Now you know why I call it Journolism! ** Updated! 9:05 PM EST ** #FreedomOfThePress includes the right not to publish what you don't want to publish, but concealing uncomfortable facts hurts the media's reputation

In the wake of the roughly 300 layoffs at The Washington Post, there has been a lot of blame spread, both among the subscribers who quit for owner Jeff Bezos refusing to endorse Kamala Harris Emhoff in 2024, and the paper itself for it’s very liberal leanings. The Post managed to piss off both the conservatives who might have been willing to subscribe, and the liberals who cancelled their subscriptions. Mr Bezos, in trying to fix a long-ongoing problem, fouled up.

But let me be clear here: the Freedom of the Press includes the freedom not to publish something. That should be obvious: there are only so many pages a newspaper can print, though with digital publishing these days, those limits have expanded.

And now we see just what isn’t being published, when it doesn’t fit Teh Narrative. When the mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in a small town in northeast British Columbia occurred, the Associated Press told us, at 8:59 AM EST, that the (alleged) killer was a “woman” and a “female suspect.” At 9:32 AM EST, CNN simply identified the killer as “they,” being careful to not use a pronoun to specify the killer’s sex. At 9:32 AM EST, The New York Times told us nothing about the shooter.

But, as early as 6:48 AM EST, Matt Van Swol was telling us on Twitter the news which was not politically correct, that the killer was a mentally ill boy who thought he was a girl. I checked the credentialed media, and found several instances of the media concealing the knowledge that the (alleged) killer was transgender.

The killer’s name is Jesse Van Rootselaar, though initially identified as Jesse Strang, 18 years old, and yes, he’s transgender.

I don’t get it. The credentialed media want to build trust in their accuracy, so why conceal information that they know will come out soon enough?

My spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. And now you know why I spell it that way.

Well, eventually even The New York Times had to admit what had previously been revealed, that young Mr Van Rootselaar was the killer, and that the “suspect” was born as biologically male and chose to identify as a female about six years ago. That acknowledgement was time-stamped at 2:45 PM EST, just three minutes short of eight hours after Mr Van Swol’s tweet. The Times also revealed that the “suspect” had quit school four years earlier, which would have meant he wasn’t in school since age 14.

From the Times at 3:19 PM EST:

“Police had attended that residence on a number of occasions over the last several years dealing with concerns of mental health with our suspect,” Dwayne McDonald, the deputy commissioner, said, referring to the home where the suspect’s mother and stepbrother were found dead. On one of those occasions, “firearms were seized.” The most recent police call to the residence was in the spring of last year.

So, the local police already knew that young Mr Van Rootselaar was just plain nuts. Isn’t being biologically one sex but believing you are the other one definition of just plain nuts?

Of course, the newspaper continued to use the feminine pronouns to refer to the killer, as did local officials, because for some stupid reason they think a guy calling himself a girl really is a girl; are the editors and writers at the Times just as nuts as Mr Van Rootselaar?

Yeah, I think that they are!

You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!

Adrian Gonzales, mugshot by Uvalde County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office, and is a public record.

No, Adrian Gonzales, pictured to the right, is not your typical criminal. Rather, he was the police officer stationed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde County, Texas, who channeled Scot Peterson, the coward of Broward, and chose not to confront the shooter who killed 19 students and two teachers during the shootings.

Trial begins for former Uvalde officer charged in Robb Elementary shooting response

Adrian Gonzales faces multiple counts of endangerment, abandonment of a child.

By Peter Charalambous, Josh Margolin, Jenny Wagnon Courts, and Jim Scholz | Monday, January 5, 2026 | 5:12 AM EST

Nearly four years after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in a Texas elementary school, a jury is set to decide whether a police officer should be held criminally responsible in connection with one of the worst school shootings in American history.

Jury selection begins Monday in the trial of former Uvalde school police officer Adrian Gonzales, charged with allegedly placing more than two dozen children in “imminent danger” by failing to respond to the crisis as it unfolded.

Perhaps Mr Gonzalves is not in as big a heap o’ trouble as the headline suggests, given that Mr Peterson was acquitted.

