Sunday, January 23, 2022


School Board Clams up When Father Asks About Daughter’s Sexual Assault

Virginia schools continue to face issues with sexual assault cover-ups and denials. In Prince William County, one father brought up the issue after his daughter was assaulted, but the school board was silent.

Jeff Darr stood up at a school board meeting on Wednesday and informed the members that his 13-year-old daughter had been assaulted.

“I was wondering if you all could explain to me how the policies and procedures are for the administrators to handle that situation,” Darr said in the school board meeting.

He was met with silence from the board members. “Does anybody have any answers?” Darr asked again.

Babur Lateef, chairman at-large of the school board, finally answered by telling him that “we typically don’t go and have a back-and-forth here” and that he should address the board via email or make an appointment.

Darr said he didn’t understand. “So where do you find the rules and regulations at?” he said, again asking where administrators could find the correct procedures for handling sexual assaults in school.

In response, he was told to step aside and someone would address his questions. Meanwhile, a security officer approached him and appeared to put his arm on Darr’s back.

But the father said he wanted to make this public so that everyone could be informed and that was why he showed up for the school board meeting.

“So, we won’t be answering you, but you can certainly keep asking,” Lateef said.

Darr asked again for the definition of sexual assault. “I want to know the school’s definition of sexual assault, because my daughter was told … that if it’s above the clothes, it’s not sexual assault,” Darr said, as he got choked up.

“And that’s the way the county does the kids here? It’s messed up,” he said.

“That’s my daughter, and no one wants to do nothing about it. Suspend a boy for one day for improper touching, and I don’t think that’s right,” Darr said. “So somebody needs to do something. Somebody needs to look into the matter and do something.”

He added, “I’m pretty sure if it’s happened to her, it’s happened to plenty of children here. It’s ridiculous.”

WTTG -TV followed up by reaching out to the Prince William County Police Department, which said it was aware of a sexual assault that happened in November during a Hylton High School field trip.

The department said that a “thorough police investigation was conducted into the accusation.”

Diana Gulotta, the director of communications for Prince William County Schools, released a statement Friday, according to WTTG.

“PWCS takes any act of sexual assault or violence seriously and such acts will not be tolerated,” she said. “PWCS has specific procedures and highly trained personnel to assist students and parents in resolving claims that involve certain forms of unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature as required by Title IX, a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.

“School administration learned of this incident on the day it is alleged to have occurred and notified law enforcement. The PWCS Title IX office has taken action to investigate the allegations and to offer supportive measures consistent with legal requirements.

“That process is still ongoing. For student privacy reasons, we cannot share information about the alleged incident, the investigation, or any findings, discipline or other actions that may result. PWCS administrators are working with the family of the complainant to respond to their concerns.”

Throughout the past several months, other sexual assaults in Virginia schools have come to light. Loudoun County schools were widely criticized over the gross mishandling of assaults perpetrated by a 15-year-old student.

Darr’s public questioning of the school board was very reasonable, but he was brushed aside. This should be causing serious concern for all parents with children in Prince William County schools.

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Virginia Woman Charged After Threatening to Show Up to Child's School with Guns in Protest of Mask Mandate

A Virginia woman was charged by police after she threatened to bring loaded firearms to her child's school over the district's mask mandate.

Amelia Ruffner King was charged Friday night with a violation of a Virginia statute stating that oral threats of bodily harm on school property are not allowed, a Class 1 misdemeanor.

She was released on a $5,000 unsecured bond, and police will have an increased presence at the school on Monday, according to the Luray Police Department.

During a Page County School Board meeting held Thursday to discuss Gov. Glenn Youngkin's (R) executive order allowing parents to opt-out of mask requirements, King blasted the board over the mask mandate that was still in place, video footage shows.

"My child — my children will not come to school on Monday with a mask on. All right, that's not happening. And I will bring every single gun loaded and ready to — I will call every—," King explained before she was interrupted by school officials.

She then left the podium and said, "I'll see y'all on Monday."

King later apologized to the board members in an email read aloud during the meeting by one of the board members.

