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Thank you for registering for "Week of Action to Protect the Federal School Discipline Guidance Webinar". In January, 2014, the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice jointly released federal school discipline guidance to help schools prevent and address discipline practices that discriminate against students of color. This critical protection for vulnerable students is now under attack. The Dignity in Schools Campaign and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. are asking parents, students, and advocates to join us in the fight to maintain this important resource by participating in the Week of Action to Protect...

No one noticed it, during and after Francis’s journey to Myanmar and Bangladesh, immoderately focused on the situation of the Rohingya. But in Dhaka, on December 1, the patriarch of the Bengali Buddhists, Sanghanayaka Suddhananda Mahathero, addressed his homage to the pope by recalling with admiration this specific action:“I will never forget the image of Your Holiness when you washed the feet of the young African refugees. You, Holy Father, have attained the stature of the great, and you are a great example for me.”If there was a need for yet another confirmation of the global communicative power of Pope...

AURORA, Colo. -- Reports of bullying at an Aurora high school have reached a breaking point for a 15-year-old girl and her family. Police are investigating as video of a recent encounter went viral on social media. The alleged victim, known as Laniey, said the past four months have been full of threats, taunts and four-letter words used to torment her. It’s all been too much for the Gateway High School freshman, who said she no longer feels safe at school.

In the latest incident of anti-gun hysteria to erupt in a school setting, officials overseeing a school district in Alabama have expelled a 16-year-old girl for an entire year because she had a water gun at school. Prior to her yearlong expulsion, the student, Sara Allena "Laney" Nichols, attended Prattville High School Prattville, a town of 35,229 just northwest of Montgomery. [Snip] Nichols and her mother, Tara Herring, say the teen girl did not bring the water gun to school. Instead, the mother and daughter claim, a male classmate gave Nichols the water gun to Nichols "as a joke."...

In the midst of another graphic video of a brutal fight between teens at a Mississippi high school going viral, one teacher and a former student from have revealed how the bureaucracy apparently helps the regular mass brawls continue. New policies at Terry High School in Hinds County 'deter teachers' at the school from punishing children who are involved in violent fights, one teacher, who did not want to be publicly identified, told WLBT. The educator's comments come after the school was the scene of another vicious brawl on Monday that was caught on camera.

American service members are petitioning for the return of beards to the US military, with their petition now containing well over 10,000 signatures. According to the petition page “Beards for Military“ on change.org, the writers of the petition call for the return of the long-gone tradition of tasteful facial hair on service members, citing a boost in morale. “All I want is to be able to grow a beard,” the petition reads, as penned by Ed Beebe. “I want to grow long locks of love on my face that will make me feel like a manly man. It is...

As the United States continues to debate gun control in the wake of the Orlando massacre, The Local speaks with a criminologist about how parenting practices rather than laws have made Germans less violent. […] … (T)he truth behind why Germany sees far less gun violence per capita than the United States goes deeper than the legal structures, argues German criminologist Christian Pfeiffer, who has conducted research on this topic for years. “America is a completely different world,” Pfeiffer told The Local. “The laws are a result of a public that believes in fear. The laws reflect a culture of...

The United Nations wants parents who physically discipline their children with smacks or spankings to be thrown behind bars and have their families torn to shreds by government. Of course, the “Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Violence against Children,” Marta Santos Pais, did not put it quite that explicitly. But that is an accurate description of the UN bureaucrat's demands, as issued in a series of official statements posted on the UN's website this month. It is also part of the global agenda to destroy parental rights, as envisioned in the UN Convention on the Rights of the...

Chris Hayes has established a new standard. It is henceforth fair game to say on national TV of any parent who has spanked his child that such parent "hits his kids." Hayes employed the inflammatory formulation on his MSNBC show this evening. Hayes played a clip of a child in a Cruz audience telling him "you suck" and Cruz responding "in my household, when a child behaves that way, they get a spanking." Proclaimed Hayes portentously: "I should note it's a matter of public record by Ted Cruz that he hits his kids." Okay then, so Hayes has equated a...

A startling video shows a 5-year-old boy getting paddled by his school principal in front of his mom. Shana Marie Perez, who recorded the footage of her son's punishment, says she's had a long-running dispute with the school principal in Georgia. Her son has had 18 unexcused absences this school year and she was once arrested for his truancy. She says the school threatened to call the police and have her arrested again if she did not give them permission to paddle Thomas. She told IE: "I felt like I had no other option. The principal led me to believe...