Prosecutors allege that Gonzales, one of the first of nearly 400 officers to respond to the rampage, failed to engage the shooter despite knowing his location, having time to respond and being trained to handle active shooters. It ultimately took 77 minutes for law enforcement to mount a counter-assault that would kill the gunman.

Ever since the shooting tore apart Uvalde on May 24, 2022, families of the victims have been seeking accountability and answers. Many have argued their children might have been saved had police confronted the gunman more quickly.

The trial, being staged 200 miles from Uvalde in Corpus Christi, marks an exceedingly rare instance of prosecutors seeking to convict a member of law enforcement for a response to a school shooting.

Prosecutors in June 2024 charged both Gonzales and Uvalde schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo — the on-site commander on the day of the shooting — with multiple counts of endangerment and abandonment of a child.

I will state for the record that I have never been put in the position of having to charge into a situation with an armed killer. Yeah, we’d all like to think that we’d be brave enough to take action, but until you actually face the bullets, face the gunfire, knowing that there is a chance that you would be killed, you can’t actually know how you would react.

Our entire history is full of men who did bravely charge into the face of gunfire. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz said of the Marines who fought on Iwo Jima, “Uncommon valor was a common virtue,” and 6,821 Americans died in that battle, along with another 19,217 wounded. Out of 73,000 American troops — and the D-Day landings included British, Canadian, and French troops as well — who hit the beaches in Normandy on D-Day, 2,501 were killed, and more than 5,000 were wounded. These men, trained to run into the fire, their courage doubtlessly bolstered by the courage of the men beside them, did their duty. In our bloodiest war, the War Between the States, somewhere between 620,000 and possibly as high as 850,000 men went bravely toward their deaths, at a time in which the intense military training of American soldiers, sailors, and Marines during World War II was mostly non-existent.

American courage has not been in scarce supply, overall, but it was a scarce quantity at Uvalde. Many of the Americans who hit the beaches were draftees, many of the 58,200 Americans whose lives were wasted in Vietnam, were conscripts[1]Full disclosure: I was draft eligible in 1972, but by then American involvement in Vietnam was ending. With a high lottery number, and the great reduction of American involvement in that waste case … Continue reading, but every law enforcement officer who arrived on the scene in Uvalde was a volunteer, was a man who had personally committed himself to running toward the fire.

They were trained to do just that:

Two months before a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the school district’s then-police chief was required to attend a training about how to respond to an active shooter, which instructed in no uncertain terms that an “officer’s first priority is to move in and confront the attacker.”

When Pete Arredondo, the police chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District at the time of the May 2022 shooting, was confronted with precisely the situation his training should have prepared him for, he did the opposite of what the training instructed would have saved lives, according to a newly released trove of documents from the Uvalde school district.

“Time is the number one enemy during active shooter response,” a lesson plan for the training said. “The best hope that innocent victims have is that officers immediately move into action to isolate, distract, or neutralize the threat, even if that means one officer acting alone.”

Officers Arredondo and Gonzales were trained to run toward the fire, and did not. Now they are facing charges over their inactions that sad day. There’s some hesitancy on my part to write about men who chose not to do their duty, in a potentially lethal situation, because I have not personally been tested in such a way, and who knows? Perhaps I would have ducked and run for cover had I been there.

But I was not there, and have taken no training or commitment to run toward the fire. These trials may establish just what the actual commitment of those who do so commit really means.

References

References
1 Full disclosure: I was draft eligible in 1972, but by then American involvement in Vietnam was ending. With a high lottery number, and the great reduction of American involvement in that waste case of a war, I was not called, and did not volunteer.

When a raging anti-Semite feels comfortable enough to go on a tirade.

Lower Gwynedd Township was established in 1698 by William Penn, a very well-to-do township in what is now mostly well-to-do Montgomery County, one of the collar counties of the City of Brotherly Love. I have done a couple of projects in Lower Gwynedd, and not only could I not have afforded a home there, I couldn’t even afford some of their driveways! In the 2024 election, the residents of Montgomery County gave 317,103 votes, 60.62% of the total, to then Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff, and only 198,311 votes, 37.91% of the total to our then 45th and now 47th President, Donald Trump. Only neighboring Delaware County, 61.15%, and Philadelphia itself, 78.57%, gave Mrs Emhoff a higher percentage of their votes in the Keystone State.

