FBI Whistleblower: ‘Nobody I Know Signed Up’ to Investigate Parents Who Vented at School Board Meetings

An FBI whistleblower who was recently suspended said in an interview this week that he became a whistleblower last November because of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s email ordering the FBI to use Patriot Act counterterrorism tools to target parents at school board meetings.

Special Agent Kyle Seraphin, who was indefinitely suspended on June 1 after nearly six years with the Bureau, said that he was so disturbed by the directive, he went to his congresswoman’s office in New Mexico, and made a “protected disclosure.”

Read the full story

Some Michigan Schools Keep Mum on COVID Relief Spending

Theoretically, taxpayers should be able to see how Michigan schools are spending $5.7 billion of taxpayer money to recover from COVID-19-related learning loss.

But an investigation by The Center Square through more than 80 records requests to schools statewide shows how difficult it can be to obtain itemized COVID spending records. Many schools never responded to an initial Freedom of Information Act request.

Read the full story

Pennsylvania House Republicans Want Education Secretary’s Gender Policy Reversed — or His Resignation

Twenty Republican members of Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives this week called on acting Pennsylvania Education Secretary Eric Hagarty to reverse controversial state guidelines concerning schools’ treatment of sex and gender. 

On a webpage titled “Creating Gender-Inclusive Schools and Classrooms,” the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) calls “binary gender,” e.g., the idea that gender and biological sex are properly denoted as either “male” or “female,” a “faulty concept.” The document also suggests that teachers host a “gender-neutral day” for students above the second grade wherein kids would identify ways in which they will eschew gender stereotypes on that day. Elsewhere, the guidance counsels teachers to ask a student his or her gender identity before assuming the right pronouns by which to call the child. 

Read the full story

Ohio Students Could Be Allowed Excused Mental Health Days from School

Ohio could join 11 other states and allow students to miss school if they feel the need to stay home that day for their mental health.

A bill proposed in the Ohio House would give K-12 students three mental health days a year, defining mental health days as a “school day during which a student attends to the student’s emotional and psychological well-being in lieu of attending school.”

Read the full story

Ducey Appeals Ruling Against Arizona’s Limiting COVID Relief to Open Schools

Gov. Doug Ducey is appealing a federal judge’s decision blocking his decision to withhold federal COVID-19 relief to unopened schools. 

While Arizona had lifted all mask mandates in April 2021, some schools still maintained a mask requirement.

To incentivize the removal of classroom mask policies, Ducey restricted a $163 million aid package to maskless, opened schools. The aid amounts to $1,080 per student. The state funding came from the $2 billion in federal stimulus money from the American Recovery Plan Act.

Read the full story

Michigan Schools Are Getting Paid to Change Their ‘Racist’ Mascots

Several Michigan school districts will receive more than $400,000 in funding to change their mascots, according to a Native American Heritage Fund (NAHF) press release.

NAHF, which receives some of Michigan’s gaming revenue, is giving $411,438 out of $480,000 in grants to four districts with mascots that depict Native Americans, according to a press release from the fund. Each school district will receive the funds for its transformation in August.

Read the full story

DeWine Tells Ohio School Leaders Arming Teachers Remains Optional

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, in a letter to school superintendents around the state, called arming teachers in classrooms a serious local decision that remains optional after he signed a new law that reduces training needed for guns in schools.

DeWine, who recently signed House Bill 99, also told school leaders he would rather districts use school resource officers than armed teachers.

Read the full story

Poll: Racial and Sexual Curricula in Schools Dividing Americans

According to a new poll, Americans are divided along party lines on the question of whether or not to actively teach about race and sexuality in public schools.

The Associated Press reports that the poll by the University of Chicago, AP, and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research asked two questions of respondents: Do parents have too little, too much, or about the right amount of influence over what their children learn, and do teachers have too little, too much, or about the right amount of influence in the same area?

Read the full story

Arizona Schools Must Give Students Moment of Silence Each Day

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed a bill to ensure that students will have time to take a moment of silence at school each day.

Ducey signed House Bill 2707. It’s a bill that requires all public and charter schools to give students a moment of silence at the beginning of the day. The one-to-two-minute moment of silence can be used in a way determined by the student and their parents.

