kids, we’re gonna cut them off from team sport.’ It’s like, no we’re not.”

Steyer made similar remarks when speaking to CBS Los Angeles but also branded dissidents for perpetuating a “right-wing attempt” to smear transgender individuals.

“To be clear, this is not some huge epidemic,” he said. “This is a right-wing attempt to victimize and villainize already vulnerable and desperate people, and my heart completely goes out to the people who are so sad, feel so rejected, and so unaccepted that half of them would try to kill themselves.”

Steyer is among a crowded field of Democrats vying to retain party control of the governorship once incumbent Gov. Gavin Newsom’s term expires.

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Trans track athlete AB Hernandez dominates competition at California girls masters meet

A transgender track athlete again took the top spot in several events at a California master’s meet on Saturday, leading officials to award a second gold medal to the runner-up.

Jurupa Valley High School senior AB Hernandez scored first place in the girl’s high jump, long jump and triple jump at Saturday’s California Interscholastic Federation’s (CIF) Southern Section Track and Field Masters meet at Moorpark High School in Ventura County.

In all three events, Hernandez stood alongside the second-place finisher on the winner’s podium.

In all three categories, Hernandez’s score far exceeded the competition.

In the girl’s high jump, Hernandez’s mark was 5 feet, 8 inches while the second-place hit 5 feet, 6 inches.

In the long jump competition, Hernandez posted a winning mark of 20 feet, 4.75 inches, while the runner-up landed a jump of 19 feet, 1.75 inches.

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Sex-Ed: Eighth Graders Given Class Project to Design a Brothel

A German school was forced to withdraw a sex-ed lesson after children aged 13 and 14 years old were given the classroom task of designing a “new brothel for all”.

Children in an eighth-grade class at a Catholic high school in Kevelaer, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, were assigned the classwork of designing an inclusive brothel, including floor plans. The local Rheinische Post reported on the remarkable lesson plan on Wednesday, and news quickly spread nationwide, leading to the headmistress and mayor facing demands for explanations.

The worksheet, entitled ‘The New Brothel For All!’, asked students to consider key areas of modern “house of sexual pleasure” design, including “What sexual preferences need to be addressed and catered to?” “How should a brothel be designed from the outside so that it can be visited and desired by all kinds of people?” and “What should an advertisement for such a brothel look like?”

After considering these factors, including who would work there, what it would offer, and drawing a floor plan, the class would be brought in at the end for a group discussion.

The school, Kardinal von Galen Gymnasium, was invited to offer an explanation for this extraordinary sex education lesson, and while it didn’t exactly double down, it also insisted it had been delivered for all the right reasons.

The headmistress said, reports WDR: “The material under the heading: ‘Sexual Education of Diversity: Practical Methods on Identities, Relationships, Bodies, and Prevention for Schools and Youth Work’ is deliberately designed to be provocative in order to stimulate discussion.

“It responds to developments in our society with a diversity of lifestyles and gender roles. It also addresses the heavy use of social media channels by children and young people and the associated flood of information about various forms of sexuality.”

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Hey Guys! Did You Know It’s Racist to Have to Go to School in Your Own School District?

What happens when you give leftists everything they want? That’s a trick question. They never get everything they want, because if you give them everything they say they want, they’ll always come up with something more to want. They are never satisfied. I think the word “greed” applies here.

Case in point: let’s go to one of the bluest states in the nation and check in on a lawsuit that alleges racism in the way school district borders impact minority students. While the issue at the center of the Massachusetts case is pretty simple, the framing of it all will likely get complex.

A group of minor children are suing the Massachusetts Department of Education, the Massachusetts Board of Education, and several educational leaders in state government. Since the kids are too young to even comprehend why they are suing the state, their “next friends” are signed onto the complaint. Typically, in legal terms, if you’re a minor your “next friend” could be your parent or someone else with certain guardianship responsibilities.

See what I mean? The left is already making it complicated, and I haven’t even told you what this is all about yet.

So, let’s get to that. These kids are suing the state because their lawyers maintain they are being denied a better education because of where they live. Most, if not all, of them live within the boundaries of the Boston Public Schools district. But they’re not asking to be given the opportunity to go to another school within their district. They’re not asking for more money, resources, or staffing for their own school district.

Instead, they want to be able to go outside of their school district into the better neighboring school districts in the suburbs. They want to essentially erase the geographic borders that separate the city from the suburbs.

It’s as simple as that. If I’m that eight-year-old minority child in the Boston Public Schools district who is a party to this lawsuit, I don’t want to go to school where I live in the city. I want to go to school where you live if you live in the suburbs. And if I don’t get what the adults in my life tell me that I want, then you’re a racist.

That’s about as simple as this will get.

Now, for some much-needed background. The operating budget for Boston Public Schools in this current year is roughly $1.6 billion. This is spent to educate more than 50,000 students, which translates into about $31,000 spent on each student each year. This cost is comparable to sending your kid to a private school and paying $31,000 per year in tuition. Only in this case, you’re not footing the bill; the Boston taxpayers are.

So, what does that mean to academic performance?

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School Shootings NOT the Number One Cause of Child Death – Statistical Nonsense Debunked

A European friend approached me today, asking about guns in the US, saying, “There are so many guns in your country. It will take a long time to collect them all and get rid of them.” She was shocked when I responded, “We don’t want to get rid of them.”

After she got over her immediate horror and confusion, she asked, “But aren’t you afraid of school shootings?” I said that I was not, while also making it clear that I opposed them. “Most Americans are against school shootings,” I added.

Then she said, “I read that school shootings are the number one cause of death of children in the US.”

I responded, “I believe you believe you read that, but you didn’t. No one is actually making that claim. Mainstream media and anti-gun lobbies are playing with statistics to make you think that is what you read.”

This or similar statements about school shooting deaths are now repeated constantly, not only in personal conversations but also on television talk shows and in the talking points of the anti-gun lobby. The claim, of course, is complete nonsense.

On average, school shootings result in fewer than 40 deaths per year, and not all of the victims are children. There was an uptick during the Biden administration and after COVID, but from 2000 through roughly 2020, the average was closer to six deaths per year.

And this is why no serious authority has actually made such an egregious claim. Rather, headlines are designed to make people believe that is what they read. The actual claim, according to CDC data, is that firearm injuries were the leading cause of death among children and teens ages 1 to 19 in 2020 and 2021.

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Trudeau facing backlash after story referencing high school girls’ skirts

On Wednesday’s live stream, Sheila Gunn Reid and Lise Merle reacted to former prime minister Justin Trudeau facing backlash after sharing a bizarre story about his time teaching high school girls decades ago.

Trudeau told the controversial story while speaking at the 2026 Women Deliver Conference in Melbourne, Australia, earlier this week.

Speaking on a panel, he recalled his time as a teacher when a male student complained about being disciplined for dress code violations, while pointing out that female students regularly wore their skirts “too short.”

Trudeau continued by reflecting on how male teachers were “uncomfortable” pointing out the issue, which visibly squirmed his former Chief of Staff, Katie Telford, who was sitting next to him on stage.

Trudeau noted that he found the student’s perspective “really interesting” and allowed it to be published, which subsequently got the newspaper temporarily thrown out.

Lise condemned Trudeau’s remarks, noting the severely inappropriate nature of his messaging. She criticized him for letting a student publish the op-ed suggesting “[male] teachers are awkward around the [female students]. The sub context of that is that they liked it, and they were allowing it.”

By defending a student’s perspective that male teachers felt “awkward” around short skirts and allowing it to be published, Trudeau has once again placed himself at the centre of a firestorm over what many view as deeply insensitive and outdated attitudes.

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