Education Briefs
The National School Boards Association (NSBA) is discovering to its financial cost that comparing parents to terrorists may have been a bad idea. According to Axios, the NSBA's September letter to President Biden requesting federal help to deal with angry parents speaking out at school board meetings is resulting in a seven-figure funding loss for the organization this year.
The letter caused an uproar when U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that his Justice Department would dispatch the FBI to investigate these parents as potential domestic terrorists. Despite the NSBA's eventual apology for the letter, no fewer than 17 states ultimately withdrew their support for the national organization. Axios reported that the NSBA's own records show these 17 state school board associations "paid $1.1 million in annual dues in 2019," or about 42 percent of the $2.6 million in dues the NSBA collected from state school boards associations that year. NSBA claims it receives more dues income from school districts than it does from the state associations, and that it "continues to have the resources [it needs] to be effective." But some districts have also severed ties with the national organization, and some state school boards are in talks "about a new national advocacy group that would compete with NSBA." Axios.com; TheBlaze.com
A Massachusetts teacher who was fired for posting two TikTok videos and six memes opposing CRT and gender identity politics has sued Hanover High School where she taught math and business.
Kari MacRae was hired in August and fired in September by Hanover Principal Matthew Mattos and Hanover Public School District Superintendent Matthew Ferron, after her social media posts appeared in The Boston Globe and the Cape Cod Times. The Globe reported that in her TikTok video clip, MacRae, who is also a local school board member, said: "So pretty much the reason why I ran for school board and the reason why I'm taking on this responsibility is to ensure that students, at least in our town, are not being taught critical race theory; that they're not being taught the country was built on racism. So they're not being taught that they can choose whether or not they want to be a girl or a boy... It's one thing to include and it's one thing to be inclusive. And it's one thing to educate everybody about everything. It's completely another thing to push your agenda. And, with me on the school board, that won't happen in our town." MacRae is seeking "compensatory and punitive damages, attorneys' fees, and all other appropriate relief" for violation of her First Amendment rights. Her lawsuit was filed on November 29 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She is represented by the nonprofit legal organization, Judicial Watch, whose president, Tom Fitton, said MacRae "was singled out by school district officials interested in advancing an ideology." The Epoch Times 12-4-21
Intrusive and sexually explicit surveys are showing up in Fairfax County middle and high schools and parents are up in arms. It's the same old story Education Reporter has chronicled for decades on nosy questionnaires, but these surveys are becoming ever more pornographic and inappropriate.
Last month, Fox News reported that schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, were preparing to give students as young as 12 a "youth" survey asking "specific questions about their sex and dating lives, emotions, and bullying." One of the questions asks: "During the past three months, with how many people have you had sexual intercourse?" Another asks: "How old were you when you had sexual intercourse for the first time?" Still other questions ask about specific sex acts and sexual orientation. The district denied that the sexual questions would be included in the 6th-grade survey, but other intrusive questions about students' home lives, emotions, and gender identity would be included. Fox reported that the survey will be given to 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, but that it is not mandatory. This begs the question as to whether parents are being required to opt their children out, which is precisely the reason parents' rights advocates are working to change the "opt out" provision to "opt in," making it more difficult for schools to sneakily administer these surveys without parental knowledge. Fox News Virginia-Fairfax County
Despite denials from big media, Democrat politicians, and the education establishment, an investigation by Judicial Watch shows the record is clear: CRT is being taught in Virginia schools and throughout the nation. The conservative legal organization obtained 3,500 pages of records from the Loudoun County School District under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
"The documents reveal a district suffused with Critical Race Theory and under intense pressure from school administrators, outside consultants, and powerful state and national organizations [to teach it]," Judicial Watch reported on December 6. The organization said the records also prove that CRT instruction in Loudoun County Public Schools "starts at the top," with school superintendents and the state's Democrat Party leadership. These voices, of course, were among the loudest denying that CRT instruction was taking place during the heated Virginia gubernatorial campaign earlier this fall. In January 2021, Loudoun County's then-Superintendent Eric Williams departed to head a school district in Houston, and assistant superintendent, Scott Ziegler, assumed the post. Although the school district was already steeped in controversy over CRT, Ziegler "doubled down on racism as the central threat to education." Judicial Watch says its investigation shows that CRT's radical political message not only permeates the educational system in Virginia, but also nationwide. "Just don't call it Critical Race Theory." IndependentCitizen.com, 12-6-21
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