"I in no way meant to imply 'all guns loaded' as in actual firearms, but rather all resources I can muster to make sure that my children get [sic] to attend school without masks. My sincere apologies for my poor choice in words," King's email read.

She also said in her email that she contacted the sheriff's office to "explain herself."

Page County School Superintendent Antonia Fox and Page County School Board Chair Megan Gordon wrote in a joint statement Friday that King's remarks "were perceived by many to be threatening in nature" and that the district "does not take these kinds of statements lightly."

"Not only do comments such as these go against everything we wish to model for our students, they go against the very nature of how we as a community should interact with each other," the statement reads. "Violence and threats are never acceptable or appropriate. This kind of behavior is not tolerated from our students, faculty staff, nor will it be tolerated by parents or guests of our school division."

The school board voted in a 4-2 decision to make masks optional after the Thursday meeting in which King made her comments. This comes just ahead of Youngkin's executive order taking effect on Monday.

Luray Police Chief Bow Cook said that King apologized for her comments and is cooperating with law enforcement.

"The statement that was made absolutely caused public alarm, the parent that made the statement realized that, and immediately contacted law enforcement to apologize because the statement was not intended the way it was perceived," Cook said in a Friday afternoon statement posted to Facebook. "The safety of the students and school staff are our number one priority, we are working diligently with the Page County School Board to ensure proper measures have been put in place for their safety."

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ACLU Comes Out in Support of Keeping Parents in the Dark on What Their Children Are Learning

The ACLU has evolved from a champion of liberties into a champion of authoritarianism

When it comes to transparency and the fundamental rights of parents to know what's in their children's curriculum, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is taking a disappointing stance.

On Friday, the ACLU tweeted out an article by Tyler Kingkade with NBC News, "They fought critical race theory. Now they’re focusing on ‘curriculum transparency.’"

The tweet also claims that "Curriculum transparency bills are just thinly veiled attempts at chilling teachers and students from learning and talking about race and gender in schools."

People were quick to point out that by taking such a position, the ACLU is supporting government secrecy when it comes to what public schools are teaching and how they are potentially indoctrinating students.

Ultimately, though, the article provides a one-sided view, especially when it comes to what kind of materials parents seek to get rid of:

“People are going to disagree on a lot of these issues,” said Matt Beienburg, the Goldwater Institute’s director of education policy. “Transparency is something I think that at least allows for that conversation to know what is being taught. Everybody should be able to rally around the fact that we shouldn’t be teaching something in secret.”

But teachers, their unions and free speech advocates say the proposals would excessively scrutinize daily classwork and would lead teachers to pre-emptively pull potentially contentious materials to avoid drawing criticism. Parents and legislators have already started campaigns to remove books dealing with race and gender, citing passages they find obscene, after they found out that the books were available in school libraries and classrooms.

Kingkade fails to mention that books parents "find obscene" and that, at least in Fairfax, Virginia, have gone through a back-and-forth battle of whether to remove, deal with pedophilia and graphic depictions of sexual acts in graphic novels.

While Manhattan Institute fellow and CRT opponent Christopher Rufo's tweets are referenced, much of the commentary mentioned in the article is from Democrats who oppose such transparency and rant and rave using typical talking points like blaming Fox News:

But Democratic legislators pushed back. Pennsylvania Rep. Dan Frankel argued in legislative hearings in October that the proposal was an invitation to “the book burners and the anti-maskers to harass our schools and harass our teachers.”

“This bill isn’t about transparency for parents,” Frankel said at the time. “It’s about bringing the fights that get started on Fox News to the kindergarten classroom near you.”

When it comes to what the ACLU thinks about teaching CRT? It's included in the First Amendment, they claim.

This is hardly the only recent move from the ACLU that would seem antithetical to their very purpose.

For instance, in September, David Cole and Daniel Mach, their national legal director and director of Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, respectively, penned an opinion piece advocating for vaccine mandates. ACLU tweeted it out from their official account.

Later that month, they also edited the words of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on women and abortion, who founded the ACLU Women's Rights Project in 1972, to make the language more gender-neutral.

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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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