Tag: public schools

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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D.C.’s Test Scores and Absenteeism Rates Are Getting Worse, so Why Are More Students Graduating?

The high school graduation rate in Washington, D.C., is climbing. However, student school performance seems to be falling dramatically. While more and more seniors graduate high school, test scores are down and absenteeism is up.

According to a recent report from the D.C. Policy Center, graduation rates at D.C. public schools and public charter schools have been steadily rising since the 2018–19 school year. In 2022, 75 percent of all students graduated high school in four years, up seven percentage points from 2019. However, this progress is not reflected in measurements tracking students’ academic achievement. On state assessments, the percentage of high school students that “met” or “exceeded” expectations in the math test declined from 18.4 percent in 2019 to just 11 percent in 2022. English scores stayed the same. Absenteeism is also up, with the percentage of students absent for more than 10 percent of the school year reaching a staggering 48 percent in the 2021–22 academic year, increasing from 29 percent three years prior.

Based on academic achievement and school attendance data, fewer D.C. public school students should be graduating high school. Yet the steady rise in graduation rates remains. Why, then, are so many more kids getting high school diplomas?

The answer isn’t exactly clear. One possible reason is increasing grade inflation, meaning that students who haven’t actually learned course material are getting passing grades anyway. There’s an “increase in policy that we’re seeing to not fail students,” Max Eden, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, tells Reason. “You know, 50 percent as the lowest grade kind of policy, which is being picked up in more and more especially urban schools across the country,”

Eden also suggests that D.C. could also be failing to follow its own policies around attendance requirements for graduation. It wouldn’t be the first time District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) have made this blunder. In 2018, an audit of DCPS found that, despite the district’s sharp rise in graduation rates, the increase “was entirely attributable to schools systematically not enforcing their own policies,” says Eden. “And it’s not as though in the wake of these revelations … D.C. really clamped down and you saw the graduation rates plummet. They kind of didn’t do anything to change their policy because they could not stand to have their graduation rates decrease further.”

Unfortunately, graduating kids without necessary academic skills doesn’t lead to better outcomes. Just because more DCPS students are graduating high school doesn’t mean more of them are leaving with important skills.

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Democrat Representative Says Parents ‘Not Qualified’ To Choose Schools For Their Kids

It’s another case of Democrats saying the quiet part out loud.  The school choice movement has been fighting for decades for parents to have the ability to determine which schools get their tax dollars, including schools other than state sponsored institutions.  They have consistently hit a brick wall in terms of legislation, but that is starting to change. 

Conservative groups have long ignored the public school environment as a place of potential indoctrination, often assuming that leftist propaganda was limited to colleges.  However, identity politics and gender theory have now become commonplace within schools across America all the way down to Kindergarten and pre-school ages.  Numerous instances of school sponsored programs involving sexualized curriculum, Critical Race Theory and even drag queen shows are pervasive.

On top of this, many parents in 2020 also found themselves in conflict with public school mandates during the covid hysteria and realized they had few options in dealing with overzealous state restrictions.  In some cases, state officials were calling for forced mRNA vaccination of children in order to get access to educational facilities.     

These developments have startled millions of parents out of their apathy and injected momentum into School Choice policies – A plan to decentralize schooling and take power away from government bureaucrats and far-left teachers unions.  Multiple states have now introduced or passed legislation allowing tax dollars to be allocated for parents to move their children to private schools if they feel their public school is insufficient.  The laws vary, but are often associated with school vouchers. 

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Woke VA middle school bars Whites, Asians from joining college prep program

Cooper Middle School in McLean, Virginia sent out an email inviting students to apply to the College Partnership Program (CPP) offered by Fairfax Country Public Schools (FCPS). The email to parents outlined the criteria for application, which indicated that Black students and Hispanic students can apply. But the same correspondence also stated that all non-disabled Asian or White students whose family members have attended college are not welcome to the CPP.

Those who are accepted into the program can avail of academic counseling, college experiences, assistance with completing college and scholarship applications, a summer experiential learning opportunity and receive news and information related to colleges and careers.

The exclusion of White and Asian students from the CPP criteria appears to be intentional. As per the website of FCPS, a “typical CPP student” is either Black, Hispanic, native American or native Alaskan.

Cooper Middle School’s racism did not sit well with many parents in the school district. One lawyer whose child is enrolled at the school said the CPP was problematic.

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A Teacher Writes: Too Many Teachers See the Indoctrination of Children With Leftist Ideology as Fundamental to Their Role

“Aren’t we supposed to be agents of societal change?” were the words which greeted a colleague of mine recently during a meeting with his line manager. And it is true that teachers are agents of change, but the issue is what that change actually is. It is one thing to help children understand mathematical problems or show them ways in which to structure their writing, but it is another matter entirely to embark on some moral crusade in the name of social justice and political activism. I have worked in education for several years, having taught in both secondary schools and universities, and it has been ever more apparent that so-called professionals see the indoctrination of children with Leftist ideology as fundamental to their role. The woke brigade is, I can assure you, on the march in education and it is winning more ground over time. This article stems from a series of experiences and observations, though the core of it was triggered (as one might say in woke world) by a recent experience with PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic education). It is intended in the first instance to provide a snapshot of some of the work which happens in schools, though I am sure readers here could very well already have a good idea about that. In the second instance, it outlines why that work is (to use another woke word) problematic before theorising why such problems arise in schools.

Whilst there is plenty of evidence that Leftist ideology either has permeated or is permeating academic subjects, my focus here is on some teaching resources which were recently sent out by management to all form tutors at my school for use in PSHE. In times gone by, this tended to focus on issues like drugs and drug abuse. However, over time it has increasingly covered issues like sex education, bullying and relationships (one might wonder how previous generations managed to get by just fine without being specifically ‘educated’ about such matters). In still more recent times, PSHE has been used to teach children about the hundreds of different genders which supposedly exist and which defy biology, and it has also been used to scare them about the impending doom which awaits us all with climate change. It might come as no surprise that, yes, PSHE was also used to put the fear of Covid into children by instructing them on the dangers of not wearing a face mask. It was not, of course, used to warn children about the risks of wearing face masks or indeed of the risks of mRNA vaccines (even though PSHE used to educate children to, in the words of Nancy Reagan, ‘just say no’ to drugs).

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