Free Republic

Representative Derek Kilmer (D-WA) called on Congressional leaders to reauthorize a program that provides key support to rural communities. Representatives Kilmer, Chris Stewart (R-UT), Jared Huffman (D-CA), and Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) led a letter urging the swift renewal of Secure Rural Schools (SRS) to help counties with national forests. Since national forest land cannot be taxed by counties or states, for more than 100 years the Forest Service has shared revenues from timber harvests on federal lands with the nearby communities. In the letter to House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi the members pointed out that SRS...

LONDONDERRY — An impromptu visit from a former Londonderry High School student who just got home from boot camp led to a misunderstanding — and a district-wide lockdown on Tuesday afternoon. Superintendent Nathan Greenberg said the former student showed up unannounced at the high school shortly before noon on Tuesday. Police said staff were immediately concerned, as the student, dressed in military fatigues, signed in to visit with a name unfamiliar to staff. The situation apparently grew heated when he was asked to leave and was ultimately escorted off the premises. Greenberg said the young man's sibling attends South Elementary...

If you recall, back in May, William Baer was arrested after voicing opposition to a school board meeting about a controversial book by Jodi Picoult titled Nineteen Minutes, a story about a school shooting that contained pornographic content. It was also required reading for ninth graders. Now a New Hampshire 4th Circuit Court of Appeals judge has blasted the school board for "silencing" him and arresting him, which was a violation of Mr. Baer's free speech.

Redstate catches an unguarded moment with Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper at a lunch earlier this week where he speaks extemporaneously and gives us a peek into what he believes the proper role of government to be. You might be surprised at just how little responsibility he feels you should take for yourself. Government should do what people individually canÂ’t do, or canÂ’t do well themselves. You know, educating our young people, [emphasis added] making sure our roads are designed and built properly, making sure our communities are safeÂ…that our economic system is robust, but at the same time fairÂ…that every...

State funding for public schools is projected to increase by $2.5 billion over the next eight years, even if a House GOP plan is adopted that would shift some sales tax revenue from schools to roads, according to a Mackinac Center for Public Policy analysis. James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy for the Mackinac Center, projects that under the House-passed road plan, school funding will still increase from $11.5 billion in 2014 to $14.0 billion in 2023. Without the House plan, the School Aid Fund would increase to $14.9 billion by 2023. The projections are based on an estimate...

In response to a Michigan Capitol Confidential article about higher compensation for union executives, the Michigan Education Association sent a letter justifying the salary increases by making false claims to local leaders. The memo, which was sent Dec. 2 to all local presidents and is reprinted on the union’s Facebook page, says: Yesterday we filed our annual LM-2 filing with the US Department of Labor. The Mackinac Center is reporting ‘huge’ pay increases for MEA Executives. As some of you know, the LM-2 lists every person to whom MEA has written a check to over the past year – for...

Health advocates are blasting provisions in federal funding legislation that are seen as dialing back school nutrition standards, even as the White House seeks to downplay the riders as “minor adjustments” to the first lady’s signature policy. The bill known as “cromnibus,” contains language that would allow states to exempt struggling districts from having to offer all whole grain products and eases requirements for schools to reduce sodium levels. Critics who lobbied against more restrictive nutrition rules hailed the language as a win. The American Heart Association, meanwhile, worries the changes will open the door for more legislation that will...

resident Barack Obama has launched a new initiative to get American schools to teach computer science. Appearing at a Newark, New Jersey, middle school, the president suggested that students, especially girls and minorities, should learn "not just how to use a smartphone but to create the apps for a smartphone." If we lived in a country where most students were graduating from high school with good English and math skills and with a firm grasp of American history and government, we might be in a position to make time for advanced computer skills. But we don't. Only about 68 percent...

After a teachers union president lost a legal battle involving forcing a non-union member to pay part of her salary for union-related activities, she responded by publishing the names of all former members who opted out of the union in a newsletter. Under Michigan's right-to-work law, employees can no longer be required to belong to or support a union as a condition of employment. According to Adam Neuman, the former Brighton Education Association member who sued to avoid having to pay part of BEA Union President Ellen Lafferty’s salary, the BEA president also put bright red “I Opted IN” buttons...

