I remember how it was -- JR
‘They’ve told him that as a black man the world is against him’: Single mom of biracial son, 13, sues his school over CRT because ‘everything that doesn't go his way is racist - including chores'
A single mother of a biracial son is suing his school over its 'anti-racism' CRT-style program, saying he now sees things that don't go his way as racism.
Melissa Riley, from Charlottesville in Virginia, said that her 13-year-old boy never saw himself as different to other students until the Albemarle School District introduced an 'anti-racism' program to his middle school last spring.
Speaking to Fox News, she said it was then that he began thinking in terms of race.
'We didn't have issues before. He is in eighth grade,' Riley told Fox News host Jesse Watters on Monday evening. 'He's seeing himself just as a Black man. He's seeing things that don't go his way as racism. And he is finding safety in numbers now.'
Riley said that her teenage son started to accuse her and others of racism as a way to get out of doing chores and other responsibilities. In one example, she said he once accused her of being racist when she asked him to clean the house.
'They have totally changed his perspective. They have put him in a box,' she said of the curriculum at Henley Middle School in Crozet, Virginia.
She told the news channel that her son is using racism 'as an excuse because they have told him that that's how people see him, as a Black man, that the world is against and [he] sees it as a negative now.'
When she confronted the school over the issue, Riley said the school told her that her son could be a 'Black spokesman for the Black community' in the school.
The mother said when she pushed back, telling school officials she did not feel that would be appropriate for her son, she was told 'he and other children of color could go to a safe place during these conversations.'
This, she argued, would be 'segregation'.
In July 2021, it was reported by the Crozet Gazette that Henley Middle School's anti-racism curriculum was dividing opinions among teachers and parents.
The local news outlet reported that the curriculum was called 'Courageous Conversations About Race' [CCAR], and was launched over several weeks in May and June last year - covering four units on identity, community, bias, discrimination, and social justice. These all had an emphasis on anti-racism.
The Crozet gazette said the introduction of the curriculum had divided opinion, with some parents saying CCAR bore similarities to the divisive Critical Race Theory (CRT) - that teaches the idea that racism is fundamentally embedded in American political and social institutions.
Parents across the country have attended school board meetings in their droves to protest against the introduction CRT in their children's schools, arguing that such teaching only serves to stoke divisions further.
According to the New York Post, Riley and her son are plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in December by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) against the Albemarle County School Board over its program.
While the Albemarle County School Board does not call the program 'CRT' (instead using CCAR), CRT still underpins and informs anti-racism training and teaching programs in schools.
The ADF is a nonprofit conservative legal firm, and is arguing that the district's anti-racism policy violates Virginia's constitution and parental rights.
The New York Post reported that the ADF's lawsuit was dismissed last month by a circuit court judge, who did not object to the district's policy.
Albemarle Circuit Judge Claude Worrell II declared there was 'nothing inherently evil or wrong' about the anti-racism policy.
Lawyers for the ADF have said they would appeal the ruling, with Ryan Bangert, senior counsel with the ADF, saying they were disappointed with the result.
Bangert, who is also Riley's lawyer, told Fox News that the school board was 'fighting back'. He said: 'They simply think it's fine. They think it's okay. But it's not okay. It's never okay.
'It's never right for a school to teach kids that they are determined by their race. It's never okay for a school to tell kids that bigotry should be fought with bigotry and racism should be fought by doubling down on racism. Those things are not okay,' Banger continued. 'They're a violation of students' civil rights.'
Critical Race Theory in school curriculums has become a point of controversy across the nation, as parents, politicians, students and educators debate the societal theory's place in the classroom.
Virginia in particular has become a battleground over the issue of CRT being taught in schools, with parents saying they are being disenfranchised by schools implementing such programs without their consent.
Conservatives have taken to using the phrase as a way to describe lessons on racism and 'equity' across all grade levels - and have criticized the theory for claiming that the U.S. is built on racial animus, with skin color determining the social, economic and political differences between people.
Critics say it is divisive and paints everyone as a victim or oppressor, while advocates say its teaching is necessary to underline how deeply racism pervades society.
Numerous bills have been passed by states banning the teaching of CRT in schools.
Joe Biden's new 'disinformation czar,' Nina Jankowicz, dismissed concerns about Critical Race Theory in schools as 'disinformation for profit' in May - despite parents across the country being worried about the teaching of the philosophy in their children's classrooms.
'I live in Virginia, and in Loudoun County that's one of the areas where people have really honed in on this topic,' she said.
'But it's no different than any of the other hot-button issues that have allowed disinformation to flourish,' Jankowicz said during a talk at the City Club of Cleveland in 2021, 'It's weaponizing people's emotion.'
Jankowicz was referring to controversy in Loudon County, Virginia, where parents and school administrators have clashed over the place of CRT in county's curriculums.
The Loudoun School Board has been mired in controversy as Parents have voiced their frustration with the state's woke school board, saying they did not want their children to be taught CRT.
Multiple school board meetings made headlines after parents were filmed clashing with staff over the decision to teach it - and the board's approval of a $6 million 'equity-training' program last year, as well as the approval of a study into whether it would be appropriate to give reparations to black people
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Honoring Veterans with Educational Freedom
Americans want to honor the veterans and service members who sacrifice so much to defend our freedom. That’s why we have holidays like Memorial Day. Yet members of our military deserve more than speeches and parades. They deserve parental choice in education.