Read the full story

Commentary: Parents Can Fight and Defeat Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory sign with a table of books

Five years ago, hardly anyone knew what Critical Race Theory (CRT) was, but now the phrase is a common one in American households. The Marxist-based theory advocating a race-essentialist approach to education, law, public policy, and even health care, seeks to deconstruct the foundations of society and rebuild it as “antiracist,” while discriminating against whites along the way. Many people are overwhelmed with both the pervasiveness of the doctrine and the large task of fighting it.

Parents in Loudon County, VA, have tackled the issue head on, making national news by loudly criticizing CRT and electing school board members opposed to it. Such efforts, however, have been piecemeal nationwide.  

Momentum in fighting this hate-doctrine is growing, though, and many parents want to know how they can protect their children and eradicate such teaching from their local schools. Catrin Wigfall, a Policy Fellow with the Center of the American Experiment, offers some practical ways parents can fight CRT.

Read the full story

Michigan Parents Demand Resignation of School Board and Administrators

student and teacher reading together

A group of parents in Rochester, Mich., are demanding a dramatic change in school leadership.

Parents expressed their anger at Rochester Community Public Schools administrators and school board members during a Monday meeting. Parents are demanding the school board fire Superintendent Robert Shaner, then tender their resignations.

The parents’ pique was prompted by revelations school employees were monitoring parents’ social media accounts, compiling dossiers of publicly disgruntled mothers and fathers, and phoning parents’ employers, which, in the case of Elena Dinverno, resulted in her firing.

Read the full story

Most Minnesota School Districts Facing Budget Shortfalls amid Enrollment Decline

empty hallway

Minnesota school districts belonging to the Association of Metropolitan School Districts (AMSD), a lobbying organization, are facing a collective budget shortfall of $235.3 million for the upcoming 2022-23 school year.

That figure comes from the results of an AMSD survey taken by 45 school districts across the state.

For example, Minneapolis and Saint Paul Public Schools are facing respective shortfalls of $59.5 million and $42.8 million — approximately 43% of the combined shortfall. Only eight school districts that took the survey reported no projected shortfalls.

Read the full story

Rochester Schools Collect Dossier, Call Employers on Critical Parents

Rochester Community School (RCS) officials were sued for compiling a dossier on parents who commented negatively on the school’s virtual learning policy. One official even called a parent’s employer, which possibly resulted in the parent’s termination.

Parent Elena Dinverno sued the district in 2021, claiming school officials called her place of work in the fall of 2020, and told her employer Dinverno was part of a group threatening the school district. She was fired in December 2020.

The Detroit News first reported the story.

Read the full story

Commentary: Mike Rowe Scholarship Highlights the Lost Virtues of Hard Work and Sweat

Tracy Wilson is sitting in the cutest little ranch house in this Calvert County town. It is her dream house—literally her dream house, she explains, as she has had the image of this very home in her mind, down to the color scheme of the exterior.

It is 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and the single mother of two just got home from another dream—her job. She spends her days working as an instrumentation technician in the flight test program at Boeing.

Read the full story

Country Music Star John Rich Testifies Before Tennessee House Criminal Justice Committee on Pornographic Material in Schools

Country music singer-songwriter and Nashvillian John Rich testified before the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee Wednesday regarding legislation dealing with pornographic and obscene material in K-12 Tennessee schools.

According to the sponsor of HB1944, Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka), alluding to the turmoil expressed across the state, the bill creates a process to deal with such materials that have found their way into classrooms and libraries.

Read the full story

Wisconsin Assembly Approves Multiple Education-Focused Bills

The Wisconsin Assembly approved multiple pieces of legislation focused on education-related issues, sending the bills to the Wisconsin Senate for full legislative approval.

One of the bills is a “parental bill of rights” that would establish certain legal rights for parents throughout the state, like maintaining a voice surrounding education curriculum taught to their child or choice in medical decisions. 

Read the full story

Washington, D.C. Lifting COVID Mask, Vaccine Mandates but Face-Covers Still Required in Schools

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is lifting the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and will not extend its mask requirement into March.

