Wednesday, June 07, 2023



Community Furious After Student Is Cut from Graduation for Stating There Are Only Two Genders

At Kellogg High School in Kellog, Idaho, another conservative American is facing consequences for affirming a traditional view of male and female.

During a recent assembly where soon-to-be graduating seniors were meant to give parting words of wisdom to underclassmen, 18-year-old Travis Lohr made a statement that apparently offended the school’s administration.

“Guys are guys and girls are girls,” Lohr said according to the Shoshone News-Press. “There is no in-between.”

Shortly thereafter, Lohr was informed that he would not be allowed to walk in the school’s graduation ceremony.

Lohr and the other seniors had to prepare their statements in advance for school approval. After school officials told Lohr he wasn’t allowed to say that “guys are guys and girls are girls,” he chose to share the statement anyway, according to the News-Press.

“I feel that I shouldn’t be punished for believing in something that I believe,” Lohr told the News-Press.

“It’s more that people took it the wrong way. Everyone can speak freely, I can’t see why I can’t voice my opinion.”

On Twitter, the Idaho Tribune shared a short clip showing over 100 parents and students mobilizing outside the school to protest Lohr’s suspension on Friday.

According to KHQ-TV, a number of students participated in a walkout that day in protest of the suspension.

The walkout is shown in the Tribune’s video, with the many parents in attendance cheering loudly as the protesting students exited the building.

Later in the video, the crowd can be heard forcefully and repeatedly cheering “Let him walk.”

Nevertheless, it appears that Kellog High School will stand by its decision.

Later on Friday, the Kellogg School District announced it would be postponing the graduation ceremony, which was originally meant to take place on Saturday, claiming that “threats” had made the situation unsafe, KHQ-TV reported.

Despite all the controversy caused by his comments, Lohr stands by what he said. “I would love to walk in my graduation ceremony. I don’t believe that I should be punished for what I said. I wasn’t directing it at anybody or any groups, it’s just something that I believe in,” Lohr told the Shoshone News-Press.

“Kids nowadays really support gay people, transgender people, and it wasn’t targeted at that but there’s a lot of confusion about genders in the world today and I figured that underclassmen might find something in me saying that.”

“There’s a lot of support for other genders and other groups, but yet I don’t see any support for people who just believe in two (genders). I don’t have any hatred toward gay people or transgenders — just like I hope they wouldn’t have any resentment toward me for believing what I believe.”

********************************************************

Biden’s Education Department Tells Nation’s Schools to Go Back to Race-Based Discipline

The school year is over, but a new race-based missive from Washington will loom over teachers and students all summer.

Just before Memorial Day, federal education officials issued a “Dear Colleague” letter telling the nation’s educators that the Biden administration is resurrecting a policy of investigating and coercing schools to adopt more lenient discipline policies.

This policy originated under President Barack Obama’s administration but was rescinded in 2018 by a commission led by then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The Federal Commission on School Safety found that parents and local educators are better at deciding when a student’s disruptive actions warrant suspension or expulsion than are quotas handed down from Washington.

The reprieve from race-based federal manipulation was short-lived.

Federal policymakers from the Justice Department and Education Department released a letter to K-12 schools stating: “Significant disparities by race—beginning as early as preschool—have persisted in the application of student discipline in schools.”

Yet what if the student behavior is the issue, not skin color?

A new survey from the Education Department finds that 84% of school personnel report that “the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the behavioral development of students” and a plurality of 46% said that “threats of physical attacks or fights between students” have increased since before the pandemic.

Fully 39% of school personnel report that physical fights between students are up, the survey finds. And 61% said “classroom disruptions from student misconduct” also have increased.

Vandalism, out-of-control behavior in school hallways, verbal abuse—all have increased since before the pandemic. Yet the new letter from Washington redirects attention to students’ ethnicities instead of classroom safety.

This isn’t the first time this year that the Education Department has tried to micromanage local school safety policies and emphasize racial preferences.

