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INDIANAPOLIS -- A teacher and basketball coach at Pike High School has been arrested on a charge of child seduction. Sara L. Strahm, 28, was arrested on Friday in connection with an incident involving a 17-year-old girl, said Sgt. Paul Thompson. Police did not elaborate on what prompted the arrest, 6News' Sarah Cornell reported. Strahm, a special education teacher at the school, is also the varsity girls basketball coach.

Demand for the removal of homosexual advocate Kevin Jennings from his position as chief of the Department of Education's Office of Safe Schools is growing, with the Washington Post saying the appointment was wrong and thousands joining a petition. WND reported efforts by the organization Jennings founded, the Gay, Lesbian Straight Education Network, to indoctrinate young children into the homosexual lifestyle when a conference later dubbed "Fistgate" was held in Massachusetts in 2000. At GrassrootsNation.com, several thousand people have signed a new petition addressed to Obama, demanding Jennings' dismissal. "As a citizen of the United States of America I respectfully...

The biggest gift came from Swift herself. The singer has donated $250,000 to schools around the country that she's either attended or worked with. The money will pay teachers' salaries as well as buy books and fund various educational programs. "Something I wanted to do at the end of this amazing year and especially on my birthday was give back to something I really believe in, which is education," says Swift. "The schools that I went to and the amazing people I got to learn from really turned me into who I am, and I wanted to give back."

Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle has just signed a bill into law that forces schools to teach the glories of organized labor and collective bargaining. Doyle has received significant campaign contributions from labor unions over the years prior to forcing their special interest agenda into the classroom. Ever since unions have been involved in teaching, our system has spiraled into laughable mediocrity. It is what happens when you abandon actual education to turn children into racially-sensitive little environmentalists. Teachers' unions even tried to have the fact that 9/11 was committed by Muslim extremists scrubbed from the history books. Their effect on...

The Islamic Circle of North America has been named in "a list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends" by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is bent on waging "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions." They say they want to encourage dialogue via these billboards. Great. I'll start. The billboard says that Islam is "the way of life of Adam, Noah, Abraham,...

One eight-year-old in Taunton just learned a valuable lesson in political correctness, and a school district may wind up learning a little something about free speech, religious expression, and not asking questions to which one does not want to hear the answers. An elementary school student was asked to draw something that reminded him of Christmas. When he drew a picture of Jesus on a crucifix, the teacher and the administration recoiled in horror at the “violent image.” No, really: An eight year old elementary school student in Taunton was sent home from school and required to undergo a psychological...

An 8-year-old boy has been suspended from school and forced to undergo a psychological evaluation after he drew a picture of Jesus Christ on the cross. A teacher at Lowell Maxham Elementary School in Taunton, Mass., said the second-grade student created a violent drawing, the Taunton Daily Gazette reported. The boy's picture portrayed a crucified Jesus with Xs over his eyes to indicate that he had died on the cross. The child's father, outraged at the school's action, asked to remain anonymous to protect his son. He said his boy drew the picture after returning from a family trip to...

A battle over religion is brewing in central Indiana after a public school wanted second graders to sing a song declaring, “Allah is God.” The phrase was removed just before the performance after a national conservative group launched a protest. The principal of Lantern Road Elementary School in Fishers, IN, said they were trying to teach inclusiveness through their holiday production. It included references to Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Las Posadas and Kwanzaa. However, no other deity, other than Allah, was referenced in the show. “It went off…without a hitch,” Danielle Thompson told the Indianapolis Star. “Several families thought it was...

Impassioned parents demanded jail time for educators and district officials Saturday following the release of test scores that showed fourth- and eighth-graders had the worst math scores in the nation. City students took the National Assessment of Educational Progress test this year, and 69 percent of fourth-graders scored below the basic level in math and 77 percent of eighth-graders scored below basic. The Detroit scores on the progress test were the lowest in its 40-year history. The sample of students included 900 of Detroit's 6,000 fourth-graders and 1,000 of the district's 6,000 eighth-graders. Sharlonda Buckman, CEO of the Detroit Parent...

Every December, public school students, parents, teachers and administrators face the difficult task of acknowledging the various religious and secular holiday traditions celebrated during that time of year. This pamphlet is designed to inform members of the public school community about the current state of the law regarding constitutionally permissible religious holiday observance in the public schools. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion to all Americans — including young schoolchildren — by prohibiting the government from endorsing or promoting any particular religious point of view. This prohibition has led courts to ban such plainly coercive religious activities in public...

