Tag: public schools

‘Woke or KKK’: NYU Hosts Whites-Only ‘Antiracism’ Workshop for Public School Parents

New York University hosted a whites-only “anti-racism” workshop for public school parents in New York City, barring minorities from a five-months-long seminar that legal experts say was a brazen violation of civil rights law.

The all-white seminar, “From Integration to Anti-Racism,” cost $360 to attend and met six times between February and June, according to a description of the program that has since been scrubbed from the university’s website without explanation. Organized by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education, the workshop was “designed specifically for white public school parents” committed to “becoming anti-racist” and building “multiracial parent communities.”

But to promote solidarity with all races, participants were told, it was necessary that the seminar include only one.

A few days before the first session, facilitators circulated a short handout, “Why a White Space,” to explain “why we are meeting as white folks for these six months.” The handout, produced by the nonprofit Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere, argued that white people need spaces where they can “unlearn racism” without subjecting minorities to “undue trauma or pain.”

Facilitators reiterated this argument on day one of the seminar, audio and video of which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. When a parent questioned the premise of the workshop—saying it seemed “a little counterintuitive” to exclude minorities from an anti-racism seminar—Barbara Gross, the associate director of Steinhardt’s Education Justice Research group, assured her that it was for their own good.

“People of color are dealing with racism all the time,” Gross said. “Like every minute of every day. It’s a harm on top of a harm for them to hear our racist thoughts.”

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‘Majority Doesn’t Always Dictate’: Fairfax County School Board Ignores 84% Rejection of Gender Ideology

Democrats pose as the champions of democracy—except when democracy doesn’t go their way. After 84% of parents in a Virginia county rejected co-ed sex education and gender ideology in schools, the taxpayer-funded school board dismissively announced that “the majority doesn’t always dictate.”

Fairfax County has been a hotspot of crazy LGBTQ ideology and persecution of concerned parents for quite a while now. Woke or authoritarian nonsense from Fairfax schools includes making false statements about a dress-wearing boy who raped a girl in a school bathroom (before trying to get the victim’s father jailed), pushing pornographic books to kids, and suspending maskless students despite Virginia’s governor having lifted COVID-19 restrictions.

Despite being paid by taxpayer funds and thus being employees of the district’s parents, the school board has rejected poll results showing that parents in the county overwhelmingly reject gender ideology in schools and combining sex education for boys and girls from fourth grade onwards.

The Washington Examiner reported on the Fairfax County Public School board‘s outrageous reaction to parents’ opinions and details of the survey:

In a work session, the Fairfax county school board was presented with a poll showing 84% of parents are against children being taught “Family Life Education” together. It showed, out of the 2,656 respondents, parents overwhelmingly want classes separated by gender.

While students are currently separated based on sex, that could change with the new proposal. It would require co-ed sex education from fourth grade up.

Parents wrote overwhelmingly in the open-ended comments part of the survey that they were against teaching gender ideology in schools.

The county’s school superintendent, Michelle Reid, dismissed the survey’s results with the ridiculous remark: “Honestly, the majority doesn’t always dictate, right?” It does when they’re taxpayers and you’re their employee, Michelle.

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Change.org removes 12-year-old girl’s petition for single-sex bathrooms at her school

A 12-year-old girl’s petition to get bathrooms in her school that are segregated by sex has reportedly been taken down by Change, a petition-hosting platform. The petition allegedly had nearly 13,000 signatures when it was taken down by the site. 

The petition was made by a Twitter user’s daughter in May. The account on Twitter is called, “WomenAreSayingNO!” The user posted a link to the petition page.

The post said, “After being asked by many to make it an online petition, here is my daughter’s petition for single sex toilets in her school. PLEASE SIGN AND SHARE!”

When one navigates to the change.org petition, the page only says, “This petition isn’t available. Either the URL is incorrect, it violated our Community Guidelines, or the starter removed it.”

An archived version of the petition read: “I am a 12yr old girl and my school, like many, has open plan mixed sexed toilets with only sinks to act as a divide. This makes many boys and girls uncomfortable, with many refusing to use them.”

“I would like single sex toilets to be available so I, and many other children, can feel comfortable and safe when using more private spaces. I propose we have male only, female only and a mixed spaces to give people choice,” the petition stated.The account posted on Friday that the petition had been removed from change.org. The user tagged change.org and said, “Why are you taking my petition down that’s on behalf of my 12yr old daughter?”

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Lawmakers Push For Investigation Into Secret “Problem Codes” Database Kept on Unvaccinated Teachers

A group of nine Congressional representatives from New York have taken a united front, urging the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) to conduct a full investigation regarding secret “problem codes” databases, alongside fingerprints, that were kept on teachers who opted not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. The representatives have penned a letter to the NYC DOE Chancellor, David Banks, expressing their concerns.

The gravity of the issue is rooted in the NYC DOE’s utilization of the same “problem codes” database — ordinarily assigned to individuals accused of severe offenses like child abuse, rape, or assault—for educators who were put on unpaid leave due to their refusal to get vaccinated against COVID-19, as per an internal email in 2022. The comparison of unvaccinated educators with individuals implicated in heinous crimes has created a maelstrom of concerns.

