Tag: public schools

Furious parents, Dan and Jennifer Mead, sue Rockford Public schools in Michigan for using male pronouns for their 8th-grade autistic daughter without their knowledge

Two furious parents are suing a Michigan public school district for using male pronouns for their eighth-grade autistic daughter without their knowledge. 

Dan and Jennifer Mead filed a lawsuit against the Rockford Public School District on Monday after discovering the school had been referring to their child using ‘he/him’ pronouns last year.

The lawsuit alleges the school violated the parents’ First and 14th Amendment rights by using a masculine name and pronouns for their child, as reported by NewsNation. 

According to court documents, the school complied with its policy by using the student’s chosen name and pronouns.

The Meads withdrew their child from the Rockford Public School District, where the child had been attending since kindergarten, and now homeschool their daughter. 

‘No one with the school district told them that the school district had begun to treat her as a boy by calling her a masculine name and by male pronouns,’ Vincent Wagner, who represents the parents, told WOOD-TV.

The lawsuit, filed Monday by the Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of the parents, alleges East Rockford Middle School staff referred to their daughter by a male name and pronouns for at least two months. 

The parents found out in October 2022 when a school psychologist inadvertently included the child’s masculine name in one section of a report that was sent home.

The eight-grader’s name had been changed back to the birth name in the rest of the document, according to the lawsuit. 

‘At first, the Meads thought this was a mistake — that another child’s information had been included in their daughter’s documents,’ said the Alliance Defending Freedom in a statement. 

‘When the Meads asked district employees to refrain from using the masculine name and male pronouns, the district refused to comply with their wishes,’ the lawsuit claims. 

‘They weren’t able to help her in a difficult time in her life,’ Wagner said. ‘So it prevented them from helping her and that denied them their constitutional rights. Schools shouldn’t keep information like that from parents.’ 

The lawsuit alleges the school’s policy violated the parents’ First Amendment rights to freedom of religion and their 14th Amendment rights to parental rights. 

The Meads are also seeking an unspecified amount in compensatory damages, saying that homeschooling has caused the couple to lose income, as reported by the Washington Times. 

‘Homeschooling has required Mr. Mead to remain out of the workforce, which has caused the Meads to lose his income,’ said the complaint. 

‘These and other damages were caused by the District’s actions treating G.M. as a boy named F.M. while concealing those actions from the Meads.’

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Florida school is slammed for forcing a TWO-year-old black girl to take part in a Rosa Parks reenactment that involved white toddler ‘handcuffing her and taking her fingerprints’

A two-year-old black girl has been subjected to a ‘horrific’ Rosa Parks reenactment involving a lighter-skinned child ‘handcuffing’ her in front of her peers in a Florida preschool classroom.

Civil rights group the NAACP shared shocking photographs of the incident online as it is called on the Florida Department of Children and Families to investigate Building Brains Daycare in Saint Cloud, Osceola County. 

In a letter to the department, the NAACP said the black pupil was ‘subject to an alarming act of simulation, where she was handcuffed and fingerprinted by a white peer’ in early December. 

The NAACP’s National Director of Education, Dr Ivory Toldson, shared the photographs on Facebook with the pupils’ faces blurred. In unedited versions of the images seen by DailyMail.com, the children appear visibly disturbed and upset. 

The toddler’s outraged parents described the lesson as ‘horrific’ and immediately pulled her from the school. The female teacher involved has not been named and continues to work at the daycare. 

Building Brains Daycare told DailyMail.com the reenactment was a spontaneous incident rather than a planned part of their curriculum, and that the teacher involved felt ‘horrible’ and has ‘apologized profusely’ to the child’s parents. 

They said there were ‘no physical restraints’ in the classroom. 

The toddler’s parents, who did not want to be identified, said they first became aware of the incident after seeing the photographs of their daughter through the school app. 

‘Her hands (were) restrained behind her back as if she was being taken into custody,’ they told FOX 35. 

