Free Republic

“You don’t have to be honest. I mean we can talk in theory.” –Paul Diamond, Executive Vice President, Yonkers Teacher Federation “I don’t’ care if it’s the phys ed teacher you went to high school with, you don’t fucking tell anybody anything…Because old loose lips sink ships.” — Patricia Puleo, President, Yonkers Teacher Federation “You could. Your parents could have been down there, or your cousin could have been down there, or your brother and they were taken by drug dealers and you literally had to go bail them out and you didn’t know what to do and you lost...

Preborn babies with Down syndrome are still aborted at alarming rates. Abortion advocates often use birth defects like Down syndrome as an excuse for late-term abortions, and the majority of women who receive a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis still report that doctors deliver the news in an overwhelmingly negative manner. Many say that they felt pressured to have an abortion. Societally, it’s still expected that abortion will follow a Down syndrome diagnosis. Salt Lake City’s Utah Electronic High School apparently not only feels that preborn babies with Down syndrome should be aborted, but also that high schoolers should be indoctrinated...

This piece is co-authored by Emmett McGroarty, senior fellow at American Principles Project.Narrowly viewed, the unlawful “guidance” letter issued by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, implicitly threatening schools that refuse to allow both sexes to access all restrooms, locker rooms, dormitories/sleeping quarters, and probably sports teams, represents a leftist assault on student privacy. But the attack is much broader than that, actually targeting fundamental realities on which human civilization is based. Rather than write a book on that subject, let’s focus on one strand that should especially disturb parents: The guidance is yet another in a long series...

A Texas teacher turned herself in to authorities this week after she allegedly sexually assaulted a 13-year-old student and then had an abortion to cover it up. Alexandria M. Vera, 24, allegedly had an on-going relationship with a 13-year-old male student while she was teaching eighth-grade English at Stovall Middle School near Houston, Texas. Vera turned herself into police on Wednesday, posted bond and was released, The Woodlands Villager reports. She is charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child, a felony, according to police. According to court documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle, Vera said she and the boy...

As part of a final biology exam, Utah Electronic High School asked students to determine whether a woman in a specific situation should have an abortion. The multiple choice question presented a scenario in which a 40-year-old woman is pregnant and has discovered that the child has Down syndrome. According to the scenario, the doctor has recommended that the baby be aborted. Students are asked to choose between the following options: A. The parents should wait until the baby is ready to be born, then re-do the genetic tests to see if the results have changed. B. The parents should...

By fall 2017 Washington state public schools will begin teaching gender expression to kindergarteners under newly-approved health education learning standards that designate sexual health a “core idea” of public K-12 education. While some aspects of sexual health aren’t taught K-12 (HIV prevention begins in fourth grade), one component of sexual health titled “Self-Identity” begins in kindergarten, where students will be expected to “Understand there are many ways to express gender." The state’s health education glossary defines gender as “A social construct based on emotional, behavioral, and cultural characteristics attached to a person’s assigned biological sex.” Gender expression, meanwhile, is defined...

The Philadelphia School District will add two Muslim holidays to its calendar and the city will create a task force to study doing the same for the city’s calendar, officials announced Tuesday. “Philadelphia’s history is based on being a place where religious freedom is part of its founding ethos,” Mayor Kenney said at a news conference in City Hall. “Our city was built on the idea that while we may be different in nationality and ethnicity, the city welcomes all to worship and practice the faiths of our culture or our choosing.” The two holidays are Eid al-Fitr, celebrated after...

BOYD COUNTY, KY - A former Boyd County School employee was arrested on rape charges on Monday. Howard Faber of Ashland Kentucky is facing a charge of rape in the 1st degree. Boyd County Sheriff's Department tells 13 News Faber is accused of sexually assaulting a student who attends Boyd County High School.

A veteran English teacher at Flushing HS says she was so terrified when a student charged at her and threatened to beat her with a heavy cast on his arm that she blurted out in self-defense, “If you hit me, I’ll kill you.”

“Don’t shop at Target,”... “We need to send a message to Target. You might not live in North Carolina, so at this moment you don’t have any skin in the game, but you will, because this is going to every state, every community. Don’t let your little girl go into Target and try on a bathing suit right now. Don’t buy anything from Target.” “Speak out. Don’t be afraid to express how you’re feeling about this issue,” she urged. “We are talking about a miniscule number of people who are psychologically unhealthy, and the people on the Left are saying...

