Free Republic

CARROLL COUNTY, Tenn. (WZTV) — A school bus carrying students and staff from the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System was involved in a deadly crash in Carroll County while traveling to a field trip, authorities said. Officials said the bus, from Kenwood Middle School, was headed to Jackson when it was involved in a crash with another vehicle near the intersection of Highway 70 and Cedar Grove. The Tennessee Highway Patrol is leading the investigation. Families of everyone on board have been contacted, according to school officials, who said they do not yet have additional confirmed details about the crash.

A Washington state special needs student who graduated with a padded 3.78 GPA is suing her school district, claiming her diploma was a “participation trophy” that propelled her into financial strain. Makena Simonsen claimed she graduated from the Edmonds School District in Lynwood reading at first-grade level — and was handed a high school diploma that blocked her from entering a free vocational program that helps special needs grads transition to independent life, King 5 reported. “I should have earned that diploma,” the 22-year-old former student charged. “Not just something that really got me nowhere.” Makena Simonsen claimed she graduated...

Virginia's legislature has passed a bill prohibiting schools from teaching what it considers to be falsehoods about the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, including portraying it "as peaceful protest." The General Assembly approved the measure Thursday, as a first-of-its-kind legislation to combat false statements by supporters of President Trump. The bill says that school instruction must "Not describe, portray, or present as credible a description or portrayal of the actions precipitating or involved in the events of the January 6, 2021, insurrection as peaceful protest." Schools may also not "state, suggest, or present as credible a statement or suggestion...

Nobody should be surprised that Iran has adopted the Hamas strategy of conducting warfare out of hospitals and schools, and I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that Pravda is covering it up. Yet I continue to be a bit shocked at the latter, because I still can't quite wrap my head around the idea that an institution that is key to upholding Western constitutional values would betray us in favor of the worst people on Earth. Silly me. There really is no level of depravity to which many of these people will not stoop. Holy sh*t Members of the basij...

The federal investigation into the Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent, whose home and school office were raided Wednesday, may be tied to a failed multimillion-dollar AI school contract involving a potential conflict of interest. Alberto Carvalho previously awarded a $6 million contract, paying $3 million up front, to education technology company AllHere. A former salesperson employed by the firm also had her Miami property raided the same day as Carvalho, according to public records cited by the Los Angeles Times. The woman, Debra Kerr, reportedly had close ties to Carvalho during his tenure leading Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Spokesperson...

Yunqing Jian, 33, first entered the country on a fraudulently obtained F1 student visa, the FBI says Fusarium graminearum creates "head blight," a disease of wheat, barley, maize and rice, and "is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year," according to the Department of Justice. It is also toxic to humans, and can cause vomiting, liver damage and "reproductive defects in humans and livestock." The affidavit, which said Jian has been attempting to smuggle the pathogen into the U.S. since she began post-doctoral studies funded by China in 2022, also accuses Jian of asking a third...

WASHINGTON (TNND) — Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that a transgender teacher, who “identified” as a wolf, was fired from his position as a pre-K and Kindergarten substitute teacher and teacher’s aide at an elementary school located on Fort Bragg military base. “The ‘Wolf’ was fired 2 weeks ago,” Hegseth wrote on X. His post included a link to an article written by Christian Broadcasting Group, which detailed the bizarre and unsettling behaviors of the substitute teacher toward the students. Military parents of the Mildrid E. Poole elementary school students said that the teacher, a biological male, would...

Montgomery County, Maryland, Board of Education must pay $1.5 million in damages to Becket’s clients and comply with court-enforced protections for parental rights following the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling inMahmoud v. Taylor. The case arose after the School Board took away parental notice and opt-outs for storybooks that promote gender transitioning, Pride parades, and pronoun preferences to children as young as three and four (Watch this podcast episode to learn more). Becket represented a diverse coalition of religious parents including Muslims, Christians, and Jews, who successfully challenged the policy at the Supreme Court. In the Court’s 6-3 ruling last summer,...