The agency issued a report in March that urged educators to use “restorative justice” practices instead of suspension and expulsion, although exercises such as “restorative circles” and other conversation-style interventions leave disruptive students in class with their peers, even after they have been violent or otherwise interfered.

School officials in Broward County, Florida, had employed these methods for years before an expelled student shot and killed 17 at his high school in 2018, opening school leaders to intense criticism.

These new reports from the Justice and Education departments warn schools that employ school resource officers that their activities should be limited. Emails obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project under the Freedom of Information Act show that the two agencies coordinated their statements on school resource officers. The Justice Department report says these officers should undergo “anti-bias” training and use restorative justice practices.

Not all school districts are ready to limit school resource officers, though. In Washington, D.C., which is under federal authority, local policymakers are reconsidering their 2020 decision to remove all school resource officers by 2025.

The last three budget proposals from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, have included “fully funding” school resource officers in District of Columbia Public Schools, according to The Washington Post.

The Post’s editorial board praised these proposals, writing: “Many cities yanked officers out of schools while reassessing policing after George Floyd’s 2020 murder. However well-intentioned, the experiment has left kids more vulnerable and classrooms less safe amid surging youth violence.”

Neighboring jurisdictions such as Alexandria, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland, also are considering hiring more school resource officers, as are Boston and Phoenix, the Post’s editorial board wrote.

Two students were shot in separate incidents in just the last two weeks near D.C. high schools, police said. A D.C. Council committee notes that 77 knives, 15 tasers, and five guns were found on the school system’s campuses in the 2021-2022 school year.

Incidents such as these, along with surveys showing a surge in disruptive student behavior after the pandemic, explain why the new federal guidance on limiting school resource officers and calling for racial preferences in student discipline isn’t what schools need.

School officials should judge each disciplinary incident on its own merits. Parents and educators know their students and their schools best, and they should decide how to keep students safe and maintain order.

They can do that without letters from Washington that reek of racial quotas.

***********************************************

What Settlement of Vaccine Mandate Case Says About Corruption of Teachers Unions

Teachers unions across America have defended members from termination for virtually every imaginable kind of misconduct.

The unions defended teachers for illegal marijuana use and intoxication on the job. They defended teachers who stole money, had excessive absences, or otherwise abused their position.

They defended teachers who had pornographic materials in the classroom. They defended incompetent teachers who failed to produce positive student achievement.

And in Rhode Island, the teachers unions vigorously defended one teacher who engaged in inappropriate touching and language with his female students. They appealed his firing all the way to the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

As one of the primary purposes to justify the paying of dues, teachers unions promote themselves as fighting to protect the jobs of teachers and rarely ever backing down when it comes to the dismissal of one of their members.

But unions are criticized routinely for defending bad employees, regardless of the cost, and often seeking alternate accommodations or filing their own grievance, no matter the gravity of the sin.

However, teachers unions cannot tolerate one sin, and they’re willing to break the law in order to virtue signal.

That sin?

Exercising one’s religious freedom by choosing not to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Oh, the horror.

In early 2022, in the small town of Barrington, Rhode Island, three teachers were fired for this unforgivable sin. Throughout the long ordeal that followed, the teachers nobly stuck to their principles and stood their ground.

Last month, they emerged from their battle with a rare major legal victory and complete vindication, when their lawsuit against Barrington Public Schools was settled. The settlement included payment of all back salaries, significant compensatory damages, and attorney’s fees.

But a second lawsuit by the teachers is pending, one that has garnered little media attention but may have greater long-term implications. That lawsuit also was filed against the Barrington Education Association, which brazenly abandoned these three dues-paying union members.

In the same case earlier this spring, the three teachers’ attorney, Gregory Piccirilli, filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claim against the Barrington teachers union, an affiliate of the National Education Association.