The Republican Party, the Party of Reagan has been nearly smothered and suffocated by the RINO-virus which has spread more rapidly than any swine flu pandemic, the GOP has been infected from the top down, and IF it is to avoid the fate of the Bull Moose Party, the principles of Reagan conservatism must be re-established, the fair weather collaborators and Quislings (that means YOU Juan McCain and your butt buddy Lindsey 'Goober' Graham!) MUST be driven out and banished and if they join up with the traitorous 'Rats, so be it. Force them to show their true colors. The...

Her choppy blue-and-blond hair hiding the fear in her eyes, a 15-year-old voiced her dislike for a hip-hop music group and got punched in the face by a classmate. The whole thing was caught on tape, and social media helped police in their investigation. A crowd of six to 10 classmates were following the self-described emo girl and her boyfriend home from school in Newark, Ohio, on an autumn day in September. Some kids were taping it and others were egging on the assailant, who was on the school wrestling team. It all started because Alexis Xanders doesn't like Insane...

Is Rep. Michele Bachmann a “lovable little fuzzball”? Those of us who know her on a more personal basis know that’s a pretty good description of Michele personally, but politically,she’s about as tough as they get. Breitbart TV’s B-cast interviews Bachmann, who brings listeners up to date on Barney Frank’s financial-reform legislation, which dropped on the House last week. It’s 1300 pages long, and the vote will be taken — today. It reorders the entire financial-services industry and vastly increases government control over it. Oh, and ACORN, too. Frank bypassed the committee process, according to Bachmann, and she doesn’t see...

WASHINGTON - The House passed the most ambitious restructuring of federal financial regulations since the New Deal on Friday, aiming to head off any replay of last year's Wall Street failures that plunged the nation deep into recession. The sprawling legislation would give the government new powers to break up companies that threaten the economy, create a new agency to oversee consumer banking transactions and shine a light into shadow financial markets that have escaped the oversight of regulators. The vote was a party-line 223-202. No Republicans voted for the bill; 27 Democrats voted against it. While a victory for...

Texas and Alaska are the only states not participating in the common standards effort. Scott said Texas is already ahead of the other states in developing tough standards. The U.S. Education Department appears to be "placing its desire for a federal takeover of public education above the interests of the 4.7 million schoolchildren in the state of Texas by setting two different starting lines — one for nearly every other state in the country and one for Texas," Scott wrote last week in a letter to the state's congressional delegation. "Because Texas has chosen to preserve its sovereign authority to...

ALAMEDA, Calif. – The school board blinked. Under the duress of a lawsuit and threats of recall, the Alameda Board of Education has voted to phase out an elementary school curriculum it adopted in May to prevent anti-gay bullying. The so-called Lesson 9, which had become an opposition centerpiece in a national anti-gay marriage campaign, will be replaced by a more generic anti-bullying message. But the board's action Tuesday night did little to ease the tension between gay parents, who want their children protected, and parents who who think elementary school is too early to talk to students about gay...

Sean Hannity & Michelle Malkin Break Media Silence on Fistgate & Obama’s Dangerous Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings (Video) Wednesday, December 9, 2009, 8:58 PM Jim Hoft Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin broke the media silence on Fistgate, GLSEN and Obama’s deranged Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings. Hannity says he won’t stop talking about Kevin Jennings until he is fired.

Kevin Jennings, Safe Schools Czar, Homosexuality, and the Obama administration Kevin Jennings, the appointed "Safe School" Czar by the Obama administration, has a depraved, sick, and perverted sense of safety in American schools. The organization he directed for many years, the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network was designed to attract otherwise "straight" children and recruit them into the Gay Lesbian lifestyle. Jennings became the "Safe School" Czar after holding the position of Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual fund-raising co-chair in the Obama campaign. In a 1990 "report" for the Massachusetts Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, Jennings is the individual who proposed taking...

Kevin Jennings has been appointed as director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools under Obama. Here's a bit of his bio: In 1997, according to a transcript put together by Brian J. Burt, managing editor of the student-run Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Jennings said he hoped that promoting homosexuality in schools would be considered fine in the future. The group Jennings founded has also been accused of promoting homosexuality in schools. At a GLSEN conference in 2000, co-sponsored with the Massachusetts Department of Education, the group landed in hot water when it was revealed...

