Free Republic

Hockey pucks: They're small, heavy and — one Michigan college thinks — might be the perfect weapon against an active shooter on campus. Oakland University, a public school located in Rochester Hills, near Detroit, is distributing thousands of 94-cent hockey pucks for just that reason. The distribution, which began earlier this month, stemmed from a March faculty active-shooter training session following February's shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school that left 17 dead. A participant at the training asked the Oakland University Police Chief Mark Gordon what items people could use to defend themselves on the campus, which has a...

A North Carolina school where a high concentration of families claim religious exemption from vaccines is facing the state’s worst chickenpox outbreak in more than 20 years. The chickenpox outbreak has affected 36 students at Asheville Waldorf School, health officials with Buncombe County said. The outbreak ranks as North Carolina’s largest since a chickenpox vaccine became available more than 20 years ago, the Asheville Citizen Times reports.

St. Louis area substitute teacher Jim Furkin was fired in October after he thanked the children for standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. This offended one student so Jim lost his teaching gig. KMOV reported:

A substitute teacher who has taught for years at Parkway South High School claims school administrators banned him from working there after he thanked students for saying the Pledge of Allegiance and a student complained. The substitute teacher, Jim Furkin, told the Parkway School Board his story at their meeting Wednesday night and asked them to look into it. “I’d like to know what happened,” Furkin said. ------------- Furkin told the Post-Dispatch that in late October he was the substitute teacher for a freshman English class at Parkway South High when the school made its daily announcements over the PA...

A Florida school district allowed a self-described transgender female student regular access to the boys’ locker room, with no advance warning to the boys or their parents. The first time she walked in, she caught “boys (literally) with their pants down, causing them embarrassment and concern by the fact that they had been observed changing by an obvious girl,” says a complaint letter to Pasco County School District from Liberty Counsel, a pro-bono constitutional law firm. With a “gag order,” school administrators forbade teachers from talking about the change, and ordered a male P.E. teacher to supervise the potentially undressed...

A Florida school district allowed a self-described transgender female student regular access to the boys’ locker room, with no advance warning to the boys or their parents snip When he refused to “knowingly place himself in a position to observe a minor female in the nude or otherwise in a state of undress,” administrators told him “he will be transferred to another school as discipline for ‘not doing your job in the locker room.'”

A former NFL player-turned-high school health teacher and assistant football coach was arrested Friday for assaulting the same student twice — and promptly resigned, police said. Sheddrick Wilson, 44, who played wide receiver at LSU and for the Houston Oilers, allegedly assaulted the 16-year-old at Archbishop Stepinac HS during two separate occasions, court records show. Sometime in January or February 2017 while Wilson was teaching health class at the prestigious White Plains school, he ordered the victim, known only as “JM” in court papers, to the front of the classroom and asked him to remove his glasses, records show. Wilson...

FULL TITLE: Horrifying moment Baltimore teacher gets punched in the face by student on her first day back after cancer treatment A viral video of a Baltimore teaching getting punched in the face by a student has sparked an investigation by the school district. Posted on Wednesday, the video shows a teacher and a student engaged in a vicious argument at Frederick Douglass High School in Gwynns Falls Parkway. According to the user who shared the video, the teacher had just returned to the classroom after recovering from cancer surgery. In the clip, a fellow classmate can be seen holding...

Common Core sucked all the energy, money, and motivation right out of desperately needed potential reforms to U.S. public schools for a decade, and for nothing. It’s been about nine years since the Obama administration lured states into adopting Common Core sight unseen, with promises it would improve student achievement. Like President Obama’s other big promises — “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” — this one’s been proven a scam. “If you set and enforce rigorous and challenging standards and assessments; if you put outstanding teachers at the front of the classroom; if you turn around...

MAYWOOD (CBSLA) — A teacher was arrested Friday after a violent confrontation with a student inside a classroom. Video of the incident at Maywood Academy High School shows the teacher swinging at the student following an alleged dispute over the uniform the student was wearing. Police and school district officials had not identified the teacher at the time of this report. Parents want answers. “I’m shocked. Why did it have to escalate to this point?” one

THORNTON, Colorado, October 26, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Parents were shocked and angered to discover that an x-rated drag queen showed up to their children’s school last week as part of a career day event. Zack Sullivan, a 25-year-old man better known as drag queen "Jessica L'Whor," was invited by school administration to give a presentation on Oct. 19 to 11-13-year-old children at Rocky Top Middle School in suburban Denver, without parents' knowledge or consent. L'Whor has worked for x-rated "uncensored" venues, one which included allowing patrons paying the highest bid to "f*ck up the queens." “Parents are in an outrage...

