Category Archives: Education

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All the News That’s Politically Correct Do the credentialed media really think we don't notice?

I have written it previously: when I see a story in the credentialed media about the sexual abuse of a minor, if it is written in a manner to obscure the sex of the victim, “I suspect that the abuse was homosexual in nature.” Now, fresh on the heels of our stories about April Bradford’s sexual abuse of two female middle and high school students, this one appeared in my media feed, from the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Teacher sexually abused student for years, including in her classroom, Iowa cops say

By Mike Stunson | Wednesday, February 21, 2024 | 4:53 PM CST

A teacher faces sexual abuse charges following a yearslong “inappropriate sexual relationship” with a student, Iowa police say.

Rachel Whiteside, via Iowa News Now

Rachel Whiteside, a 34-year-old teacher and coach with the Ankeny Community School District, turned herself in Wednesday, Feb. 21, according to the city of Ankeny. She is charged with third-degree child abuse, four counts of sexual exploitation by a school employee, and lascivious conduct with a minor.

Authorities learned in January of the incidents involving Whiteside when the victim came forward to the Ankeny School District, officials said.

The victim reported being in ninth grade when the abuse began, KCCI reported, citing court documents. The victim was 14 years old at the time.

Police said the “sexual conduct” continued for years while the student attended the Ankeny Community School District between 2015 and 2018. The incidents continued until the victim was 23, according to the Des Moines Register.

There’s more at the original. Neither the Lexington Herald-Leader, where I first saw the story on Sunday morning, nor the Kansas City Star, another McClatchy newspaper, had the mugshot of the accused, even though it was available in several places. The Des Moines Register, a Gannett newspaper which Mike Stunson’s article cites, also failed to include Miss Whiteside’s photo.

Why was I interested at all? As I stated, when I don’t see any references to the victim’s sex, I always assume that it was homosexual in nature, and I wanted to confirm my suspicion. And yup, Mr Stunson’s article was written in a manner in which the victim’s sex was carefully concealed.

But The Des Moines Register let it slip, just barely, and just once, in the seventh paragraph down:

She (Miss Whiteside) also kept photographs of the victim in her classroom, and had kept a note written by the victim when she was a student in middle or high school in her desk drawer, according to court documents.

Emphasis mine.

Mr Stunson referenced the Des Moines Register article in his original, which included that reference to the victim’s sex, so, unless he’s a sloppy reader — something which is always a possibility — he knew that the victim was female, and wrote his article in a manner deliberately to conceal it.

But there’s more. Iowa News Now reported, in a reference which was easily found by a Google search of Rachel Whiteside, part of the victim’s statement to law enforcement:

As a minor, I was confused about my sexuality and wasn’t sure about my own identity. Rachel Whiteside groomed me and abused me. It wasn’t until just before I turned 23 that I broke ties with her.

Did Mr Stunson not do any more research? Does he believe that people wouldn’t be asking that question? Of course, to be fair, he could well be following the directives of his editors?

It is the Accepted Wisdom of our good friends on the left that homosexuality has nothing to do with the sexual abuse of minors, nothing at all, but it certainly seems that a much greater incidence of such reported crimes are homosexual in nature than the prevalence of homosexuals in our society. I suppose that we weren’t supposed to notice that.

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The Philadelphia teachers and crappy work attitudes. If some teachers believe that they are not "treated with dignity," it is because other teachers have not been worthy of dignified treatment.

I’ve seen the forms before. In an employee evaluation form from the University of Kentucky, when I was in grad school, there was an attendance section which had four different possible selections, one of which was “Uses sick days as fast/almost as fast as they are accumulated.” And no, that box was not checked in my case; I almost never missed work, and yes, I went to work even when I was not feeling 100%.

I did have a few instances of missing time when I was hospitalized due to Crohn’s Disease, something I have but which is almost completely in remission. My last serious flare-up was in 2012.

However, in an article in Wednesday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, on the use of sick days in the city’s public schools, there was one line which told subscribers — yes, it’s another of those “subscribers Only” articles — which encapsulated the problem very succinctly:

“The days were meant for us to take,” said Cristina Gutierrez, a kindergarten teacher at Elkin Elementary in Kensington.

