Tag: public schools

House Democrats Block GOP Effort to Codify Parents’ Bill of Rights

Parental oversight of their kids’ education shouldn’t be a complicated or divisive issue, but — as statewide elections in Virginia last month showed — parents’ rights have become a partisan wedge as Democrats seek to keep America’s families from having a role in what their children are learning.

To preserve parents’ ability to keep tabs on what’s going on in schools and protect their ability to get critical information about the people to whom they entrust their children, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy drafted the Parents’ Bill of Rights with Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Julia Letlow (R-LA), Burgess Owens (R-UT), and Jim Banks (R-IN).

The House GOP’s proposal is simple: Parents should have the right to review their school’s curriculum and reading materials, to be heard, to see school budget and spending, to protect their child’s privacy, and to be updated on any violent activity at school.

While the ideas in the Parents’ Bill of Rights are straightforward and seemingly common sense, Democrats don’t want such rights protected under federal law. So, House Republicans led by Rep. Letlow put Democrats’ opposition to parental rights into the congressional record.

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Minnesota Public School District Tried To Charge Concerned Parents More Than $900,000 For Records

A public school district in Minnesota told a law firm representing concerned parents that it could cost upwards of $901,121.15 to complete a government records request, according to communications obtained by the Daily Caller.

An attorney at Mohrman, Kaardal, & Erickson in Minneapolis sent a Government Data Practices Act Request to the interim superintendent at Rochester Public School District in Minnesota on Sept. 20. The request was made on behalf of “Equality in Education,” a concerned parents association.

The request asked the Rochester Public School District to release information on the development of curriculum, conferences, or seminars for teachers and students related to “equity and social justice topics often referred to as Critical Race Theory.”

The request called for records dating back to Jan. 2020 in elementary, middle, and high school, according to the Mohrman, Kaardal, & Erickson letter. Specific words that the group was concerned about included “equity, social justice, cultural competency, race, intersectionality, or CRT.” Many of these concepts are linked to the core tenets of Critical Race Theory.

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Canadian School District Cancels Speech by ISIS Rape Survivor, Nobel Winner Due to ‘Islamophobia’ Fears

A woman who lived through kidnapping and sexual slavery at the hands of ISIS had an event cancelled by a Canadian school board due to fears of “Islamophobia.”

Twenty-eight-year-old Nadia Murad was scheduled to visit with students from 600 different schools to speak about her upcoming book, “The Last Girl: My Story Of Captivity,” which documents the horrific treatment she suffered from ISIS but was told by the Toronto School District that her event could not be held because it could “foster Islamophobia”, according to the Telegraph.

The decision to cancel the event was made by Toronto School Board Superintendent Helen Fisher, who argued that the book could be viewed as offensive to Muslims. The Toronto District School Board is Canada’s largest, and the fourth largest in North America.

Murad’s book tells how she escaped the Islamic State after being taken from her home and sold into sexual slavery where she was raped and tortured at the age of 14.

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Armed Agents in Texas School District Arrest Concerned Parents in Their Own Homes

The Round Rock Independent School District (RRISD) in Texas is using its own armed agents to arrest parents who speak out against the school board’s policies, according to Christopher Rufo in the City Journal.

Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said:

The battle lines are clear: on one side, the Biden administration, public school bureaucrats, and their armed agents; on the other, parents and families who oppose school closures, mask mandates, critical race theory and corruption. Public school officials have demonstrated a willingness to use police power to silence and intimidate their opponents.

Two fathers, Jeremy Story and Dustin Clark, had spoken out against the school board’s “alleged corruption and school officials’ hostility toward parents.” In August, while “produc[ing] evidence that the board had covered up an alleged assault by the superintendent, Hafedh Azaiez, against a mistress,” Story, a minister, was cut off midsentence as Azaiez ordered armed officers to remove him from the premises, according to Chronicles Magazine.

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CRT Whistleblower Banned From School Because Staff Have “Clinical Anxiety” Over Working With Him

Tony Kinnett, A public school administrator in Indiana, exposed that critical race theory is being taught in public schools.

According to Kinnett, what is being taught “suggests to all of our students who aren’t black or brown that they are responsible for centuries of horrible oppression that the United States has built.”

He added, “we do have critical race theory in how we teach.”

Now, he’s being punished.

Fox News reported:

A public school administrator in Indiana went viral after posting a video explaining that Indiana schools are teaching Critical Race Theory and intentionally deceiving concerned parents about whether or not their children are being subjected to it.

“When we tell you that our schools aren’t teaching Critical Race Theory, that it’s nowhere in our standards, that’s misdirection,” Indianapolis district science coordinator, instructional coach, and administrator Tony Kinnett posted on Twitter Thursday.

Kinnett explained that he is an administrator in the largest school district in Indiana which means he is present in “dozens of classrooms a week” so he “sees exactly what we are teaching our students.”

