Free Republic

Hundreds of parents across the country have called on President Donald Trump to embrace Obama-era protections for transgender students that allow them use to school bathrooms in accord with their gender identity. In a letter sent to the president by the Human Rights Campaign late Tuesday, more than 780 parents stressed that “all students deserve equal access to a safe, welcoming school and a high quality education no matter who they are.” The call follows a decision by the Trump administration last week to abandon a defense of the guidelines that had been issued by the Obama administration. A court...

BANGOR, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) – More controversy is hitting the Bangor school system. On the same day two teachers resigned after video of school employees making inappropriate comments about students went viral, new video has surfaced of a Bangor High School teacher duct taping a student in class and there is now a criminal investigation underway. The school system confirmed that a teacher resigned Tuesday after admitting to duct taping a 16-year-old student in his desk. Police say the boy felt embarrassed and wants the teacher to be prosecuted. The video, taken by a student, shows the Bangor High School...

The Trump administration has dropped the federal government’s challenge to a nationwide injunction issued last year that blocked the fulfillment of Obama administration guidelines stating that transgender students’ access to bathrooms and other gender-segregated school facilities was protected under existing federal civil rights law. The injunction was issued in August by Judge Reed O’Connor of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Texas as part of a lawsuit filed by more than a dozen states over the Obama administration’s position that Title IX, the federal law that bans sex discrimination in schools, protects transgender students. Under that interpretation,...

With the aid of D.C. School and U.S. Education Department staff, Education Sec. Betsy DeVos eluded screaming protesters blocking the door of a D.C. public school where she was scheduled to meet with education advocates on Friday. […] After the meeting, DeVos issued a defiant statement, saying she won’t let protesters keep her from doing her job of improving the U.S. educational system: “I will not be deterred in executing the vital mission of the Department of Education. No school door in America will be blocked from those seeking to help our nation’s school children.” …

Roughly 381,000 kids were sent home this week from Chicago Public Schools with a partisan letter blasting President Trump and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. Chicago’s WGN reported Tuesday that officials with CPS angered parents by handing out letters that excoriate Republicans — and Republicans only — for budget problems. A letter distributed on Monday begins by saying that Mr. Trump and Gov. Rauner “attack those who need the most help” as a segue into the state’s financial woes. “CPS cannot run the school system that your children deserve with the funds we have,” the letter says. “Under the law, CPS...

A 12-year-old boy was in a coma over the weekend after being severely beaten by another student at a northwest suburban middle school Friday. Kenyon Woods Middle School Principal Lisa Olsem said the young boy was “assaulted by another student” just before noon. He suffered severe injuries and was taken to Presence St. Joseph Hospital in Elgin before being transferred to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. {SNIP} At the Elgin school district meeting Monday night, the student board member wore green, a symbol officials say is meant to represent hope. Others throughout the district wore the color in...

A 12-year-old boy in Missouri was attacked on a school bus by his peers for wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat—and was suspended from school as a result. A cellphone video of the incident shows Gavin Cortina of St. Louis being bullied physically and verbally by his peers for expressing his political beliefs on a hat Wednesday, the Daily Mail reports. “You want to build a wall?” one student yells in the clip. “You want to build a f—king wall?” Things escalated quickly after that, according to Gavin. “At one point, he just got so frustrated he pushed me,”...

Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp in Washington. This task is especially urgent in that large, malodorous part of the swamp known as Education. The Education Establishment makes everything murky and unproductive by an endless spew of jargon, incoherent theories, goofy methods, phony research, and new names for failed ideas. Finally, no two Americans can talk constructively about anything in education. It's as if they are talking across vast linguistic and cultural barriers, not over coffee at Starbucks. Education is now the fog-shrouded domain of dumbing down. Pervasive murkiness is a big part of the reason why so much...

A high school art teacher in Dallas posted an Instagram video of herself "shooting" an image of Donald Trump with a squirt gun and screaming "die" during Friday's inauguration. A copy of the video went viral on Twitter before the original source was identified.   The teacher has since deleted the video, but here's a copy:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp1A3VB6Fg8    

Public schools around California are bracing for a crisis driven by skyrocketing worker pension costs that are expected to force districts to divert billions of dollars from classrooms into retirement accounts, education officials said. The depth of the funding gap became clear to district leaders when they returned from the holiday break: What they contribute to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as CalPERS, will likely double within six years, according to state estimates. CalPERS, a public pension fund with $300 billion in assets that is the country’s largest, manages retirement benefits for 1.8 million current and former city,...

