Tag: public schools

Seattle won’t remove homeless encampment from school grounds before students return to campus

Six weeks after Seattle Public Schools hosted a public meeting to address a dangerous homeless encampment on a public school property, pinning their hopes on one-man organization with an extensive criminal record to solve the problem, it was announced that the encampment behind Broadview Thomson K-8 School will not be removed before classes start on Sept. 1.

Meeting attendees said the campers are being made a higher priority than the children who attend the school and officials set no timeline for when the tents will be cleared.

Teachers, parents and neighbors have been calling for the encampment’s removal for over a year but have been stymied multiple times by the school board. In that time, the encampment has grown and currently 55 people are still living in tents on the property.

During a meeting Thursday night hosted by deputy superintendent Rob Gannon, school board member Liza Rankin, and Mike Mathias of Anything Helps, Mathias falsely claimed that the encampment was not a security threat despite numerous lockdowns in the school, violence in the encampment and overdose deaths. Due to the encampment, the district was forced to hire security guards after having banished police officers as school resource officers from campuses in 2020.

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Enemies of the School Board

School boards have always attracted their share of controversies: disagreements over curriculum, bitter election fights, and personality clashes. But in recent months, as parents express their frustration over Covid lockdowns, mask mandates, and critical race theory, local school districts and federal law enforcement have upped the ante by monitoring parents, requesting undercover agents at school board meetings, and even arresting parents who attend board meetings to express dissent.

The latest and most egregious example comes from Round Rock, Texas. In a series of school board meetings this fall, two fathers—a minister named Jeremy Story and a retired Army captain named Dustin Clark—spoke out against alleged corruption and school officials’ hostility toward parents. Journalist Pedro Gonzalez reported that at an August meeting, Story had calmly “produced evidence that the board had covered up an alleged assault by the superintendent, Hafedh Azaiez, against a mistress.” The superintendent and school board president cut him off midsentence and ordered officers to remove him from the premises.

At the next meeting, in September, with the district’s controversial mask mandate on the agenda, the school board locked the majority of parents out of the room, preventing them from speaking. Clark and other frustrated parents asked the board to open the nearly empty room to the public. Instead, school board president Amy Weir directed officers to remove Clark from school property. As he was dragged out by two officers, Clark shouted to the audience: “It’s an open meeting! Shame on you. Communist! Communist! Let the public in!”

A few days later, the school district, in coordination with law enforcement, sent police officers to the homes of both men, arrested them, and put them in jail on charges of “disorderly conduct with intent to disrupt a meeting.” Families and supporters of Story and Clark held an all-night protest outside the jail, until the men were released the following morning. They are now raising funds for their legal defense.

The school board was able to do this because the Round Rock Independent School District has its own police force, with a three-layer chain of command, patrol units, school resource officers, a detective, and a K-9 unit. The department serves under the authority of the board and, through coordination with other agencies, apparently has the power to order the arrest of citizens in their homes. For many parents, the school board is sending a message: if you speak out against us, we will turn you into criminals. When reached for comment, the school district’s police department confirmed that it initiated the investigation and that “one board member requested details from the RRISD Police” prior to the criminal referral.

Round Rock is not the only school board to resort to repressive tactics to stifle dissent. In Loudoun County, Virginia, for example, where parents have protested against critical race theory and a sexual assault cover-up, the superintendent asked the county sheriff to deploy a SWAT team, riot control unit, and undercover agents to monitor parents at school board meetings. The sheriff refused, telling the superintendent that he had not provided “any justification for such a manpower intensive request,” but the mere attempt was astounding.

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ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN skip DOJ whistleblower revealing ‘threat tag’ targeting parents at school board meetings

The media have largely ignored the explosive allegation made by a DOJ whistleblower about the counterterrorism targeting of outraged parents that appears to undercut sworn testimony from Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

On Tuesday, a whistleblower revealed the FBI created a “threat tag” to aid in tracking alleged threats against school board officials, teachers, and staff as part of its implementation of a controversial memo issued by Garland last month.