Athletes in Minnesota’s public schools who say they identify as the sex opposite their biological sex have won the right to shower with athletes of the opposite sex, as well as share locker rooms and hotel rooms. On Thursday, the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) approved criteria that will create eligibility standards for schools to let transgendered students on single-sex sports teams. Students would be allowed to be on a team of the opposite gender if parents or guardians, as well as a health care professional, sign written statements affirming a student's “consistent or sincerely held gender-related identity.” A...

A #HandsUpWalkOut Ferguson protest was targeted to students and workers, and mostly students are taking part so far:

The Muslim Brotherhood in American Schools "I am waging a Bloodless Revolution in America's Public Schools..." - Shabbir Mansuri (Founder and Director of the Council on Islamic Education) . Brigitte Gabriel spoke earlier this year at First Conservative Baptist Church and informed the people there that the Muslim Brotherhood is in the process of infiltrating American public schools, just as they have the United States federal government. Gabriel, author of two New York Times Best Sellers, Because They Hate and They Must Be Stopped, and founder of Act for America, said that she is passionate about the subject because it...

Parents groups are up in arms after a recent report found public schools in Newton, Massachusetts presented whitewashed versions of Hamas and Palestinian Authority (PA) charters, as well as other materials posing the destruction of Israel as acceptable. The findings were made through an investigation of classroom materials by the independent watchdog group Verity Educate, which discovered "repeated instances of bias against Israel, bias against the US and its actions in the Middle East, and bias that sanitizes the ideology and actions of terrorists." Parents for Excellence in Newton Schools (PENS), which took part in the research, on Sunday released...

In the last five months, Democrats in the Michigan Legislature have introduced 10 bills and two budget amendments that impose more oversight, reporting requirements, regulations, restrictions or an outright ban on charter public schools and the entities that authorize ("charter") them. The bills are part of an escalating battle over the extent which Michigan parents who can't afford or don't prefer private schools can still choose where to send their children to school. The bills come at a time when the number of charter schools in the state has expanded from 240 in 2009 to 303 in the current school...

In late September, State Superintendent Mike Flanagan said in a press release that there was a “dramatic teacher shortage” causing large classroom sizes in Detroit Public Schools. Flanagan called on businesses, career professionals and the state Legislature to help. A review of the number of teachers relative to the student enrollment in DPS, however, doesn’t paint a picture of a teacher shortage. Detroit Public Schools has one classroom teacher for every 16.65 students, a ratio that is a little higher than the state average but lower than higher performing school districts. Teacher-to-student ratios are not the same as class sizes,...

While Obama is still making ridiculous promises of border security that are as credible as a crack addict promising that this will be his last go at the crack pipe, the actual liberal infrastructure is prepping for what’s really coming.A horrifyingly massive flood of illegal aliens attracted to amnesty like wasps to human sweat. New York has sent a warning to its schools: Expect more illegal immigrants.The city Department of Education has told principals it plans this year to enroll 2,350 migrant children from Central America who crossed into the United States unaccompanied — with many more to come.“It is...

A school district that includes part of Ferguson, Mo., will cancel classes next week in anticipation of a grand jury decision on whether to indict a police officer for killing an unarmed black teenager, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “With the heightened anxiety and activity, we thought it would be better for students and staff to extend the holiday at this point," Jennings School District superintendent Tiffany Anderson told the paper. She added that most students walk to school because the district doesn’t provide school buses and that people had been approaching students on their walk home.

Last week the Michigan Council of Charter School Authorizers sent a letter to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction challenging his authority to suspend charter public school authorizers without first going through the formal rule making process prescribed by the state's Administrative Procedures Act. Charter school advocates said they are expecting Superintendent Michael Flanagan to act sometime this week to suspend charter school authorizers from opening additional charter schools due to poor academic performance. Martin Ackley, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Education, said they were reviewing the Nov. 5 letter and would respond within the 90 days allowed by...

On one level it’s been entertaining to watch the College Board scramble to defend its radical new Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH) Framework. When the public can see the truth merely by going to the College Board website and reading the Framework, it’s certainly a challenge to prove that the document isn’t what it clearly is – a leftist polemic that presents American history in a relentlessly negative light. An unfortunate recent performance by College Board vice-president Trevor Packer before a Georgia House study committee suggests that the College Board team is cracking under the strain. The APUSH course that...

Oakland school officials, under pressure from supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, have agreed to reinstate a controversial curriculum that includes a lesson comparing the convicted cop killer to the Rev. Martin Luther King J