Free Republic

The Big Apple mom who crashed Mayor Eric Adams’ press conference Monday to blast him over his tot mask mandate was fired shortly afterward from her job at the city Law Department ... Daniela Jampel, who served as an assistant corporation counsel, learned she was canned less than an hour after she confronted a caught-off-guard and apparently annoyed Adams over when he would “unmask our toddlers.” ... “Three weeks ago, you told parents to trust you that you would unmask our toddlers,” Jampel told the mayor. “You stood right here, and you said that the masks would come off April...

New Judicial Watch Lawsuit for FBI Documents on Anti-Trump Collusion A Little Known Reason the TSA Is So Ineffective New York’s War on Religious Education New Judicial Watch Lawsuit for FBI Documents on Anti-Trump Collusion Attorney James Baker had what DC considers a long and distinguished career at the Justice Department – his last position was general counsel of the FBI – until he got himself involved in the anti-Trump machinations of disgraced former Director James Comey and his co-conspirators. As the FBI’s top lawyer, Baker helped secure the notorious Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant for Carter Page,...

They are the schools Mayor de Blasio doesn’t mention. At 32 city elementary and middle schools, the average English-math proficiency rate on state exams has not exceeded 10 percent of students for four years in a row. Seventeen of these schools — which enroll nearly 10,000 kids — have been part of the mayor’s signature Renewal program, which has spent $582 million on teacher training, social services and an extra hour a day of instruction. Four did so poorly that the city Department of Education closed them in June. ... Families for Excellent Schools, a pro-charter-school group that analyzed the test...

It turns out that you don’t have to get good grades or even show up to class often to graduate from high school in New York. Several students from New York City have spoken out about passing classes they know they should have failed and receiving high school diplomas they feel they didn’t earn. Melissa Mejia, a senior at William Cullen Bryant High School, was surprised to find out she was due to receive her diploma in June when she was fully aware she hadn’t completed all of the credits to earn it, she admitted in a letter to the...

It was a tale of two rallies — with Mayor de Blasio getting schooled by Gov. Cuomo. An overflow crowd of 11,000 charter-school supporters braved Albany’s subfreezing weather Tuesday to cheer Cuomo as he blasted the state’s 200-plus failing public schools and declared that “parents deserve a choice” in charter schools. “We are here today to tell you that we stand with you,” the governor told the huge crowd. “You are not alone. We will save charter schools.” Cuomo pledged to ensure that “charter schools have the financial capacity, the physical space and the government support to thrive and to...

Elite New York Democrats are waging a war on children. Well… At least that’s how it appears when the progressive Democrat mayor kicks 700 students out of high-performing schools, because… Well… He doesn’t really have a good reason. Ostensibly, it’s because he doesn’t want charter schools (public education facilities that govern their affairs with autonomy from New York public education directives) to share space with underperforming school districts. Proving that there are worse things than a Bloomberg-run city, de Blasio has decided to kick at least three charter school programs out of their co-location agreements with traditional public education facilities....

A popular gifted-student program at a New York City elementary school is getting the ax after school officials decided it lacked diversity. PS 139 Principal Mary McDonald told parents in a letter Jan. 24 that Students of Academic Rigor, or SOAR, would no longer accept applications for incoming kindergartners, the New York Daily Newsreported. “Our Kindergarten classes will be heterogeneously grouped to reflect the diversity of our student body and the community we live in,” Miss McDonald said in the letter posted on Flickr.com. At least one parent described SOAR as largely white, while others disagreed, the report said. One...