WARNING: This editorial includes discussion of topics that are sexually graphic. . . . . The Obama administration is stonewalling serious inquiries about sexual filth propagated by a senior presidential appointee who is responsible for promoting and implementing federal education policy. Democrats clearly are terrified of ruffling the feathers of their activist homosexual supporters, who are an influential part of the Democratic party's base. This scandal, however, is not merely about homosexual behavior; it is about promoting sex between children and adults - and it's time for President Obama to make clear that abetting such illegal perversion has no place...

We had frigid weather and several inches of Goreflakes on the ground here in Colorado Springs, but Sarah Palin lit up the town for a Borders signing earlier this evening that drew yet another massive crowd on her nationwide “Going Rogue” book tour. My family and I had the great honor and pleasure of meeting the governor, her husband Todd, adorable baby Trig, her lovely parents, relatives, and friends from near and far. Sarah’s energy is boundless and her ability to connect is unparalleled with any public figure I’ve met in covering politics over the last 17 years. I spoke,...

With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue. "Climate-gate," as the e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicized scientific circle -- the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't...

This veteran teacher says that if parents believe that keeping their children out of sex-ed classes will prevent the children from hearing and believing the agenda that permeates our schools, they are wrong. It might make the parent feel good and give a false sense of security that all is okay under his roof. But what about GLSEN's "Integrated Curriculum Plan?" How does a parent remove his child from math, science, English, social studies, and foreign languages when teachers have been taught to plant little contaminated seeds into the fertilized ground of the usual daily lessons? This teacher's name will...

For Ashley Valentín, giving up meat was easy. The hard part: finding something to eat in the school cafeteria. ``At first, there weren't that many options,'' said Ashley, 17, a senior at Miami Sunset High. ``There was always pizza. But eating pizza all the time is unhealthy.'' School cafeterias are taking note. While the Miami-Dade school district has long offered vegetarian items, it debuted three new vegan options this year: faux chicken nuggets, veggie burgers and hummus platters. The Broward school district also added veggie burgers to menus districtwide. And cafeterias are now offering vegetarian and vegan salads daily --...

Sex Ed Overwhelms Abstinence Malcolm A. Kline, December 7, 2009 Opponents of abstinence education who say it doesn’t work speak with some authority: They’ve been doing their level best to defeat it. “According to a report from HHS, federal abstinence education programs received $1 for every $4 spent on contraceptive-focused sex ed,” Kate Knable writes in the December issue of Organization Trends, a newsletter published by the Capital Research Center. HHS is the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency that oversees much, but not all, of the national government assistance to public school programs that...

Here's a lesson plan similar to what "Safe Schools czar" Kevin Jennings might have used when he taught American history at Concord Academy. One of his GLSEN disciples, a teacher at the Harvard, Mass. high school, described her lesson plan in great detail at the 2001 GLSEN-Boston conference......

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online)- The following letter was written by the mother of three children to the President of the United States: An open letter to Mr. Obama I will not address you as Mr. President. I question whether you are fit to lead anyone. What I have learned today is the very last straw. I cannot even give you the benefit of the doubt any longer. Frankly, I feel foolish for ever being inclined to do so. We have endured a great deal from you in one short year, and it is simply too much to bear any longer....

A judge has attacked parents, suggesting they are bigots for seeking to opt-out their elementary-age children from a mandatory controversial pro-homosexual curriculum, according to a non-profit law firm.

Scott Baker from Breitbart-TV.com and Co-Host of ‘The B-Cast‘ submitted this shocking report today on Obama’s deviant Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings. —-Warning on Content—– I was recently approached by a team of independent researchers that I have known for some time and have come to trust. They prepared this report involving ‘Safe Schools Czar’ Kevin Jennings and the organization he founded, GLSEN, and asked that I find a way to help draw attention to what they uncovered. Knowing that Gateway Pundit has followed Kevin Jennings since his appointment, as we have on The B-Cast (here, here, and here), and...

Zhihua Tian traveled thousands of miles from his native China earlier this year to profit from the treasures of the American education system. Unfortunately, he landed at South Philadelphia High School, where the number of violent incidents often overshadow student achievements. Tian, 19, of South Philly, and five other students who are recent immigrants are staying home today because they were among 26 Asian students who were attacked by a gang of other students throughout the day yesterday, said Xu Lin, of the Chinatown Development Corporation, who works with victimized students.

