Free Republic

Every child in Illinois government schools will be subjected to intrusive “mental health” screenings and data-gathering schemes starting this fall under a controversial new state law, opening the door for further mass-medicalization and surveillance of children as well as huge profits for politicians’ Big Pharma campaign donors. Critics are sounding the alarm. The measure, adopted under the state’s Wellness Checks in Schools Program Act, is aimed at dealing with what policymakers describe as an explosion of “mental health” problems among children. The trends have been getting worse for years. But the government responses to COVID such as school shutdowns and...

One of the more disturbing facts about public schools–and let’s face it, almost all facts about our public school system are disturbing–is that foreign governments and Left-wing nonprofits now design a good chunk of the curriculum. Planned Parenthood provides curricular support. The United Nations does. China does. And, in this case, Qatar is doing so. I’d love to see some investigative reporter dive into all the different groups that provide curricular material and/or funding to our public schools in order to slip into the curriculum their preferred propaganda.A map of the "Arab World" hangs in PS 261, a public school...

An annual report from the Inspector General of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) revealed that millions of dollars worth of tech devices were reported lost or stolen “without appropriate search and recovery efforts.” The fiscal year 2023 annual report released Tuesday states CPS schools reported 77,505 tech devices as lost or stolen during the 2021-22 school year, totaling well over $23 million in original purchase price. The discovery, as a result of the district’s first post-COVID-19 inventory, calls the numbers “unacceptably high” and says the oversight process is in need of a “serious overhaul.” The report said the missing items included...

A public New York City elementary school is being accused of “Jewish erasure” because a map in one of its classrooms showed all of the countries in the Middle East except for Israel — which it labeled as Palestine. The map, labeled the “Arab World,” appears in a classroom at PS 261 in Brooklyn, where Rita Lahoud gives students lessons in the Arab Culture Arts program — which is funded by Qatar Foundation International, the American wing of the Qatar Foundation, a nonprofit owned by the country’s wealthy ruling family. It was manufactured by Arab education company Ruman and features...

There was an uproar on the social media platform X on Tuesday afternoon as news hit about what was happening at James Madison High School in New York City. The city is evacuating almost 2,000 illegal aliens who are staying in a tent on Floyd Bennett Field due to concerns about the weather because the field is not a livable environment in the face of a potential torrential rain storm and high winds. But city officials are now moving the illegal aliens into the second-floor gym of James Madison High School in Brooklyn. “To be clear, this relocation is a...

With school choice being such a hot topic these days, it can be helpful for parents to learn more about what the experiences are like in different learning environments. Though there may be pros and cons to each option, the differences may surprise you. The Babylon Bee is proud to help parents make more well-informed decisions with the following list of differences between public school kids and homeschooled kids: Homeschooled Kids: Learn how to manufacture paste using complex chemical processes. Their mother then sells the paste as a side hustle. Public Schooled Kids: Eat paste. Homeschooled Kids: Read War and...

An Iowa school district has apologized for using a phrase attributed to Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi architect of the Holocaust, as its “Respect Quote of the Day.” The quote “My honor is my loyalty” was used over a public-address system for middle school students in Indianola on Monday — as well as in an email to parents, where it was attributed to “Heinrich H,” the Des Moines Register reported. Himmler’s actual phrase, “loyalty is my honor,” was used by the Schutzstaffel — the Nazi Party’s paramilitary group better known as the SS — to show loyalty to Adolf Hitler, according...

A teenage boy accused of punching and kicking his teaching assistant in a row over a Nintendo Switch has appeared in court and charged as an adult - after being arrested for battery three times in 2019. Brendan Depa, now 18 but who was 17 at the time of the alleged beating was led shackled into court in Florida wearing an orange jumpsuit on Monday to face charges of aggravated battery - a felony. He allegedly attacked teaching assistant Joan Naydich, 57, at Matanzas High School on February 21. The savage assault was caught on school surveillance cameras. The 6'6"...

The Colorado School district that wanted to ban a student from wearing a Gadsden Flag patch on his bookbag is now the target of a federal lawsuit for its handling of the situation. In August, Jaiden Rodriguez came under fire at the Vanguard School, part of Harrison School District 2 in Colorado Springs, when the school banned the flag patch before relenting as it became the focus of national attention... a video made the rounds of social media showing Jaiden’s mother explaining the history of the Revolutionary War flag to a school official who had believed the yellow flag with...

There is a saying that states the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This is true, but it represents only one form of insanity. Most of the other types are exhibited on a daily basis by those radical leftists who claim to be woke, when in reality they are anything but awake. For instance, the Western Heights School District (WHSD) in Oklahoma City, Okla., in June of this year named a drag queen to be the principal of John Glenn Elementary School. I guess this is the woke method of...

