I remember how it was -- JR
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Court Hears Parents’ Challenge to School District’s Secretive Transgender Policy
For the past two years, 14 parents have been fighting to protect their children and retain their rightful authority over them within the Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin over the district’s secretive transgender policy. The policy ordered teachers to hide children’s gender identity issues from their parents and to affirm the children’s chosen identities at school.
On Tuesday, attorneys at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and Alliance Defending Freedom presented oral arguments on behalf of those parents at the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
“We asked the court to recognize that parents have the right to direct the upbringing of their children,” Luke Berg, attorney at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, told The Daily Signal. “Yet the Madison Metropolitan School District is deceiving parents and excluding them from important decisions about the well-being of their children. We are optimistic that the court will do what is right and protect the safety of children and the rights of parents.”
Attorneys filed the original lawsuit, Doe v. Madison Metropolitan School District, in February 2020. In late September 2020, a state court in Wisconsin issued an order prohibiting the school district from intentionally deceiving parents about their children’s activities—especially if a child was struggling with gender identity issues.
Madison is the second-largest school district in Wisconsin, with approximately 27,000 students attending 52 schools. A few years ago, the district adopted a policy that promoted both transgender ideology and gender fluidity and that undermined parental rights, all in one guideline.
Here’s how it worked: Teachers were required to fill out a “Gender Support Plan” form for any child who expressed gender dysphoria or who asked to have a transgender treatment plan. Plans included changing the name and pronouns a child was called at school without the parents’ knowledge.
Under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, parents have the express right to review any school records about their children, but because of the way this form was intentionally designed, they were prohibited from viewing, or even knowing about, the Gender Support Plan.
The school administration had to be creative to determine how to work around the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Under the law, parents can’t access a teacher’s “personal” notes about a student. So, a section of the Gender Support Plan informed teachers to file the plan in the teacher’s “personal” file, not in student records, so it remained exempt from federal law and out of sight from parents.
The policy also said: “School staff shall not disclose any information that may reveal a student’s gender identity to others, including parents or guardians and other school staff unless legally required to do so.”
As I wrote in 2020, “In the Madison school district, a child could go to school as a girl named ‘Lindsay,’ but spend the day as a boy named ‘Liam.’ The child could go to the restroom alongside boys, change in the locker room with boys, and be known by friends and teachers as ‘Liam.’ But Lindsay’s parents, who gave birth to and are raising a girl named Lindsay, would have no idea.”
The fact that teachers were encouraged to keep a child’s gender identity struggles secret—as if the parents are the enemy and have no natural and legal right to this information—and that the district sneakily worked around a specific federal law banning this kind of secrecy is reprehensible.
The complaint describes the unethical policy thusly: “Parents’ rights cases have established that parents have the primary role in directing the upbringing of their children, especially in significant decisions (like health care), and that the government may not supplant parents simply because a parent’s decision is not agreeable to the child.”
Parental rights are the foundation of healthy families and a thriving society. School systems are but a tool to help educate children when parents are unable to do so themselves. Education should be the priority in this school district and all others. The priority should not be setting up illegal guidelines to keep vital information secret from parents or purposely encouraging kids toward concepts of gender fluidity.
Helping kids embrace or manifest a transgender-friendly persona through different attire, hormones, or changes in name and personal pronouns has replaced a school’s original goal: education. This is both wrong and misguided. Schools, parents, and kids should be allies, not foes. Hopefully, the Wisconsin Supreme Court agrees.
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US Schools Facing Mass Exodus of Teachers Who Won’t Return This Fall
With the end of the academic year in sight, an overwhelming number of educators are planning to close the book on their teaching careers.
Much of this stems from post-pandemic classroom behavioral challenges with students and ongoing staff shortages that create excessive workloads for teachers.
Many educators who have 25 years or more under their belt are opting to retire, but even less seasoned ones are walking away and choosing different career paths.
Back in February, the National Education Association (NEA) released a study conducted by GBAO Strategies that revealed a startling 55 percent of teachers planned to leave their profession ahead of schedule.
The NEA is the most prominent teachers union in the United States and represents 3 million educators.
Widespread educator shortages pre-date the arrival of COVID-19, but the pandemic also served as the last straw for many, kicking off the trend of an early departure.
A RAND study from January 2021 showed nearly a quarter of those surveyed expressed the desire to quit after just one year of teaching during the pandemic.
The average national turnover rate was only 16 percent before COVID-19. However, in 2021, that number jumped to 25 percent.
This year, 80 percent of NEA members reported that unfilled job openings at schools have led to more work obligations for the educators who’ve chosen to stay in their profession.
“I think people are leaving because it’s all too much. It’s a firestorm. It’s all eroding,” Heidi Rickard told The Epoch Times.
Rickard has been an educator since 1999. After spending some time teaching in Colorado Springs, she put down roots in the Alameda Unified school district in the San Francisco bay area.