Perhaps that’s why Philip Leddy, the principal of Lower Gwynedd Elementary School felt it safe to go on an anti-Semitic rant, even in private, as so many of our nation’s good Democrats have decided that they hate Jews for defending themselves following Hamas’ October 7th massacre.

Well, he shouldn’t have felt too safe, because he’s now the former principal!

Pennsylvania principal axed after ranting about ‘Jew money’ in voicemail to parent

By David Spector | Saturday, December 27, 2025 | 9:33 AM EST

Philip Leddy, photo by Wissahickon School District, and is a public record.

A Pennsylvania principal whose antisemitic tirade about “Jew money” was inadvertently recorded has been fired.

Lower Gwynedd Elementary School Principal Philip Leddy was axed Tuesday by the Wissahickon School Board.

Leddy, 45, was returning a call from a parent when he got the dad’s voicemail and left a message, but then apparently failed to end the call, Philadelphia’s ABC 7 reported.

That’s actually ABC 6, not ABC 7, but the link is accurate.

Leddy allegedly accused the parent of having “Jew money” and could be heard muttering “they control the banks,” according to recording, which was posted by the advocacy group StopAntisemitism.

”They go to Jew camp . . . everyone at the camp hates that family . . . ,” he was also caught saying, according to the group’s recording.

Parents in the district have accused the school board of attempting to paper over their longstanding issues with antisemitism by hanging Leddy out to dry.

“It was an easy one for them because it was old school anti-semitism versus more modern, like anti-Zionism antisemitism,” Beth Ages, who has two kids in the district, told The Post.

Jewish parents in the district noted a mural in Wissahickon Middle School which depicts the rabid anti-Semite Linda Sarsour.

Perhaps the anti-Semites are achieving their mostly unstated goals:

“Jewish families are leaving in droves,” said Lynn Simon, who has two kids in the district.

I was unable to find Mr Leddy’s credentials, but he must have at least a Master’s degree to have been a principal in a Montgomery County school district. He has to be an educated man, at least as far as education in education goes. He had to have gone to college, and, at his age, 45, it had to have been several years ago. He became principal in 2023, presumably before the October 7, 2023 attack.

But this was the funniest point of all, from the 6ABC news story: he had “previously chaired an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee in another district, according to his school bio.” Looks like being all in on DEI doesn’t cover inclusion of Jooooos.

The School District leaders said that Mr Leddy wasn’t just talking to himself, but was apparently speaking with another district employee at the time. No action has been taken against that employee, who contributed nothing anti-Semitic to Mr Leddy’s tirade, but left unreported is the fact that the now former principal felt comfortable enough to engage in that tirade with another school employee.

And that’s the part that gets to me. Unless Mr Leddy is an absolute moron, he had to have known that an anti-Semitic rant was the kind of thing that could get him fired, yet he felt secure enough to do it anyway in front of another school district employee. That tells me that not only did Mr Leddy not think his rant was wrong, but he seemingly didn’t think that whomever the other school employee was wouldn’t find it a problem either. Just how anti-Semitic is wealthy Lower Gwynedd that this could have occurred?

Fortunately, with the ongoing strike, there should be plenty of available positions as baristas at Starbucks, so maybe he won’t starve. But, then again, he probably won’t be able to afford to live in Montgomery County.

Perhaps we should start telling the unvarnished truth instead of hiding behind euphemisms

It was with some amusement that I saw the screen blurb screen captured to the right in Wednesday morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer “Newsletters” section of their website main page.

When schools move ‘tough-to-teach’ kids | Morning Newsletter

by Paola Pérez | Wednesday, December 17, 2025 | 6:00 AM EST

It’s not unusual for students to switch schools after the school year begins. However, some Philly principals point to one “concerning” trend behind a bump in transfers from charters.

The Inquirer spoke with a dozen current and former district administrators who say some pupils with behavior problems are pushed by charters out to Philadelphia School District schools. Charter leaders dispute claims that kids are sent to district schools over disciplinary issues. . . . .

Deep frustration: The bar is much higher for district administrators to remove students; they “can’t turn kids away,” another principal said. Making matters more difficult is a lack of additional funding to attend to more students.

Notable quote: “It’s just not fair,” said a third principal. “We’re not getting their best kids.”