Should the media turn at least one glazed eye toward the checkered trail of Obama's highly suspicious connection to multiple social security numbers? I dunno, maybe ask a question or two?

As Thanksgiving festivities wind down we contemplate all we have to be thankful for as free Americans! We head into the Christmas season wishing for leadership in Washington that reflects our commitment to the values and ideals that have built the freest and most prosperous and generous nation on earth. Heading into December and Tuesday’s announcement of our nation’s strategy in Afghanistan, I ask the President to reassure us that the administration is in this War on Terror to win. And I’ll pass along the following from Harold B. Estes, a 95-year-old member of the Greatest Generation: “I realize you...

We have a few more weeks, folks, to gather our thoughts and political weapons, and then 2010 is upon us. It will be a mad dash to the finish line, and we have a lot of priorities: Kill healthcare, kill Cap & Trade, pursue terrorists wherever they hide, win primaries, and stand atop Capitol Hill with the Conservative Flag in November. Horowitz is an old warrior. He's a good place to start.

Concord-Carlisle High School is promoting a take-down of family values on Thanksgiving Day – engineered by Mr. Peter Atlas, an old friend of Kevin Jennings (Obama’s “Safe Schools czar” and founder of GLSEN). A few years back, we reported on Concord-Carlisle High School’s disgraceful hosting of the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus on Palm Sunday. Now they’re at it again. Under the direction of perennial gay-activist CCHS math teacher Peter Atlas, CCHS students are performing “Falsettos” in December -- a musical pushing polyamory, bisexuality and homosexuality.

Spitting and drooling on MSNBC's Hardball, Chris Matthews said, "President Obama has his chin out on just about every hot issue out there.... He’s exposed and vulnerable. His poll numbers are dropping. Is he just too darned intellectual? Too much the egg head?" Tingles notwithstanding, where do you suppose Matthews got that notion? It can't be because of Obama's lofty scholastic achievements. Not only has he adamantly refused to release his transcripts, he's spent upwards of $2 million, employing every legal trick in the book to hide them. It can't be because of Obama's scholarly papers. In the 13 years...

Do you believe in the American dream -- the idea that in this country, hardworking people of every race, color and creed can get ahead on their own merits? If so, that belief may soon bar you from getting a license to teach in Minnesota public schools -- at least if you plan to get your teaching degree at the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities campus.

In Henrico County schools last year, African-American students made up 36 percent of the enrollment and 7 percent of the children who received gifted education. Chesterfield and Hanover counties saw similar patterns the last school year. Area school officials who provided the numbers acknowledge the disparities and say they've dug in with task forces, targeted programs and studies. But last week, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine put the issue in the spotlight with an order to analyze disproportionately low representation of minority students in gifted education.

The Empire Strikes Back Malcolm A. Kline, November 24, 2009 Bill and Melinda Gates, in their education reform efforts, have drawn the ire of NEA types, RiShawn Biddle at the Capital Research Center points out. “From the bastions of traditional public education—the National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the university-level schools of education that dominate teacher training, and the public school superintendents—the alarm has sounded: the Gates Foundation engages in ‘misinformation campaigns,’ and wants to ‘effectively cripple public control’ of schools,” Biddle writes. “Two years ago the National Commission on Skills in the Workplace, a Gates...

At least three youngsters in Calabasas have fallen victim to violence by fellow middle-school students after a Facebook group urged people to beat up redheads, authorities said Monday. The first reported incident occurred Friday morning when a 12-year-old redheaded boy was kicked and hit by a dozen of his classmates at A.E. Wright Middle School, Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators said. Detectives took reports of two more assaults, targeting a 7th-grader and an 8th-grader that day at the middle school, said Lt. Scott Chew. Investigators are trying to determine whether there was a fourth attack, officials said. The students who...

The 12-year-old boy saw Rebecca O'Malley-Tietz standing in her bathroom with her hand behind her back. According to a criminal complaint filed Thursday, his former teacher's aide asked him if he had told anyone about their sexual relationship. He told her he hadn't. She took a gun from behind her back, put the muzzle under his chin and threatened to hurt him and his family if he did, the complaint states. Pierce County prosecutors charged O'Malley-Tietz, 34, of River Falls, Wis., with first-degree child sexual assault. The boy told investigators they had sexual contact as many as 40 times.