The Democratic mayor also says that as of Tuesday many businesses in the nation’s capital will no longer be required to check that customers have at least one dose of the vaccine before allowing them to enter. However, they will still be allowed to make such a request on their own, according to dcist.com.

Read the full story

Over Half of Americans Don’t Think Schools Need to Teach About the Ongoing Impact of Slavery and Racism

Over half of Americans don’t think schools have a responsibility to teach students about the ongoing impact of slavery and racism, according to according to a poll released Monday by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University in partnership with APM Research Lab.

Two-thirds of Republican respondents and almost half of Independents said educators should only teach the history of slavery, according to the “Mood of the Nation” poll. Only one-fifth of Democratic respondents said exclusively the history of slavery should be taught.

Read the full story

Commentary: Democrats Want to Destroy Your Children

No, this is not another Qanon or Pizzagate conspiracy theory. It’s a sober recitation of the facts and incidents that can support no other conclusion.

Let’s start with one important stage-setting fact: According to OpenSecrets.org two organizations account for practically all of the contributions made by teachers unions: The National Education Association (about $20 million in 2016) and the American Federation of Teachers (almost $12 million). Both groups — which compete for members, but also collaborate with each other through the NEA-AFT Partnership — are consistently among the organizations that contribute the most money to candidates and political groups. From 2004 to 2016, their donations grew from $4.3 million to more than $32 million — an all-time high.

Even more than most labor unions, they have little use for Republicans, giving Democrats at least 94 percent of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties since as far back as 1990, where the Open Secrets’ data begins. Go here for a detailed breakdown of teachers union political giving.

Read the full story

Metro Nashville Council Passes Resolution Requesting Metro Employees Undergo Implicit Bias Training, Allocates over $20 Million in Taxpayer Funds for Economic Recovery

The Metro Nashville Council passed a resolution requesting that Metro Nashville employees undergo implicit bias training at their February 1, 2022 meeting.

A late resolution was filed by councilmembers Joy Styles, Sandra Sepulveda, Jennifer Gamble, and Brandon Taylor. It is a resolution “requesting the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County to provide implicit bias training to all employees” and “employees of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County should be required to attend training on implicit bias and the promotion of bias-reducing strategies to address unintended biases regarding race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or other characteristics.” There was no objection to the resolution coming to a vote. The resolution passed by voice vote with Councilmember Allen abstaining.

Read the full story

Commentary: Tennessee Republicans Will Work to Keep Communities and Schools Safe in 2022

School bus

Tennessee voters spoke loud and clear last November when they overwhelmingly elected Republicans to represent them at every level. I’m extremely proud that Republicans in the Tennessee General Assembly have delivered on the promise to uphold conservative values, increase economic opportunities, improve public safety and strengthen education. We still have much work to do and we will continue to work to address these priorities during this upcoming legislative session. 

Our state budget is probably the most significant component of public policy our governor and General Assembly tackle each year. Unlike the federal government, Tennessee’s constitution requires us to balance our budget. The federal government’s debt has amassed to almost $30 trillion, something we should all be concerned about for future generations to come.

Our primary goal each year is always the same: to pass a balanced budget. From top to bottom, Tennessee’s $42.6 billion zero-debt budget is a spending plan that addresses the priorities and needs of all Tennesseans. 

Read the full story

Thousands of Students Plan School Walkouts Across the U.S. in Protest of in-Person Learning

Boy walking down a school hallway

Students across the U.S. are planning school walkouts in protest of in-person learning as COVID-19 cases spike amid the rise of the Omicron coronavirus variant.

There are nearly 3,500 schools actively disrupted as of Friday, according to Burbio’s K-12 School Opening Tracker, which tracks school closures for 1,200 districts, including the 200 largest school districts in the nation.

On Tuesday, New York City students staged a walkout in protest of in-person learning over what they said were concerns about testing and safety mitigation measures. NYC Mayor Eric Adams said school was the “safest place” for children during a Friday news conference.