Mary Holland, former president of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD), an organization actively advocating for a bipartisan congressional investigation since March, was emphatic about the lack of transparency. She stated that the city’s “unwillingness to be transparent about how and when these codes are used and under what circumstances requires a thorough and complete investigation.”

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Biden Admin Says Its COVID Spending for Schools Will Boost Test Scores. Districts Used the Funds for Staff Bonuses.

Decades-low eighth-grade reading and math scores are no reason to be discouraged, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Wednesday, because the Biden administration’s “historic” COVID-era school spending is poised to turn the tide. In many districts, a large portion of those funds have already been spent on lucrative staff bonuses.

A National Assessment of Educational Progress report published Wednesday found that math and reading scores among U.S. 13-year-olds are at their lowest levels in decades. Cardona responded to those findings by praising “positive results” in student achievement, arguing that the “historic investments and resources” provided by President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan would “reverse the damage.” In school districts across the country, however, a large portion of those funds did not go to more tutoring or new school materials. Instead, they funded bonuses for teachers and administrators.

In North Carolina, for example, the Wake County Public School System from March 2020 to April 2023 spent 78.5 percent of its total pandemic relief funding on salaries and employee benefits, according to the district. Chicago Public Schools—a district where union teachers repeatedly refused to return to the classroom during COVID—similarly spent 77 percent of its pandemic money on staff bonuses, salaries, and benefits. In Tennessee, meanwhile, the state’s comptroller found that a district funneled nearly $28,000 to one administrator alone. And in Nebraska, Lincoln Public Schools attempted to use COVID relief dollars to issue across-the-board teacher bonuses, but the state’s Department of Education said no.

The use of so-called emergency COVID funds to pay for five-figure staff bonuses reflects the stark divide between Republicans and Democrats on education policy. Democrats generally balk at school choice, shooting down taxpayer funding for charter schools in favor of additional public school spending. For Republicans, that spending is already at an all-time high with little to show for it and showcases the need to pursue alternative options rather than funneling more money to powerful teachers’ unions working to pay out their members.

“It turns out the hundreds of billions in taxpayer money that was ‘direly needed to safely reopen schools and improve infrastructure’ was a lie,” Nicki Neily, founder and president of parental rights group Parents Defending Education, said in response to districts’ using federal COVID funds to pay for staff bonuses. “The same teachers’ unions that kept schools closed are now misusing the taxpayers’ money to smooth things over with their growingly dissatisfied members through bonuses and raises. What a slap in the face to families.”

The Department of Education did not return a request for comment.

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Schools Are Now Allowing Children To Identify As Cats, Horses, Dinosaurs…

I seriously should have thought of this when I was a kid.  If I could have answered every question a teacher asked by meowing like a cat or roaring like a dinosaur, there is no way they could have ever accused me of getting an answer wrong.  And when it was time for a quiz or a test, I could have just responded to every question with a paw print.  Of course nobody would have actually been able to get away with such a thing decades ago.  When I was a kid, anyone that tried to pull this kind of a stunt would have been immediately marched down to the principal’s office.  But now we live at a time when we are supposed to allow people to identify as anything that they want.

Things have gotten particularly absurd in the United Kingdom.  According to an investigation that was conducted by the Telegraph, schools in the UK are now allowing children to identify as all sorts of things…

At a state secondary school in Wales, one student is said to ‘meow’ when asked questions by a teacher, rather than answering in English, the Telegraph reports.

In other schools, one apparently insists on being addressed as a dinosaur, one claims to identify as a horse while another is said to wear a cape and demands to be acknowledged as a moon.

In the old days, teachers knew how to deal with this kind of nonsense.

But today they are instructed not to correct the children because that would be “discriminatory”…

Pupils claim teachers are ‘not allowed to get annoyed’ about such behaviour in case it is seen as being discriminatory.

However, lessons are reportedly becoming completely derailed by these interactions, impacting the quality of their classmates’ education.

So these teachers in the UK literally have to sit there and make the best of it when students respond to their questions with “animal noises”…

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Wearing Shirt Saying ‘There Are Only Two Genders’ Not Protected Speech, Rules Obama-Appointed Judge

School administrators were not infringing on a student’s constitutional rights when they ordered him to remove a shirt that said, “there are only two genders,” a district judge ruled on June 17.

Massachusetts middle-schooler Liam Morrison’s lawyers said the order violated his First Amendment rights to free speech and his Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process, but U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said the violations have not been proven.

The school “permissibly concluded that the Shirt invades the rights of others,” Talwani, an Obama appointee, said.

Schools can bar speech that is in “collision with the rights of others to be secure and be let alone,” Talwani said, quoting from the 1969 ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. School Dist.

That means the administrators appropriately exercised their discretion when concluding the statement “may communicate that only two gender identities–male and female are valid, and any others are invalid or nonexistent, and to conclude that students who identify differently, whether they do so openly or not, have a right to attend school without being confronted by messages attacking their identities,” she added.

Talwani’s ruling rejected a request from the boy for a temporary restraining order that would have stopped administrators from prohibiting the student from wearing the shirt at John T. Nicholas Middle School.

