I remember how it was -- JR
Judge tosses NYC teachers’ union suit that tried to block charter high school
A state judge on Tuesday tossed out a lawsuit from the New York City teachers’ union that had sought to block the opening of a new charter high school in The Bronx.
The United Federation of Teachers filed suit earlier this year claiming that two K-8 charter networks were violating the state’s charter cap of 460 by striking an agreement to open a joint high school.
But Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Lyle Frank — who also is overseeing the contentious city school budget funding case — found that charter schools have the right to expand from kindergarten through 12th grade, and that therefore, the project doesn’t violate the cap.
The charter schools involved are Brilla College Prep and Public Prep, which each serve grades K-8 in Manhattan and The Bronx.
The two operators applied for a revision to their charter licenses in 2019, to propose the joint high school, the Vertex Partnership Academies, at a single site, to be run by an independent entity on their behalf.
The joint high school was approved by the State University of New York’s Board of Trustees, which licenses charter schools along with the Board of Regents.
While the union argued that the new school was violating state law, the judge ruled the project was all above-board.
He noted in his ruling that SUNY charter school officials had also approved similar applications for a combined high school to serve students from different K-8 schools.
Brilla College College Prep and Public Prep each agreed that they cannot both create the joint high school and also independently run separate K-12 programs, acknowledging that such “double dipping” is prohibited.
“The capacity of students available to these schools under their existing charters remains unchanged… Both sides agree that there is nothing in existing law that would bar charter schools from having an outside entity operate their school,” Frank said.
“Contrary to the petitioners’ [UFT’s] contentions,” he wrote, “it is clear that at issue here is the revision of existing charter schools and not the creation of a new charter school.”
Frank also said the UFT lacked standing to challenge revisions to the charter licenses. Only the city Department of Education, which was not part of the suit, has standing to claim any perceived harm to the city public school system.
SUNY officials who approved the new high charter school applauded the judge’s ruling.
“We are very pleased with the decision in this case – we believed all along that our actions were consistent with the law,” said Joseph Belluck, a trustee who chairs SUNY’s charter school committee.
A UFT spokesperson responded, “The judge’s decision does not permit the charters involved to `double-dip,’ to get around the charter law by using this ruling to create more high school seats in addition to those involved in the joint high school.”
Charter schools are publicly funded, privately managed schools that typically have a longer school day and year than traditional public schools. They are popular among parents but critics including the unions claim the mostly non-union alternative schools drain resources from regular public schools.
There are now 140,000 students who attend 275 charter schools. One of every seven students in the city now attends a publicly funded charter school.
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As DC Plans to Ban 40% of Black Teens From School, Mayor Rejects DC COVID-19 Vaccine Numbers
During a Monday press conference, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser seemingly claimed her department’s own numbers surrounding the amount of black school aged children vaccinated against COVID-19 were inaccurate. Unvaccinated school children will be banned from attending Washington, D.C. public schools later this month.
In response to a question from The Daily Signal about how 40% of black school aged children were unvaccinated, Bowser responded, “I don’t think that that number is correct. We have a substantially few fewer number of kids that we have to engage with vaccination.”
While Bowser claimed the number provided by The Daily Signal is incorrect, the statistic came from the District of Columbia’s own vaccination data website.
The data shows that around 60% of black kids aged 12-17 have received a complete COVID-19 vaccine regimen, meaning 40% are unvaccinated or have not received a second shot if necessary. The numbers flip for blacks aged 18-24, as the D.C. data shows 60% of adults in that age bracket are unvaccinated or have not received their second shot if necessary.
Per D.C.’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education website, “Beginning in the 2022-23 school year, the COVID-19 vaccine is required for school enrollment and attendance in the District of Columbia for all students who are of an age for which there is a COVID-19 vaccination fully approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”
As of right now, that means D.C. students aged 12 and up will have to be vaccinated or they will be unable to attend school in person.
The vaccine requirement makes D.C. an outlier in the nation, as many of the larger school districts recommend but do not require a COVID-19 vaccine in order to attend school in person.
The Daily Signal then asked the mayor about whether or not it was appropriate to respond to kids who aren’t vaccinated by forcing them to attend school virtually. “You’ve never heard me say that,” Bowser said.
Bowser and the D.C. city government have clashed over whether or not to return kids to classrooms amid lingering COVID-19 concerns. While Bowser has gone on record stating she would prefer kids to be in school, the 13-member D.C. Council has pushed for more exceptions to allow for remote learning.
The Daily Signal reached out to Bowser’s office for comment on the numbers and to clarify her position on remote learning, but did not receive an immediate response.
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How Gender Radicalism Conquered Sacramento Schools
Sacramento City Unified School District has adopted a queer theory–based pedagogy that encourages teachers to “normalize gender exploration,” confront their “cisgender privilege,” and maintain strict secrecy when facilitating a child’s gender or sexual transition.
