Tag: public schools

Anti-CRT Measures Adopted By 28 US States

More than half of U.S. states have passed measures against the teaching of critical race theory – for example in schools or government employee trainings. Another dozen have seen successful initiatives on a smaller scale, with single cities, counties or school districts (or both) establishing such laws and directives. This is according to a tracking project at the University of California Los Angeles law school.

Additionally, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, almost all states that haven’t yet passed any such measures have seen them proposed on the state level, the exceptions being California, Vermont and Delaware.

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Oregon teachers’ aide, ‘drag mom’ to child drag queen sentenced to less than 1 year in jail for 11 felony child sex crimes

A former Oregon elementary school teaching assistant and “drag mom” to a controversial child drag performer has been convicted of 11 felonies over the distribution of child sex abuse content and sentenced to less than a year in a local jail. 

Kelsey Meta Boren, 33, was convicted in Lane County, Ore. on March 23 of 11 felony counts of encouraging child sexual abuse in the first degree. A single charge of using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct was dismissed as part of the plea deal. Boren was sentenced to 330 days in county jail—30 days for each felony count—in a sweetheart deal agreed upon between the district attorney’s office and her counsel.

“Our office must decide each case individually, taking into account the facts of the offenses, and the nature of the offender,” wrote Lane County Deputy District Attorney Robert Lane to The Post Millennial. “This case was assigned to me, and I made those decisions.”

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NH Dems Defend Graphic Sex Content, Attack ‘Dangerous’ Parents in House Debate

Parents do not have the right to know their middle school children have access to graphic novels that depict children engaged in sex acts and include links to gay dating apps, nor are they allowed to know teachers are urging kindergartners to draw themselves naked.

That was the case New Hampshire Democrats made as they opposed GOP legislation expanding parents’ rights over their kids’ public school experience.

The battle over the Parents’ Bill of Rights took center stage Tuesday with a packed Representatives Hall for the House Education Committee hearing on SB 272. The Senate passed the bill along party lines last month.

A similar House bill sponsored by House Speaker Sherman Packard, HB 10, died in the closely split legislature this year. Packard said the Senate version needs to pass to give parents the final say over their children’s education.

“Parents are responsible for the upbringing of their own children. We support the parents’ right to know what is happening to their child in school. These are our children, not the state’s or the school district’s,” Packard said.

Emotions ran high during several hours of testimony, as Democrats and left-leaning media outlets have characterized the bill as targeting LGBT students.

The bill is designed to address situations like the one in the Manchester school system in which a mother requested information after hearing rumors her child was identifying as a different gender at school. The Manchester district’s policy is to keep that information secret from parents. The mother was forced to sue, and Hillsborough Superior Court Judge Amy Messer upheld the district’s policy directing teachers and staff not to fully and accurately inform parents about their children’s behavior.

Democrats have responded by arguing parents are simply too dangerous to be given the same information about their children that teachers, students, and school staff have.

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GEORGIA NATIONAL GUARD WILL USE PHONE LOCATION TRACKING TO RECRUIT HIGH SCHOOL CHILDREN

THE GEORGIA ARMY NATIONAL GUARD plans to combine two deeply controversial practices — military recruiting at schools and location-based phone surveillance — to persuade teens to enlist, according to contract documents reviewed by The Intercept.

The federal contract materials outline plans by the Georgia Army National Guard to geofence 67 different public high schools throughout the state, targeting phones found within a one-mile boundary of their campuses with recruiting advertisements “with the intent of generating qualified leads of potential applicants for enlistment while also raising awareness of the Georgia Army National Guard.” Geofencing refers generally to the practice of drawing a virtual border around a real-world area and is often used in the context of surveillance-based advertising as well as more traditional law enforcement and intelligence surveillance. The Department of Defense expects interested vendors to deliver a minimum of 3.5 million ad views and 250,000 clicks, according to the contract paperwork.

While the deadline for vendors attempting to win the contract was the end of this past February, no public winner has been announced.

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Middle school hosts ‘licking game’ between students and staff

Do you ever see an ad — let’s say, that ad for Amazon Prime featuring the young woman who decides to “rock her mustache” — and wonder how many people it had to go through to make its way to your TV? Someone pitched the concept to the company, which decided to hire an actress and a production crew and buy airtime … did anyone along that assembly line speak up and say, “This is a bad idea?”

We’re wondering the same about this “licking game.” Who got the idea, from where, and managed to get a crew together to set up plexiglass windows in the gym for students and staff to lick each other? Didn’t anyone say, “This is a bad idea?”

The principal apparently didn’t think it was a bad idea, although the school district is now backtracking.

Jason Rantz writes:

Before students left for spring break, Desert Hills Middle School in Kennewick hosted an assembly and fundraiser that featured a competition between students and staff. Two plexiglass panes were stationed in the middle of the gymnasium and each side of the glass had four spots of marshmallow cream. Students and staff then competed to lick it off the plexiglass, often with adult educators and their minor students licking their respective sides of the glass at once. Students in the crowd could be heard screaming, “ew,” “disgusting,” “that’s so gross,” and “what the heck?” One student yelled, “who thought that this was a good idea?”

The superintendent has said, “The content of a video being shared on social media is highly concerning.”

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Colorado school district to introduce biometric scans of kids for free school meal access

The Poudre School District, in Colorado, will be piloting a controversial biometrics program to make the distribution of free lunches more “efficient.”

