Free Republic

Western Heights Public School District in Oklahoma has reportedly hired a drag queen known as Carmen Deveraux, who works at Oklahoma City night club The Boom, as a kindergarten classroom assistant. The school previously defended its August decision to hire Dr. Shane Brent Murnan as an elementary school principal at John Glenn Elementary. Murnan is a drag queen who performs under the name Shantel Mandalay and has an arrest record for child pornography, the Substack newsletter V1sut first reported. In 2001, while working as a fifth-grade teacher at Will Rogers Elementary School in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Murnan was arrested two weeks...

A brilliant strategy, rooted in both common sense and law, has resulted in a victory for both decency and parental rights. Moms for Liberty, a conservative group dedicated to defending parents and students against government overreach, capitalized on a new Florida statute and compelled a school board to bypass its own procedures by voting immediately to remove obscene literature from school libraries. The group’s strategy unfolded in a dramatic way at a school board meeting on Monday in Indian River County, Florida. According to WEAR-TV in Pensacola, Florida, parents and others affiliated with Moms for Liberty selected books from the...

Dear TVUSD School Board, The school board’s proposed parental notification policy is both a common sense and worthy proposal to what so many voters, parents, and taxpayers want in our school district as well as in society at large; a return to normalcy. It has long been a normal standard throughout virtually all school districts that parents receive timely and pertinent notifications from school officials for a variety of reasons, including school sponsored field trips, medical, psychological and counseling issues, extracurricular activities, student commendations, as well as disciplinary actions, and the safety and security of the students. It is only...

A new report from Parents Defending Education (PDE) puts forth evidence of Chinese Communist Party funding in several public school programs, revealing pro-China influence and messaging. PDE outlines that since 2009, nearly $18 million of CCP funding has contributed to school programs across a total of 34 states and Washington D.C.In the state of New York, 12 public schools were included in the PDE’s findings, prompting seven members of the House of Representatives to address a letter to the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul. Led by Rep. Brandon Williams (NY-22), the letter detailed concerns surrounding evidence of CCP funding in particular...

A Maryland district court denied parents’ appeal to reinstate an opt-out policy in Montgomery County Public Schools on Thursday. The case, Tamer Mahmoud v. Monica B. McKnight, hinged on whether the district’s May decision to rescind its opt-out policy for LGBT curricula violated parents’ right to direct the religious instruction of their children. The court concluded that, “the plaintiffs’ asserted due process right to direct their children’s upbringing by opting out of a public-school curriculum that conflicts with their religious views is not a fundamental right.” Parents sought a preliminary injunction that would authorize opt-out options once school begins on...

An Ohio-based Christian ministry that provides biblical education to public school students expects an estimated 30,000 children to be enrolled in the program this coming academic year.LifeWise Academy, an organization launched in 2019 that provides released-time religious instruction for public school students, recently announced that more than 300 schools across 11 states will participate in the program.In addition to Ohio, other states where the program will be offered include Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.LifeWise founder and CEO Joel Penton told The Christian Post that the program went from being in 133 public schools...

To the editor: A letter to the editor written by an educator of more than 30 years suggested three strategies to attract young people to the teaching profession. As a fellow educator of more than 30 years, I was horrified. The writer's first suggestion was to remove the one year of graduate education required to obtain a teaching credential by folding it into a bachelor’s degree. Finland, Germany and other European countries require a master's to teach. Educators need more, not less, training. The second suggestion was to restore authority and order to classrooms. Studies show that authority and order...

Chicago Public Schools has a school utilization problem. Over 34% are less than half full, 57% are underutilized, and 5% are overcrowded. Just 35% are at ideal capacity. The Chicago Teachers Union is preventing solutions. About 322,000 Chicago Public Schools students are set to return Aug. 21, with more than 1 in 3 students entering buildings less than half full. Nearly empty school buildings eat resources that should go towards students’ educations. Those educations are lacking when just 14% of CPS 3rd through 8th grade students from low-income families met proficiency standards in reading and 9% in math. School capacity...

James O’Keefe tried to interview a former transgender teacher in New Jersey named Austin McCaffey, also known as Lavender. He was recently fired from a Roselle Park, New Jersey school district for posting videos of him pretending to eat babies and having sex with mannequins. He also posted violent songs. Lavender claims he was fired for being transgender, although nothing about “Lavender” looks like he’s trying to be a woman. Outside groups are coming in to defend him because he’s transgender, claiming the school administrators are anti-trans. I hope the police are investigating him for potential crimes. SNIP VIDEO AT...

