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Earlier this month, 13-year-old Tom Sosnik, wearing a tallit and holding a kiddush cup, marked a transition into manhood with a special ceremony at his Jewish day school. He wasn’t celebrating receiving a first prayer book or a first Bible, or graduating from one grade to another. He wasn’t really observing his bar mitzvah, either. In what was a decidedly nontraditional event, the short-haired teenager was publicly marking his gender transition from girl to boy

Is it legal in NY for a school to issue an "anonymous" survey to students asking about their family's gun ownership, access to firearms and other questions? This was given to my son today. I am furious about the intrusion, the manipulation of our children and the sliminess of how it was done. I am collecting information to formulate a response to the school. Anyone out there know if this kind of survey is even legal?

U.S. Sen. John McCain is running a “sponsored post” on Facebook with the intention of building support for a potential re-election campaign. While the intended audience is unclear, the paid post is boomeranging big time. “If I decide to stand for re-election to the United States Senate, I will give it everything I’ve got — and your continued support means a great deal to me. Please stand with me today,” the senator’s Facebook post reads.

A Jewish school in Paris was evacuated on Thursday — three years to the day after the brutal massacre at a Jewish school in Toulouse, French news website JSS News reported. The evacuation follows disturbing instances of increased antisemitic violence throughout France and Europe. Police searched the classrooms and common areas at the Ecole Alliance Gustave Leven in Paris using bomb-sniffing dogs. Though the report did not indicate whether the police found any explosives, sources did tell JSS News that it was a fairly serious threat. The evacuation at the French school occurred on the third anniversary of the horrific...

Federally-mandated changes to school lunches backed by first lady Michelle Obama helped cause an unprecedented drop in the number of students eating lunch, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO cited two factors stemming from the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which caused a decrease in the number of children eating school lunch each day: school childrens’ issues with “palatability” and “federally-mandated” increases in the price of school lunches.

A South Florida high school teacher who allegedly called a student a "rag head Taliban" was given a five-day suspension Tuesday. Maria Valdes, a teacher at Cypress Bay High School in Weston, won't be paid during her suspension, the Broward School Board said.

Federally-mandated changes to school lunches backed by first lady Michelle Obama helped cause an unprecedented drop in the number of students eating lunch, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO cited two factors stemming from the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which caused a decrease in the number of children eating school lunch each day: school childrens’ issues with “palatability” and “federally-mandated” increases in the price of school lunches. “Several factors likely influenced the recent decreases in lunch participation, and while the extent to which each factor affected participation is unclear, state and...

Earlier this school year, a sixth-grader in the gifted-and-talented program at Bedford Middle School in Bedford, Virginia was suspended for one year after an assistant principal found something that looked like a marijuana leaf in his backpack. The student, the 11-year-old son of two school teachers, had to enroll in the district's alternative education program and be homeschooled. He was evaluated by a psychiatrist for substance abuse problems, and charged with marijuana possession in juvenile court. In the months since September, he's become withdrawn, depressed, and he suffers from panic attacks. He is worried his life is over, according to...

Some schoolchildren claim another student bragged about having marijuana. They inform school administrators. An assistant principal finds a leaf and a lighter in the boy’s knapsack. The student is suspended for a year. A sheriff’s deputy files marijuana possession charges in juvenile court... There was only one problem: Months after the fact, the couple learned the substance wasn’t marijuana.

Denver Public Schools had four times the number of administrators as any other large metro area districts last year, and salaries and benefits for those staffers are $22 million more than the next largest metro district, Colorado Department of Education figures show. The teachers’ union president reviewed the data Watchdog.org obtained and said the nearly $68 million paid to DPS administrators would be better spent on students. “We need to be talking about keeping dollars closer to classroom when it comes to public education,” said Henry Roman, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. “Should they be putting the money...