The pilot program will launch by May 25, 2023 in elementary, middle, and high schools, if it doesn’t go contested.

According to the school district, the biometric scans would take around two seconds. The program will use identiMetrics scanners, which will replace the current system where students have to enter their ID number on a keyboard to access their free school meal.

The fingerprints will be stored locally by the school district.

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Transgender Teacher Fired After Allegedly Threatening to Shoot Students

A transgender teacher at a Florida middle school was allowed to remain on campus for several weeks after allegedly making disturbing comments about shooting students and “having bad thoughts.”

In a statement released Friday, the Florida Department of Education responded to the situation regarding student safety at Fox Chapel Middle School in Hernando County, saying the teacher, Ashlee Renczkowski, has been removed from the school.

The department noted that the removal happened only after state officials raised their concerns with Hernando County School District Superintendent John Stratton Wednesday evening.

According to an incident report obtained by parental rights group “Moms for Liberty,” a school resource officer temporarily assigned to Fox Chapel Middle School was notified by Assistant Principal Kerry Thornton and Guidance Counselor Kimberly Walby on March 24 regarding Renczkowski making “concerning statements about self-harm” and possibly shooting students.

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Trans Florida teacher ‘Ashlee’ who allegedly said they were ‘going to shoot the kids’ then themselves remains in classroom despite parents’ complaints

Parents of students at Fox Chapel Middle School in Hernando County, Florida, are demanding answers from the district after a teacher made concerning comments allegedly made about harming children and themselves. Although the district investigated the comments and found them concerning, the teacher was not fired and is back in the classroom.

Several parents contacted FOX 13, with each sharing the same story that the teacher made comments about harming students and then herself.

The district stated that the comments were made out of frustration with student behavior, but refused to divulge exactly what was said, leading to tension between parents and the board. “While the teacher in question did make a comment to colleagues that was concerning,” the school principal could be heard saying in a recording sent to parents on Monday. “Staff and law enforcement determined the comment was not an imminent threat to the campus, but was instead an expression of frustration at student behavior.”

A sheriff’s office report from March 24, obtained by Moms for Liberty Hernando County, stated that a school resource officer responded to a report from Assistant Principal Kerry Thornton and Guidance Counselor Kimberly Walby, who reported that a teacher had made statements about harming themself and possibly shooting students.

Thornton told the resource officer that at around 3 pm, she was visiting classrooms and walked into teacher Ashlee Renczkowski’s classroom. Thornton asked how the teacher was doing, to which Renczkowski responded, “Not good, I’m having bad thoughts.”

Thornton radioed Walby and said that Renczkowski was coming to see her. According to the report, “Ashlee walked to Kimberley’s office and started to explain that she learned about a social media post where people were talking negatively about Ashlee’s sexual orientation.”

The post in question was in regard to Renczkowski and Renczkowski’s wife, Fawn Renczkowski, who also teaches at the school.

According to Fox Chapel’s staff directory, Ashlee Renczkowski teaches mathematics for grades six through eight, and Fawn Renczkowski teaches science for grades six through eight.

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Satan Clubs Should Be Allowed in Schools

On March 31, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit against Pennsylvania’s Saucon Valley School District after it dismantled the “After School Satan Club,” an after-school program sponsored by the Satanic Temple with chapters across the country, allegeding the club failed to communicate that it was not formally sponsored by the district. The ACLU argues that the removal was actually motivated by the hundreds of angry messages the district received from local parents and the general public. 

Saucon Valley is not the only American community bedeviled by Satan clubs. Similar clubs in Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, California, and New York have all generated controversy. The primary concern, as one Pennsylvania parent put it, is that “Satan is here to kill and destroy.” Other parents have asserted that the United States is “one nation under God” and that to deny Satan a place in public schools is therefore a necessary and prudent measure. The Napa Legal Institute’s Frank DeVito even used Satan clubs to justify restoring the pre-World War II tradition of blasphemy laws. 

After School Satan Clubs (and most modern Satanists) do not literally worship Satan. Satan clubs espouse “free inquiry and rationalism,” and “[do] not believe in introducing religion into public schools and will only open a club if other religious groups are operating on campus.” The Satanic Temple openly rejects the supernatural, using Satan’s name and image for shock value. 

But even if Satan Clubs were actually worshiping Satan, there’s little that can (or should) be done about them. A defense of American pluralism requires a defense of, or at least apathy toward, Satanism. 

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Segregation forever? Atlanta separates blacks from whites in ‘academic recovery’ summer program

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) took more than a year to open an investigation into allegedly intentional racial segregation in Atlanta Public Schools and purported retaliation against parents who complained.

The feds may soon face a similar complaint: keeping predominantly black and white elementary schools apart in a summer program intended to mitigate learning loss due to COVID-19 policies.

The nonprofit Committee for APS Progress asked district officials why majority-black Hope-Hill Elementary School in Atlanta would not be housed on the same site as “the rest of the cluster schools” in Midtown — majority-white Mary Lin, Morningside and Springdale — for this summer’s Academic Recovery Academy, a departure from last summer.

The program website confirms that HHES, which has far smaller enrollment than each of the other three, will continue meeting at its own site while the others will meet at Mary Lin. Only three APS elementary schools among 40 are being kept alone for the summer program.

The arrangement resembles a larger version of the race-based “affinity groups” that are popular in higher education but have prompted litigation when applied to K-12 students and municipal employees. OCR has received several complaints about affinity groups for faculty, according to anti-woke medical advocacy group Do No Harm.

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