‘Then the next image was her hands being placed on a table as if she was being booked, and the look on her face alone, it was horrific.’ 

They added that ‘there’s so many ways to teach the Rosa Parks story’ and that they saw a change in their daughter after the incident. 

‘As we were approaching the school where the incident happened, she got very quiet and very, very reserved,’ they said. ‘But then we passed it, we had our daughter back. She was bubbly.’ 

The NAACP voiced ‘deep concern and profound disappointment regarding the disturbing incident’ which it said would cause the student ‘psychological harm’ by reliving a ‘traumatic moment in American history’.

It also said in the letter it would be ‘exploring all legal avenues to address this grave matter and ensure such incidents are not repeated.’ 

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Unhinged teacher threatens to behead girl who asked about his Israeli flag: witnesses

A Georgia teacher allegedly threatened to behead a middle-school student for commenting on his Israeli flag.

Benjamin Reese, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Warner Robins Middle School, allegedly became angry Dec. 7 when the girl asked about the flag as students were leaving after class and said she found it offensive.

He followed her into the hallway and told the student he was Jewish and had family members who live in Israel, reported WMAZ-TV.

“You don’t make an antisemitic comment like that to a Jew,” Reese said, according to another faculty member.

The girl responded negatively but did not raise her voice, the faculty member said, and Reese allegedly threatened to drag the student outside and brutally murder her.

“You mother—–ng piece of s–t, I’ll kick your a–,” Reese said, according to multiple witnesses. “I should cut your mother—–ng head off.”

Witnesses said Reese returned to his classroom cursing and yelling that she should not speak that way to a Jew, and he allegedly continued making violent threats.

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Chicago’s progressive Mayor Brandon Johnson announces plans to ax Windy City’s high-achieving selective-enrollment high schools to boost ‘equity’ despite promising not to during election campaign

Chicago’s progressive mayor has announced plans to axe the Windy City’s high-achieving selective-enrollment schools to boost ‘equity.’  

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Board of Education has proposed shifting back toward neighborhood schools – away from the system where kids compete for selective programs.

But when he was campaigning to become Mayor, Johnson put out a statement saying that he would not get rid of Chicago‘s selective-enrollment schools. 

According to the Chicago Tribune, woke Johnson specifically said: ‘A Johnson administration would not end selective enrollment at CPS schools.’

Now, he is seen to be back peddling – by allowing a vote to stop gifted children from lower income backgrounds from academically competing to get into high-performing schools. 

Selective schools cause a ‘stratification and inequity in Chicago Public Schools,’ according to the board’s CEO. 

Chicago has 11 selective-enrollment high schools — Northside College Prep, Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, John Hancock College Prep, Jones College Prep, Lane Tech, Lindblom Math and Science Academy, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School.

Walter Payton College Prep, South Shore International College Prep, Westinghouse College Prep and Whitney M. Young Magnet School are also on the list. 

The schools are not just the best in Chicago – but rank among the top high schools in the entire country. 

Walter Payton College Prep is ranked 10th best school in the US. Northside College Prep is 37th. Jones College Prep ranks 60th. 

Now, a resolution is up for a vote by the school board on Thursday.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez has prepared a resolution for ‘a transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.’

It would lay out a five-year ‘transformation’ to effectively get rid of selective schools in Chicago – which have been heralded as the gems of the city’s education system. 

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Seattle high schooler FAILS quiz where he marked only women can get pregnant and that all men have penises

A Seattle high school with a recent history of activism is facing outrage from a parent after her 10th grader was marked wrong for saying only men have penises and only women get pregnant.

The parent and her student, who remained anonymous out of fear of backlash, said the answers were given on a true-false test in an Ethic Studies World History class at Chief Sealth International High School.

The student put that it is ‘true’ that only men have penises and only women can get pregnant on his ‘Understanding Gender vs. Sex’ quiz.

His mother claims the student failed the portion of the quiz as a result of his answers, which led her to speak out. 

‘I keep trying to wrap my head around how it is legal to teach inaccurate information and force students to answer against their beliefs or receive negative scores,’ she said. 

