Tag: public schools

Canadian Teacher Suspended Over ‘Racist’ Zombie Makeup, Despite Fact Trudeau Got Away With It 3 Times – Now Teacher Has His Job Back With a Bonus

A Canadian teacher who lost his job after purportedly showing up to class in blackface as part of a Halloween costume has been reinstated with back pay.

The story highlights the culture of the left: If you’re a regular person, they will destroy your life. If you’re a powerful far-left politician, you get a free pass.

The U.S. saw the same situation play out in 2020, when Joe Biden was accused of sexual assault by former Senate staffer Tara Reade in the middle of the #MeToo movement. He wasn’t canceled and was instead crowned as his party’s nominee.

The Daily Mail reported that Gorian Surlan, a teacher at Parkdale Collegiate Institute in Toronto, was fired in 2021 after wearing what he said was a zombie costume to school.

He painted his face black using his daughter’s makeup and covered it with a mask to follow COVID rules.

Students were reportedly shocked. A photo of the teacher was sent to their parents. Complaints flooded the school.

The Toronto District School Board launched an investigation.

Surlan admitted misconduct and had his teaching license suspended in 2023. But an arbitrator has now ruled he must be reinstated.

Arbitrator Norm Jesin found Surlan guilty of “culpable misconduct” but said his career record justified suspension, not dismissal.

Jesin noted Surlan had acknowledged his mistake, adding, “This is an appropriate case for reinstatement.”

Surlan will return to work with a bonus — full compensation for lost wages dating back to October 2023, according to the Daily Mail.

Compare that with former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who had a habit of engaging in blackface in his youth.

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HHS Cuts California Sex Ed Grant over State’s Refusal to Remove Radical Gender Ideology from Student Program

The U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Thursday terminated a sex education grant to California due to the state’s refusal to remove radical gender ideology from the taxpayer-funded program, the agency announced. 

HHS, through its Administration for Children and Families (ACF), specifically terminated the state’s Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) grant, which is a program for students meant to prevent teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. HHS said California used taxpayer money to “teach curricula that could encourage kids to contemplate mutilating their genitals, ‘altering their body … through hormone therapy,’ ‘adding or removing breast tissue,’ and ‘changing their name.’” HHS said the state also instructed teachers to “remind students that some men are born with female anatomy.”

“California’s refusal to comply with federal law and remove egregious gender ideology from federally funded sex-ed materials is unacceptable,” Acting Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison said in a statement. “The Trump Administration will not allow taxpayer dollars to be used to indoctrinate children. Accountability is coming for every state that uses federal funds to teach children delusional gender ideology.” 

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REPORT: Muslim Student Was Exempted From Suspension in Loudoun County Locker Room Case Where Boys Objected to Presence of Female

A group of boys at a grade school in Loudoun County in Virginia were recently suspended from school because they objected to a female student in their locker room who identifies as male.

The female student even took pictures in the locker room but the boys were suspended for objecting. The case is outrageous.

The Gateway Pundit reported on this story:

The radical madness in Loudoun County, Virginia, just hit a new low. Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) has decided to SUSPEND two boys at Stone Bridge High School, not because they misbehaved, not because they broke the law, but because they dared to ask why a girl was in the boys’ locker room.

7News reported earlier this year that LCPS launched a Title IX investigation against the boys after they were caught on video asking the obvious question: Why is there a girl in the boys’ locker room?

That video, however, wasn’t recorded by the boys; it was recorded by the female student who identifies as male. A direct violation of LCPS policy, according to the news outlet.

Yet instead of disciplining the rule-breaker, the school launched a full-blown investigation against the boys themselves.

The school’s Title IX Office determined the boys were guilty of “sexual harassment” and “sex-based discrimination.”

Their punishment? A 10-day suspension, a no-contact order with the female student, forced meetings with administrators, and a permanent smear on their academic records that could destroy their college prospects.

Now it is being reported that one of the boys was exempted from the suspension. He happens to be a Muslim.

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For Uvalde families, long-awaited records release leads to more questions

Public records related to the Robb Elementary School massacre that occurred on May 24, 2022, were released last week by Uvalde County and the school district, revealing details about the events of that day, and the actions and communication between officials and local leaders.

