Free Republic

NEW YORKA New York City public elementary school has adopted an all-vegetarian menu, serving kids tofu wraps and veggie chili. Public School 244 is the first public school in the city to go all-veggie. The animal-welfare group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says it might be the first all-veggie public elementary school in the nation. Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott says he's proud of the "trailblazing" school. He ate the new food with children on Tuesday.

Four Pittsburgh firefighters are suing seven companies that manufacture fire trucks or sirens, claiming they've lost hearing due to the blaring sirens. (snip) They're claiming that Mack Trucks Inc., Seagrave Fire Apparatus LLC and five other firms "knew or should have known the products ... were inherently dangerous, defective and hazardous to human hearing." The men claim they've suffered irreversible hearing loss "due to exposure to the intense noise." The firefighters are seeking unspecified monetary damages

Private religious schools perform better than public schools, and public charter schools performed no better than regular public schools, according to a new study by William Jeynes, professor of education at California State University at Long Beach and senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute at Princeton. Jeynes spoke Monday with The Christian Post about the study. He found that religious, mostly Christian, school students were a full year ahead of students who attend public and charter schools. The results of his research were recently published in vol. 87, issue 3 of the Peabody Journal of Education in an article titled,...

EditorÂ’s Note: Graphic descriptions follow (You were warned). WhatÂ’s that you say about sequestration and consequences of it? Apparently Barack Obama talks about sequestration pains, while he and his family is indulging in vacations at our expense, but thereÂ’s more. In light of the current cases concerning sodomites at the Federal lever seeking to undermine and redefine marriage, the Obama administration is spending $350 million to indoctrinate children sexually. While the White House says sequestration has eliminated funds for children touring the White House, President Obama has no problem spending $350 million federal tax dollars for sexual indoctrination programs starting...

As a 15 year old, I never imagined my activism in politics would translate into controversy for me at school. My name is Benji Backer and I attend a public high school in Appleton, Wisconsin. I have always supported the public school system and plan to do so for the rest of my life. Many Americans who stand up for the public school system and the unions believe there is no attempt to sway opinion or that students with opposing beliefs are singled out. Unfortunately, experiences I have had with harassment and bullying prove that wrong. This is a timeline...

Working for the public good has also worked well for one California county administrator’s bank account. According to reports by several newspapers, Alameda County, in the San Francisco Bay Area, is paying its County Administrator Susan Muranishi, north of $400,000—for life. This includes a generous base salary of $301,000, plus taxpayer-funded deferred pension plans paid for by the county. The pension accounts are set by a formula that multiplies years of service by 2 to 3 percent of the top salary to calculate the benefit, the San Jose Mercury News reports. With 38 years of service under her belt, the...

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A Las Vegas high school teacher who recently won his job back in arbitration after he was fired several years ago has been suspended. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports 54-year-old John Mannion was sent home from Bonanza High School on Friday after officials learned he faces felony drug trafficking charges. He was arrested last July on suspicion of selling the prescription painkiller Oxycontin to an undercover detective.

The now 20-year-old told state lawmakers her story on Thursday, Feb. 28, urging them to support a bill that would strengthen Minnesota's anti-bullying law. The law, at just 37 words, is one of the shortest anti-bullying laws in the nation and only requires school districts to enact their own local bullying prevention policies. The bill's backers include educators, pediatricians, gay rights activists and advocates for the disabled. "I think it would send a message to students and help them feel like they're important and cared about," Schuette said. "And it gives teachers and parents the tools and resources to effectively...

Opponents of an insurance surcharge to fund police and fire pensions told state lawmakers Tuesday, March 5, that the proposal is particularly unfair to low-income Minnesotans and follows huge increases in homeowners insurance. The bill, authored by Rep. Joe Atkins, DFL-Inver Grove Heights, calls for a $5 surcharge on each homeowners and auto insurance policy as a way to provide additional revenue to pension funds for police officers and full-time and volunteer firefighters. Lawmakers on the Legislative Commission on Pensions and Retirement heard arguments for and against the bill during a hearing at the Capitol but delayed a vote until...

