Free Republic

SNIP “In light of the heightened media coverage of the issue of undocumented immigrant children, VDOE provides the following updated information for your use in responding to community questions or issues,” says the memo distributed to the commonwealth’s 132 school divisions and obtained by Breitbart News. SNIP “While a case-by-case review of each child’s circumstances upon enrolling in a Virginia public school is necessary, many of these unaccompanied children will be deemed homeless under applicable state and federal law,” the memo reads. It goes on: Pursuant to Va. Code § 22.1-3, a homeless child is one who lacks a fixed,...

Parents in Fremont, California, are pushing their school district to remove a health book with sections about oral sex, bondage and drug use from local high schools, saying there is no way the publishers can adapt the adult content featured in the book. The Fremont Unified School District purchased the textbook, Your Health Today, over the summer to be taught in its six high schools. After overwhelming response from parents, Superintendent Jim Morris offered to have the books amended. However concerned parents want the books pulled from shelves because of its adult subject matter. "My thinking, and the parents were...

LIVONIA — After putting the popular Hinoki International School in a box, Livonia Public Schools has now, in a phrase, thrown away the key. The school board voted 6 to 1 to end the charter public school’s authorization — one year before it was to expire. Without a charter authorization, Hinoki is ineligible for state funding grants to function as a free public school. "The contract with the school carried with it various provisions under which the contract would be revoked. Included is a provision calling for automatic revocation if the Academy has lost more than 50 percent of its...

Following repeated requests from parents, the state of New York released the text of half the questions used in its new Common Core-aligned standardized tests. The test questions, used in tests for grades 3 through 8, include one question that encouraged students to cite evidence in favor of global warming. included several short written pieces that students had to read and respond to in order to demonstrate English mastery. One such piece was an article originally published on NASA’s website, “The Summer of 2012 –Too Hot To Handle?” The article discusses the high temperatures and drought during the summer of 2012...

Michael Mulgrew defends Common Core: ‘You sick people need to deal with us and the children that we teach’The wild remarks came during last month’s American Federation of Teachers convention in Los Angeles. ‘You sick people need to deal with us and the children we teach. Thank you very much!’ Mulgrew said. Teachers union honcho Michael Mulgrew unleashed a venomous screed directed at anyone who would dare threaten his beloved Common Core agenda. “If someone takes something from me, I’m going to grab it right back out of their cold, twisted, sick hands and say it is mine! You do...

ver the last four years, I have lived with the constant threat from a stalker – a stalker who is now in jail for the third time for violating a restraining order. Every day I live with these questions: What if today is the day that my stalker posts bail? What if today is the day that he discovers my parents’ new address? What if I go to a lecture on campus and he shows up there? I feel that I have no control over my life. My family was forced to move. I have had stay indoors, keep drapes...

A 20-year-old Dartmouth student says she may have to give up her Ivy League dream and drop out of school because the prestigious college won't allow her to carry a gun—to protect herself against a predator. Taylor Woolrich, a junior, says Dartmouth administrators told her they won’t let her carry a gun on campus, even though she lives in fear of a man who has been stalking her since she was a high school student in San Diego. “It’s absolutely unfair,” Woolrich said about her attempts to have the school make an exception to its weapons ban. “It’s one of...

Israel was once again criticized on Sunday for an attack on a United Nations school in Gaza, which the United States said was “disgraceful”. According to the AFP news agency, in one of the most strongly-worded statements yet from Washington since the conflict began nearly a month ago, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the United States was "appalled" by the attack on the school in Rafiah. At least 10 people were killed in the shelling, the third time in 10 days that a UN school has been hit in fighting. "The United States is appalled by today's disgraceful shelling...

Hate Crime Legislation - Back Door to Censorship By James Simpson An extension of the Hate Crimes law recently passed the House of Representatives which will essentially codify into national law the "speech codes" that are smothering academic freedom on college campuses today. This law is the back door method Obama and his fellow socialists will use to stifle free speech in this country, as explained in an informative article by Jerry Kane at American Daughter. To heck with the "Fairness Doctrine." Who needs to limit censorship to the airwaves? This legislation will silence anyone who disagrees with them. Hate...

KRGV reports that a refurbished detention center in Karnes City, TX, will be used to house hundreds of women and children who crossed into Texas illegally. The center’s rooms, called “suites,” have only been used to house adult illegal aliens in the past, but with the recent surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America, it will now be used to house kids too. KRGV’s story says that the illegal aliens will only be housed at the center for an average of 23 days, or that’s the fe

Dalton GA, USA -- Experience the challenges of Central American children who have entered the country illegally, after about 30 were admitted to the district in the last school year, according to its director, Jim Hawkins. While the number of new students not beyond the capacity of the school system, adolescents pose a series of unprecedented challenges. They have very little education. Some cannot count to 10. Could not turn on a computer. In fact, they have never seen a computer. And in most cases they do not speak English or Spanish, adding that most of those children speaking other...