The teachers filed a legal complaint May 25 in Rhode Island Superior Court, the state’s second-highest court, against the NEA’s local, state, and federal branches. The lawsuit alleges that the union discriminated against teachers based on their religious beliefs and breached its “duty of fair representation.”

According to federal law, neither employers nor unions may discriminate against employees or members for religious reasons, as the Barrington teachers union did when deciding not to represent the three teachers.

And under Rhode Island law, unions are required to provide a “heightened” obligation to defend their public sector members against wrongful termination, not abandon them.

The suing teachers hope to demonstrate that the local teachers union openly conspired with the Barrington school committee, or school board, which not only imposed the vaccine mandate but fired the teachers who resisted it.

An attorney for the teachers claims that he has irrefutable proof that the local and statewide NEA chapters not only publicly advocated that every school district impose such a vaccine mandate, but that the union clearly said it wouldn’t defend any teachers fired as a consequence of the policy.

This declaration may be viewed only as open collusion with school districts. In essence, the union said to them, “If you implement a vaccine mandate, we will support the school district policy, not our own teacher members. So go right ahead, impose your authoritarian dictate, and we’ll stay out of the way.”

Most school committees in Rhode Island understood that such a mandate wasn’t within their purview to make medically; it belonged to the state Health Department. Also, lawyers for many school committees had legitimate, and prescient, fears of being sued for overstepping their bounds.

But, as it turned out, Barrington was the only school district in Rhode Island that took this unjustified and legally dangerous step. The district went so far as to deny paying the three fired teachers their lawfully required salaries until the end of the school year. And now, the school district is paying a steep price.

The lawyer for the Barrington school committee, who supported the teachers union’s push for the vaccine mandate and firing the teachers, eventually was fired herself for her incompetence and shockingly poor legal advice.

The school committee’s recently hired attorney, recognizing the obvious legal peril, quickly moved to settle the case. At the school district’s great expense, the three plaintiff teachers were “made whole, plus” in a settlement that exceeded their original demands.

Soon, the unions may suffer the same fate for failing to fulfill their legal and moral responsibilities. Instead, they chose to demonstrate egregiously blind adherence to a false government narrative.

Imagine an innocent citizen, charged with a criminal offense, discovering that her own defense attorney was conspiring with the prosecutor to ensure her conviction.

Basically, the same thing happened in Barrington, Rhode Island, where the three teachers were denied their rightful and guaranteed legal representation by the union, which had openly colluded with the school district. More alarmingly, these teachers were treated even worse than actual criminals.

But why?

Why would a teachers union so blatantly sell out these teachers and so obviously break the law in order to push a vaccine mandate that didn’t work?

Are they just incredibly stupid and ignorant? Were they completely and mindlessly brainwashed, as so many others have been—and still are—about the false claims of the efficacy and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines? Were they drunk with power?

Or was it just pure corruption?

In perpetual league with local and state officials—elected and appointed—public sector unions routinely enjoy every conceivable legislative and regulatory advantage. To maintain its illicit gravy train of taxpayers’ money, were this teachers union’s illicit actions simply a means of showing support for the government’s narrative?

In a recent example of unions dutifully backing the official narrative, another local teachers union in Rhode Island actually went to the extent of filing suit against a mother for asking too many questions about the government-run school system’s radical racial curriculum.

Regardless, such union disregard for the law—and for its own responsibility to dues-paying members—must be exposed and punished to such an extent that it never happens again.

The National Education Association has a $1 million liability insurance fund; no doubt that fund will be greatly depleted after the resolution of the pending lawsuit, which will seek significant punitive and emotional distress damages.

It is time for school districts to return to the basics of education. Similarly, teachers unions must keep to their collective bargaining duties and desist with their open promotion of controversial and divisive curricula and of all things big government.

Corrupt departure from traditionally accepted educational norms now may lead to severe legal and financial costs. It’s about time.

******************************************************

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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

******************************************************

No comments: