Free Republic

CHICAGO — Thousands of Chicago teachers plan to walk off the job for one day on Friday, shutting down schools in the nation's third-largest district in what could be an early glimpse of a more prolonged strike still to come. Some 27,000 Chicago Teachers Union members have been working without a contract since June. They've overwhelmingly authorized an open-ended strike like the one that closed schools for more than a week in 2012, though that would still be weeks away. The union and its allies say Friday's action is an attempt to draw attention to their fight for a new...

Chcago Public Schools officials told principals on Wednesday that the district is "short of the necessary cash for the remainder of the school year" partly because of a pension payment of nearly $700 million due this summer. ... Last month, principals had to absorb $26 million in midyear budget cuts to district-operated schools. Principals tapped internal accounts, cut planned technology and textbook purchases and didn't fill vacant positions to avert layoffs. On Wednesday, principals were told to hold off on $45 million budgeted for "non-personnel" expenses. The district said it wants to save another $10 million through a limit on...

Two key members of the Oregon militia, who continue to hold the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, say Arizona officials took their children from their homes as an act of revenge. According to a report from the Arizona Republic, Robert "LaVoy" Finicum and Blaine Cooper say federal officials pressured local child protection officials to take custody of their children in retaliation against them for their siege on the wildlife refuge. Cooper, who posts regular updates of the siege on social media, said earlier in the month that child protection services came to his house in Humboldt, Arizona, and took...

The head of the Chicago Public Schools says the district will lay off some of its central office staff on Friday. District CEO Forrest Claypool's statement came a day after top Illinois Republicans called for a state takeover of the financially troubled school district, which has a nearly $1 billion budget deficit that could lead to thousands of teacher layoffs and a strike. ...

Maria Hasankolli, the Connecticut mom who was arrested after police found her eight-year-old son walking to school while she overslept, had her court appearance yesterday. Here is what she wrote to me: "So I just left court. I was informed that "risk of injury to a minor" (my charge) carries with it a ten year sentence, five thousand dollar fine, and five years probation. My case was continued to January 6th, 2016."

That's what happened to Sonya Hendren when she let her 4-year-old son, Tomahawk, play on their gated Sacramento, California, apartment complex playground by himself. She felt her son could handle playing unsupervised 120 feet from her apartment's front door, but her neighbor disagreed. According to local news outlet CBS8, the neighbor, Sonja Horrell, reported Hendren to Child Protective Services, and Hendren was arrested for felony child neglect and endangerment.

Legal Kidnapping: Government’s Assault on Parents How Did We Get Here? The Slippery Slope of Government “Protection”by Monica MearsHealth Impact NewsWhen most people today hear of a terrible child abuse case, their immediate reaction is to call on the government to protect the child and bring justice to bear on the situation. This reliance upon government to enforce child protection, rather than families, churches or non-profit groups, is a relatively new concept in history.As American government has grown ever larger in response to society’s expectations that it should be all children’s protector, Americans have discovered these good intentions have created...

Chicago has a high school with just 13 ninth graders. That’s the entire freshman class: 13. This isn’t a specialty school, or a school for expelled students, or an alternative school. It’s a regular Chicago public high school. Just 13 freshmen signed up this year to attend Austin Business and Entrepreneurship Academy High School on the city’s predominantly black West Side. And Austin Business is not alone. Two other high schools located inside the same building have enrolled just 20 and 24 freshmen each. Three separate principals oversee the three schools. Then there’s Hirsch Metropolitan High School on 79th and...

The indictment of former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett closes a chapter in yet another sad tale of greedy, cheating city officials. Her lawyer says she has agreed to plead guilty when she appears in court, and I hope the judge throws the book at her. But ethical misconduct is only a part of BBB's legacy. The ex-CEO—along with the rest of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's crack team at the Board of Education—has left us with a whopper of a problem that could hit full force as soon as next month. I'm referring to the nearly $500 million hole in...

Claire Rembis was sick, and had to spend 3 days in the hospital. Her attack of pancreatitis paled in comparison to what happened next. The mom from Plano, Texas, came home to a nightmare that no parent should ever have to face. CPS came and took her children, all 11 of them, because a “well-meaning” couple, members of her oldest son’s former youth group, didn’t think that the 16 and 14 year olds could handle babysitting their siblings while their dad took the baby to the hospital to visit Claire. Has it really gotten to the point where a mother...