“We don’t have the quotes and theories as state standards per se,” Kinnett said. “We do have Critical Race Theory in how we teach.”

Kinnett continued, “We tell our teachers to treat our students differently based on color. We tell our students every problem is a result of ‘white men’ and that everything Western Civilization built is racist. Capitalism is a tool of white supremacy. Those are straight out of Kimberle Crenshaw’s main points verbatim in ‘Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement.’”

For exposing this he has been placed on leave and denied access to the school email and all buildings.

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California’s new educational guidelines say math is racist

California is set to adopt new math teaching principles that are based in critical race theory. These changes, which include deemphasizing calculus and pulling programs for academically gifted students, will “apply social justice principles to math lessons.”

These guidelines do not instruct educators to teach critical race theory, but rather use critical race theory as a guide for the formation of teaching principles. Critical race theory is not being taught to students, but taught to teachers, who are then meant to use it to formulate their own practices.

The goal of the new math framework is “to maintain rigor while also helping remedy California’s achievement gaps” for black, Latino, and poor students. the reason for the changes is that California students are falling behind in math.

“We were transforming math education, and change is hard and scary,” Rebecca Pariso, a math teacher at Hueneme Elementary School District told the San Francisco Standard. “Especially if you don’t understand why that change needs to occur. But I didn’t expect it to go this far.” The inspiration for these new guidelines came from San Francisco educational standards.

In the new guidelines, which will up for consideration prior to their potential adoption in July, reading in Chapter 2, “Teaching for Equity and Engagement,” reads that “Cultural relevance is important for learning and also for expanding a collective sense of what mathematical communities look and sound like to reflect California’s diverse history.”

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Fairfax Public Schools Reinstates Pornographic Books As A Commitment To ‘Diverse Reading Materials’

Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) has reviewed two books previously contested by parents as pornographic and pedophilic and decided to put them back into the district’s libraries, according to a statement released by FCPS on Tuesday.

A two month committee review process conducted by FCPS as a result of a “formal challenge” found “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe and “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison appropriate for high schoolers, according to the FCPS statement.

The books will be put back in the school system’s libraries, which were removed in September after Stacy Langton, a FCPS mom went to a Sept. 23 school board meeting and denounced the nature of the books.

Langton previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the books depicted pedophilia and sex between men and boys, including one book that showed a fourth-grade boy performing oral sex on what appears to be an adult male.

“Please describe to me what do you call this image of the adult bearded male with an erect penis fondling the genitalia of the child male? What is that?” Langton said in response to the district’s decision to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “He’s twice the size of the other character too. And I mean his erect penis is also twice the size of the boy’s penis.”

Langton said she somehow expected the district “could do the right thing” but “it’s clear to me now, they have no intention of doing the right thing about this.” “This is about an agenda they’re pushing and they’re not interested in protecting kids.”

“The other book has detailed illustrations of a man having sex with a boy,” Langton said to the school board in September while she unfolded copies of the illustrations. “The illustrations include fellatio, sex toys, masturbation and violent nudity.”

The board cut her off before her time was up and turned off her microphone, but she shouted that the board members were in violation of the law of Virginia, citing Virginia Code section 18.2-376, which says it is “unlawful for any person knowingly to prepare, print, publish, or circulate, or cause to be prepared, printed, published or circulated, any notice or advertisement of any obscene item proscribed in § 18.2-373, or of any obscene performance or exhibition proscribed in § 18.2-375.”

After the district received the formal complaint, two different committees of school administrators, librarians, parents and students were formed to examine and consider the books as “optional independent reading material” for high school students.

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Biden’s Education Department Wants to Roll Back Effort to Catalog Teacher Sex Crimes

The Department of Education wants to roll back a Trump-era effort to collect data on teacher-on-student sex crimes.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights will not ask school districts questions regarding teacher-on-student sexual assault allegations as part of its 2021-2022 Civil Rights Data Collection, proposed Thursday. The change is designed to “reduce burden and duplication of data,” an Education Department spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon. But critics say eliminating the question is the Biden administration’s attempt to appease teachers’ unions.

“This is the ultimate act of bowing to the teachers’ unions,” Kimberly Richey, who served as acting assistant secretary in the Office for Civil Rights in the Trump administration, told the Free Beacon. “Through this proposal, the Biden administration is actively helping schools cover up these incidents, which we were intentionally shining a light on.”

The Education Department will still ask districts to report documented cases of rape and sexual assault. But it will not ask school officials to report allegations that resulted in the resignation or retirement of the accused. Former secretary of education Betsy DeVos added those optional questions to the 2020-2021 data collection, which was delayed one year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The department also won’t ask districts to report pending cases or cases in which a school staffer was reassigned to another district school prior to the conclusion of an investigation.

Reporting alleged sex crimes in addition to documented cases provides a fuller picture of sexual violence in schools, as the accused may retire, resign, or seek employment elsewhere before a district can reach a conclusion in the case.

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