Reporter Paola Pérez newsletter referenced a larger Inquirer article:

It’s an open secret that some charter schools push out kids with behavioral problems, Philly principals say

Principals say students offloaded from charters to Philadelphia School District schools are often “counseled out,” while they can’t remove students from traditional public schools for those reasons.

by Kristen A Graham | Wednesday, December 17, 2025 | 5:00 AM EST | Updated 12:16 PM EST

The trickle begins in the fall, some principals say: Students with a history of behavior or disciplinary problems or other issues show up in Philadelphia School District schools, often from city charters.

“(A) history of behavior or disciplinary problems,” huh? Is that the 21st century formulation of what those of us from the quill-pen-and-inkwell era referred to as juvenile delinquents? At least it’s better than “tough to teach.”

“(N)ot getting their best kids”? Nope, the public schools are getting their worst kids!

But at times, it seems like some students are off-loaded from charters because they’re tough to educate, according to interviews with a dozen district administrators. In district schools, administrators can’t remove students for such issues.

We also used a term, “reform school,” which AI defined as:

A reform school, an outdated term for juvenile correctional or therapeutic facilities, housed troubled youths for behavior change through discipline, education, and vocational training, aiming to reform rather than just punish. Today, these institutions are typically called residential treatment centers, therapeutic boarding schools, or youth correctional facilities, focusing on mental health and specific behavioral issues with modern therapeutic approaches, though historical ones featured strict discipline, labor, and sometimes harsh conditions.

Maybe the name and ideas of reform schools are what’s needed. Instead of sending juvenile delinquents those youth with behavioral or disciplinary problems to regular public schools, perhaps we need to send them to old-fashioned reform schools, perhaps we need to get them and their disruptive-to-other-students behaviors away from normal kids.

But, like the kerfuffle over President Trump calling Minnesota Governor Tim Walz “seriously retarded,” you’re just not allowed to use the politically incorrect words, and “reform school” and “juvenile delinquent” are just as politically incorrect as “retard.” Perhaps, just perhaps, if we admit that the delinquents are delinquents, and put them in real reform schools, rather than warehousing them in mainstream public schools, the vast bulk of our students would wind up being better educated than they have been.

Mikie Sherrill Hedberg believes you can’t handle the truth! The candidate will not address an issue she sees as a vote loser

Remember the kerfuffle over former Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff’s admission that she considered then-Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg as her running mate, but decided against it because he is openly homosexual? Mr Buttigied admitted to being “surprised” to read that.

The divergence comes as their party is grappling with its approach to diversity, as the Trump administration slashes through diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Democrats disagree about how much to emphasize such values after the GOP successfully painted the party as too “woke” — and now face new questions over how to field winning candidates.

Now The Philadelphia Inquirer is telling us how one candidate is handling that. The Editorial Board endorsed Representative Mikie Sherrill Hedberg (D-NJ) in her campaign for Governor of the Garden State, but now the newspaper is telling us not to worry, she’s #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading enough, but she has to keep that on the down-low to get votes:

These parents wish Mikie Sherrill would defend their transgender kids. They understand why she doesn’t.

U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill has been quiet on transgender rights in the New Jersey governor’s race as Republican Jack Ciattarelli has spoken out against protections for trans youth.

by Aliya Schneider | Sunday, October 16, 2025 | 5:00 AM EDT

C.B. can’t even comprehend her transgender daughter being required to use the boys’ bathroom at her South Jersey school.

That’s OK, because most of us cannot comprehend how “C.B.” or any other rational human being could think that her son is actually a girl, or how the newspaper can use terms to pretend that he is a she.

“If you went into her classroom and someone said, ‘Pick out the trans kid out of these 25 kids,’ you would not be able to,” C.B. said. “You might very well get it wrong.”

So, “C.B.” is saying that her son can ‘pass’ as a girl

C.B., who asked to be identified by her initials to protect the privacy of her child, said she loves the Garden State. She has a “very Jersey family.”

But, like other parents of trans children, she’s considering packing her family’s bags depending on the results of the Nov. 4 election, and whether the next governor maintains the state’s LGBTQ+ friendly policies.

As opposed to getting her son mental help, to accept that he’s really a boy and learn how to be a male.

