I remember how it was -- JR
5th California School District Says Teachers Must Notify Parents If Kids Identify as Trans
Parental rights triumphed over the transgender agenda in the shadow of California’s capital overnight, as the state’s fifth school district adopted a policy requiring teachers to notify parents if their children begin to identify as a member of another sex.
Parents burst into cheers as the Rocklin Unified School District board of trustees adopted the policy by a 4-1 vote Thursday morning around 12:40 a.m. local time.
The regulation stipulates that schools must contact parents within three school days if their child requests to use a name, pronouns, or sex-segregated facilities “that do not align with the child’s biological sex.” Trustees also clarified that a student’s gender identity remains confidential to everyone “except the student and their parent(s).”
“We trust our parents to know what is best for their children,” said Rocklin school trustees shortly after the vote. “We believe that the best way to address these challenges is together, with open communication and clear expectations. The board’s action to strengthen parental notification and communication reinforces our commitment to include parents in school activities and decisions related to their child.”
The new measure is aimed at “strengthening the relationship between our staff, students, and family,” they stated.
The vote came after hundreds of people crowded into a grueling, six-and-a-half-hour meeting that included more than four hours of public comments that ranged from heartrending to hot-headed.
“This policy is violent,” asserted an LGBTQ activist wearing a rainbow cape, a cloth COVID-19 mask, and hoisting a handheld transgender flag. “You are waging war, and we will not take it quietly. … We’ll shame you in public! … Take our kids’ futures and we’ll take your livelihood!”
“We don’t take threats up here,” replied RUSD Board President Julie Hupp, who favored the policy. “Threatening the board members is not how we work up here.”
“It’s not a threat. It’s a promise!” said the speaker, who identified as Jay Smith, to the cheers of rainbow flag-waving audience members.
More than one speaker wore an LGBTQ cape in the manner of a superhero. Teachers in the school district reportedly passed out rainbow ribbons to oppose notifying parents.
Mothers and fathers asked those teachers not to lock them out of knowing the most fundamental facts of their children’s lives.
“Please support parental rights. Basic safeguarding of children means not keeping secrets from parents,” pleaded concerned parent Beth Bourne.
One of the district’s concerned parents, California Assemblyman Joe Patterson, a Republican, thanked the trustees for their service, empathizing with those who received “really hateful comments.”
“What this whole issue is about is: Who gets to raise our kids? Who gets to raise the next generation of Californians? Is it the government, or is it their parents?” declared Assemblyman Bill Essayli, a Republican who has championed a similar policy at the state level (AB 1314).
“The central question is: What authority does a school have to withhold information from parents?” asked Essayli. He noted that courts have ruled “there is no right to privacy between children and their parents.”
Liberals promised swift political retaliation against RUSD and its four pro-parent trustees.
“Hit me up if you want to run for school board next year,” said Jonathan Cook, the executive director of the Sacramento Housing Alliance. (RUSD trustee Michelle Sutherland cast the lone dissenting vote on Wednesday night. Julie Hupp, Tiffany Saathoff, Rachelle Price, and Dereck Counter voted in favor.)
One political communications specialist urged LGBTQ activists to nullify or counter messages that parental notification policies validate parents’ love for their children.
But messages of support also poured in from those unable to attend. “Parents have every right to know what’s happening with their kids. State politicians need to stay in their lane and stop meddling in parents’ efforts to raise their children,” said former state Sen. Melissa Melendez, a Republican.
Many of those who opposed the policy reportedly came from outside the district, while some who supported it cited their faith.
Hupp took a moment during the hearings to address a “controversy” over a social media post in which she invited “Christ-centered, family-focused individuals” to attend the proceedings, noting that she posted a second message inviting all families to take part.
The lopsided passage constitutes an act of defiance on the part of Rocklin, which is located in Placer County—a mere 22 miles outside Sacramento, where the administration of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has made a full-court press against parental notification policies.
California State Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, won a temporary restraining order Wednesday morning against the first district to approve a parental rights policy, Chino Valley Unified School District in San Bernardino County.