Western Heights Public School District in Oklahoma has reportedly hired a drag queen known as Carmen Deveraux, who works at Oklahoma City night club The Boom, as a kindergarten classroom assistant. The school previously defended its August decision to hire Dr. Shane Brent Murnan as an elementary school principal at John Glenn Elementary. Murnan is a drag queen who performs under the name Shantel Mandalay and has an arrest record for child pornography, the Substack newsletter V1sut first reported. In 2001, while working as a fifth-grade teacher at Will Rogers Elementary School in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Murnan was arrested two weeks...

A Maryland district court denied parents’ appeal to reinstate an opt-out policy in Montgomery County Public Schools on Thursday. The case, Tamer Mahmoud v. Monica B. McKnight, hinged on whether the district’s May decision to rescind its opt-out policy for LGBT curricula violated parents’ right to direct the religious instruction of their children. The court concluded that, “the plaintiffs’ asserted due process right to direct their children’s upbringing by opting out of a public-school curriculum that conflicts with their religious views is not a fundamental right.” Parents sought a preliminary injunction that would authorize opt-out options once school begins on...

COBB COUNTY, Ga. — The Cobb County School Board voted to terminate a teacher after she read a book about gender norms to her fifth-grade class. In a board meeting Thursday evening, the board voted 4-3 to fire Katie Rinderle. Rinderle, a longtime educator in the Cobb County School District, read a book called “My Shadow is Purple,” a book about gender norms. The termination comes a week after a tribunal proceeding was held to decide if she would keep, or lose, her job. The tribunal determined that she did violate part of Georgia’s new divisive concepts law, but they...

A Florida high school principal and four staffers were arrested after allegedly failing to report the alleged sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl to the state. Palm Beach Central High School Principal Darren Edgecomb, 58, was booked Monday night for his alleged failure, police said. Charges were also filed against assistant principal Dan Snider, 49, assistant principal Nereyda Garcia, 37, chorus teacher Scott Houchins, 53, and school behavioral therapist Priscilla Carter. Charging documents revealed that school administrators were alerted to the abuse on June 16, 2021, when a friend of the victim wrote a letter alleging that the 15-year-old had...

A teacher in the United States is fighting to keep her job after reading an Australian children’s picture book to her class. Katie Rinderle says she bought My Shadow is Purple at a school book fair and then put it in a list of options her students could choose to read back in March. The fifth-grade class – usually aged 10 or 11 – at Due West Elementary in Georgia chose My Shadow is Purple, which centers around a non-binary character. ... Ms. Rinderle was placed on administrative leave during an investigation and is now facing termination, with a public...

The school year has just finished, but fall will be here before you know it, bringing a whole slew of new woke subjects that will be taught to your unsuspecting children in public schools. You should be prepared! The Babylon Bee has compiled the following list of new subjects public schools are almost certain to be offering this fall. 1) How the Founding Fathers Were Literally Hitler: Though this has been taught as part of history classes for decades, it will now officially have its own separate subject. 2) How to Make Huge, Life-Changing Decisions Without Telling Your Parents: From...

There are many reasons why so many US public schools remained persistently closed for well over a year, but at the top of the list is Randi Weingarten. She is the President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and served as the self-appointed and media-anointed spokesperson for teachers’ unions throughout the pandemic. Weingarten appeared regularly across national media outlets for well over two years, relentlessly touting the dangers of public schools and the risk to teachers from in-person instruction. She also painted anyone who advocated for schools to open as heartless and cruel. Now that it’s become clear what...

A Temecula mother has complained that her 15-year-old daughter was made to read a sexually explicit play in drama class and is calling for a policy to prevent such instances in the future. Tracy Nolasco said her daughter, a Temecula Valley High School sophomore, had to read “Angels in America,” a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tony Kushner. The play, set in New York City in 1985, explores the AIDS epidemic as well as religion, race, politics, and homosexuality. Nolasco on Tuesday night, May 16, told the Temecula Valley school board that the drama describes sexual activity, sexual...

Sarah Bonner has been an Illinois middle school teacher for 20 years, and she has always tried to offer her students a diverse collection of books. One of those books was Juno Dawson’s “This Book is Gay.” It’s a bestselling nonfiction book that’s billed by its publisher as an entertaining and informative “instruction manual” for anyone coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans. “By Wednesday, I received notice that parents had gotten a hold of pictures from that book that their child had taken in class,” Bonner says. “By Friday, I was told that parents had filed a police...

It would be wrong to say that the dust has settled from the May 6 municipal elections, since there was never much dust kicked up in the first place. But something important happened that you might have missed, and it signals a shift in our politics in the region. You had to be paying close attention to school board races in Frisco, Plano and McKinney to catch it. But, in a nutshell, voters in those cities rejected candidates who represent a conservative movement aimed at taking control of local government offices, and especially school boards, in the suburbs. In Frisco,...