Beaumont police say a teacher was arrested Friday after video on Twitter showed her slapping a student on the head. [Snip] Hastings was arrested and charged with assault. She has been released on bail at this time. Ozen High School has placed Hastings on administrative leave, and the school district has released this statement:

'I hereby denounce the effects social media have on my children': Hilarious moment Southern mom SHOOTS her 'disobedient' children's iPhones to smithereens...then pounds them with a sledgehammer to finish the job The mother perches the phone on a tree trunk, and nails it on her first shot It explodes to bits and sends pieces flying into the grass The camera then shows her three children, one of whom flips a double bird Mother gives speech about how she is stopping them from 'contacting people they don't know' and getting into 'drama' and trouble at school Hell hath no fury like...

The growing scandal over cooked ISIS intelligence just got much worse. Now, analysts are saying they’re being forced out for not toeing the Obama administration’s line on the war. Two senior intelligence analysts at U.S. Central Command say the military has forced them out of their jobs because of their skeptical reporting on U.S.-backed rebel groups in Syria, three sources with knowledge of their claim told The Daily Beast. It’s the first known instance of possible reprisals against CENTCOM personnel after analysts accused their bosses of manipulating intelligence reports about the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in order to paint a...

The teacher posted: “Anyone care to explain to me the school-to-prison pipeline my colleagues and I have somehow created, or perpetuated, or not done enough to interrupt? Because if you can’t prove it, the campaigns you’ve waged to deconstruct adult authority in my building by enabling student misconduct, you seriously owe us real teachers an apology. Actually, an apology won’t cut it.” "Phones and iPad devices, used for social media and gaming," wrote Olson. "There have always been rules for ‘devices,’ and defined levels of misconduct. Since we now have no backup, no functional location to send kids who won’t...

I saw a woman leaving the YMCA recently with a baby strapped to her chest. She had a second, slightly larger baby in a stroller. And she had a tantrum-throwing three-year-old holding her hand. She was infested with small children. I couldn't help but stare... The three-year-old was trying to make a scene. I say "trying to make a scene" because he was waging war against his mother, and she was refusing to participate. With a steady gait and an even expression, she ignored him. It was the most spectacular moment in parenting I have ever seen. This woman, who...

Education: As serious crimes in schools soar, teachers unions in New York and other cities are pushing back against new softer student conduct codes inspired by the president's national anti-discipline strategy. New York public schools are dealing with escalating classroom chaos after adopting minority-friendly discipline policies that the Education Department pushed to close so-called "racial disparities" in suspensions and expulsions. Educrats have been threatening school districts with lawsuits and funding cuts wherever if finds disparities. High-school kids are getting "warning cards" for offenses that normally would result in a criminal summons and suspension, such as drug possession and disorderly conduct.

DALLAS (AP) -- The recent arrest of a 14-year-old Muslim boy whose teacher mistook his homemade clock for a bomb led to widespread ridicule of school officials and accusations that Islamophobia may have played a part. It earned Ahmed Mohamed an invitation to the White House, where the Irving teen will attend astronomy night Monday. But it also got him a three-day suspension, which he says the district insisted he serve even after it was clear it was just a clock.

THIS just in

Discipline starts with the individual When transferable identity reaches the level of media coverage where it eclipses vital issues of government gone awry, it’s time to pull on the galoshes. There’s a sea of manure to slog through and one misguided person after another is being sucked into the mire only to find that it gets deeper and more noisome the further he ventures. (Yes, here will be invoked the proper grammatical use of the male gender term to indicate all persons. Political correctness be hanged.) Behind the problem of individuals believing their identity is other than what they see...

SAN FRANCISCO – Last week we were stunned to learn that chaos has been the norm in the St. Paul, Minnesota school district, due to a student disciplinary policy that replaces suspensions with time-outs, counseling and other less punitive measures. We also learned that the controversial policy was influenced by the Pacific Educational Group (PEG), a radical San Francisco-based consulting firm that claims black students lag behind academically, and tend to have more disciplinary problems, because American K-12 education is designed to benefit white students – aka “white privilege.” Now it’s becoming obvious that several other large school districts around...