After yearslong contention between officials and the media outlets that sued them for the records three years ago, they were finally released.

The Texas Department of Public Safety is fighting a separate lawsuit for the release of that agency’s records.

Uvalde officials have been under sustained scrutiny for the widely reported delayed response that occurred that day when 19 children and two teachers were killed by a gunman.

Video from officers’ body camera footage and thousands of documents were released. They included angry emails sent to the sheriff about his inaction.

There are also accounts from teachers—some of whom were injured—who survived and said that school leaders did not check in on them after the traumatic events.

The documents indicated that the 18-year-old shooter had behavioral issues. There were also reports from sheriff’s deputies that his mother had reported being afraid of her son.

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Billionaires Backing Woke Math Doesn’t Add Up Amid DEI Rollback

Jim Simons’ mathematical skills helped transform him from a prize-winning academic at Harvard and MIT into a legendary financier whose algorithmic models made Renaissance Technologies one of the most successful hedge funds in history. After his death last year, one of his consequential bequests went to his daughter, Liz, who oversees the Heising-Simons Foundation and its nearly billion-dollar endowment.

What Liz Simons has chosen to do with that inheritance might have surprised her father. Jim Simons devoted much of his charitable giving to basic research in mathematics and science, but his daughter’s foundation is moving in a very different direction. The Heising-Simons Foundation and similar organizations are supercharging a movement to remake K-12 mathematics education according to social justice principles.

The revamp the advocates seek is profound. They reject well-established practices of math instruction while infusing lessons with racial and gender themes. The goal is to motivate disadvantaged students while dispensing with the traditional features of math, like numerical computation, that they struggle with on standardized tests – considered an oppressive feature of white supremacist culture.

In many quarters, including corporations and universities, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are in retreat due to pressure from the Trump administration and the courts. Not so in public education, with curricula that are locally controlled and largely insulated from the dictates of Washington. That allows progressive foundations and like-minded charitable trusts to continue to pour millions of dollars into reshaping math education for black and Latino kids, including a $800,000 grant this year from the Heising-Simons Foundation, even though there exists no credible research showing that the social justice approach improves their performance.

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Loudoun County Public Schools Lunacy: Boys SUSPENDED for Objecting to Sharing Locker Room with a Female Pretending to Be Male

The radical madness in Loudoun County, Virginia, just hit a new low. Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) has decided to SUSPEND two boys at Stone Bridge High School, not because they misbehaved, not because they broke the law, but because they dared to ask why a girl was in the boys’ locker room.

7News reported earlier this year that LCPS launched a Title IX investigation against the boys after they were caught on video asking the obvious question: Why is there a girl in the boys’ locker room?

That video, however, wasn’t recorded by the boys; it was recorded by the female student who identifies as male. A direct violation of LCPS policy, according to the news outlet.

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Dept. of Education Plans to Pull Federal Funds from Five Virginia School Districts over Transgender Policies

The Department of Education said it plans to cut federal funds to five Northern Virginia school districts that have refused to rescind their policies allowing students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on “gender identity” rather than biological reality. 

The five school districts — including Alexandria City Public Schools, Arlington Public Schools, Fairfax County Public Schools, Loudoun County Public Schools, and Prince William County Public Schools — announced last week that they had rejected the Trump administration’s requests to change their transgender policies, Fox News reported. The Education Department announced in July, following an investigation, that the districts are allegedly in violation of Title IX for sex discrimination. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 bars discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.  

Education Department spokesperson Madi Biedermann told the outlet that the department will begin the process of suspending or terminating federal funding to the five districts. 

“The U.S. Department of Education generously granted an extension for five Northern Virginia School Districts to come into compliance with Title IX and follow federal law – unfortunately, the additional time did not result in a fruitful outcome,” Biedermann said. “The Agency will commence administrative proceedings to effect the suspension or termination of federal financial assistance to these divisions. The Virginia districts will have to defend their embrace of radical gender ideology over ensuring the safety of their students.”

Loudoun County was the first of the five districts to announce that it had rejected the Trump administration’s request. The board voted 6-3 in a closed-session meeting on Tuesday to keep Policy 8040, which allows students to used restrooms and locker rooms according to their subjective sense of “gender identity,” according to the report.