The case has not been thrown out and Talwani could ultimately rule in the boy’s favor.

Tyson Langhofer, senior counsel and director of the Center for Academic Freedom at Alliance Defending Freedom who is helping defend the plaintiff, said that the ruling was disappointing.

“Public school officials cannot censor a 7th grader’s free speech by forcing him to remove a shirt that states a scientific fact,” Langhofer told The Epoch Times via email. “Doing so is a gross violation of the First Amendment and we will be appealing this ruling to the First Circuit Court of Appeals.”

Lawyers for the defendants, which include acting principal Heather Tucker and Middleborough Public Schools Superintendent Carolyn Lyons, did not return an inquiry.

First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh said the ruling does not appear to be consistent with the Tinker ruling, which held that school officials in Iowa illegally ordered students to remove armbands amid protests against the Vietnam war. Lawyer Hans Bader, who is not involved in the case, said the ruling was wrong, noting that previous cases have upheld students’ rights to convey messages “as long as they weren’t vulgar or likely to cause a disruption,” including a ruling in favor of wearing a shirt that said “Be Happy, Not Gay.”

“The judge suggested that the T-shirt interfered with other students’ ‘right to attend school without being confronted by messages attacking their identities,’” Bader said. “But other courts have refused to recognize a right to attend school without being confronted by messages attacking one’s identity, when the messages don’t disrupt school, and don’t involve ‘independently tortious speech like libel, slander or intentional infliction of emotional distress.’”

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Federal judge rules MA student’s ‘there are only two genders’ T-shirt ‘invades the rights of others,’ is NOT protected by free speech

On Friday, a federal judge in Massachusettes ruled a shirt that read “THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS” could be construed as bullying of a protected class and is not protected speech after a 12-year-old and his father filed suit against officials in the Middlesbrough Public School district for First and Fourteenth Amendment rights violations. 

Judge Indira Talwani said in the court ruling, the boy and his father had “not established a likelihood of success on the merits where he is unable to counter Defendants’ showing that enforcement of the Dress Code was undertaken to protect the invasion of the rights of other students to a safe and secure educational environment.” 

“School administrators were well within their discretion to conclude that the statement ‘THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS’ may communicate that only two gender identities–male and female–are valid, and any others are invalid or nonexistent,” the ruling continued, “and to conclude that students who identify differently, whether they do so openly or not, have a right to attend school without being confronted by messages attacking their identities.”

Trans and gender non-conforming students are considered a protected class under Massachusetts law, and while this shirt does not constitute the bullying of a single student, the ruling says that the school was justified because it could make “a group of potentially vulnerable students” not feel safe. 

Citing multiple precedents, the judge ruled that “A school need not tolerate student speech that is inconsistent with its basic educational mission, [ ] even though the government could not censor similar speech outside the school.” So there was no constitutional violation that occurred. 

In reaction to the ruling, defense attorney Marina Medvin wrote on Twitter, “As someone who grew up in the USSR getting her teeth drilled without novocaine the idea that today’s US kids complain and prohibit— with the help of judges— another kid from wearing a shirt stating a scientific fact b/c it hurts their feelings is just…”

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Disturbing Testimony Reveals FBI Collected License Plate Numbers of Parents Attending School Board Meetings

During Thursday’s hearing by the House Judiciary Select Committee on the weaponization of the federal government, FBI whistleblower Stephen Friend testified that he was ordered to write down the license plate numbers of parents who attended school board meetings.

Friend — a 12-year veteran of the bureau — was suspended after he refused to take part in a SWAT-style raid on a January 6 suspect who was facing misdemeanor charges last summer. “I have an oath to uphold the Constitution,” Mr. Friend, a 12-year veteran of the bureau, told his supervisors when he declined to participate in the raid on August 24, 2022. “I have a moral objection and want to be considered a conscientious objector.”

On Thursday, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) questioned the FBI whistleblowers on the bureau’s “terrorism symbol guide.”

The agents told Gaetz that voicing support for the second amendment, the Betsy Ross flag and writing “2A” were all among the FBI’s designated domestic terrorism symbols. Gaetz then turned his attention to Friend and asked about school board meetings.

Friend told the panel that the FBI directed him to record license plate numbers from vehicles belonging to parents opposed to leftist agendas at school board meetings. The suspended agent was one of those parents himself, having attended a number of local school board meetings to voice curriculum concerns.

“After I attended privately my colleagues teased me that [the FBI] were probably going to start investigating me,” Friend said.

In addition, Friend revealed that he was pulled from cases involving child predators in order to investigate parents at school board meetings.

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Feds Mull Ban on Chocolate Milk in School Cafeterias

The feds are now mulling a ban on chocolate milk for school cafeterias.

The USDA is weighing a ban on chocolate and strawberry milk for elementary and middle school cafeterias because of the added sugar, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“From a public-health perspective, it makes a lot of sense to try to limit the servings of these flavored milks because they do have quite a lot of added sugar,” Erica Lauren Kenney, a public health professor at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, told the Wall Street Journal.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the decision to ban the sugary milks will likely take effect for the 2025-2026 school year.

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