The stakes of the election are stark for C.B. and other parents. Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican nominee for New Jersey governor, opposes state policies implemented under Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy meant to protect transgender children. Ciattarelli says he would require schools to tell parents about their children’s gender identity and stop transgender girls (sic) from participating in girls’ sports. He also opposes gender-affirming care for minors and believes parents should be able to opt their kids out of LGBTQ+ related topics in school.

Shocking! You mean that Mr Ciattarelli believes that public schools should not be able to conceal a child’s mental illness from his parents? You mean that the Republican candidate believes that parents should have the choice to opt their children out of lessons they consider to be immoral and contrary to their religious beliefs?

U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee, has largely voted in support of transgender rights throughout her nearly seven-year legislative career. She was endorsed by LGBTQ+ advocacy groups as well as her friend U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D., Del.), the first openly transgender member of Congress. But Sherrill has not publicly defended trans rights when criticized by Ciattarelli and has declined to answer reporters’ questions on the matter.

Of course, “U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride” is actually Tim McBride, yet another male who thinks he’s a woman, whom the good people of the First State foolishly elected to Congress, but the newspaper I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. would never tell you that, because you can’t handle the truth.

Reporter Aliya Schneider noted that former and future President Donald Trump attacked Mrs Emhoff for supporting the strange notion that girls can be boys and boys can be girls, and that Mr Ciattarelli is doing the same thing in his campaign.

Sherrill has not just ignored the attacks. She has avoided talking about the issue altogether.

The article continues, and it is pretty heavily biased in favor of ‘transgenderism,’ so don’t be surprised if you choose to follow the link and read more of it, but it all boils down to one thing: the ‘transgender’ lobby believe that Mrs Hedberg will closely toe their line, but just can’t say so, because she needs the votes. The Democratic candidate won’t address the issue at all, because doing something really radical like telling voters the truth about her beliefs is a vote loser. Perhaps, if she loses, she’ll admit the truth as Mrs Emhoff did in her silly book, but the sad part is that, if she wins, she’ll tell you the truth about her policies with state action.

References

References
1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.

That thing that never happens has happened again At least ten high school varsity teams have chosen to forfeit games to protest presence of a boy on a girls' volleyball team

We noted, on September 26th, that six schools had forfeited games against the Jurupa Valley High School’s girls’ varsity volleyball team because a mentally ill male, A B Hernandez, plays on the girls’ team. Fox News has just reported how much the real girls are sacrificing:

California girls’ volleyball team with trans player sees 10th match forfeited amid controversy

The team can clinch first place in its league on Wednesday

By Jackson Thompson | Wednesday, October 15, 2025 | 3:45 PM EDT

Jurupa Valley High School’s girls’ volleyball team in California has now seen at least 10 games on its 2025 schedule forfeited amid a national controversy involving one of its players, who is transgender.

Los Osos High School forfeited a tournament game against Jurupa Valley on Saturday, while Patriot High School forfeited its Monday varsity match, marking its second forfeit to JVHS this season. Patriot High School previously forfeited a Sept. 26 match to Jurupa Valley.

Maribel Munoz, the mother of Jurupa Valley player Alyssa McPherson, provided Fox News Digital a copy of a message sent by JVHS head coach Liana Manu, announcing that the varsity match against Patriot was forfeited. The JV and freshman games were still played.

So, the schools are still playing the sub-varsity games, the games in which young Mr Hernandez is not participating.

It appears that by using a male player on the girls’ team, Jurupa Valley is in position to win the league title. However, JVHS is playing without Hadeel Hazameh and Alyssa McPherson, real girls who are refusing to play while Mr Hernandez is on the team.

Two of Jurupa Valley’s senior players, McPherson and Hadeel Hazameh, stepped away from the team this season in protest of trans teammate AB Hernandez.

McPherson and Hazameh have also filed a lawsuit against the Jurupa Unified School District citing their experience playing and sharing a locker room with Hernandez the previous three seasons. McPherson’s older sister and former JVHS girls’ volleyball player Madison McPherson is the third plaintiff in that lawsuit.