Sonja Shaw, Chino Valley Unified School District president, who has endured disturbing and specific death threats for her stand in favor of parental rights, objected that the policy “simply says that parents have a right to know what is going on at school and not be the last person informed.”
Judge Thomas Garza’s order, which applies only to Chino Valley, represents “a temporary setback in the ongoing struggle to affirm parents’ God-given and constitutionally protected right to direct the upbringing and education of their children,” said California Family Council President Jonathan Keller.
Bonta’s threats and legal intimidation amount to little more than “a political gimmick to intimidate school boards,” said Lance Christensen, vice president of education policy and government affairs at the California Policy Center.
“Gov. Newsom and other state officials are on a mission to strip parents of their rights and give control over their kids to the government,” he continued. “Bonta is using the power of his office to scare other school boards that are considering adopting parental rights policies. They should not be intimidated.”
“Despite the court’s decision, we stand undeterred by intimidation tactics from legislators, executives, and bureaucrats,” vowed Keller. “This is not just a legal battle; it’s a defining moment for our culture, drawing a line between government overreach and the sacred realm of family.”
Both see the lawsuits as an attempt to blunt the momentum in favor of parents’ rights and pro-family policy in deep-blue California.
Chino Valley affirmed parental rights by a 4-1 vote in July, followed by Murrieta Valley Unified School District and Temecula Valley Unified School District (both in Riverside County), and Anderson Union High School District in Shasta County.
“Five down, 939 to go,” quipped Christensen.
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Progressives ending grading in schools are condescending racists
I went on a guided tour Thursday of Rome’s historic Colosseum and saw the significance of the barbarism there thousands of years ago.
Rome presented its public executions as equitable since the person losing a life was armed equally to the professional combatant tasked with spilling the prisoner’s blood.
Even the Romans understood the benefit of faking fairness to persuade the public to accept the overwhelming gaps in skillset and preparedness in those defending themselves in such a cruel environment.
Today’s progressives are much like the Romans of the past.
In liberal school districts across America, they’re doing everything possible to get the public to accept mediocrity as fair and equitable and arming our children with educational paper swords, misleading them into believing they can battle the world without the solid weapon of knowledge.
Take Portland Public Schools.
The district is considering adopting new “equitable grading practices” that it’s already using in some schools.
It sent a handout pointing to data showing historical racial disparities in students’ pass/fail rate.
The handout instructs teachers to avoid giving zeros — or any grade lower than 50% — on assignments not meeting expectations, incomplete or handed in late or not at all.
Homework can’t be graded.
Teachers can’t even penalize the scores of students who’ve cheated.
How do officials justify these wild alterations from the typical grading structure?
“What it’s doing is, it’s assessing mastery and accuracy,” PPS’ Chief Academic Officer Kimberlee Armstrong stated.
“It’s about fairness, it’s about reducing bias, it’s about considering the diverse backgrounds and needs of students.”
Progressive school administrators always talk about biases that exist within their schooling structure, but they rarely discuss what policies exist that are objectively accentuating those biases.
They only know how to present the veneer of fairness by artificially inflating underperformers and leveling the more exceptional students.
A school district that states we need to have fewer expectations of students handing in course work on time because the minority children fail to do so is beyond condescending.
I feel bad for any parent who has a minority child under the tutelage of any “educator” who truly believes this.
Though they’re supposedly fighting to end racial biases, the officials’ reasoning and methodology in changing the grading system only exposes how their motives are based on racial biases, racist tropes and simplistic theories assuming certain groups’ lack of output is equal to intellectual inferiority.
These elitist progressives cannot conceive any other possibility why some minority children are unable to keep up with others in an equal environment other than their race — and to cover up their own years of failure to uplift the ones who have fallen, they manipulate the grading system instead of helping these children.
Real white supremacists would allow someone who doesn’t look like them to struggle surviving while reinforcing the false belief that he or she is actually excelling so the kid fails in a competitive world.
Real racial bias shows itself when officials claim your black child can’t meet simple expectations like handing in work on time.
Now that I think of it, they probably do believe the trope that black people are always late, so let’s not penalize them for handing in work late: They can’t help it, right?