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Furious Colorado parents claim their 11-year-old daughter was made to sleep in a bed with a biological boy who identified as TRANSGENDER child on overnight school trip

An 11-year-old Colorado girl called her mother in a panic from a hotel bathroom after discovering that the girl she was expected to share a bed with on a school trip was actually a biological male.

No-one had told the girl, the mother or any other parent at Governor’s Ranch Elementary School because the transgender pupil was in ‘stealth mode’ with their sexual identity protected by school board policy.

Mom Serena Wailes said her daughter had to repeatedly ask for a different room, and was then told to lie about the reason she was going in order to protect her bedmate’s privacy.

The family from Littleton are now demanding the school board ensure that parents are told in advance the gender of people their children will be expected to share a bed with.

‘Her bedmate informed her that he was a boy who identified as transgender,’ Wailes told Fox31.

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U.S. students’ math scores plunge in global education assessment

U.S. students lag behind their peers in many industrialized countries when it comes to math, according to the results of a global exam released Tuesday.

Why it matters: U.S. students saw a 13-point drop in their 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) math results when compared to the 2018 exam.

  • The 2022 math score was not only lower than it was in 2012 but it was “among the lowest ever measured by PISA in mathematics” for the U.S., per the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country note.

Zoom in: While the U.S. scored below the OECD average in math, it managed to score above the OECD average in reading and science.

  • The 2022 results found that U.S. students scored one point below their 2018 reading score and three points below their 2018 science score. However, their performances in those areas were higher than in 2012.

The 2018 PISA assessment found that U.S. students straggled behind their peers in East Asia and Europe, per the Washington Post.

What they’re saying: In a statement Tuesday responding to the latest results, Education Sec. Miguel Cardona praised the U.S. for moving up in the world rankings but acknowledged “there’s much work to be done.”

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Senate fails to overturn Biden’s plan to withhold lunch aid from schools that don’t let boys use girls’ bathrooms

School lunches in America are on the chopping block for K-12 schools that don’t enforce gender ideology. In an attempt to comply with Joe Biden’s executive order requiring all agencies to implement equity programs for LGBTQ+ inclusion, the Department of Agriculture decided that it would hold free school lunch aid hostage unless schools allowed boys to use girls’ bathrooms and implemented other actions showing their compliance with the wacky, progressive gender theory that says boys and girls can become girls and boys just by declaring it to be so.

Senate Republicans tried to overturn it in voting against the USDA reinterpretation of Title IX via the Congressional Review Act, but that vote was short at 47 to 50. “Don’t be fooled here, the Biden Administration is the only player in this policy fight that is taking away lunches from children,” said Kansas Senator Roger Marshall. “There is real-world evidence that USDA’s policy has already taken away school lunch funding from low-income children. Weaponizing school lunch money in pursuit of their radical agenda and putting students in the crosshairs is unconscionable, and we will not stand for it.”

That rule, proposed in 2022, blasted by attorneys general and lawmakers across the US, has now gone into effect. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack made the proclamation in May 2022, saying that it would “interpret the prohibition on discrimination based on sex found in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972… to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The Department of Agriculture then went on to explain their bizarre reasoning, saying that in light of the Supreme Court decision that allowed a man who claimed to be transgender to appear at work in a funeral home wearing women’s clothing, and to use the women’s restroom at his workplace, they would prevent schools from receiving federal school lunch aid if those schools didn’t allow boys to use girls’ restrooms, locker rooms, or other facilities.

Vilsack said this was a way to “root out discrimination.” His goal in withholding lunch aid from schools that do not put girls at risk of potential male aggression was to “help bring about much-needed change.” It was shortly after this proclamation that it was revealed that a female student in Loudon County, Virginia was raped in a “gender-neutral” school bathroom by a male student who wore women’s clothing.

Biden signed the executive order as soon as he took office on January 20, 2021. It read that “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.” It was this that Vilsack was trying to tackle. 

