Free Republic

The school district in Little Rock, Ark. has announced plans for a dress code that will require teachers to wear underwear. Every single day. Female teachers will have to wear bras, too. An Aug. 29 letter from the Little Rock School District’s Office of the Superintendent to all employees explains that the dress code will officially go into effect in the fall of 2014. “Foundational garments shall be worn and not visible with respect to color, style, and/or fabric,” the letter reads. “No see-through or sheer clothing shall be allowed, and no skin shall be visible between pants/trousers, skirts, and...

Outgoing Ohio Education Association (OEA) President Patricia Frost-Brooks was paid a total of $998,949 from 2008-2012, the first five years of her six-year tenure. Thanks to union contracts that existed long before many current teachers were hired, the vast majority of OEA’s revenue comes from more than $450 per year in dues deducted automatically from tens of thousands of Ohio teachers’ paychecks. Based on OEA’s annual report to the U.S. Department of Labor, the union collected over $58 million in dues and “fair share” fees in 2012. While Frost-Brooks has benefited the most from OEA’s generous officer and executive salaries...

The Janczewski family is fighting the local school district in Rose, Michigan after it emerged that a male teacher molested their 8th grade son and then — unbelievably — six other teachers spoke out against the 15-30 year sentence the man received. “Neal has plead (sic) guilty for his one criminal offense but he is not a predator,” Harriet Coe reportedly wrote. “This was an isolated incident. He understands the severity of his action and is sincere in his desire to make amends…” John Janczewski, the father of the victim, spoke on the Glenn Beck radio program Monday about all...

This is a story that SCREAMS for attention. In Michigan a family has been, and continues to be, brutalized by a systemic rot within the school system. A rot that perpetrates, and unbelievably as it sounds, excuses CHILD RAPE – despite the community outrage. This just came onto our radar screen. However, a cursory review shows this storyline has a similar disposition to the Penn State, Sandusky scandal. The Janczewski’s son was brutally raped over a period exceeding three years (2006-2009) by his middle school math teacher, Neal Erickson. Years later, in 2012, an anonymous tipster alerted authorities to video...

L.A. Unified and seven other California school districts on Tuesday won relief from some strict and costly provisions of federal education law. Besides Los Angeles, the school districts are Long Beach, Santa Ana, Fresno, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and Sanger.

The Wisconsin school teachers protests and attempts to recall Gov. Walker resulted in not only losing the battle but instead helped to further new laws across the US that allow teachers to drop union membership. Now the National Education Association (NEA) and other teacher unions are seeing a decline of those willing fill the coffers of these organization.

It was the kind of meeting that conspiratorial conservative bloggers dream about. A month after President Barack Obama won reelection, top brass from three dozen of the most powerful groups in liberal politics met at the headquarters of the National Education Association (NEA), a few blocks north of the White House. Brought together by the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Communication Workers of America (CWA), and the NAACP, the meeting was invite-only and off-the-record. Despite all the Democratic wins in November, a sense of outrage filled the room as labor officials, environmentalists, civil rights activists, immigration reformers, and a panoply of other...

Move over Trayvon Martin. Big Labor has a new favorite group of victims of social injustice - the teaching staff of Lewis County, West Virginia. Citizens have been complaining to school board members about the “way teachers dress,” according to school board president Paul Derico. As a result, the school board unanimously passed a dress code for teachers, banning blue jeans, faded jeans and shorts. Of course the teachers union is not taking this grave injustice lying down. Union officials have threatened to sue the board. "We're disappointed in the actions of the board. We don't believe it's in the...

Chicago Public Schools officials announced late Thursday that 2,113 teachers and other employees would be laid off Friday, largely due to a giant pension obligation increase that’s straining the system. “In fiscal year ‘14 we’re facing a historic deficit of $1 billion that is driven primarily by a $400 million increase in our annual teacher pension payments,” said CPS spokesman Becky Carroll. “Absent pension reform in Springfield, we have very few options available to us to close that gap, and that has resulted in bringing this crisis to the doorsteps of our schools.” Of those being laid off, 1,077 are...

<p>EFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Missouri schools will be encouraged to teach first-graders a gun safety course sponsored by the National Rifle Association as a result of legislation signed Friday by Gov. Jay Nixon.</p> <p>The new law stops short of requiring schools to teach the Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program. But by putting it in state law, Missouri is providing one of the stronger state-sanctioned endorsements of the NRA-sponsored firearms safety course, which the group says is taught to about 1 million children annually.</p>

NEW YORK (MainStreet)—Secretary of Education Arne Duncan defended his Common Core standards during an address at the annual convention of the American Society of News Editors at the end of June. He admonished his critics. Secretary Duncan noted ...