Beginning Monday, the Black Lives Matter movement could become a curriculum topic in classrooms across the city. A Philadelphia School District teachers' group has planned six days of action this week, encouraging educators to introduce optional curriculum and activities - from "The Revolution Is Always Now" coloring pages for very young students to a science lesson about the biology of skin color for older ones. "This is a critical issue of our time - in our society, but also in our students' lives," said Charlie McGeehan, an English and history teacher and member of the Caucus of Working Educators, an...

Chris WellerJanuary 23,2017 Jessica Epting, a homeschool mother of four, with her kids in their home in the Bronx, New York During Betsy DeVos' recent three-hour confirmation hearing to become President Donald Trump's education secretary, charter schools came up no fewer than 60 times. Homeschooling was mentioned once. Charter schools have become a significant part of the US public-education system and now educate 2.5 million kids. But homeschooling has quietly experienced a surge in recent years too. Brian Ray, a homeschooling researcher at the National Home Education Research Institute, estimates the number of kids taught at home is growing by...

The law was passed in 1919 under pressure from the Ku Klux KlanA nun in Nebraska who teaches in a secondary school has been told that she is not allowed to wear her habit in the classroom.  37-year-old, Sister Madeleine Miller, was shocked to learn that, under a little-known law nearly a century old, habits were banned.  The vaguely worded ban prohibits teachers from wearing any sort of religious clothing, from burqas to yarmulkes.  “I could have been arrested, jailed, fined or had my license taken away if I had tried to teach,” Miller said on Tuesday.Now, state lawmakers are...

Betsy DeVos, the billionaire conservative activist and nominee for secretary of education, will likely face one of the most contentious confirmation hearings in the history of the department on Tuesday. Since being tapped by President-elect Donald Trump, DeVos has been a lightning rod in the media and on Capitol Hill. Her supporters praise her outspoken commitment to school choice and her efforts to expand charter schools around the nation. On the other hand, critics believe that her agenda will undermine public education and drain resources from traditional public schools. DeVos will face rigorous questioning regarding her school choice advocacy, her...

Nash ran the school district's Twitter account. On Jan. 5, a student tweeted to the account, asking that schools be closed "tammarow." Nash responded from the district's account, "But then how would you learn how to spell 'tomorrow?'"

The problem of left-wing public school teachers and administrators bullying school children for thinking and acting like normal Americans seems to be a continuing one. Two years ago Wisconsin talk-radio host Vicki McKenna, in a story which quickly went national, outed Wisconsin school principal Melissa A. Horn for bullying an 11-year-old boy, threatening to expel him for bringing a “virtual gun” to his virtual (i.e., home) school. His offense? Displaying a tiny picture of a gun, with an American flag, on the computer which he used only at home — an image viewable by no other student. See blog posts...

The United Kingdom’s Department for Education will allow some primary schools to offer students a booklet on “medical transitioning” called “Can I Tell You About Gender Diversity?” LGBT activist CJ Atkinson’s latest book in a the “Can I Tell You About…?” series by Jessica Kingsley Publishers will be offered to students in late January, but the decision has already ignited protests from government officials and religious leaders. The material will be read by children as young as seven years old. . . . “Can I Tell You About Gender Diversity?” includes information on hormone blockers, gender dysphoria, and the use...

Well, what do you know? An official who doesn’t deserve her job in a public school actually won’t have it. Last week, Manhattan Judge Manuel Mendez tossed the reinstatement petition of Marcella Sills, a former principal who was fired for being chronically late to school. Why did the judge do that? Because Sills filed her petition . . . late.

We recently received a disappointing ruling in the case of Bill Diss, a Portland, Oregon public school teacher who was fired after he objected to facilitating a Planned Parenthood sex education program in his classroom. The judge granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment, which means the case cannot go before a jury. Life Legal is appealing the decision.Bill Diss became “enemy number one” with his local Planned Parenthood affiliate when he led opposition to a new PP mega-facility in downtown Portland.When Planned Parenthood employees wanted to come into Diss’ classroom to recruit students for their “Teen Outreach Program,” or...

WASHINGTON, November 8, 2013 — Bill Diss is an experienced, highly qualified and popular computer science teacher. On November 14, the Portland school district and Planned Parenthood will try to have him declared unfit to teach.