HUMANSVILLE, Mo. - If you've ever tried to concentrate on an empty stomach, you know how much of a relief a new federal school lunch program may be for some families. In some low income areas, every student may be able to eat free breakfast and lunch. In Humansville, about 90% of the kids that go through the lunch line are already on free or reduced lunches. But the Community Eligibility Provision may now allow all Humansville students to get free breakfast and lunch. For many in the small town, it's likely a challenge to cover the grocery bill. "A...

While enrollment in the Livonia Public Schools has been declining, a charter public school in its shadow has been growing in popularity. And now that growth could come to an abrupt halt. Shortly before the school year ended, the district notified Hinoki International School that it was terminating its building lease and starting a carbon-copy Japanese language immersion program in the fall. The move will essentially put Hinoki out of business because the charter cannot find space on short notice in the land-locked city of Livonia. Hinoki is authorized by Livonia Public Schools and must operate within its boundaries. The...

The updated standards released by the United States Department of Agriculture, which most schools put in effect over the 2012-13 school year, meant larger, faster changes to lunches nearly across the board. With the changes came news media reports of student complaints and food waste. A USA Today article in September 2012 described protests and boycotts from Kansas to Massachusetts. Those objections to the phase-in of the new standards are supported by the findings of two recent studies. Researchers asked school administrators and food-service providers whether students complained “at first” about the new lunches. Many did (56 percent of elementary...

A report into the so-called Trojan Horse plot to takeover schools in Birmingham has found a "determined effort" to implement radical Islam. The comments came from the newly appointed Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, who made a statement on the subject in the House of Commons today. The review was ordered by the Morgan's predecessor Michael Gove, following reports that as many as twenty-five Birmingham schools had been the subject of takeovers. In each case, the governing bodies were infiltrated by radicals who then set about pushing out moderate teachers and implementing radical Islam. Today's report makes clear that the allegations...

SNIP Lee Hansen, a professor emeritus of economics at UW-Madison wrote in an op-ed piece for the John William Hope Pope Center for Higher Education, a North Carolina-based think tank, about the latest “diversity” plan for the UW-System’s flagship school. The plan, completed in May, is your typical left-wing platitudes about commitments to “compositional diversity,” “equity mindedness” “representational equity” and other things for what has become a sacred cow to liberal academia. But when you dig deeper into the definitions of these platitudes according to Hansen, you suddenly see that “representational equity” is being applied to levels never before seen....

ORLANDO – A federal judge has given a secular organization the green light to distribute more atheistic and anti-Christian materials to Florida public school students, in spite of the materials’ graphic content and offensive language. As previously reported, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) learned last year that a Christian ministry had made Bibles available to Orlando high school students on “Religious Freedom Day.” To counter the Bible distribution, FFRF sought permission from the school district to give students a variety of atheistic and anti-Christian materials. According to reports, the Orange County School Board permitted FFRF to distribute several books...

A Stamford High School teacher accused of threatening to fail an 18-year-old student if he did not have sex with her and providing him and a friend with marijuana, turned herself over to police early Thursday. Danielle Watkins, 32, of Fort Point St., Norwalk, was charged with two counts of sexual assault, two counts of sale of marijuana and one count of risk of injury to a minor ... A day after the student reported the allegations, police executed a search warrant of Watkins's car during a motor vehicle stop in Norwalk. During the stop, police said Watkins tried to...

Dr. Elaina George, an ear, nose, throat and chest specialist from Atlanta, told Charles Payne on FOX News today that the US could be facing a health crisis as the thousands of newly illegal children enter the classrooms this fall. “There’s an example in Maryland, where parents got a letter from the school that there children had been exposed to an illegal child who had TB who was one of their classmates. So this fall it is potentially possible that these children entering the school systems could be carrying all sorts of things, diseases that are not on the radar.”...

For years, Brighton Area Schools struggled with deficits and saw it balloon to $8.5 million in 2012-2013. That's up from $2.3 million in 2008-2009. However, the district now projects it cannot only be out of deficit, but show a surplus in 2014-15 thanks to its "shared services" program that brought the district $8 million dollars in 2013-14. "Where else are we going to generate $8 million a year?" said Brighton School Board Member Bill Trombley. "What else are you going to do?" Public schools can provide services to private schools in non-core areas such as art, computers, foreign language, music,...