So, Misses McPherson and Hazameh, both of whom are minors according to the lawsuit filed — the age of sexual consent in the Pyrite State is 18 — wound up playing and sharing a locker room with young Mr Hernandez, though obviously uncomfortably, in previous seasons. Here we have to give credit to Riley Gaines Barker, who has been leading the effort against allowing males to compete on women’s athletic teams, and the several colleges which forfeited against San José State University last collegiate volleyball season, for showing the way. Because none of the actual adults would do the right thing and protect women’s sports, it has been left to teenagers and young twenty-something athletes to sacrifice willingly to make the point.

But I keep wondering what young Mr Hernandez is doing. I get it: he really, really, really thinks he’s a girl. Yet, a volleyball team is supposed to be a team, and even if he thinks that Misses McPherson and Hazameh are being ridiculous in not accepting him as a girl, he has also cost his team at least ten opportunities to play against competition. The forfeits are wins for the team, but they are not wins that the team has earned. Brayden “Blaire” Fleming did the same thing for San José State University.

If Mr Hernandez really wants to be seen and thought of as a girl, why is he doing things to draw ever more attention to the fact that he’s male? He recently competed in and won the girls’ triple jump track competition by eight feet! He won races by margins which left the other girls in the dust. At least Will “Lia” Thomas had enough sense to, after he won an NCAA championship in one event, to pull back and let real women win the others. Mr Fleming kept his ‘transgender’ status a secret, and, to be honest, he could actually ‘pass’ as a girl, where Mr Thomas could not.

Can someone explain this stuff to me, because I guess that I’m just not smart enough to figure it out on my own. If the ‘transgendered’ really want to be seen as the sex they claim to be, why do things to point out that they really are not?

That thing that never happens has happened again

Hiring a 48-year-old, 5’7″, 210 lb ‘transgender woman’ to drive a school bus full of young kids? What could possibly go wrong?

Male bus driver who goes by ‘Ms Sharon’ charged with sexually abusing multiple boys

By Alex Oliveira | Sunday, October 5, 2025 | 2:27 PM EDT

A North Carolina school bus driver who calls himself “Ms. Sharon” has been charged with sexually assaulting several boys whom he lured to his house, cops say.

Leetwain Darrell Tate — a 48-year-old a male also known as just “Sharon” — was arrested Tuesday and charged with two counts of statutory rape and six counts of indecent liberties with a minor, according to Charlotte-Mecklenberg police.

He is accused of assaulting at least four boys age 14 and 15 years old, but officials said there could be more victims.

The children were found to be staying at his house, and one of them claimed Tate offered him money in return for sex, an arrest affidavit obtained by WCNC read.

The New York Post noted that the police said none of the ‘incidents’ occurred while Mr Tate was working for the school or on school property.

The WCCB news story doesn’t give us any more information than did the Post. Oddly enough, I was unable to find anything on this story in The New York Times, where they tell readers about All the News That’s Fit to Print.

The Charlotte Observer did report on the story, but of course the newspaper used the feminine pronouns to refer to Mr Tate. The Observer reported this:

In a letter to families about the allegations, Sugar Creek Charter School Superintendent Celeste Sundo said Tate met all of the necessary background requirements to get hired.

“All Sugar Creek Charter School candidates undergo a multi-step hiring process, including a national background check and reference checks, before an offer of employment is made,” Sundo said.

Yeah, that’s what the Des Moines board of education said about Ian Roberts, too, and look how that turned out! Apparently being a 5’7″ ‘transgender woman’ meets the ‘necessary background requirements’ for Mecklenburg County public schools! Normally when you hire crazy, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get crazy.

Arizona leads the nation in the most important educational reform.

We reported, on Friday morning, how public schools in the Pyrite State have been required to treat mentally ill boys who think that they’re girls as real girls, and how such has caused a number of other high schools to forfeit girls’ volleyball games rather than play against ‘transgender’ players.

The Wall Street Journal has now reported how different options to the public schools have opened up in next-door Arizona:

At the Epicenter of School Choice, Arizona Public Schools Battle Existential Crisis

Educators fight back against falling enrollments and rising competition. One idea: mimic restaurant-industry focus on customer service.

by Matt Barnum | Friday, September 26, 2025 | 10:00 AM EDT

PHOENIX—Public school leaders in Arizona recently convened a summit to combat an existential crisis.