An Oct. 20 internal email from the FBI’s criminal and counterterrorism divisions, released Tuesday by House Republicans, instructed agents to apply the threat tag “EDUOFFICIALS” to all investigations and assessments of threats directed specifically at education officials.

“The purpose of the threat tag is to help scope this threat on a national level, and provide an opportunity for comprehensive analysis of the threat picture for effective engagement with law enforcement partners at all levels,” the email stated.

The email also directs FBI agents to consider whether the criminal activity being investigated is in violation of federal law and what the potential “motivation” is behind it. 

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School Forces Unmasked Kids to Wear Yellow Badges

A school in the UK is forcing children who don’t wear face masks due to them having an exemption to wear yellow badges on school premises and in class.

Yes, really.

An email form the school, which is not named, was posted on Twitter by journalist Allison Pearson.

The school cites an “increase” in the number of COVID cases, despite the fact that infection levels in the UK have been flat or even in decline over recent weeks, as a justification for re-introducing mandatory mask rules.

“Those pupils who were exempt from wearing a mask last academic year will once again be exempt and should wear a yellow badge,” states the email.

The yellow badge is historically understood to symbolize a “badge of shame” and was imposed on Jews at numerous points throughout history to denote them as ethnic or religious outsiders.

While no one is comparing the treatment of Jewish people in Nazi Germany to kids being forced to wear yellow badges, the use of such a symbol is still odious and morally bankrupt.

“Does the school have teachers who know their history?” asked Pearson.

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Shock Report: CA Teachers Urge Recruiting Kids Into LGBT Clubs

In a shocking report, Abigail Shrier, the author of the best-selling book “Irreversible Damage,” revealed that at a late October meeting at a conference of California’s largest teacher’s union, the California Teachers Association (CTA), documents show teachers were encouraged to recruit students into LGBT clubs, urging them to “have the courage to create a safe environment that fosters bravery to explore sexual orientation.” One teacher reportedly chortled, “We’re going to do just a little mind-trick on our sixth graders.”

Additionally, Shier wrote, “Speakers went so far as to tout their surveillance of students’ Google searches, internet activity, and hallway conversations in order to target sixth graders for personal invitations to LGBTQ clubs, while actively concealing these clubs’ membership rolls from participants’ parents.”

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New Hampshire student sues school after being suspended for off-campus text messages

A high school student in New Hampshire is suing the school district after he was suspended from the football team for insisting there are only two genders in private text messages. His lawsuit argues that the suspension was a violation of his first amendment rights.

The suit states that the freshman at Exeter High School was suspended from the football team for one game after the administration obtained a text conversation, outside of school grounds, that he had with another student over gender identity. The suit, filed on the student’s behalf by Christian-based organization Cornerstone Action, argues that he stated his Catholic-based belief that there are only two genders.

The lawsuit further argues that the school’s non-binary gender identity policy is an infringement of the student’s First Amendment rights.

The policy states the school’s community should respect student’s preferred name and pronoun related to their gender identity. Failure to respect others’ gender identities is a violation of the policy.

The student does not deny violating the policy.

“He in fact denied, and will continue to deny, that any person can belong to a gender other than that of ‘male’ or ‘female’” the lawsuit says.

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Florida parents sue after school clandestinely orchestrated daughter’s gender transition

The parents of a Florida teenager have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit after their daughter’s school directed their child to pursue a gender transition without notifying them.

January and Jeffrey Littlejohn of Tallahassee, Florida, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida last month, seeking to “vindicate their fundamental rights to direct the upbringing of their children” after Deerlake Middle School, where their 13-year-old daughter was enrolled, failed to notify them that their daughter had entered a school-sanctioned gender transition plan.

The lawsuit, which names the school superintendent, the assistant superintendent, and the Leon County School Board as defendants, says the Littlejohns’ daughter informed them during the COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020 that “she was confused about her gender and believed she might be non-binary.”