No, Miss Gutierrez, the sick days are not some sort of personal time off that employees are “meant” to take; they are there for employees to use when they are actually sick! Perhaps the Inquirer’s school system reporter, Kristen A Graham, or an editor was as appalled by that statement as I was, given that someone made it the lead photograph, complete with that abysmal quotation, in the online version of the article!

Sick days come with their contract. But Philly teachers get punished for taking them.

10 are allowed each year, but after accumulating a few, instructors are expected to meet with the boss. Then things intensify.

by Kristen A Graham | Wednesday, February 28, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST

Philadelphia teachers’ contract allows them 10 sick days a year. But they are progressively penalized just for taking them.

No, the teachers are not being punished for using sick days; they are being held to account for abusing sick days.

That means when a teacher comes down with a virus or has a family member with a medical emergency, there’s a constant calculus in the heads of many: Can I afford to take the day off? Will there be consequences for doing so?

The policy, known informally as “3-5-7-9,” works this way: After a teacher’s third “occurrence,” whether a single sick day or the third in a consecutive stretch of days, principals are instructed to have an informal conversation with the instructor and write a memo documenting the episode. After the fifth occurrence, the teacher gets a warning memo in the permanent file; after the seventh, the teacher gets an “unsatisfactory incident” memo in the file and a formal conference. A teacher who reaches nine occurrences gets a second unsatisfactory incident report, a recommended suspension, and conferences with the principal and assistant superintendent.

The policy seems kind of bulky and overly documentarian, but I suppose that’s something that’s required in a large, unionized environment.

My far too expensive Philadelphia Inquirer subscription. I could use a senior citizen’s discount right about now!

Miss Graham’s article continues to tell readers “subscribers like (me)” — and I subscribe so that you don’t have to — several different stories about hardships that some teachers have: sick children, handicapped spouses, and the like, many of which would appear to be legitimate concerns.

Much further down:

The policy stems from a case dating 40 years, when a district secretary was fired for poor attendance. The PFT (Philadelphia Federation of Teachers) challenged the termination and ultimately lost; the arbitrator wrote that management can “require reasonably steady attendance as a condition of employment, regardless of the reasons for the absences, since otherwise the employee is of no practical value to the enterprise.”

The PFT contract sets the number of sick days at 10 (plus three personal days), but the arbitration decision gives the district the right to set the 3-5-7-9 policy. The district’s employee relations department tells principals that “progressive discipline uses increasingly more severe penalties to bring about positive change in employee behavior. The goals of progressive discipline are to improve employee output, correct inappropriate behavior, or terminate recalcitrant employees.”

Under the union contract, full-time teachers, referred to as ten-month employees, have a work year defined as 188 days[1]Article XVII, §A and a work day set at 7 hours and 4 minutes, including a duty-free lunch our of 30 minutes in secondary schools, and 45 minutes in elementary schools.[2]Article XVII, §B(1)(a) How many employees in the private sector, who normally have a 244-day work year plus two weeks of vacation, would love to have ten sick days plus three ‘personal’ days? Yet here we have teachers, who get a solid two months off a year, combitching that they can’t use sick days just willy-nilly. I can guarantee you that, if I had taken ten unscheduled says off a year, I’d have been fired in any job I ever had!

The union contract has the sick day provisions in place not to be [insert plural slang term for the anus here], but due to teachers with an attitude as expressed by Miss Gutierrez[3]Perhaps Miss Gutierrez simply expressed herself poorly; I do not know her, so I cannot really judge. But I have been proceeding as though she meant exactly what she said., that sick days are things simply granted to teachers to take off for whatever reasons they have. If the employees had a decent employee attitude, they’d come to work every day they were scheduled to work, do their f(ornicating) jobs, and the Inquirer would have had no story on the subject.

What about Lewis Elkin Elementary School, where Miss Gutierrez teaches? According to US News & World Report, only 5% of students tested at or above grade-level proficiency in reading and 5% scored at or above grade-level proficiency in math. Niche.com gives the school a C- in overall performance, a C- in academics, and a C for quality of teachers.[4]US News & World Report mistakenly called the school Elkin Lewis Elementary, while Niche.com got it right as Lewis Elkin Elementary. Perhaps Miss Gutierrez’s expressed attitude has been shaped by working in a poor school in Kensington, or perhaps the poor school in Kensington has been shaped by her attitude.