Chicago Public Schools went an entire decade without making a pension contribution under Daley. It was part of a "pension holiday," according to the report. And like a lot of holidays, it left a hangover.

It is common for people to spend more time deliberating over what type of cable TV package they will purchase than over who will provide their family with primary health care services. Making the right choice of health care provider may be one of the most important decisions that you make for your family. It may determine whether your family stays together or is broken up and destroyed by Child Protective Services.Are you a parent who believes that you have the right to make decisions for your children regarding the medical care they receive? Are you a parent who believes...

Agenda 21 A recent story in the media about 2 children aged 10 and 6 being taken into protective custody by over-zealous officials has introduced a phrase I expect we’ll be hearing a lot more of in coming years - Free Range Children. The children were allowed to play unsupervised in a nearby park, and busybodies called authorities who took the children into custody without notifying the parents. This was a “second offense” as the parents let the children walk home from their nearby school. Basically the kids were given a modicum of freedom to encourage responsibility and independence. I...

Two suburban Washington, D.C., parents are under scrutiny again for letting their 6- and 10-year-old children play in a park and walk home alone in a case that has stirred debate about "free-range" parenting and government powers. For the second time in four months, police picked up the children of Danielle and Alexander Meitiv on Sunday as they were walking home alone from a park that's nearly a mile from their house. This time, instead of bringing the children home, police took them directly to Child Protective Services. "It's beyond ridiculous," Danielle Meitiv said Monday. "The world is safer today,...

The Meitivs continued allowing their children some independence until Sunday, when the couple dropped the kids off at a park so they could play after a six-hour drive back from upstate New York, telling them to be home by 6 p.m. Danielle Meitiv said she and her husband began worrying when the kids weren't home by 6:30, but that Child Protective Services didn't call them until 8 p.m. to say the children were in their custody. Police had picked them up on the walk home after another concerned citizen called.

The Maryland parents who let their “free-range” kids walk home alone and were found responsible of unsubstantiated child neglect are under fire again for leaving the children unsupervised in a park. Child Protective Services is investigating Danielle and Alexander Meitiv after their children were found alone in a Silver Springs park Sunday, NBC Washington reported.

Government is out of control. This statement sadly seems to require no additional explanation or defense. Whether one is conservative or liberal, progressive or libertarian, Americans increasingly regard this proclamation as a self-evident truth. But perhaps some Rip Van, catatonic through previous decades, just now awakening, might seek further details and elucidation. For decades we’re been warned about the dangers of high and rising levels of national debt in the United States of America — now an accumulated $18.1 trillion dollars. Moreover, under just the last two presidents the Feds have added two-thirds of this massive debt — $4.9 trillion...

Remember our free range Baltimore kids? Apparently their parents have been convicted of “unsubstantiated neglect” for allowing them to walk home from the park alone.The Meitiv kids, engaging in unapproved “dangerous behavior” How can you hold someone responsible for anything that’s “unsubstantiated?” Where, other than government bureaucracies, would that NOT be an oxymoron?Perhaps I need to elaborate; what exactly  is “unsubstantiated neglect?” It is something that is not illegal (the law being silent on it) butt that some busybody – in this case Maryland Child Protective Services – thinks should be. Therefore they create an “illegal” act on their own...

Hey moms and dads, if you’re like me, before you had kids, you imagined yourself teaching them, raising them, and being responsible for them.  After generations of our parents and grandparents shedding their responsibility to the government in exchange for a selfish, me-centered life, we no longer have primary authority to raise our children as we see fit.  That authority now lies with the government. We’ve given away so much authority to the all-powerful state in the name of protecting children, that it’s a crap-shoot when kids who really need protection will get it.  And when the state gets it...

It’s Sunday, the day of rest. So let’s give it a rest for the day – politics I mean.  Big Guy’s new Soak The Rich plan can wait for the State of the Union, and the #OscarsSoWhite situation is in Al Sharpton’s capable hands.So let’s shift gears and talk about the culture-at-large instead; specifically the care and tending of children in this dangerous culture. In The Overprotected Kid, Hanna Rosin argues that “a preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer,” and showcases a special playground in Wales designed to reverse this trend.In...