Read the full story

School District Openly Promotes Implementation of CRT, High School Presentation Discusses ‘Pyramid of White Supremacy’

Girl standing up in the middle of classroom

A high school in Oregon gave a presentation featuring a “Pyramid of White Supremacy” that discussed concepts like “white fragility” and “white saviorism,” according to documents obtained by Parents Defending Education.

Grant High School in Portland, Oregon, taught students about equity and racial justice as part of its “Race Forward” project from December of 2021, according to documents obtained by Parents Defending Education (PDE).

The presentation defined “whiteness” in connection with “the belief that white people are the standard in society” and said “white fragility” is demonstrated by white people showing discomfort and defensiveness “when confronted by information about racism,” such as “bringing up having family members or friends who are Black.”

Read the full story

Former Obama White House Adviser Pleads Guilty in Scheme to Steal $218k From Schools He Founded

Former Obama White House adviser Seth Andrew this week pleaded guilty to participating in a wire fraud scheme in which he attempted to steal over $200,000 from a network of schools he helped found.

Andrew “admitted today to devising a scheme to steal from the very same schools he helped create,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement on the Justice Department’s website.

“Andrew now faces time in federal prison for abusing his position and robbing those he promised to help,” Williams noted.

Read the full story

Wisconsin Schools, Public Health Managers Change Coronavirus Rules for Students

students working on school work and wearing masks

School kids across Wisconsin will likely miss fewer days because of a change in the state’s coronavirus rules.

Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services on Monday sent a letter to every school in the state, informing them of new guidance for coronavirus isolations and quarantines.

“Science shows that the majority of SARS-CoV-2 transmission happens early in the illness, so CDC has shortened the recommended length of isolation from ten days to five days for people with COVID-19 who do not have any COVID-19 symptoms or symptoms have resolved or are improving after five days,” DHS wrote in its letter.

Read the full story

Commentary: The Fixation on COVID Testing Is Leading to the Widespread Disruption of Another Academic Year

Last week, a friend phoned to tell me that her child would be unable to make a playdate with my 8-year-old scheduled for the following day. Her son had tested negative for COVID that evening, yet she planned to take him for another PCR test the next morning “out of an abundance of caution.” Days earlier, a neighborhood mom was so distraught that her daughter had shared the same bus with a classmate who was later discovered to have had COVID that she insisted on stocking up on at-home testing kits for use every day that week. Despite displaying no symptoms and being fully vaccinated, the child and her siblings were subjected to daily nasal swabs.

While television programs like HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm poke fun at liberals who stockpile COVID essentials, progressive professionals who retain the luxury and time to devote to their hypochondria are inevitably contributing to the nationwide shortfall of available tests while undermining the efforts of Americans whose testing needs revolve around a real exposure to the virus. Yet, as has been the case since the beginning of the pandemic, American children continue to pay the heftiest price for the Left’s misguided and irresponsible conduct.

Read the full story

Mayor Frey Pleads with Minneapolis Schools to Stay Open so Kids Can’t Carjack

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is calling on local schools to remain open so that juveniles have far fewer opportunities to engage in carjackings and other crimes.

Frey made his plea at a Wednesday press conference with Deputy Chief Amelia Huffman on the city’s high violent crime rate.

“We’ve gotta keep the schools open. This is very clear to me,” he said. “Yes, we need to make sure we’re abiding by the necessary safety precautions. Yes, we need to make sure anyone from parents to teachers to students are protected in full from the dangers associated with a global pandemic, and we need to make sure the students are in the schools and that they’re able to learn.”

Read the full story

Arizona Gov. Ducey and Gubernatorial Candidate Kari Lake Differ on Putting Cameras in Classrooms

Leading Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake voiced support for putting cameras in schools in order to allow parents to monitor what educators are teaching their children, and Gov. Doug Ducey responded by criticizing the idea. 

Ducey said during a press conference that it could lead to “predators” monitoring children, the Arizona Capitol Times reported. “We’ve got young kids in these classrooms,” he said. “We want to protect them from predators, of course.” 

Read the full story

Homeless Encampments Begin Forming Near Schools in Los Angeles

Homeless encampments have begun cropping up near schools throughout the city of Los Angeles, even despite a citywide ban on any such encampments near public areas, as reported by the Epoch Times.