In an op-ed column published in the Wall Street Journal, Ryan Anderson and Leslie Ford of the Heritage Foundation defend San Francisco's Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone against his critics. The archbishop's new policy, barring Catholic-school teachers from public support of policies that contravene Church teachings, is not an infringement on the teachers' rights, the writers argue; it is bid to ensure that Catholic schools promote Catholic principles, and maintain their distinctive identity. "A Fight to Keep Catholic Schools Catholic" (Wall Street Journal)

The Prince George’s County branch of the NAACP is threatening to sue the local school district over a plan to start two schools for an influx of immigrants in recent years. “Segregation was eliminated back in 1954. When you have two schools that are designed to deal with one group based around basically language as the criteria for the schools, than that’s a form of discrimination,” Bob Ross, president of the local NAACP, told WAMU.org. “It’s not about force, it’s not about choice, it’s about the law,” he said. Ross is upset because a plan underway in Prince George’s County...

Michigan House Republicans recently released a reform agenda that calls for closing the state-run school employee retirement system to new employees. Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, R-West Olive, reiterated the proposal. The necessity of closing the current defined-benefit pension system and instead offering new employees a defined-contribution plan is simple: the state underfunds pensions. According to the legislative auditor general, the system has been underfunded in all but one of the past 30 years. The system carries a $25.8 billion unfunded liability. Michigan taxpayers are now on the hook for 13 times more in unfunded school pension liabilities than the...

Conservative discourse mainly features teachers' unions as the enemy when it comes to school choice, leaving others, like sociologists and other tenured intellectuals, free from public accountability as they exert their substantial influence on education policy. One thing that you should know if you follow school choice issues is that for leftist academics who oppose school choice, their dogmas take primacy over empirical evidence, and their most fundamental dogma when it comes to school choice is that it promotes racial segregation, and thus thwarts their version of equality. Racial segregation, as a policy in the United States, saw its end...

A first-grader made to sit alone during lunch because of tardiness is forcing the Grants Pass school district to revisit its policy.

Pictures have been released comparing what Michelle forces American schools to eat and what kids in other countries get to eat… Since the program’s inception, Michelle Obama’s Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act has offended the sensibilities of the entire nation. Conservatives found the program to be invasive, thrusting D.C.’s hand into local education matters. Educators found the program wasted enormous amounts of food and money. Parents found the lunches far too light to be considered “meals.” And school children everywhere took to the Internet with pictures of the gruesome dishes the program sloshed onto their cafeteria trays every day. Those pictures...

The principal of Romeo High School has called an outraged father to apologize about a controversial homework assignment. The 9th grade biology worksheet sent home with students this week featured questions about a mother trying to determine the identity of her baby’s father. Possible answers included: the cable guy, the mailman, the cab driver, the bartender and the guy at the club.

A Liberty Blitzkrieg reader who is a resident of Naples, Florida recently sent me a note highlighting a video in which he, and several other concerned parents, were reprimanded and treated like little children in a School Board Workshop as a result of them expressing concerns about school curriculum.In order to give you some background on the issue, see the Letter to the Editor he wrote to the Naples Daily News on 1/28 to say what he was prevented from saying at the 1/20 School Board Workshop. Letter reprinted below: Patton the causeThe controversy behind the recent parents’ review of school textbooks lays squarely at...

Re-entry after winter break has not been easy for him. The rules and restrictions of school — Sit Still. Be Quiet. Do What You Are Told, Nothing More, Nothing Less. — have been grating on him, and it shows. His teacher recently emailed me; she’d noticed a change in his behavior (more belligerent, less likely to cooperate) and wanted to know if there was anything going on at home. My guess, I said, was that he was upset about having to be back in school after break. I was right. The lack of movement and rigid restrictions associated with modern...

YULEE, Fla. – It took less than a week of public outrage to convince the Nassau County School District to allow the phrase “God Bless America” in schools after officials caved to legal threats over its use in morning announcements. Last week, Yulee High School officials received a letter from the American Humanist Association – an atheist advocacy group – stating that some students objected to the “God Bless America” sign-off used by a student who runs the morning announcements. The Association alleged the phrase is a “constitutional violation” that’s inappropriate.