Free Republic

A federal court dismissed a case Tuesday against Republican Iowa Gov. Kimberly Reynolds’ prohibition of mask mandate in school districts across the state, official documents showed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit found “persuasive” the argument that “the general risks associated with COVID-19, even though COVID-19 remains an ever-present concern in society, are not enough to show ‘imminent and substantial’ harm,” court papers showed in part. The court also decided that “because Plaintiffs have only alleged the potential risk of severe illness should they contract COVID-19 at school, the risk of harm is too speculative to satisfy...

Maine’s Department of Education is reportedly urging school districts to stop using taxpayer-subsidized electric school buses that were purchased within the last year. The districts reported problems with the new buses, which were supplied by Canada-based Lion Electric Co., last fall ... The windshields on the buses would leak whenever it rained, as the glass didn’t appear to be securely in place. concerns about mixing electricity and water from the leaking windshields led them to stop driving some of the buses. The buses, which cost about $345,000 each, were also sold with misaligned or incorrect lettering on the sides, and...

Guided by activists and flimsy legal reasoning, school districts are asserting a right to conceal children’s gender transitions from parents. More than 3 million American children attend public school in districts that require employees to hide students’ gender transitions from their parents. The revelation of how widespread secrecy polices are comes thanks to a list compiled by the parental-rights advocacy organization Parents Defending Education. While the prevalence of these policies is alarming in itself, the philosophy underlying them is what parents should be most concerned about. Districts are using legal theories pushed by activist groups like the Gay, Lesbian &...

This week, history and civics scores across the nation plummeted to record lows among eighth graders. Just 13% of students performed at or above the “proficient” level in U.S. history. It is the latest appalling report on our declining educational system — a matter that should be treated as a national crisis of literally historic proportions. As discussed in prior columns, we are graduating students from high school who cannot proficiently read or do math. School districts have responded by solving the problem by simply lowering standards and eliminating gifted programs. Now we are producing citizens who know little about...

A Florida lawmaker is considering legislation that would cut funding for school districts that implemented mask mandates despite a recent executive order, the Tampa Bay Times reported Monday. State Rep. Randy Fine, who chairs the PreK-12 Appropriations subcommittee, proposed a move that would punish the dozen districts that mandated masks, the Times reported. He said the school districts should have $200 million taken away and given to the 55 other districts that adhered to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ order. DeSantis passed an executive order banning mask mandates in schools as part of a “Parent’s Bill of Rights” that he signed into...

California’s two largest school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — are targeted in lawsuits challenging their student COVID-19 vaccination mandates, alleging the vaccines are too new and that unvaccinated children face discrimination and the denial of their equal right to a public education. Both school systems were ahead of the state in requiring student vaccines as a measure to make campuses safer and to limit spread of the coronavirus in the community — and their mandates are more comprehensive than the state requirement, which has yet to be codified into law. In Los Angeles, an individual parent who...

Pennsylvania officials on Monday announced a plan to test students for COVID-19 as part of the effort to prevent the disease from forcing schools to close. The plan is voluntary, with school districts deciding whether or not to participate. In schools that participate, a contracted firm would conduct the tests weekly. In most cases, students would swab their own noses in a process that officials said is much less uncomfortable than early tests that required the swab to be inserted deep into the nasal passages. Samples would be combined into a “pooled” testing process that would not produce results for...

Investigative Journalist and avid CRT opponent Chris Rufo has identified over 30 school districts across 15 different states that are teaching the radical ‘anti-whiteness’ book, “Not My Idea” by Anastasia Higginbotham. Rufo notes that the book, meant for children as young as kindergarteners, ‘traffics in the noxious principles of race essentialism, collective guilt, and anti-whiteness.’ SEE TWEET One part includes images portraying whiteness as the devil, offering the reader a contract that ‘bids them to whiteness’ in exchange for stolen land and the ability to ‘mess endlessly’ with the lives of people of color. The book teaches children to primarily...