Shortly after he started teaching at Building 21, a district high school in West Oak Lane, Julian Prados Franks explained his new employer’s sick time policy to his family. His father, a casino worker, was mystified.

He said, “‘They do what?’” said Prados Franks, who has not incurred consequences for using his sick time — yet. “This policy just demonstrates a fundamental distrust between the district and the teachers; that level of control makes it feel like we’re not adults, like we don’t deserve to be treated with dignity.”

It’s simple: the Philadelphia Public Schools are unionized, and the union contract has to specify how teachers who do not act like adults have to be treated and subjected to discipline. Mr Prados Franks may very well be one of the good guys, but the School District has to have the policies in place for everyone — and Miss Graham’s article noted that there have been complaints that the policy has not been enforced evenly — good and bad. If some teachers believe that they are not “treated with dignity,” it is because some teachers have not been worthy of dignified treatment.

You know, we used to have a pretty strong work ethic in this country, and some of us still do. We go to work and do our jobs, every day we are scheduled to work. I’ve had to work many Saturdays in my career, and not a few Sundays as well. I’ve worked 19 full days in a row before, and one year, because another worker had a heart attack, I had only two work days off all year, no vacations, nothing.

But now we have a generation of whiners, and I find it sickening.

References

References
↑1 Article XVII, §A
↑2 Article XVII, §B(1)(a)
↑3 Perhaps Miss Gutierrez simply expressed herself poorly; I do not know her, so I cannot really judge. But I have been proceeding as though she meant exactly what she said.
↑4 US News & World Report mistakenly called the school Elkin Lewis Elementary, while Niche.com got it right as Lewis Elkin Elementary.
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Stupidity x Stupidity = Stupidity²

When your Wikipedia biography page has a section “Other Names,” you know that there’s already a problem. We have mentioned the lovely Rachel Dolezal only thrice previously on The First Street Journal, and then only in mockery.

The white woman born Rachel Anne Dolezal, to two white parents, in very white Montana — 88.9% white, but just 0.6% black in 2020 census — tried, initially successfully, as black to obtain a position as president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington, from 2014 until June 2015, when she resigned in the midst of controversy over her racial identity. Subsequent idiocy followed, and Miss Dolezal, in 2017, released a memoir on her racial identity titled In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World. She has, in effect, acknowledged that she is a white woman, but that she identifies as black, which makes just about as much sense as former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Will Thomas identifying as a woman named “Lea.”

In that Other Names listing, we find that Miss Dolezal now identifies as Nkechi Amare Diallo, and, as bad people usually do, she has gotten herself in more trouble.

Ex-Spokane NAACP leader loses Arizona teaching job over OnlyFans account

By Karu F. Daniels | St Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2024 | 7:27 PM PST

Nkechi Diallo, the Montana-born white woman formerly known as Rachel Dolezal — who was infamously exposed for attempting to pass as Black — has been fired from her teaching job following the exposure of her OnlyFans account.

According to the Arizona Daily Star, the disgraced ex-NAACP Spokane chapter leader had served as a $19-an-hour after-school instructor at the Catalina Foothills Unified School District in Tucson, Ariz., since August 2023. She also worked as a teacher through the school’s contracted substitute provider, Educational Services Inc.

School officials said they only learned about Diallo’s activity on the NSFW platform after local station KVOA reported on Tuesday that explicit photos had been inexplicably shared on public websites such as Reddit.

“We only learned of Ms. Nkechi Diallo‘s OnlyFans social media posts yesterday afternoon,” district spokesperson Julie Farbarik wrote in an emailed statement Wednesday to the outlet. “Her posts are contrary to our district’s ‘Use of Social Media by District Employees’ policy and our staff ethics policy. She is no longer employed by the Catalina Foothills School District.”

The school district’s policy reportedly stipulates that employees are prohibited from communicating on social media in an unprofessional manner that would significantly harm their “work-related reputation.”

Only Fans is a subscription-based internet company, through which people — mostly women — can produce their own pornography, and sell subscriptions to which other people — mostly male — can masturbate vicariously copulate. It is no secret that school systems don’t like it when teachers produce this stuff. As we reported last September, St Clair, Missouri, High School teacher Brianna Coppage lost her job when her Only Fans porn page was discovered.