She explained that many veteran teachers “just can’t take it” anymore and are leaving due, in part, to the scale of mental health challenges students brought back to the classroom after two years of online learning.
“As a veteran teacher, when the best of my best isn’t working, that’s so defeating,” Rickard said.
Two years of excessive screen time at home and the disengagement of online learning have left students struggling, falling behind, and adrift in a sea of depression.
COVID-19 and its subsequent restrictions created a mental health crisis for youth, which is now manifesting as aggressive or excessively troublesome behavior in the classroom.
In October 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association acknowledged the pandemic-fueled decline in child and adolescent mental health had become a national emergency.
And the dire shortage of counselors in school districts to assist students has added to this.
Rickard noted, “We haven’t had a counselor all year. Nobody even applied.”
Findings from a joint study on the role of school counselors from the Connecticut State Department of Education, the Connecticut School Counselor Association, and the Center for School Counseling Outcome Research and Evaluation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst revealed schools with fewer students and more counselors had lower rates of student suspensions and disciplinary actions.
Former superintendent, educator, and school counselor Gary Marks spent decades working in Nebraska schools. He agreed that student counseling and support for teachers in the classroom have hit a critical point.
“You need way more counselors when you’re having all these mental health issues,” Marks told The Epoch Times.
For example, he pointed to where his grandchildren go to school in Tennessee’s Farragut school district, which has only two counselors for about 600 students.
He also thinks a general lack of respect for educators underscores why more are leaving their jobs early, and others are reluctant to apply.
“The respect situation is just a huge issue,” he said.
Marks was candid when asked about the difficulties of hiring new talent in schools. “I don’t know right now, given the way the world is, if I’d be interested in being a classroom teacher.”
Yet the struggle to keep existing educators and hire new ones is only half the battle. A new report from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education indicates that university students pursuing teaching degrees are declining.
In 2019, U.S. colleges awarded fewer than 90,000 undergraduate degrees in education. That’s down from nearly 200,000 a year in the 1970s. Over the past 10 years alone, the number of people completing traditional teacher preparation programs has dropped by 35 percent.
“This is a five-alarm crisis,” said NEA president Becky Pringle.
One of the hurdles administrators face amid the staff scarcity is a lengthy certification and training process even after qualified university graduates apply to teach.
“I want to continue teaching—however, I’m being forced out,” Lisa Carley Hotaling told The Epoch Times.
Having taught in Michigan and New York, Hotaling found herself between a rock and a hard place after she took a teaching job in California as an emergency hire in the Alameda Unified school district.
Despite already having a master’s degree and more than a decade of education and classroom experience, she still has to take the California Basic Skills Test (CBEST) and go back to school specifically for her master’s in education to continue teaching.
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Woke Toronto college forces students to sign waiver acknowledging how they benefited from the 'colonization and genocide of indigenous peoples' before they can enter Zoom class
A woke college in Canada is requiring students to sign a statement acknowledging land grabs from indigenous Canadians before they can attend their online classes.
George Brown College in Toronto, like many universities, requires students to sign an IT department waiver acknowledgment before utilizing the school's online services.
However, the IT statement does not address internet safety or online protocols, but instead talks about how the territory George Brown College operates on belongs to the Huron-Wendat, Mississaugas, Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples.
It also states that immigrants and settlers benefited from the 'colonization and genocide of indigenous peoples' who were native to the land.
'It is imperative that we constantly engage in acts of awareness and decolonization,' the statement added.
The college alleges the statement aims to educate students, not force them to agree with its ideals.
'By selecting "I agree," you are indicating your acknowledgment to of this statement,' the document reads. 'Our intent is not to impose agreeance, but to inform through acknowledgement. This acknowledgement is to generate awareness and offer opportunities for personal reflection.'
The statement also states that the college 'acknowledges the all Treaty peoples,' which it claims includes those who came to Canada involuntarily through slavery.
The school reportedly wants students to acknowledge that the land on which George Brown College resides is subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, a law that details an agreement for sharing territory among two or more nations.
Per the IT statement, entities operating in the territory are supposed to work together to 'peacebly care' for the land and 'share' the resources around the Great Lakes.
The statement, which was shared on Twitter, has been met with criticisms.
'So just to be clear, you need to click "agree" on the statement that you are benefitting from genocide,' Quillette editor Jonathan Kay penned.
'What if someone just doesn't agree there have been humans in North America "since time immemorial"? I suppose they're expected to click cancel,' one user tweeted.
'I could almost deal with their statement, but this part is about engaging in resistance is beyond the pale,' added another.
'So what good is a statement when you can give the land back, which I’m sure would be greatly appreciated?' Jeffrey Churchill wrote.
One user added: 'Okay and what is “displanted”? Some kind of neologism for displaced? The need to endlessly invent jargon to signal special meaning to group insiders is truly astonishing. I’m sure your in “agreeance” with that.'
It is unclear if George Brown College has any other indigenous people-focused documents as the school did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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