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Wyoming Cop Assaulted a Disabled 8-Year-Old, Then Deleted the Body Camera Footage, Lawsuit Claims

Last spring, a disabled Wyoming 8-year-old was assaulted by a school resource officer, who pinned the boy facedown on the floor of a school conference room seemingly unprovoked. According to a lawsuit filed by the boy’s family last week, after the incident, the resource officer deleted body camera footage showing the most egregious parts of the attack and even accessed the child’s private school records without his parents’ or school administrators’ knowledge.

Last February, an 8-year-old with a “diagnosed neurodivergent disability” was sitting in the principal’s office of Freedom Elementary School in Cheyenne, Wyoming, during the school’s lunch period. The boy, named in the suit as “J.D.,” had been doing this for days, in accordance with his Individualized Education Plan (IEP). The complaint states that Principal Chad Delbridge and another faculty member began to quietly speak to J.D. about comments he made to a school cafeteria cashier and whether he should apologize to the cashier. Deputy Benjamin Jacquot, the school resource officer, was standing nearby during the discussion. J.D. was calm during this period.

According to a report later filed by Delbridge, when J.D. stood up to return to class moments later, Jacquot grabbed J.D.’s arm. Delbridge had not asked for Jacquot’s assistance in any way. 

“J.D. was not a threat to himself or to anyone else. There was no reason at all for Deputy Jacquot to become involved with J.D. during this interaction with Principal Delbridge,” the lawsuit notes. “Deputy Jacquot, nevertheless, forcibly wrestled J.D. into a nearby conference room using an armlock where the assault grew violent.”

The suit claims that Jacquot repeatedly “slammed” J.D.’s face into the conference room floor, causing numerous lacerations and bruises. The undeleted portion of Jacquot’s body camera footage shows the 250-pound Jacquot pinned on top of 68-pound J.D.

“At this point, J.D. is bleeding from wounds on his face, and his smeared blood is visible on the video,” the complaint reads. “As shown on the video, Deputy Jacquot is out of control, pinning J.D. by his arms face down to the ground in a prone restraint position and yelling threats at J.D. J.D., meanwhile, is struggling to breathe, and is coughing.”

According to the suit, Jacquot screamed at J.D.: “Do you understand me! I should be taking you to jail!”

Eventually, Delbridge called J.D.’s father, Ishmael DeJesus, to pick him up. When he arrived, DeJesus asked Jacquot why he grabbed J.D. even though the boy wasn’t causing a disruption. 

“Because, as a law enforcement officer, that’s my primary function,” Jacquot replied.

The complaint further alleges that “immediately after his assault on J.D., Deputy Jacquot went to his vehicle, and, upon information and belief, destroyed evidence by deleting his body cam video which showed the most violent portion of the assault, as well as the footage of his improper intervention into and escalation of this situation.”

Later, Jacquot obtained J.D.’s “private and protected” school records and included excerpts of those records in the police report of the incident. An investigation from the school later concluded that Jacquot had “no need to access these records in his work with this situation.”

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Texas School District Removes Convicted Prostitute From Multiple Roles, Including Sex-Ed

The Godley, Texas, school district removed a woman appointed to assist with deciding things like age-appropriate material for sex education after learning she was a convicted prostitute.

FOX 4 in Dallas reported that the woman, identified as Ashley Ketcherside, also advertises online as an escort, with one site listing one of her personas as active last month.

While the idea of having a convicted prostitute work for a school district may have some scratching their heads, the issue raises concerns for others about background checks in the Godley Independent School District (ISD) and across the state.

“We had no idea what was going on in her personal life. She was always very friendly and personable,” Godley ISD School Board trustee Kayla Lain told the station.

Mary Lowe of the nonprofit group Families Engaged for Effective Education commented on Ketcherside being a convicted prostitute and working on a council that recommends “appropriate grade levels and methods for human sexuality instruction” within the district.

“I don’t see any community wanting that to be the standard for their school district,” she said.

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