The Los Angeles City Council had previously passed a new resolution, Ordinance 41.18, which was signed into law by Mayor Eric Garcetti (D-Calif.), forbidding any such homeless camps from being set up within 500 feet of “sensitive-use” areas, including schools, daycares, libraries, and parks. The ordinance also banned such camps from forming near freeway overpasses and underpasses, ramps, tunnels, and bridges.

But in order for the ordinance to be enforced, each individual district’s councilmember must introduce a motion to do so, which then must be approved by the council. As such, homeless encampments have begun sprouting up near schools in the Venice Beach neighborhood, which falls under District 11; that district is represented by Councilman Mike Bonin (D-Calif.), who has a history of refusing to enforce anti-homeless measures for other districts, and has not yet introduced any such measures to protect his own district.

Read the full story

Commentary: The Biggest Junk Science of 2021

Doctor with protective gloves handling vaccine

Just as it did last year, the most dangerous pandemic in a century spawned all sorts of junk science in 2021, running the gamut from pure quackery to ideology-fueled misinformation. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to spot junk science, especially when it’s disguised in techno-babble or parroted by governments, doctors, or other traditionally trusted sources. This sneakiness, combined with the unprecedented stress of a novel, highly-infectious disease, makes almost anyone prone to falling for BS.

To help identify junk science in the future, it’s useful to showcase junk science from the present and past. Here are six of the worst examples from this year:

6. Star NFL Quarterback Aaron Rodgers Was ‘Immunized’ Against COVID-19 With Homeopathy. Through much of the NFL season, Green Bay Packers starting quarterback Aaron Rodgers led reporters and fans to believe that he had been vaccinated against COVID-19. But when Rodgers was diagnosed with the illness in early November, it was revealed that he had not in fact been vaccinated, but rather had been ‘immunized’ with a homeopathic remedy. Homeopathy is a ridiculous, utterly disproven pseudoscience based on the magical notions that “like cures like” and that water can ‘remember’ the essence of a substance. Furthermore, according to practitioners, diluting a substance down to infinitesimal, often nonexistent amounts actually makes the homeopathic remedy stronger. In keeping with this fairytale logic, Rodgers likely imbibed a homeopathic potion (essentially just water) that before dilution may have had some sort of virus in it, and claimed that it raised his antibody levels, rendering him ‘immunized’. It’s utter nonsense.

Read the full story

Ohio Lawmaker Wants Parents to Know What’s Being Taught In Schools

Ohio schools would be required to tell parents nearly everything about their child’s education, rather than only when asked, if proposed legislation becomes law.

Rep. Brett Hillyer, R-Uhrichsville, said talks of what children are being taught in schools around the country have turned into heated debate, and he believes parents want to be engaged in what their children should and should not be taught in Ohio classrooms.

“The Education Transparency Act ensures exactly that, transparency,” Hillyer said. “The purpose of the bill is to better equip parents to be engaged in their child’s education experience by giving them the transparency they have been clamoring for.”

Read the full story

Pennsylvania Gov. Wolf Vetoes Education-Transparency Bill

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) this week vetoed legislation that would have directed school districts to publish their curricula online.

State Rep. Andrew Lewis (R-Harrisburg) sponsored the bill to provide a “standardized, simple and user-friendly” means for residents to review the general lesson plans and the titles of textbooks to which children in their districts are subject. New or revised plans would have had to appear online within 30 days of their approval. The representative has observed that many parents have publicly voiced frustration about their inability to ascertain their kids’ curricula ahead of time, with some speaking to him directly about the issue.

Read the full story

Ohio Ranks Poorly in Terms of Freedom, Report Says

Ohioans are not as free as much of the rest of the nation, according to a new report released by the Cato Institute. And things are getting worse.

The report calls Ohio “thoroughly mediocre when it comes to freedom,” ranking the Buckeye State above average in fiscal policy but poorly on both regulatory and personal freedom issues. Overall, the report ranked the state 31st in the nation in terms of freedom, a spot lower than last year and two below its peak in 2016.