I posted on Nov. 11 at www.lvrj.com/blogs/vin/ a response to a letter-writing government schoolmarm who contends she should not be held responsible for the failure of her young charges to learn anything, since it's all their parents' fault. I answered, in part: "Teachers from 1620 through 1950 didn't go home with their kids to tuck them in, either. Yet Americans with eighth grade educations through all those centuries could read, write, spell and do basic arithmetic well enough to run circles around your pathetic charges ... even if today's pathetic inmates sit through a full 12 years of your progressively...

LEWISTON — A national Muslim civil rights organization has filed a formal request with the Lewiston School Department to allow a middle school student to pray on school property. The group also wants Lewiston to modify existing policy and provide "constitutionally protected religious accommodation," such as a designated prayer room. The group has also requested the school department institute diversity training for school staff, and to ensure the middle-schooler won't face retaliation because of her request to pray at the Lewiston Middle School. According to the Washington, D.C.,-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, seventh-grader Nasra Aden had been routinely "praying discreetly...

Three years ago, the Washington state association that regulates fair play in high school athletics faced an unusual query from administrators: what should they do about four boys who wanted to participate on girls' teams. One had his eye on volleyball, two wanted to be cheerleaders and a fourth did not specify his area of interest. After consultation, it developed a novel policy that says all students should be able to participate in sports "in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on a student's records." Upon a student's request, the idea is...

A 12-year-old girl is prohibited from bringing aspirin to California public schools without a note from her mother or father – but in many California districts she may sign herself out of classes, leave her junior-high campus without parental permission, secretly have an abortion and return to school before the end of the day – and her own family may be none the wiser. Parents and educators across the state have been in heated debate over school policies allowing children to be excused during class time without parental notification for "confidential medical services" such as abortions, birth control, and drug...

Enfield (WTNH) - The ACLU of Connecticut is warning the Enfield school board to stop holding graduation ceremonies at a Bloomfield megachurch, claiming the graduates and their families are unconstitutionally being subjected to religious messages.

AIP News exclusive commentary by:  Tom Kovach Yesterday, the Canada Free Press reported that the National Education Association had listed as "recommended reading" the pro-Communist book Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky.  The CFP report did not mention that it was the number-one choice on the NEA's list.To prevent the NEA from later altering its Web pages and backing away from this stance under public scrutiny, I have copied the relevant Web pages and converted them to PDF documents.  First, here is the NEA's "recommended reading" list for its members.  (NOTE:  the page's appearance was slightly altered in the PDF conversion...

The NEA’s (National Education Association’s, a.k.a. Nefarious Elitist A****’) recommended reading list includes two books by Brother O mentor and communist community organizer Saul Alinsky that advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. The Democrat-controlled teachers’ union praises Alinsky’s Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals as “an inspiration to anyone contemplating action in their community! And to every organizer!” The following book quotations are from the NEA website: “The Radical does not sit frozen by cold objectivity. He sees injustice and strikes at it with hot passion. He is a man of decision and action. “Society has good...

The dairy industry rolled out an expensive media campaign this week in praise of chocolate milk, a classic school lunch beverage whose sugar content is under assault in some districts. But as trade groups spend upward of $1 million to defend the drink, three area fifth-graders already have come to its rescue. A year after Barrington Community Unit School District 220 banned flavored milk from its lunch menus, the students persuaded administrators to give it another chance. Now the sweetened drinks are served on Fridays as the district tries to decide whether the benefits of calcium and vitamin D are...

Visits by two men, claiming to be Homeland Security employees, have Middletown officials raising a lot of questions. Police say one man, who was armed and wearing a Homeland Security badge, entered Mayfield Elementary School yesterday morning, before the start of class. Officials say he and another man, also wearing a similar badge, had been to an apartment complex earlier looking for a suspect. At the school, the man claiming to be an agent, asked the principal whether a particular street was within the school's attendance area.

We know absolutely no one in Bush family circles and have never met former President George W. Bush or his wife Laura. If you have been reading us for any length of time, you know that we used to make fun of “Dubya” nearly every day…parroting the same comedic bits we heard in our Democrat circles, where Bush is still, to this day, lampooned as a chimp, a bumbling idiot, and a poor, clumsy public speaker. Oh, how we RAILED against Bush in 2000…and how we RAILED against the surge in support Bush received post-9/11 when he went to Ground...