Students from the Arabic Club at the public high school in the city of Medford, about a 15-minute drive north of downtown Boston, wanted to participate in “World Hijab Day” early this semester. The annual event was created in 2013 to promote awareness and understanding of Muslim women who wear the headscarf as an expression of their faith. At Medford High, the plan was pretty straightforward ... The date was set for February 1. But soon after Hijab Day was announced, the Medford public got wind of it. And there was a wave of phone messages, emails and social media...

Homeschool families in Clinton County, Kentucky, were surprised to see themselves mentioned in their local paper as a topic of discussion during the recent school board meeting. On May 18, the Clinton County News reported that local school officials intend to conduct random audits of area homeschool families this summer because they want to “ensure that all children in our county are getting a rigorous and effective education.” Home School Legal Defense Association opposes any such audits as unconstitutional. We are also troubled by what appears to be the underlying motivation for this proposed meddling by school officials: money. During...

A “transmasculine” teacher at an Oregon elementary school has been awarded $60,000 by her school district as compensation for harassment she claims to have suffered on the job, including being referred to by the wrong pronoun. According to The Oregonian, Leo Soell was born a woman, but now prefers to identify as “transmasculine” and “genderqueer,” meaning she does not consider herself to be male or female. After getting breast cancer in late 2014, she had her breasts amputated to create a more masculine appearance and changed her name to Leo. Once she returned from medical school in May, 2015, Soell...

Reality has seemingly escaped us all. On Tuesday, The New York Times published a bizarre piece intent on mainstreaming transgenderism. A 16-year-old “boy,” AJ Jackson, informs us all about “his” period, “his” plight with tampons and bathrooms. “There were practical issues, When he had his period, he wondered if he should revert to the girls’ bathroom, because there was no place to throw away his used tampons,” writes Anemona Hatocollis of the Times, describing Jackson’s period struggles. “But he had started feeling like an intruder in the girls’ bathroom, and the single bathrooms were so far out of the way...

<p>Lee County Deputies said a 15-year-old South Fort Myers High School girl had sex with multiple male students in the bathroom of the school.</p> <p>"Shock. Disbelief. Concern. Sad," Eric Struble said. He's a parent to two 15-year-old girls.</p> <p>The incident report said the girl admitted to having sex with multiple male students in the bathroom, and 25 male students were identified going inside the bathroom during the timeframe the girl was inside.</p>

In a move spearheaded by environmentalists, the Portland Public Schools board unanimously approved a resolution aimed at eliminating doubt of climate change and its causes in schools. “It is unacceptable that we have textbooks in our schools that spread doubt about the human causes and urgency of the crisis,” said Lincoln High School student Gaby Lemieux in board testimony. “Climate education is not a niche or a specialization, it is the minimum requirement for my generation to be successful in our changing world.”

A Florida public high school suspended a teacher after he gave students a final exam question about Donald Trump that an administrator called inappropriate, Palm Beach Post columnist Andrew Marra reported. The exam question, written by Palm Beach Lakes High School (PBL) teacher and practicing attorney Malik Leigh, asked, “If a Donald Trump becomes president of the United states, we are: A. Screwed B. Screwed C. Screwed D. Screwed behind a really YUGE wall that Mexico pays for." The final exam is “wholly inappropriate for the Law Academy class,” PBL Principal Cheryl McKeever wrote in a letter, according to the...

A shocking editorial in the Charlotte Observer counseled young girls to get over the "discomfort" they feel at the sight of male genitalia when transgender facilities are allowed in North Carolina. The newspaper assumes the law will eventually be repealed or declared illegal. While that may or may not happen any time soon, it is the justification for this position used by the Observer that reveals the true nature of this battle of the bathroom. (snip) So, biological men enter the bathroom used by biological women and this is not threat to the privacy of women? What spaceship brought this...

UPDATE (11:30 AM 5/19/16): The West Virginia State Police served a third juvenile petition to a 13-year-old boy on Thursday, May 19th, for incidents at Clay Middle School. The petition was served for the crimes of making terroristic threats, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation to commit murder

Police say a Chicago man followed an 8-year-old girl into a store bathroom Saturday and choked her until she became unconscious. CBS Chicago reports that the girl became separated from her mother inside a store and went into the restroom, allegedly followed by 33-year-old Reese Hartstirn. Moments later, the girl's mother heard her scream, and ran to the bathroom, where she allegedly found Hartstirn carrying the unconscious girl into a stall. Police said Hartstirn pushed the girl's mother when she tried to rescue her, and other customers at the store helped detain the man until police arrived. He allegedly took...