I remember how it was -- JR
Court Allows DeSantis' School Mask Mandate Ban to Resume
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' ban on mask mandates in schools was reinstated Friday by the First District Court of Appeals.
The ruling reverses a decision from a Leon County Circuit judge earlier this week that put the mask mandate ban on hold while legal challenges go through the courts.
The court's Friday ruling means that parents will be allowed to make the decision about whether their children should wear face coverings in school.
"Just like last year in the school re-opening litigation, the First District Court of Appeal has reinstated Florida’s ability to protect the freedom for parents to make the best decisions for their children while they make their own ruling on the appeal," Taryn Fenske, DeSantis' communications director, said of Friday's ruling in a statement to ABC News. "We look forward to winning the appeal and will continue to fight for parents’ rights."
Florida officials will now also be able to issue financial consequences to schools that decide to defy DeSantis' order and mandate that students wear masks. The Biden administration, however, has previously promised to reimburse school districts who endure financial penalties over their decision to implement mask mandates.
School boards in 13 districts in the state have voted to defy the governor's anti-mask mandate order and require masks in schools due to the spike in COVID-19 cases.
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Los Angeles school officials order sweeping vaccine mandate for students 12 and older
All children 12 and older in Los Angeles public schools must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by January to enter campus under an order approved Thursday by the Board of Education, the first such mandate among the nation’s largest school systems and a decision that triggered immediate pushback.
The requirement cements the standing of the L.A. Unified School District as an early adopter of COVID-19 school safety measures that are wide-reaching and aggressive. The nation’s second-largest school system has moved faster and more comprehensively than most others in testing all students and employees for coronavirus infection every week, requiring masks indoors and outdoors and ordering employees to get vaccinated.
L.A. schools Interim Supt. Megan K. Reilly said the student mandate was the next logical step to keep children, staff and community members safer from a COVID-19 pandemic that still poses significant risks.
“We’ve always approached safety with a multilayered approach: masks, air filtration and coronavirus screening,” Reilly told The Times. “But we are seeing without a doubt that the vaccines are one of the clearest pathways to protecting individuals from getting severe sickness as well as for mitigating transmission of the COVID virus. It is one of the best preventive measures that we have at our disposal to create a safe environment at schools.”
New York City’s school system, the largest in the nation, so far has ordered athletes in high-contact sports to begin the vaccination process before competition starts. New York City and Chicago, the nation’s third-largest district, are among a growing number of school systems that have enacted mandates for employees.
The L.A. district action “could provide the model for a comprehensive school response to COVID mitigation, so that schools can move on to student academic and mental health recovery plans,” said Odis Johnson Jr., executive director of the Center for Safe and Healthy Schools at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. “Mandatory vaccination mandates move us forward toward finally addressing students’ developmental, social and academic well-being.”
One vaccine, made by Pfizer, has received full approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for people 16 and older. Those who are 12 to 15 can be inoculated under a federal emergency use authorization. L.A. Unified is not waiting for full vaccine approval for those 12 to 15 — although that approval by the FDA is widely expected in the coming weeks. And President Biden on Thursday pledged to expedite approval of the vaccine for younger children.
Reilly estimated that about 225,000 students in grades six through 12 would fall under the policy. District officials estimate that roughly 80,000 students are not yet vaccinated. Also affected would be about 17,000 students in independent charter schools that use L.A. Unified campuses.
Students who are not vaccinated by the deadline will not be allowed on campus, she said. The alternative for them would be to enter remote learning through independent study, a program that was overwhelmed at the start of the school year when more than 10,000 students signed up.
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British university clears don of being anti-Islam but then cancels his course anyway after students launched 'vicious and militant' campaign
A professor has hit out at cancel culture after his lectures were axed following a 'vicious, militant' campaign by students who branded him Islamophobic.
University chiefs rejected complaints that human rights expert Steven Greer had expressed 'bigoted views' after a five-month investigation – but have still pulled his module from their syllabus.
He accused senior academics of 'capitulating' to the threats of students who had called for the module at Bristol University's law school to be scrapped over his 'reported use of discriminatory remarks and Islamophobic comments'.
An online petition which was launched by members of the university's Islamic Society, Brisoc, attracted 3,700 signatures.
Meanwhile, Prof Greer said he had to flee the family home amid fears for his safety following the campaign against him.
Critics claimed a lecture slide that mentioned the 2015 terror attack on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a magazine that had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, was 'Islamophobic rhetoric'.
Prof Greer also highlighted the inferior treatment of women and non-Muslims in Islamic nations, and the harsh penalties handed out under sharia law.
But he believes he largely came under attack because he supports the Government's Prevent programme to stop radicalisation, which critics have branded anti-Islamic.
Prof Greer, who has worked at the university since the 1980s, told The Mail on Sunday: 'Brisoc's campaign has been vicious and punitive and has put me and my family under intolerable stress. It has been very threatening and frightening.'