“[W]hile our service members fight for our freedoms abroad, too many military families are denied education freedom at home,” according to former deputy U.S. Secretary of Education Mitchell Zais. And he should know: Zais served in the U.S. Army for 31 years and retired as a brigadier general.
The lack of parental choice in education hits military families especially hard because they can’t just pick up and move if their neighborhood public schools aren’t meeting their children’s needs. Not only does a lack of educational options hurt military families, it has significant negative implications for national security.
More than one-third of military families say dissatisfaction with their children’s education is “a significant factor” affecting their decision to continue serving. According to Zais, the commanding general of one of the Army’s largest training installations reports having difficulty recruiting drill sergeants because of the poor quality of local schools. In fact, 40 percent of respondents recently told the Military Times that they “have either declined or would decline a career-advancing job at a different installation to remain at their current military facility because of high performing schools.”
Not surprisingly a majority of military families support various types of parental choice, according to an EdChoice survey of military families. It found that nearly three out of four military families favor education savings accounts (ESAs), while two out of three support voucher scholarships and public charter schools.
Today, more than 600,000 students are attending the private schools of their parents’ choice through ESAs, publicly-financed voucher scholarship programs, and privately-financed tax-credit scholarship programs in 33 states, including Washington, D.C., plus Puerto Rico.
Importantly, a growing number of those programs have expanded their eligibility criteria to include children from military families or those whose parents were killed while serving their country, including seven programs in Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina.
The concept behind ESAs is simple: when a student withdraws from public school, a portion of the associated funding that would have gone to their district or charter school to educate them is deposited into that child’s ESA instead. Under most existing state-level programs, parents are issued a type of dedicated-use debit card to purchase pre-approved educational products and services. Best of all, ESAs empower parents to customize their children’s learning no matter where they live.
States should continue enacting and expanding parental choice programs, but there are policies Congress should pursue that wouldn’t expand the federal footprint into education, especially ESAs.
One option is simply allowing veterans to direct their earned education benefits to their school-age children in the form of ESAs, rather than limiting those funds to college tuition. Another policy recommended by The Heritage Foundation would distribute Impact Aid to military families directly in the form of ESAs, which parents could use to pay for the education they think is best for their children.
Congressman Jim Banks of Indiana has introduced legislation that would direct the U.S. Secretary of Education to establish ESAs on behalf of interested military families, who could use those funds to pay for eligible educational expenses for their children such as private school tuition and online programs, private tutoring, public school classes and extracurricular activities, textbooks, curricula, and contributions to college savings accounts.
Research shows that parents are using their children’s state-funded ESAs to pay for a variety of educational services and private schools. Moreover, ESA funds are not only sufficient to cover annual educational expenses, including special education therapies, parents have enough left over to save for their children’s future education expenses.
Research has also consistently shown that parents who can choose their children’s schools are more satisfied than parents who cannot. ESA programs in particular have extremely high parental satisfaction levels, approaching—even far exceeding—90 percent. In addition, nearly 80 percent of current military parents favor ESAs.
U.S. Department of Defense data suggest that approximately 40% of active-duty military children ages six to 18 live in states that ban or cap the number of public charter schools. In fact, more than one-third of them live in states with such poor charter laws, these schools offer only limited options.
What’s more, nearly 80% of active-duty military children live in states where public school officials are not required to accept out-of-district open-enrollment transfer students, leaving many of them trapped in schools that do not work for them.
Calling this situation “a travesty,” Rep. Banks rightly notes that “Congress can alleviate this critical problem by supporting education savings accounts for military families.” After all, Americans who sacrifice so much for their country should not have to sacrifice when it comes to providing a quality education for their children.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14169&omhide=true&trk=title
*************************************************Left-Wingers at Lecterns: Most College Graduation Speakers Are Liberals, Survey Finds
Don’t plan on hearing from a conservative speaker at your college commencement this spring.
This year, just three of the top 100 colleges ranked by U.S. News and World Report are hosting conservative commencement speakers, while 53 are hosting left-of-center lecturers, according to the Young America’s Foundation 2022 Commencement Speaker Survey.
The remaining colleges and universities are not tallied in the foundation’s study if they are hosting speakers without apparent political affiliations, hosting multiple speakers, opted for university personnel to give the address, or hadn’t announced their commencement speakers as of the conclusion of the survey.
The trend of political liberals dominating the list of graduation speakers has been ongoing for the past 30 years, according to the foundation.
For the class of 2022, the speeches are being given by the likes of comedian Ken Jeong and former NBA basketball star Dwyane Wade, with speeches focusing on topics such as anti-racism and social justice.
Harvard University is hosting New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has kept the Pacific island nation locked down throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Some highly rated schools selected woke celebrities, such as Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Taylor Swift (New York University) and actor Kal Penn (University of California at Irvine), who served in the Obama administration.
“Despite his sinking poll numbers and rising inflation, President Joe Biden himself is scheduled to speak at University of Delaware’s commencement—so long as he can remember to show up on time,” the Young America’s Foundation report says. Biden represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate for 36 years.
The foundation says the only three conservatives this year at commencement lecterns will be Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow, and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. However, other leading conservatives, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem were not expected to speak at any commencements this year, according to the foundation’s survey.
“Even as Americans are beginning to wake up and wholly reject the left’s disastrous economic policies and culture wars, America’s universities are working overtime to rehab the left’s failing image,” it concluded. “It’s truly sad that up until their very last day of school, students are being indoctrinated by speakers with a clear ideological agenda—people who have no intent on giving an actual inspiring, powerful send-off to our future leaders.”
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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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