Don't just get your Kids out of Public Schools. Get the public schools out of Your State. The very Concept of public schools is Obsolete... (video)

On Tuesday, Feb. 26, Brian Camenker of MassResistance addressed the meeting of the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, including Education Commissioner Mitchell D. Chester. They wrote and approved this. As you can see in the video below, we did not mince words about their hideous directive.

One boy, accused of cutting a fellow student with an X-Acto knife, faces a felony assault charge. Another was charged with assault after kicking a schoolmate in the groin. Both incidents took place at St. Paul's Ramsey Junior High this school year. In both cases, parents alerted police. The school did not. Educators have long grappled with the messy task of deciding when student misbehavior calls for school discipline -- or for police action. In recent years, districts in Minnesota and beyond have retooled their approach. Schools have become increasingly loath to refer students to the juvenile justice system, which...

Iran has recently implemented public amputations as punishment for criminals, in accordance with a court ruling aimed at reducing the country’s theft rate, The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) revealed. The semi-official Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reported on one such public amputation, which took place on January 24 in the city of Shiraz, and displayed images of the apparatus used to carry out the amputation, according to MEMRI. According the report, a 29-year-old man, who was charged with robbery, selling stolen goods, and engaging in illicit sexual relations, had his hand publicly amputated. He was also sentenced to...

Beck speaks about public demonstrations of military strength... in America

A public university plans to offer a course this spring on “sibling incest in theory and literature,” Campus Reform learned on Tuesday. According to the University of Missouri’s official description, the class will “examine the deployment of erotic desire, love, and sympathy as political, economic, and textual strategies, and analyze the gender dynamics involved in such deployment.”

Do we need more arms in public schools - or perhaps LESS public schools? (video)

Last Thursday, the Minnesota Department of Education held public hearings to approve its new social studies education curriculum that leaves out "patriotism" as a civic virtue and teaches that America's rise as a global power from its agrarian roots led to "institutionalized racism." History Standard 20 for the period 1870–1920, in the new social studies/history standards, says: “The student will understand that as the United States shifted from its agrarian roots into an industrial and global power, the rise of big business, urbanization, and immigration led to institutionalized racism, ethnic and class conflict, and new efforts at reform.” John Fonte,...

My Cato Institute colleague, Chris Edwards, put together a remarkable (and depressing) chart showing that federal bureaucrats get almost twice the level of compensation as workers in the productive sector of the economy. Defenders of the bureaucracy (including a federal pay panel dominated by bureaucrats) claim that government employees actually are underpaid because…well…just because.My modest contribution to the debate was to put together a chart based on the Labor Department’s JOLTS data, which shows that bureaucrats are far less likely to voluntarily leave their jobs than folks in the private sector, which is very strong evidence that they are being...

Over the years, I’ve shared some outrageous examples of overpaid bureaucrats. The chief bureaucrat of a low-income California city getting almost $800,000 per year.Cops in Oakland getting average compensation of $188,000.A school superintendent in New York raking in more than $500 thousand of annual compensation.A Philadelphia bureaucrat, after working only 2-1/2 years, nailing down a guaranteed pension of $50,000 per year.A New York school bureaucrat simultaneously getting a $225,000 salary and $300,000 pension.California taxpayers being forced to pay a fired bureaucrat $550,000 for unused vacation time.An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000. Hopefully...

Just when you thought yesterday’s dismal jobs numbers couldn’t get any worse -- they did. According to CNSNews.com, nearly seventy-five percent of all civilian jobs created since the beginning of last summer are in the public sector: Seventy-three percent of the new civilian jobs created in the United States over the last five months are in government, according to official data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In June, a total of 142,415,000 people were employed in the U.S, according to the BLS, including 19,938,000 who were employed by federal, state and local governments. By November, according to data...