<p>A federal judgeon Wednesday backed the city's Department of Education, ruling that the display of the nativity scene, unlike Christmas trees and menorahs, was not secular and has no place in classrooms.</p> <p>Judge Charles Sifton in Brooklyn dismissed the lawsuit brought forth by Andrea Skoros, 34, of College Point, saying the city's holiday displays policy banning non-secular symbols from schools did not violate her right to free exercise of religion.</p>

The New York City Department of Education is making the morning-after-pill available to high school girls at 13 public schools. The DOE says girls as young as 14 will be able to get the Plan B emergency contraception without parental consent. Parents have been notified about the CATCH pilot program and how their daughters can opt out of it. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn says she supports the program because high school students are sexually active and getting pregnant. The city says about 7,000 girls get pregnant by the time they reach the age of 17. It says more than...

EXCLUSIVE The Department of Education is giving morning-after pills and other birth-control drugs to students at 13 high schools, The Post has learned. School nurse offices stocked with the contraceptives can dispense “Plan B” emergency contraception and other oral or injectable birth control to girls without telling their parents — unless parents opt out after getting a school informational letter about the new program. CATCH — Connecting Adolescents To Comprehensive Health — is part of a citywide attack against the epidemic of teen pregnancy, which spurs many girls — most of them poor — to drop out of school. Helayne...

... When results from the 2010 tests, which state officials said presented a more accurate portrayal of students’ abilities, were released last month, they came as a blow to the legacy of the mayor and the chancellor, as passing rates dropped by more than 25 percentage points on most tests. But the most painful part might well have been the evaporation of one of their signature accomplishments: the closing of the racial achievement gap. Among the students in the city’s third through eighth grades, 40 percent of black students and 46 percent of Hispanic students met state standards in math,...

(April 3) -- When 12-year-old Alexa Gonzalez was caught doodling on her desk at Junior High School 190 in Queens, New York, she expected detention and an afternoon on desk-cleaning duty. Instead, she was arrested, led out of her school in handcuffs and detained at a local police precinct for hours, she said. Two months after the incident, Gonzalez and her mother, Maraima Comacho, are suing the New York City Education Department and the New York Police Department for $1 million in damages, claiming excessive use of force and violation of the girl's rights in the ordeal, which Comacho has...

March 16, 2008 -- Joel Klein is a pizza-party pooper. The schools chancellor's food police have put the kibosh on a 20-year-old "Pizza Day" tradition at a Queens elementary school, opening the door for a citywide ban, infuriating parents and upsetting kids. "This borders on cruel," said Michael Teoduro, vice president of the PTA at PS 193 in Whitestone. "It's one thing that the kids really look forward to in school, and for no legitimate reason it's pulled out from under them." Pizza Day took place once a month, when kids would eat 90 to 100 pies from local shop...

The city fired or demoted 45 principals for "poor performance" yesterday, but critics blasted the move that they said also targeted good veterans. Over the past few weeks, the targeted principals were faxed a 10-point agreement that required them to keep quiet about terms of departures and demotions in turn for avoiding "unsatisfactory" ratings. If they signed the agreements, they could return as consultants, the sources said. In some cases, they were given only a few hours to make a decision. "They took my life from me," said one Brooklyn principal, who got news of his academic performance bonus, then...

June 17, 2004 -- The Big Apple could be called Dropout City — a staggering 350,000 public high-school students have quit or flunked out of school since 1986, Department of Education data show. That means the number of New York City dropouts over this period exceeds the entire population of such cities as St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Buffalo, St. Paul, Minn., and Newark. The number of dropouts was disclosed during testimony at a City Council hearing on the Bloomberg administration's plan to open 70 new small schools next fall with startup funds provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation....

As I write this column, a bit of harmless, racist, fluff is transpiring on the TV screen: The Hispanic Day Parade. A celebration of Latin "pride." The hosts are alleged journalists Jim Watkins, who is white, and Lolita Lopez, who is Hispanic, with Hispanic reporter Matt Garcia working the street (the announcers note that reporter Marysol Castro, who worked with Garcia in 2002, is on vacation in Costa Rica, or she’d be there, too). The parade this year was dedicated to the memory of Latin singer, Celia Cruz, who died on July 16 at the age of "around 79." Lolita...