Read the full story

Federally Funded Critical Race Theory Program Removes ‘Critical Race Theory’ from Description

Five years ago, the U.S. Department of Education approved a grant application for a summer research program whose “core feature” was introducing student fellows to “critical race theory.”

The feds approved a five-year extension of the original grant for the Research Institute for Scholars of Equity (RISE) this year, with one notable and unexplained omission: the term “critical race theory.”

Read the full story

Arizona School District Opens Probe into Dossier Assembled on Parents Opposing Board President

An Arizona school district announced Friday night is has hired a forensic investigator to determine if school resources were used to “compile, access or modify” a private dossier on parents critical of the school board president.

The Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) acknowledged it was aware of allegations that the dossier may have been assembled by School Board President Jann-Michael Greenburg’s father, Michael, a local activist, and some of its contents shared by the school board president.

The district “began the process of hiring an independent forensic investigator to determine if any school resources were used to compile, access or modify the private dossier allegedly created and maintained in Google drive folders by Mark Greenburg, the father of SUSD Board President Jann-Michael Greenburg, and shared by the latter,” Superintendent Scott A. Menzel announced.

Read the full story

Attorney General Garland Grilled by GOP Senators over Department of Justice Memo Targeting Parents at School Meetings

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday faced a litany of hard-edged Senate questions about agreeing to allow federal law enforcement to investigate alleged incidents of outspoken parents at school board meetings.

Garland, in a memo, agreed to responded to a Sept. 29 letter from the National School Board Association to President Biden asking that the FBI, Justice Department and other federal agencies to investigate potential acts of domestic terrorism at the meetings. Parents across the nation have been voicing their concerns about the curricula being taught to their children, in addition to instances like the one currently playing out in northern Virginia, in which there was an apparent coverup of the sexual assault of a female student in a bathroom.

Read the full story

Consultants Are Raking in Millions Promoting Critical Race Theory in Schools, According to Conservative Advocacy Group

Diversity, equity and inclusion consultants are getting paid millions of dollars by public schools “to push divisive ideologies” to transform American schools “from institutions of education to places of woke indoctrination,” according to a conservative education advocacy group. 

Parents Defending Education (PDE) spent four months compiling data for its “Consultant Report Card” released Thursday, which investigates 543 public school districts and agencies across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Read the full story

Proposed Law Would End Ohio Sales Tax on Guns, Ammunition, Knives

Sales tax would no longer be collected on guns, ammunition and knives in Ohio if a bill planned for introduction in the state House of Representatives becomes law.

State GOP Rep. Al Cutrona recently announced he will introduce legislation that would exempt those items from sales tax, saying the move would help make gun, ammunition and knife retailers and manufacturers more competitive with neighboring states.

Read the full story

Parents Allege Arizona School Disregarded Opt-Out from ‘Gruesome’ Curriculum

The parents of a seventh-grade student in an Arizona school district claimed that a teacher disregarded an “opt-out” from an assignment while speaking before a school board Thursday.

“After being made aware of inappropriate racial and political content being taught in our daughter’s seventh-grade social studies class, we reached out to the teacher, then the principal, then the curriculum department, and finally the superintendent to obtain curriculum for us to review ahead of time,” Amy Souza told the Peoria Unified School District Governing Board in a video posted to Twitter by Free to Learn.

After relating how she and her husband finally obtained the curriculum following “exhaustive efforts to get it,” they determined an upcoming lesson would be “gruesome, violent, and inappropriate” for their daughter.

They emailed their concerns to the teacher, announcing they would “opt out” of that lesson. They stated in the video that the teacher emailed back, agreeing to an alternate assignment.

Read the full story

Flooding Could Wipe Out 25 Percent of Critical Infrastructure: Report

About 25% of critical infrastructure in the U.S., or 36,000 facilities, is at serious risk of being rendered inoperable as a result of flooding over the next three decades, according to an industry report released Monday.

American infrastructure such as police stations, airports, hospitals, wastewater treatment facilities, churches and schools were all considered in the analysis, according to First Street Foundation, the group that published the first-of-its-kind report. The U.S. is “ill-prepared” for a scenario where major flooding events become more commonplace, the report concluded.

Read the full story