More and more of America’s educators have become ideologically captured and put into practice the most condescending ideas as they claim to be the saviors of the melanated class.
The truth is, they look down on us with pity and have become our social executioners as they create circumstances to set us up for our demise.
The paper sword they’re handing minority children is crafted by a patronizing anti-racist, not a diligent educational sword maker.
Even the ancient Romans could see this isn’t a fair fight.
https://nypost.com/2023/09/07/progressives-ending-grading-in-schools-are-condescending-racists/
**************************************************Single-sex schools have the academic advantage, Australian data reveals
When prospective parents agonise over the decision to enrol their daughter in a single-sex school, Campbelltown’s St Patrick’s College for Girls principal Sue Lennox has a simple answer: “Boys get away with stuff because ‘boys will be boys’ and that is a dreadful lesson for girls. That is what girls at co-ed school learn,” she said.
“When girls are in class without the boys, they can be themselves. It is a safe place where they can ask questions. They don’t feel they have to be anyone in particular because there are no boys. They grow in confidence.
“In co-ed schools, some subjects are considered ‘boy subjects’ and some are considered ‘girl subjects’. That is absent here.”
An analysis of NAPLAN results from across the country’s 304 single-sex schools shows there is another advantage to segregating boys and girls: they both perform slightly better when it comes to academic results.
After accounting for socio-educational background, the analysis by Catholic Schools NSW using NAPLAN test data from 2019 to 2022 found the single-sex advantage was particularly pronounced when it came to numeracy scores in boys’ schools.
Students enrolled in boys’ schools typically scored between 11 and 12 points higher than those in co-ed schools, after accounting for socio-educational background, the report said.
“Overall, the results of this analysis imply a modest academic advantage for single-sex schools, with the advantage generally greater for boys’ schools than girls’ schools,” the report said.
When it came to numeracy, girls who went to a single-sex school scored on average three points higher than those who attended a co-ed school, after differences in social background were considered.
There are about 284,000 students across the country enrolled in single-sex schools. While they might be performing better academically, the share of all students in those schools across the country declined slightly from 7.2 per cent in 2018 to 7 per cent in 2022.
The shrinking share of students in single-sex schools is likely driven by the fact that many boys schools have decided to open their doors to girls, the report said.
In Sydney, that includes Marist school Corpus Christi College which opened its doors to girls in year 7 this year. It followed North Sydney’s Marist Catholic College North Shore which went co-ed in 2021.
The $41,000-a-year Cranbrook in Bellevue Hill will open its doors to girls in 2026, and Newington College in Stanmore is also weighing up a possible shift to co-ed.
Flinders University researcher Dr Katherine Dix analysed NAPLAN data ranging from 2010 to 2012. She found in numeracy that students at boys’ schools were one school term ahead of students in girls’ schools. However, her research found single-sex schools offered no added value in academic results over time when compared to co-ed schools.
She now believes girls’ schools remained popular because the values they promoted were attractive to parents, while that was less the case for boys’ schools.
“Wanting to develop strong independent young women is a stronger driver in a traditionally male-dominated world. The same driver is not there for single-sex male schools,” she said.
Chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW Dallas McInerney wants single-sex schools to remain an option for parents. He warned that going co-ed by admitting girls should not be considered a quick-fix solution to help a struggling school.
“Just as we believe in parental choice between sectors, it also extends to the type of school be it co-ed or single sex because different children are better suited to different environments,” he said.
“There are a number of different reasons we might want to bring together two single-sex schools on a single site. But as a general principle, one section should not be called upon to save a failing school of the opposite sex. Don’t bring in girls to salvage a struggling boys’ schools.”
At St Patrick’s in Campbelltown, Rebecca, 15, said when she compared the school to her co-ed primary school she preferred just having girls in the classroom.
“It is a lot more quiet and focused,” she said.
Abigail, 15, said she liked the close friendships she had made at school, while her classmate Diadem, also 15, said she liked being in a supportive environment of an all-girls school.
“It is a sisterhood, I feel really encouraged to do my best,” she said.
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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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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