An Auburn, Washington mother was irate upon learning that her daughter's middle school (Olymic Middle school) permitted their students to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during school hours. Video:

Hundreds of students staged a walkout at several schools across Albuquerque on Tuesday in protest of immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump. The nationwide "Free America Walkout" saw students at six Albuquerque Public Schools campuses leave their classes, according to a statement from the district. The students walked out at 2 p.m. in protest of recent actions taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Students at Manzano, Highland, Sandia, Albuquerque High, Del Norte and Eldorado high schools joined in the walkout. In an official statement, APS said the district “does not sponsor or encourage walkouts, but we understand...

Summary Parents are guarding schools after reports of ICE activity ICE presence has cut attendance and pushed some schools to cancel or move online DHS denies targeting schools, but families and educators report detentions nearby MINNEAPOLIS, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Peter Brown's gray mustache and beard were matted with ice as he stood watch on a frigid Friday afternoon outside Green Central Elementary, not far from where a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Good last week.Wearing a neon green vest and equipped with a whistle and walkie-talkie, Brown, an 81-year-old retired lawyer who lives nearby,...

Parents at an elementary school in Kansas are upset after students were reportedly told that they were not allowed to list President Donald Trump or late conservative activist Charlie Kirk as their role models for an assignment. The situation happened at Marshall Elementary School in Eureka, Kansas, in October. A formal complaint said the incident only recently came to light because students were originally instructed not to tell their parents about what happened. The American Center for Law & Justice, described as “a politically conservative, Christian-based legal organization,” has filed a civil rights complaint with the school. The organization said...

Only 34% of students in the Saint Paul School District are meeting grade-level reading standards. Maybe they should focus on teaching kids to read instead of teaching them how to protest for leftist causes

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...

In a request for opinion filed to state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office on Dec. 12, Hancock asked whether schools could be excluded from the program if they were linked to a “foreign terrorist organization” or a “foreign adversary.” Hancock suggested schools that had hosted events for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group which Gov. Greg Abbott recently designated as a terrorist organization, would be affected. Abbott’s designation of CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization is part of an uptick in Texas politicians’ criticisms of Islam and the presence of Muslim organizations in the state. The...

In California, US District Court Judge Roger Benitez issued a summary judgment declaring a state law requiring public school teachers to conceal the transgender declarations of their students from their parents unconstitutional, saying "parents and guardians have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence. Teachers and school staff have a federal constitutional right to accurately inform the parent or guardian when the student expresses gender incongruence. These federal constitutional rights are superior to any state or local laws, state or local regulations, or state or local policies to the contrary." Judge...

Parents have a constitutional right to be informed if their child starts to present as a different gender at school, and schools can’t hide that information from parents, a San Diego federal judge ruled in a class-action lawsuit. In a 52-page decision handed down Monday night, Dec. 22, Judge Roger Benitez ruled that parents have a constitutional right to know if their child may be transgender and that California public schools cannot prevent employees from notifying parents. In a separate order, he barred them from violating that right. The injunction bans public school employees from misleading parents about their child’s...

The education story of the year has been the “Southern Surge.” An intrepid group of southern states have led the nation in post-pandemic recovery. In a decade, Mississippi moved from 49th to seventh in the nation on fourth-grade reading scores, despite remaining the poorest state. According to Harvard’s 2024 Education Recovery Scorecard, Louisiana is the only state to recover to 2019 achievement levels in both reading and math, while Alabama matched pre-Covid scores in fourth-grade math alone. All other states continue to lag prior achievement levels. Much of this success has rightly been credited to a handful of commonsense reforms:...

The Trump administration’s focus on immigration enforcement across the country is alleviating the heavy burden of illegals diverting public services, as school systems are reporting significant drops in enrollment after having been overrun with countless migrants, many of whom do not speak English. “One of the victims of Biden’s open border polices was America’s students whose schools became overcrowded[;] teachers, aides and resources, including for disabled students, were diverted to the millions of illegal aliens the Biden Administration flooded into our country,” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told The Federalist. “President Trump is...

WASHINGTON — Libby Hilsenrath’s eight-year odyssey to protect her son from what she considered unconstitutional religious indoctrination has reached the final chapter. Last week, the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, filed a Reply Brief on her behalf — the final written plea to the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse lower court decisions which affirmed Chatham Middle School teaching seventh grade students: “May God help us all find the true faith, Islam.” Libby Hilsenrath, reflecting on the uncertainty of the High Court’s weighty decision, commented: “This is the path God...