A spokesperson for the district said the federal interpretation of Title IX is at odds with state laws.

“After consultation with legal counsel, the Board voted 6-3 not to comply with this request due to the tension between the OCR position and current law. We will continue to monitor developments closely to ensure continued legal compliance and the protection of all students,” the spokesperson told the outlet on Wednesday. 

The other four districts reportedly asked the department to hold off on pilling funds until the courts clarify whether Title IX applies to gender identity. 

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Dept. of Education to cut funding for Va. school districts over trans locker room policies

Alexandria City Public Schools, Prince William County Public Schools, and Arlington Public Schools joined Loudoun County Public Schools on Friday in defending their policies that allow students to access and use school bathrooms and locker rooms based on their chosen gender identity.

The U.S. Department of Education gave the four school districts and Fairfax County Public Schools until Friday to respond to the Department’s demands to comply with Title IX. Their responses are listed later in this article.

After this story was published, the Education Department told 7News it would begin suspending or completely cutting off federal financial assistance to those school districts.

“The Virginia divisions will have to defend their embrace of radical gender ideology over ensuring the safety of their students,” a portion of the department’s statement read.

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School district must face ‘deliberate indifference’ claim by gender-confused girl alleging assault

AVirginia school district that allegedly socially transitioned a “gender-nonconfirming” 14-year-old girl into a boy’s identity, hid it from her legal parents, told her to use the boys’ restroom even after boys started threatening her, and “pressured her to recant” those threat claims, will have to defend itself again in trial court.

A split panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the lawsuit by Michele Blair, who with her husband adopted their granddaughter Sage at age 2 from foster care, where she had been placed after her father’s death and mother’s inability to raise her.

But it dismissed all but her Title IX “deliberate indifference” claim against the Appomattox County School Board, Superintendent Annette Bennett and its staff and contract counselors, and a dissent accused the majority of “push[ing] past the boundaries” set by the Supreme Court in student-on-student sexual harassment cases.

While the school board was “not entirely unresponsive” to Sage’s threat claims, giving her access to the nurse’s restroom, that falls short of “reasonably calculated” efforts to end her harassment, simply addressing it “in piecemeal,” wrote President Clinton-nominated Judge Roger Gregory, joined by President Biden nominee Judge DeAndrea Benjamin.

The court record shows “no indication” the board took action against the boys on the bus who allegedly “threatened her with sexual violence,” another group of males who “jacked” Sage against the wall and threatened her with violence, or students who “threatened to shoot” her “and told her they knew where she lived,” the majority says.

“In fact, the direct opposite happened” when school counselor Dena Olsen and deputy sheriff Daniel Gunter allegedly interrogated her and tried to get her to take back her claims that the boys were threatening her, Gregory wrote. Olsen had first told Sage to use the boys’ restroom and to go back when other girls reportedly complained about her in the girls’ restroom.

Even after being told to use the nurse’s restroom, Sage “continued to be so fearful for her and her family’s life that she ‘suffered a psychotic breakdown’ and opted to run away from home to save her family,” the majority said. 

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Teachers’ Union Chief Randi Weingarten Questioned Over Scandalous Spending Including $100,000 Limo Bill

On Thursday, the Education and Workforce Committee sent a letter to American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten demanding answers and accountability after details surfaced regarding the union chief’s excessive and potentially improper spending on luxury travel.

The letter, from Education and Workforce Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee Chairman Rick Allen (R-GA) demands details from Weingarten regarding public records that show that, since September of 2023, the partisan Democrat cheerleader spent $100,000 on private limousine services.

Walberg and Allen write, “The Committee has received reports describing first-class travel, family-related expenses, and large vendor payments that appear unrelated to legitimate representational activities.”

“If substantiated, these allegations reveal a troubling lack of accountability within AFT leadership. It is the Committee’s responsibility to conduct oversight to protect union members. As such, the Committee seeks to ascertain the truth of these allegations and whether the alleged conduct may warrant reform of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA).”

“The magnitude of recent AFT officer reimbursements raises questions about the adequacy of your current treasury oversight practices. AFT’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 Form LM-2 shows that you received $42,105 in additional disbursements on top of your $457,769 gross salary (which, notably, is more than six times the average teacher salary of $72,030).”

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