Free Republic

RICHMOND, Va. — Barack Obama Elementary School will not open this week due to mold, and students will temporarily relocate to Clark Springs Elementary School while remediation continues. Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras said in a message to families Monday that teachers and staff setting up classrooms discovered "additional areas of mold growth (for example, behind bulletin board paper)," prompting the district to send everyone home for additional cleaning and testing. "All of this is realistically going to take several days. So we will not be returning to the Obama building this week. Our goal is to do so...

Colorado state officials on Thursday morning released the results of spring 2023 K-12 achievement tests and the results are mixed -- suggesting that where students were developmentally when their learning was disrupted by the COVID pandemic may play a role in how well they're succeeding academically today. In the English Language Arts portion of the Colorado Measures of Academic Success for example, higher percentages of students in grades 5, 6 and 7 met or exceeded expectations than in 2022, but grades 3 and 4 saw drops or nominal gains. The CMAS tests students in grades 3-8, finding that across the...

Every generation searches for answers. Young people have always challenged the status quo, questioned authority and sought a better future than the one they inherited. That impulse is not only understandable, but it is often essential to a healthy democracy. It is how societies reform, innovate and correct injustice.Yet one question has resurfaced with increasing frequency on college campuses, social media and in political discourse: Why are some young people embracing communism or openly expressing sympathy for socialist and communist ideas despite the overwhelming historical record of communist governments?The answer deserves more than slogans or political attacks. It deserves honesty,...

From sexting to rape, there is a disturbing uptick in sexual misconduct by public school teachers and other staff against students across the United States.The growing problem was recently highlighted by an audit of Chicago public schools where dozens of staff members ranging from teachers, administrators, and counselors, to security officers—even a sign language interpreter—were found guilty of committing a variety of sex crimes against students while in school.The audit was conducted by the Sexual Assault Unit of the Chicago school’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG).The OIG did not respond to inquiries by The Epoch Times about the audit’s...

Denver Public Schools board members voted unanimously May 20 to dismiss a 50-year-old foreign language teacher following a district investigation and an independent review into student complaints about a class assignment. The board voted 7-0 after meeting in executive session to consider the firing of Jennifer Honka. Honka taught French Language and Culture at Northeast Early College for all of her eight years with the district. Officially, Honka was fired for incompetence and neglect of duty. There was no public debate among the board members prior to the vote. Honka's classroom instruction first came into question during the 2023-24 school...

The Denver Public Schools Board of Education voted UNANIMOUSLY to dismiss French teacher Jennifer Honka. Honka, who taught at Northeast Early College high school, reportedly made female students kiss each other during classroom skits and graded them on their performance. . . One student who refused to participate testified she received a zero on the assignment. Students told other teachers they felt pressured and uncomfortable being forced to engage in these highly personal and sexualized role-plays in front of classmates.

American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten tapped hundreds of thousands in union resources to help write her controversial book — working with a team that raked in more than $1.4 million from the labor group, a new analysis found. Weingarten used the abundance of union-fueled resources for the liberal agenda-pushing “Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy” then pocketed a portion of the proceeds, the Freedom Foundation claimed in a new report. Her team included an attorney who supposedly worked on the book pro bono but whose firm raked in $977,000 for various work for...

A first-grade teacher in Washington state allegedly admitted to her husband that she cheated on him with a 16-year-old student — with whom she had sex in his truck, according to court documents. Mackenzie Naught, 25, allegedly fessed up to her hubby Saturday night, just hours before being arrested on child sex crimes on Sunday, the Spokesman-Review reported. The educator from Whitman County said she became physical with the teen the week before in his truck during a meet-up in the dead of night, according to court docs.

The Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, blasted what she described as a troubling lack of patriotism among some public school teachers and administrators at an event titled “The Roadmap for Restoring American Education” at Yale University this week. She recalled a moment in which a principal told her that students at his school did not know the words to the Pledge of Allegiance, and that he had told them they were not required to pledge allegiance to the American flag, but instead to the “spirit” of the United States, or to any flag they chose. Education Secretary Linda McMahon lamented...

A growing national debate over politics in the classroom is now taking center stage in Florida, as parents, educators, and lawmakers wrestle with a question that has become increasingly difficult to ignore: Are personal political beliefs affecting students in the classroom? National data has consistently shown that public school teachers tend to lean left politically, with a majority identifying with or supporting the Democratic Party. While that alone does not indicate bias in the classroom, it has raised concerns among many parents-particularly those aligned with the political movement surrounding Donald Trump-that the current political climate may be influencing how, and...