Across the state, enrollments at district public schools are falling. Last month, superintendents gathered in Phoenix at the “Traditional Public Schools Messaging Summit” to strategize ways to improve the perception of public education. The goal: woo families and bolster political support.

In an opening brainstorming session, educators shouted out benefits of public schooling. “We welcome all!” said one person. “We represent the community,” added another. There are “comprehensive choices” in public education, chimed in a third.

Well, perhaps that’s just it: as California is ‘welcoming all’, to the point of pretending that girls can be boys and boys can be girls, and thereby harming the rights and privacy of other people — similar problems are cropping up in the once sensible Commonwealth of Virginia — and the liberal governments imposing #woke ideologies and leftover Biden Administration federal policies are making public schools places that aren’t quite as welcoming to normal people.[1]Yes, by “normal people,” I am referring to heterosexuals Only the cost of private schools have kept millions from fleeing to them . . . and Arizona broke that barrier!

Arizona is at the leading edge of a reckoning in public education. Nationwide, declining birthrates and rising competition—from alternatives like charter schools, private education and home schooling—have eroded student bodies at the regular neighborhood schools that generations of Americans attended.  .  .  .  

In 2022, Arizona became the first state to allow any family to use public funding for their child to attend a private school or support home schooling. The move came as public schools across the country faced intense criticism over Covid precautions and practices related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

A surge of similar voucher initiatives followed in Republican-led states. The federal government will soon launch a program to subsidize private education costs, although states will have to opt into it.

I saw this tweet on Wednesday, and “Rebecca” told us a story which few people know, but which is far too common:

People who say this about autism have exclusively dealt with the high functioning autist, who perhaps has a revulsion to wearing socks. When I was first teaching in public school I had a 4th grade autistic student who regularly wet himself, could not speak beyond moans, often hit and bit out of frustration, could not read or write. If you don’t think parents and children deserve a cure for this, you are either a very evil or very deluded person.

She was responding to another silly post on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — with a graphic saying that “autism does not need to be cured”, so not addressing this topic, but the real problem is that the school stuck her with such a ‘student’ in the first place. ‘Mainstreaming’ the seriously and hopelessly disabled may sound so very sympathetic, but it harms the educational progress for the real students. How does the disruptive autistic ‘student’ inhibit the rest of the class? How does having a ‘student’ who regularly urinates in his pants enable the teacher to continue teaching the other kids in the class?

I remember this very clearly! It was the last day of school at St Joseph’s Regional Academy in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, in early June of 2023, where my younger daughter attended the seventh grade. I took the day off, and was speaking with another parent there, who was herself a teacher at the public Pocono West High School, but put her own kids in parochial school. She described the same situation, a ‘mainstreamed’ handicapped student, and described her job as less teaching than just trying manage a chaotic situation due to a frequently disruptive, seriously handicapped ‘student,’ one who could never function on any normal level, regardless of how many resources were invested in him.

I get it: I’m the [insert slang term for the anus here] who’s wholly insensitive to the needs of handicapped children and their families, but at some point it has to be asked: are we allowing public sympathy for people who will have to be cared for — frequently at public expense! — for their entire lives to negatively impact public education for the vast majority of normal students?

Sadly, the Journal article never brought up the subjects I have, but they are subjects with which most school systems of any size have to deal, and subjects which push normal families to want to get their normal kids out of the public school systems.

Nor does the article raise the subject of teachers, almost entirely from the political left, attempting to indoctrinate students politically. Somehow, some way, I managed to go through twelve years of public schools — back in the days of quill pens and inkwells — without ever knowing anything about my teachers’ sexuality or political leanings, but there are tons of stories now on teachers of this century sharing exactly those things.

The Supreme Court had to rule, in the case of Mahmoud v Taylor (2025), that parents could opt their children out of public school lessons they deemed immoral or contrary to their religious beliefs,[2]Technically, the case allowed the petitioners to receive an injunction to require the opt-outs while the merits of the case were adjudicated, but the majority held that the parents were likely to … Continue reading when the Montgomery County, Maryland, School Board ended such a policy to force children as young as kindergarten to be instructed with “LGBTQ+-inclusive texts.” That’s the kind of thing to which normal parents might object, but the Board wanted to wave away such objections away and indoctrinate kids their way, not the parents.