This turned out to be a particularly oddly timed story to come across after the Synagogue shooting this morning. Someone should probably have a word with the parents and teachers in the Pittsburgh Public School system. At a recent meeting of the school board, a measure was brought up for a vote which sounds as if it should be a no-brainer except for the fact that it hadn’t been done long ago. Should the police who patrol on school campuses be armed? That was the question before the board. And they shot it down (pun intended) by a margin of...

Our children aren’t being taught to read in ways that line up with what scientists have discovered about how people actually learn. It’s a problem that has been hiding in plain sight for decades. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, more than six in 10 fourth graders aren’t proficient readers. It has been this way since testing began. A third of kids can’t read at a basic level. How do we know that a big part of the problem is how children are being taught? Because reading researchers have done studies in classrooms and clinics, and they’ve shown...

FULL TITLE: Transgender girl charged in brutal Texas high school attack caught on camera 'was hitting back at bully after receiving a death threat' A transgender girl accused of assaulting two students at a Texas high school alleges that she was being bullied and was merely fighting back. Shocking video shows a student identified by police as Travez Perry violently punching, kicking and stomping on a girl in the hallway of Tomball High School. The female student was transported to the hospital along with a male student, whom Perry allegedly kicked in the face and knocked unconscious. According to the...

BARTOW, Fla. — Police say two middle school girls, who worship Satan, armed themselves with knives in a foiled plot to violently kill classmates and drink their blood at school on Tuesday. The 6th and 7th-grade girls attend Bartow Middle School, police say. At 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, the Bartow Police School Resource Officer assigned to the school was summoned to the principal's office in reference to an armed juvenile complaint. The investigation revealed that the students armed themselves with knives, and planned on attacking fellow students during the school day. "Fortunately, they were intercepted by school staff hiding in a...

Several parents are outraged after a drag queen spoke to their children during Rocky Top Middle School's career day. Now the principal is apologizing for not notifying parents ahead of time. A police officer, an architect and a drag queen -- a broad range of jobs on career day, but parents say one of them has no business inside a school. “I was pretty appalled. I was pretty surprised. It was a shock because no one was notified,” parent Jen Payer said. Ms. Jessica is a gay man who was invited by one of her fans, a Rocky Top student,...

When Montgomery Township High School teacher Michelina Aichele was suspended with pay for allegedly sending nude photos of herself to a 17-year-old student, she offered a possible explanation, authorities said. "While collecting her belongings, (Aichele) made statements about students possibly gaining access to her cellphone and sending nude photos of herself previously saved onto her phone to themselves," police wrote in a criminal complaint obtained by NJ Advance Media. Aichele, 29, of Hillsborough, was arrested Oct. 5 and charged with second-degree endangering the welfare of a child. She was released after two days in jail pending court hearings. School officials...

A planned Student Gun Violence Summit held in Washington, D.C. over the weekend has generated a proposal geared towards extensive gun control ideas. The summit was designed to merge existing plans to reduce gun violence and merge them into a single “Students’ Bill of Rights,” after a weekend conference. The group, a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt social welfare organization, was formed by Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School teacher Melissa Falkowski, along with Jami Amo, a survivor of the Columbine shooting; and Abbey Clements, a teacher from Sandy Hook Elementary School. The summit was sponsored with the assistance of several national gun control...

Older-but-wiser principal named Edwina Educator apologizes for dumb decisions she made when running a big public school. Only three-minutes long, this little video tells you everything you need to know about the public school system. Please share. ------------------------------------------------------------- I made it 6 years ago. The primary purpose was to test new video software called Xtranormal. You first type your script, then you can have characters move around and speak your words as you see in this video. Quite remarkable. Some of you would enjoy experimenting with it. Unfortunately Xtranormal, which was free, is dormant. Other options are now available but...

A high school student mixed her cremated grandfather's ashes into homemade sugar cookies and shared them with several classmates, police in Northern California said Wednesday. The student and a friend baked the cookies and shared them with at least nine classmates at their public charter high school near Sacramento on Oct. 4, said Davis Police Lt. Paul Doroshov. He said the Da Vinci Charter Academy students told some of their classmates that the cookies contained human ashes. He said investigators interviewed nine students who ate the cookies, and said there are other supporting details that he declined to disclose that...