An Illinois school district honored a biological male in celebration of Women’s History Month on Thursday. Batavia Public School District 101 honored Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, who claims to be a transgender woman, in a since-deleted Thursday Facebook post, a week after they honored astronaut Mae Jemison. McBride was involved in controversy over which restroom would be used after being first elected to the United States House of Representatives in 2024. “Sarah McBride was born on August 9th, 1990, in Wilmington, Delaware. At a young age, she became interested in politics and government. McBride eventually ran for the...

Parents surprised to see a man with a beard wearing makeup and a dress at Countryside Elementary. He uses a man’s name but instructs the children to call him “Miss”. Parents were not informed of the staff change.

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has been forced to delete a post urging the 'ultra-wealthy' to fully fund city schools after it was mocked online for misspelling 'governor.' On Tuesday, the CTU posted a flyer across X, Facebook and TikTok calling on the public to push state leaders to tax billionaires, months after a report found the district is $1.6 billion short of necessary funding, according to Chicago Public Media. A damning report revealed that last year, over half of Chicago students couldn't read at grade level, and nearly three-quarters failed to reach math proficiency on state tests, according to...

Do parents have a right not to be lied to by a government school if their child starts undertaking a gender transition? That’s now a live legal dispute, and over the holidays a federal judge took the side of parents in a case from California. His ruling was stayed for now by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but one of these cases could make it to the Supreme Court. The California policies “are designed to create a zone of secrecy around a school student who expresses gender incongruity,” as Judge Roger Benitez writes. Children as young as two years...

As national education spending per pupil rises, student enrollment is dropping and test scores across the United States are falling, which raises concern over how effectively taxpayer dollars are being used in public schools. Since 2002, K-12 public school spending has increased by more than 35%, yet enrollment has dropped 2.1%, which is over a million students over the past five years. Student achievement has also declined, with only one-third of students nationwide scoring at or above the proficient level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading, according to the National Assessment Governing Board. Currently, 40% of fourth...

In yet another shocking example of radical left ideology infiltrating public schools, a “non-binary” Baltimore high school English teacher has come under intense fire for sharing explicit kink-related content on social media, including videos where he role-plays as a pregnant woman with enormous prosthetic breasts. James Roman Stilipec, 50, who goes by “Jay Aress” online and teaches ninth-grade students at Reach! Partnership School, has been blasted by parents and conservative groups for flaunting his fetishes publicly, raising serious questions about his fitness to be around impressionable teens. Stilipec, a former U.S. Navy veteran with 36DDD breast implants he proudly calls...

Students attending American public schools are struggling. Test scores from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), released this year, indicate that 33% of 8th graders—a greater percentage than ever before—are reading at the “below basic” level.Additionally, only 22% of high school seniors are proficient or above in math, down from 24% in 2019, and only 35% are proficient in reading—the lowest score since NAEP began in 1969—down from 37% in 2019. Also, a record-high percentage scored at “below basic” levels in both math and reading compared to all previous assessments.Parents across the country, especially in big cities, have...

Post See new posts Conversation Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh 🚨 JUST IN: Parents are SUING a Colorado school after their 11-year-old daughter was FORCED to share a bed with a biological male, without even telling the parents That is absolutely DISGUSTING and INFURIATING. Transgenderism has gone way too far. "Putting that person into a s*x segregated bed with a girl is just completely UNACCEPTABLE." "A young girl who's on an overnight school trip, who finds out in the moment that not only is she sharing a room with someone with male genitalia, she is in a bed with that person!" "And...

The ACLJ is taking decisive action after a New York school district exposed seventh-grade students to pornographic images under the guise of an “art lesson” – and then attempted to downplay what happened. The Watertown City School District didn’t just fail its duty to protect children; it violated the constitutional rights of parents and traumatized children. We are now demanding immediate accountability. Our clients, Stephanie Boyanski and Jessy Roberts, were horrified to learn that their seventh-grade children were assigned to visit an unvetted website containing graphic sexual images as part of an art project. The teacher, Ms. Bridgette Gates, displayed...

Over the past few years, a huge number of schools in the United States and around the world have banned cell phone use among their students.Gothamist spoke to students about their experience with the ban, and the number one takeaway didn’t have to do with anything to do with hot-button topics like social media addiction or cyberbullying. Instead, it was that kiboshing phones is forcing kids to actually talk to each other in meatspace again — and it’s making schools way noisier, for better or worse.“Sometimes I would take naps in the lunchroom, but now I can’t because of the...