Is it any wonder that trust in the public schools is low?

The rest of the referenced article I do encourage you to read, but it’s mostly a documentation of sales programs that private and now some public schools are trying to use.

It’s a good thing that Arizona passed their laws concerning school choice, so that their citizens can use it and show the rest of the United States how our education system can work for the good of the American people rather than just the teachers’ unions and liberal special interests. I can just imagine how The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers would react to such a program in the Keystone State!

References

References
1 Yes, by “normal people,” I am referring to heterosexuals
2 Technically, the case allowed the petitioners to receive an injunction to require the opt-outs while the merits of the case were adjudicated, but the majority held that the parents were likely to succeed on the merits.

That thing that never happens has happened again

Riverside County, where the Jurupa United School District is located, is the fourth largest county in California and tenth largest the United States, but it has at least a little bit of sense — for the Pyrite State, that is — in that it was actually carried by Donald Trump on the 2024 election, albeit by the narrow margin of 463,677 (49.30%) to 451,782 (48.04%). Six congressional districts have parts of the county in them, represented by three Democrats and three Republicans, while there is again a split in the state Senate, but a 5-to-1 advantage for Republicans in the state Assembly.

But, alas! California overall is dominated not only by Democrats, but far-left Democrats, and every #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading policy possible has been enacted. And A B Hernandez, a male who is just absotively, posilutely certain he’s really a girl, is on the Jerupa Valley High School girls’ volleyball team.

Perhaps you’ve heard of young Mr Hernandez. He recently won the girls’ triple jump track competition by eight feet!

Now:

Patriot High School has forfeited an upcoming match to the Jurupa Valley High School.

Jurupa Valley previously saw three forfeits in one weekend at the Freeway Games tournament, as Aquinas High School, San Dimas High School, and Yucaipa High School all refused to play Jurupa Valley. Before this, the teams AB Miller High School, Orange Vista High School, Rim of the World High School, and Riverside Poly High School had all forfeited to Jurupa Valley.

Young Mr Hernandez’s presence isn’t the only ‘transgender’ boy causing forfeits in California.

From Fox News:

Three of Hernandez’s current and former volleyball teammates have filed a lawsuit against the Jurupa Unified School District (JUSD), the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) and the California Department of Education (CDE) over their experience sharing a team and locker room with the transgender athlete.

The two current teammates in the lawsuit, seniors Alyssa McPherson and Hadeel Hazameh, previously told Fox News Digital they were stepping away from the team as long as the transgender athlete is participating. The third plaintiff is McPherson’s older sister Madison, who graduated last year.

“Plaintiffs have been intimidated by an intentionally hostile environment created by Defendants wherein they were bullied by school officials to censor their objections to competing with, and against, a male and to sharing intimate and private spaces with a male,” the lawsuit reads.

We have previously reported on the discovery that “Blaire” Fleming was actually a male named Brayden Fleming on the San José State University women’s volleyball team, and how it led to several forfeits.

I get it. Our good friends on the left, consumed by sympathy as they are, really, really, really want to accommodate the ‘transgendered,’ those afflicted with gender dysphoria, who apparently seriously believe that they are not really the sex into which they were conceived, developed, and born. They really, really, really want people like young Mr Hernandez and Will Thomas to be able to live out their dreams to be women, regardless of the fact that they just are not.

But there are real differences between men and women, between boys and girls, differences which make a difference when it comes to athletics, and for all of the ‘transgendered’s’ Wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’, Plannin’ and dreamin’ that girls can be boys and boys can be girls, they really can’t be. The ‘transgendered’ are mentally ill, and our very sympathetic friends on the left somehow believe that it’s better to go along with their delusions than to help them and tell them the truth.

However crazy you might think I am, no matter how much I really, really want to be as athletic as Bo Jackson, I’m at least sane enough to realize that I’m not.

Now, there are athletes, there are families in southern California, some of which might have been more sympathetic to people like young Mr Hernandez who are learning the hard way that the idiocy of the hard left wokesters is not something in the distance, something that happens to Other People, but happens to them as well.

The academic year has really just begun. How many more stories like this will we see before it’s over?

References

References
1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.