Speaking to all 3,000 of the assembled "progressive activists" at this year's Netroots Nation conference, National Education Association vice president Lily Eskelsen Garcia boldly declared a "prophecy" about the eternal destiny of NRA and Second Amendment supporters, and of politicians and lobbyists working to promote gun rights: "I'm not an ordained minister; I'm not a theologian, but these guys are going to hell." Wow. Going to hell for supporting the Second Amendment? That type of radical thinking might explain the very high incidence of ridiculous cases involving over-zealous school officials misinterpreting and wrongly enforcing "zero-tolerance" rules--and doing so without exercising...

Educators boogie to 'When it's over you ain't gon need ya vibrator' (WARNING: This story includes a video and rap song lyrics of a sexually explicit nature and may offend some readers.) At its 2013 national convention in Atlanta last week, the National Education Association encouraged teachers to dance to a sexually explicit rap song that featured the “N”-word and declared, “When it’s over you ain’t gon need ya vibrator.” The NEA, a nationwide labor union that represents public school teachers, played the song titled, “Wobble,” by V.I.C. at its “Raise Your Hand” conference – which was publicized as an...

As if more evidence were needed about the tragedy of black education, Rachel Jeantel, a witness for the prosecution in the George Zimmerman murder trial, put a face on it for the nation to see. Some of that evidence unfolded when Zimmerman’s defense attorney asked 19-year-old Jeantel to read a letter she allegedly had written to Trayvon Martin’s mother. She responded that she doesn’t read cursive, and that’s in addition to her poor grammar, syntax and communication skills. Jeantel is a senior at Miami Norland Senior High School. How in the world did she manage to become a 12th-grader without...

A group of California teachers is preparing for a Supreme Court battle to overturn forced union dues in a groundbreaking lawsuit filed in June. For nearly three decades, the Supreme Court has allowed closed-shop unionism, in which public employees must pay dues to labor groups handling collective bargaining negotiations. The Supreme Court established Beck Rights in 1988 allowing workers to opt out of union dues for political activities, while continuing to pay for union negotiating expenses. The teachers are hoping to take that battle one step further by putting an end to all coercive union dues.

School’s out for summer, which leaves ample time during the day for students to relax—and for their teachers to recharge and reflect. It’s also an ideal time for them to decide whether union membership is right for them. Unfortunately, it’s also the only time for many of them to decide—the nation’s teachers’ unions, as well as many unions generally, have done a remarkable job of restricting their members’ knowledge of and ability to exercise their rights regarding union membership. For years, educators have joined teachers’ unions with the assumption that their money advances their profession. Unfortunately, the National Education Association...

Gary Abud is a commodity experts say is in great demand around the country. He's recognized as a highly effective science teacher and was named the 2013-14 Teacher of the Year in Michigan. However, the Grosse Pointe North High School Science teacher ranked 477th out of 595 teachers for salary in his own school district, according to data acquired in a Freedom of Information Act request. Abud made $56,876 in 2012-13, which is about $21,000 less a year than the district's average salary of $77,969 a year. The average teacher salary in Michigan in 2012 was $62,631, according to the...

The West Virginia eight-grader arrested and suspended over his National Rifle Association T-shirt with an image of a firearm is now facing a $500 fine and a year in jail. A judge is allowing prosecutors to move forward with charging Jared Marcum, 14, with obstructing an officer, WOWK-TV reported.

Children who don’t get a pre-kindergarten education, ideally from birth to age 5, might fall behind and “may as well drop out” by third grade, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said on Wednesday at an event to garner support for President Barack Obama's $75-billion proposal to increase pre-school enrollment across the country.

An elementary school in Hayward, Calif. will sponsor a toy gun trade-in, encouraging kids to swap their harmless toy weapons for a chance to win a new bicycle. The purpose of the trade-in is to stop children from playing with toy guns, which may make them more likely to commit violence with real guns, said Strobridge Elementary principal Chris Hill. “Playing with toys guns, saying ‘I’m going to shoot you,’ desensitizes them, so as they get older, it’s easier for them to use a real gun,” Hill said in a statement to Mercury News. The trade-in will take place on...