I have obtained a collection of publicly accessible documents from Sacramento City Unified that traces the evolution of the district’s sexual politics. The process began a decade ago, when the district invited Elizabeth Meyer, a professor of Women’s, Gender & Queer Studies at California Polytechnic State University, to conduct presentations on how the district could adopt the principles of academic queer theory and translate them into K-12 pedagogy.
The “foundational concepts” of this approach, according to Meyer’s presentation, follow the standard left-wing narrative. Western society has created a “Heterosexual Matrix,” composed of “Hegemonic Masculinity,” “Emphasized Femininity,” “Heteronormativity,” and “Heterosexism,” that underpins an oppressive system of “patriarchy,” “homophobia,” and “transphobia.”
To liberate schools from this system, administrators and districts must adopt “queer pedagogy” and “anti-oppressive pedagogy,” which will disrupt the “commonsense view of the world” and replace it with queer alternatives, emphasizing “gender non-conformity” and “gender and sexual diversity.”
During this workshop, Meyer laid out a set of recommendations for administrators and teachers. Her recommendations for administrators included promoting gender-identity lessons in the curriculum, creating collections of sexuality books in school libraries, and hosting speakers and performers who address “sex, gender, and sexual orientation.” Teachers, according to Meyer, should follow different rules of classroom speech based on their own sexual identity. “If you are heterosexual, don’t state it. Allow yourself to be an ally while allowing others to be uncertain about your sexual orientation,” the presentation stated. “If you are GLBT [sic], consider coming out to your employer, and if you get their support, your students/school.” Finally, Meyer recommended that administrators work to build teacher-driven sexuality clubs and “equity task force[s]” within individual schools to promote “queer pedagogy” and “anti-oppressive pedagogy.”
In another training document titled “How to Be a Transgender Ally,” the district provided teachers and administrators with the entire range of queer theory terminology, promoting concepts and sexual identities such as “bi-gender,” “genderqueer,” “two-spirit,” “polysexual,” “pansexual,” “drag queens,” and “transsexuals.” The document instructed school staff to “normalize gender exploration and gender variance” and to “encourage exploration of options” for transgender students, who “may turn to hormones and/or surgery as validation of their emerging identity.”
Other rules in the handbook presented a form of queer theory etiquette: “don’t ask a trans person what their ‘real name’ is”; “don’t ask about a trans person’s genitals”; “don’t police public restrooms”; and “don’t just add the ‘T’ without doing work,” meaning that “to be an ally to trans people, gays, lesbians and bisexuals need to examine their own gender stereotypes, their own prejudices and fears about trans people, and be willing to defend and celebrate trans lives.” Heterosexual teachers, on the other hand, are told that they must confront their “cisgender privilege” and complete a questionnaire designed to elicit guilt and facilitate the adoption of a “transgender ally” identity. The questions include: “Does the state of your genitals cause you to fear violence should they be discovered?”; “Does the government require proof of the state of your genitals in order to change information on your personal identification?”; and “Can you wait at a bus stop at noon without passers-by assuming that you are loitering for sex?”
Ten years later, Sacramento City Unified has adopted all these recommendations and turned academic queer theory into pedagogy. The district’s schools, including many elementary schools, have put gender-identity theory into the curriculum and created teacher-driven “Gender & Sexuality Alliance” clubs. This ideology has also influenced districtwide policy on gender transitions, bathrooms, and athletics. According to the district’s official guidelines, school employees must provide “gender transition support” to students, recognize their “lived name and/or gender marker and/or gender pronouns,” allow them to use bathrooms and participate in athletics according to their “gender identity,” and follow a strict nondisclosure policy, which includes withholding information from students’ families. “Transgender and gender non-conforming students have a right to privacy, including keeping their sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status or gender non-conforming presentation at school private,” the policy reads. “School personnel should not discuss information that may disclose a student’s transgender or gender non-conforming status to others, including parents/legal guardians and other school personnel, unless legally required to do so or unless the student has authorized such disclosure.” In other words, teachers and administrators can facilitate a child’s gender or sexual transition without notifying that child’s parents; in fact, the default is to conduct this process in secrecy.
The sexual ideology that has captured school districts such as Sacramento City Unified is a form of radicalism cloaked in therapeutic language. Most parents initially interpret words such as “affirming,” “privacy,” “trans-friendly,” “anti-bullying,” and “safe space” as extensions of basic empathy between institution and child. But as parents discover the true nature of the ideology, they will recoil and mobilize against it. For most families, the idea that a school can promote synthetic sexual identities to young children while keeping parents in the dark is a terrifying overreach. These districts are driving a wedge between parent and child. Parents must reject this usurpation of authority.
https://www.city-journal.org/how-gender-radicalism-conquered-sacramento-schools
***********************************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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