After a lengthy discussion with several public comments, the Steamboat Springs School Board voted Monday to make collective bargaining meetings open to the public, regardless of the outcome of Proposition 104. ... If passed, Proposition 104 will require all meetings of school boards, or between district representatives and employee representatives at which a collective bargaining agreement is discussed, be public. School districts in Colorado negotiate contracts annually, with bargaining in Steamboat Springs slated to begin in January or February 2015 for the following year's contract. The board has discussed the possibility of making meetings public since last May, and Andrew...

Indeed, there can be concrete benefits to consolidating local school districts in Pennsylvania. But operational concerns – contractual, economic and, to some, even parochial -- stand to trump any rush to future mergers, concludes a new analysis by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. “Given past experience, consolidations in Pennsylvania seem very unlikely,” says Eric Montarti, research director at the Pittsburgh think tank (in Policy Brief Vol. 18, No. 39). “(F)ew consolidations occur because there are deep-seated local objections and serious economic reasons for not pursuing” them. The commonwealth today has 500 public school districts. But 66 years ago, in...

Rising housing costs in Colorado are making it hard for teachers to stay in the area, so officials are moving in to help. As Colorado’s housing costs skyrocket, a growing number of school districts, local leaders, and lawmakers are taking steps to make housing more affordable for teachers and staff. For years, resort communities like Aspen, Colorado, and a rural district in the state’s Eastern Plains have leased housing to employees at below-market rates. More recently, subsidized housing for educators has cropped up in pricey urban areas such as San Francisco, Boston, and Baltimore. But lately, Colorado districts big and...

AFFH (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing), President Obama’s most radical regulation, continues to go virtually unmentioned in the campaign. You might think a policy that allows big cities to swallow up and control surrounding suburbs would be widely debated and discussed, especially in an election where the suburbs hold the balance of power. Instead, both presidential candidates make a point of avoiding the issue. Meanwhile, it’s become increasingly clear that AFFH is about a great deal more than housing. In truth, this sweepingly transformative regulation creates levers by which the feds can reach into almost every aspect of local government. In...

I don't know if anyone has followed a few threads I have put up over the past few years about our school district having "issues". Anyway, our older son is now in first grade and has been bringing home a folder nightly with simple books to read, same as when our daughter was in first grade. I help him nightly to read the book, it takes about 5 minutes and he can essentially read them himself, but because he just graduated to a new level (where the books become harder), some of the words in the new books he cannot...

Gov. Chris Christie is making good on his promise to get tough with New Jersey's $2.2 billion budget gap -- by taking aim at one of the drivers of the state's out-of-control taxes: school budgets. Under Christie's budget, New Jersey's 605 school districts will see their state aid reduced by 5 percent of their last budget. That trims state spending by $820 million, forcing school districts to make deeper cuts or raise property taxes. If it stopped there, Christie's one-time aid cut would do nothing but aggravate property-tax payers. But he's also seeking a constitutional amendment on the November ballot...

While the state has seen demographic shifts in suburban school districts, the isolation and intense concentration of minority students in the 31 Abbott school districts is worse today than it was 20 years ago.  That's the basis for a "friend of the court" brief filed jointly by the New Jersey Black Issues Convention and the Hispanic Directors Association, two influential umbrella organizations. They are among nine groups challenging the state's overhaul of the school funding formula that guaranteed additional aid to the state's neediest districts. Locally, Paterson, Passaic and Garfield are classified as Abbott districts.   The court is scheduled...

For hundreds of California school districts already facing profound budget problems, the proposed diesel-soot regulations from the Air Resources Board couldn’t come at a worse time: The ARB is pondering a new rule that would require schools to buy new buses—they average about $150,000 each--or retrofit older ones at $20,000 or more per vehicle. The strapped districts also are crying foul over what they see as a betrayal by the ARB. The original diesel rule excluded school buses; the latest version of the rule includes them. The ARB, conducting hearings around the state, is expected to make a final decision...

School districts and local governments are entitled to be repaid for the cost of running programs the state Legislature requires them to operate, a Sacramento County Superior Court judge ruled in a decision published Monday. The California School Boards Association, the city of Newport Beach, Sweetwater Union High School District in San Diego County and the counties of Fresno and Los Angeles sued the state over a bill passed in 2005. They objected because it allowed the state to avoid reimbursing school districts for the costs associated with operating state mandated-programs. In a ruling dated March 13 but published Monday,...