A school district in Massachusetts has been slowly phasing algebra 1 out of its middle-school curriculum because the advanced math classes were predominantly taken by white and Asian students. Now, some area parents are considering placing their child in a private school or a homeschooling program to ensure that they are adequately prepared for high school mathematics. Since 2017, Cambridge Public Schools has been slowly moving away from placing middle school students into "grade-level" or "accelerated" math classes since the "grade-level" courses were filled with black and Hispanic students, while the "accelerated" courses had mostly white and Asian students. District...

Weaponizing public schools for sinister purposes, an obscure United Nations institute is quietly working to transform education worldwide to impose radical political and spiritual values and beliefs on children. It is all happening under the guise of “social-emotional learning,” or SEL, a scheme hatched at a New Age organization whose founder and namesake was a follower of Lucifer Publishing Company chief Alice Bailey.The organization in question, part of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), is known as the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development, or UNESCO MGIEP for short. Dominated by pagans, communists, New...

Dominick Varney, also known as 'Priscilla Poppycocks,' spoke to high schoolers on May 4 ... A Maine public high school paid a gay drag performer $1,000 to speak to minors at a workshop, according to Freedom of Access Act (FOAA) documents. Drag performer Dominick Varney, also known as "Priscilla Poppycocks," spoke to Bangor High School students on May 4 as part of the school’s "Support, Educate, Empower" series to "empower" LGBT students. ... The school paid Varney and another performer, whose name was redacted from the FOAA documents, $1,000 each out of the school’s $15,000 grant from the Nellie Mae...

To teach full time in a Wisconsin public school, one must jump through time-consuming, resource-draining hoops to obtain an occupational license. Our public schools are failing children by requiring strict, impractical licensing requirements and excluding highly qualified, would-be instructors from entering the teaching profession. We must create flexibility in licensing requirements to allow more experienced people to expand young minds. The kids will see the inherent value in this approach and respond. Our children are starving for people who can provide them with practical skills that will allow them to build a life for themselves. There are many adults who...

A teacher in the United States is fighting to keep her job after reading an Australian children’s picture book to her class. Katie Rinderle says she bought My Shadow is Purple at a school book fair and then put it in a list of options her students could choose to read back in March. The fifth-grade class – usually aged 10 or 11 – at Due West Elementary in Georgia chose My Shadow is Purple, which centers around a non-binary character. ... Ms. Rinderle was placed on administrative leave during an investigation and is now facing termination, with a public...

Parents of an Ohio fifth-grader say their son’s First Amendment rights were violated when he was coerced during class into making a pagan idol, that is, the likeness of a spirit worshiped by Native Americans. Students at one of Lexington Local Schools’ elementary institutions were instructed in class to make a Kachina doll, used by the Hopi Indians as a “sacred object” to teach children about spirits believed to have “special powers,” such as curing the sick, as the class worksheet explains. “What type of luck does your doll bring?” says the worksheet, which instructs the students to create the...

I seriously should have thought of this when I was a kid. If I could have answered every question a teacher asked by meowing like a cat or roaring like a dinosaur, there is no way they could have ever accused me of getting an answer wrong. And when it was time for a quiz or a test, I could have just responded to every question with a paw print. Of course nobody would have actually been able to get away with such a thing decades ago. When I was a kid, anyone that tried to pull this kind of...

A growing number of states are adopting a comprehensive new type of school choice program that would pose a threat to public schools if many students were to leave them for a private education. Eight states—including Arizona, Florida, Indiana, and West Virginia—have approved “universal” or near-universal school choice laws since 2021. They open the door completely to school choice by making all students, including those already in private schools and from wealthy families, eligible for about $7,000 to $10,000 in state funding each year for their education. What’s more, most of these states have also enacted education savings accounts, or...

.

The Burlington community is calling on town leaders to take action in the wake of a recent middle school incident during which students disrupted a Pride event... According to a letter to parents from Marshall Simonds Middle School Principal Cari Purchase, the incident took place during a school-approved spirit day celebrating Pride month on Friday, June 2. The spirit day was requested and sponsored by Spectrum Club — a student group for LGBTQ+ students and allies... As part of the event, the letter said, Spectrum Club decorated the school with handmade “Happy Pride Month” signs and educational posters with messages...

Teachers unions across America have defended members from termination for virtually every imaginable kind of misconduct. The unions defended teachers for illegal marijuana use and intoxication on the job. They defended teachers who stole money, had excessive absences, or otherwise abused their position. They defended teachers who had pornographic materials in the classroom. They defended incompetent teachers who failed to produce positive student achievement. And in Rhode Island, the teachers unions vigorously defended one teacher who engaged in inappropriate touching and language with his female students. They appealed his firing all the way to the Rhode Island Supreme Court. As...