He revealed that he 'came across a stranger loitering outside our home' shortly after news of the controversy emerged, adding: 'They gave an implausible excuse and left.
'Was it just a coincidence or a reconnoitre? We'll never know. My family and I were, of course, very rattled by this. 'Taking no chances, my wife and I fled our home to stay somewhere safer for several days. 'Going public in The Mail on Sunday may increase or decrease the risk to my personal safety. I just don't know.
'But the attack upon me is an attack upon a fundamental freedom and this is something worth standing up for, even if I'm harmed as a result.'
Although a formal investigation came down in favour of Prof Greer, he received an email from academic chiefs last week which said his module on Islam, China and the Far East was being dropped so Muslim students would 'not feel that their religion is being singled out or in any way 'othered' by the class material'.
Prof Greer said: 'Militant minorities are increasingly intent on dictating the content and delivery of university education through vilification, intimidation and threats. 'Their purpose is to silence lawful and legitimate opinion simply because they disagree with it.
'The law school has capitulated in a manner which is at variance with the result of the university's inquiry into my case.'
Prof Greer faced particular criticism over his defence of Prevent, but said the allegation that the programme was Islamophobic had been 'resoundingly discredited by the best and most recent research… it simply doesn't stack up against the evidence.'
Of the 697 cases taken on by Prevent last year, 43 per cent were for far-Right extremism and 30 per cent were Islamist.
Prof Greer, whose book, Tackling Terrorism In Britain: Threats, Responses And Challenges Twenty Years After 9/11, will be published next month, is due to retire at the end of this academic year, but has been signed off work by a doctor because of the impact of the saga on his health.
Students can appeal the ruling in favour of Prof Greer, and a Bristol University spokesman said: 'Our student complaints procedure has two stages and remains ongoing until both stages are complete.
'Material from the unit in question is still being taught but in a new format. This change is quite independent of the complaint raised and conforms with normal practice in the school in allowing the development of new teaching material to match students' current interests.'
Avon and Somerset Police said it was investigating a complaint of harassment. Brisoc did not respond to a request for comment.
Their online petition referred to 'a pattern of what can only be perceived to be hostility and bigotry towards Muslims which Prof Greer freely disseminates under the pretext of 'academic freedom'.'
Toby Young, of the Free Speech Union, said: 'Bristol's treatment of Prof Greer is outrageous.
'By kowtowing to the Islamic Society, the university has issued a gold-embossed invitation to activists to submit vexatious complaints about its employees.'
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Teachers Unions Threaten CDC
School-aged children have long been unwitting pawns in the game of politics. After all, if you can influence the thinking of impressionable children, you can control the culture. Teachers unions are very aware of this fact and have undue influence over spreading pertinent culture issues with a leftist bent.
Back on May 13, when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was issuing guidance for vaccinated Americans and masking, the National Education Association (NEA) sent a threatening email criticizing the CDC for not specifically outlining guidelines for school safety and warning that it would make its scathing remarks public.
When the CDC updated its guidelines on May 14 to include the masking guidance that the NEA wanted, the teachers unions were still not satisfied. In emails obtained by Fox News, the leaders of the CDC, NEA, and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) colluded to enforce tighter mask mandates regardless of vaccination status for students, teachers, and school staff. On May 15, the CDC caved to the teachers unions.
This is not the first time this year that the teachers unions have manipulated the CDC for their own agenda. The AFT lobbied and won the delay of schools going back to in-person learning. At the time, it was a big controversy because it was contrary to the available science.
After all this, Randi Weingarten, the manipulative president of the AFT, is pushing the idea that conservatives are using kids and schools as a battleground for the culture wars.
In her own words: “Normally, our kids have been off-limits. We had tension over Common Core. There was tension over other issues. But in modern history, since the huge desegregation battles, kids have been off-limits. Now, they are the battlefield.”
This is outrageous chutzpah. Notice how Weingarten neglects to mention tensions over No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration’s education policy. This dishonest statement would almost come off as naivety except that she has been around teachers unions and education policy professionally since the mid-1980s. Leftists have always used kids in the culture wars, though perhaps what she is inadvertently pointing out is that the teachers unions have gone too far to hide their incessant pulling of political strings.
One could also argue that conservatives are rather late entering the fight. For far too long, the leftist teachers unions have gotten their way in curriculum and policy. This has allowed dangerous agendas such as Critical Race Theory, sex education in kindergarten, and LGBTQ+ to influence our most vulnerable. Conservatives are now vocally running for school board positions; parents are actually attending meetings and making their voices heard; and governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida are fighting against the mask mandates. These are all changes for the better.
If standing up to the teachers unions and pointing out their corruption is what it takes to reclaim education, then so be it. The minds of our children are worth fighting for.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/82603-teachers-unions-threaten-cdc-2021-09-10
***********************************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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