The Littlejohns’ daughter, who is referred to as A.G. in court filings, “asked her parents to permit her to change her name to ‘J.’ and to use ‘they/them’ pronouns” as the 2020-2021 school year approached, the lawsuit says.

Her parents declined but told her she could use the “J” name in school as a nickname.

“We didn’t think it was in the best interests of our child,” January Littlejohn told the Washington Examiner in an interview. But, she went on, “we didn’t feel like we would stop her friends from calling her a different name.”

The lawsuit says the Littlejohns informed their daughter’s math teacher, Rima Kelly, about the teenager’s gender dysphoria and continued treatment with a mental health counselor on Aug. 27, 2020.

Kelly offered to inform the school about their daughter’s desires to identify as nonbinary, which the parents declined. The teacher is not a named defendant in the case.

A couple of weeks later, on Sept. 14, while she was getting into the car, the Littlejohns’ daughter mentioned that the school had asked her which bathroom she wanted to use, which the lawsuit says she thought was “funny.”

January Littlejohn told the Washington Examiner that was the first time she became aware that the school was meeting with her daughter and assisting the teenager in embracing a different gender identity in school settings. The school did not facilitate any transition-related medical procedures.

The school claimed nondiscrimination law barred them from informing the parents about the meeting with their daughter, which occurred on Sept. 8, 2020, unless the child authorized them to be there.

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Maryland Public School Teacher Asked 14-Year-Olds to Take ‘White Privilege Test’

An English teacher in Montgomery County Public Schools — the largest school district in Maryland — told students to take a “white privilege test” before reading a book that addresses themes of racism and police brutality.

Ninth-grade English students at Sherwood High School were given pre-reading questions for the book “All American Boys” on Monday, Nov. 8, according to a file reviewed by the Daily Caller. The questions linked directly to a Vox article titled “what it means to be anti-racist” and a test called the “white privilege test.” The Vox article promoted the work of “anti-racist” scholar and author Ibram X. Kendi.

The “white privilege test” was adapted by “research on white privilege” from anti-racist activist Peggy McIntosh, according to the test. Students were told to answer “yes or no” to 25 statements.

Statements of white privilege include, “I can go shopping alone and be sure that I won’t be followed or harassed,” “In the history I have studied, my ancestors are given a lot of attention and credit,” and “I never feel out of place, outnumbered, unheard, feared, or hated in my clubs and activities. Instead, I feel tied in and welcomed,” among others.

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Scottsdale Unified Assures Parents Of Privacy In Aftermath Of Secret Dossier Discovery, Parents Call For Greenburg Resignation

The Scottsdale Unified School District’s administration is scrambling to do damage control after a group of mothers discovered Governing Board President Jann-Michael Greenburg had access to a Google Drive full of personal information, documents, and photos of about 47 people, including children.

An email sent out Wednesday evening by the SUSD’s Communications Office sought to assure families that their personal and educational data is safe. However, the district also solely blamed the discovered digital dossier* site on Mark Greenburg, the father of Jann-Michael Greenburg.

The damage control appears to be too little too late for many parents in the Scottsdale Unified School District, including Amy Carney, a mother of six, who is among those calling for Greenburg to step down.

“I am calling for the immediate resignation of our board president Jann-Michael Greenburg. We cannot allow anyone in a leadership position to secretly compile personal documents and information on moms and dads who have dared speak out publicly or on social media about their grievances with the district,’ said Carney, who is running for a seat on the Scottsdale Governing Board in November 2022.

Even though Mark Greenburg is listed as the Google Drive owner, records from an Aug. 17 special SUSD board meeting show Jann-Michael admitted sharing a computer with Mark. With Mark and Jann-Michael sharing a computer and a home, there is no way to know which of them has been uploading files (now known as the “G Files”) to the drive, according to concerned parents.

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