Coppage said she joined the direct-to-subscribers website OnlyFans over the summer to supplement her teaching salary.

She taught English to freshmen and sophomores and made about $42,000 last year, according to the Post-Dispatch public pay database. She said she’s earned an additional $8,000 to $10,000 per month performing on OnlyFans.

Mrs Coppage is at least reasonably pretty; how Miss Dolezal could have made much money on only fans is a mystery.

There’s a point at which I have to shake my head over this stupidity. Let’s face it: there’s tons of porn, more than even the most obsessed of incels could ever peruse, available for free on the internet, but there are people who have been willing to pay money, which normally involves a traceable credit card transaction, to look at naked, or sometimes explicit sexual performance photos and movies, of women with whom they will never get to copulate on the internet.

It is, in a way, the perfect plural marriage: men stupid enough to pay for this s(tuff) and women desperate enough to put out this material, seemingly without realizing that it will eventually affect their real lives and will still be out there when they are sixty-something grandparents, or preparing to marry — in real life — that normal guy who seems so perfect to them.

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Brown University Students for Justice in Palestine end their hunger strike Noble Hahvahd students staged their own twelve hour hunger strike in solidarity.

When I heard about the hunger strike by the Brown University Students for Justice in Palestine, I asked, admittedly mockingly, for them to define exactly what they meant by a hunger strike. I did point out, at one point, that human beings going more than three days without water can lead to serious problems or even death.

Of course, they never answered, so I didn’t know exactly what they meant. But I got an answer, of sorts, from The Harvard Crimson:

More Than 30 Harvard Students Hunger Strike for 12 Hours in Solidarity With Brown Protesters

By Michelle N. Amponsah and Azusa M. Lippit, Crimson Staff Writers | Monday, February 12, 2024

More than 30 pro-Palestinian Harvard students participated in a 12-hour hunger strike Friday in solidarity with 17 students at Brown University who refused to eat for eight days to pressure the Brown Corporation to divest from Israel.

If the Brown University hunger strikers really did refuse to eat for eight days, that is something of an accomplishment. Eight days is not enough for a reasonably health person to starve to death, but it’s going to be pretty uncomfortable after three days or so. But the Crimson telling us that 30 pro-Hamas Palestinian Harvard students participated in a 12-hour hunger strike is just plain mockworthy. I’ve gone through plenty of 12-hour-workdays in which I had nothing to eat because I was just too plain busy to take a lunch; that’s something that can happen in the ready-mixed concrete industry.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and millions of Catholics around the world will be engaged in a 12-hour fast; it’s something we also do on Good Friday. Me? I’m giving up soda for the entire seven weeks of Lent; do I get some kind of political credit for a 46-day Mountain Dew strike? 🙂

Nineteen students at Brown began the strike — which was originally indefinite — on Feb. 2, ahead of the Brown Corporation’s planned meetings beginning Feb. 8.

The students intended to strike until the Brown Corporation considered a resolution to divest from “companies which profit from human rights abuses in Palestine,” but they ended the strike[1]Documentary hyperlink added by D R Pico, and was not in the Harvard Crimson original. Given that the paragraph cites the Brown Daily Herald, the failure to include the hyperlink is pretty poor … Continue reading after Brown University president Christina H. Paxson denied their request, citing “now-obsolete demands,” per the Brown Daily Herald.

The 17 students ended their strike at 5 p.m. on Feb. 9, along with the Harvard demonstrators and more than 200 other Brown students who fasted for 32 hours in solidarity.

The Brown Daily Herald Editorial Page Board included an editorial documenting the history of hunger strikes at the University and beyond, noting that very few hunger strikers actually starved themselves to death. But the hunger strike, while an extreme method of peaceful protest, relies on the people against whom they are striking to actually care about whether the hunger strikers suffer, or even whether they live or die.

References

References
↑1 Documentary hyperlink added by D R Pico, and was not in the Harvard Crimson original. Given that the paragraph cites the Brown Daily Herald, the failure to include the hyperlink is pretty poor journalism from these Harvard journalism students!
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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! But don't you dare call him a 'groomer'!

Gerald Spoto, mugshot via Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News.

We reported, Friday afternoon, on the case of substitute teacher Rebecca Coddington of Brown Mills, New Jersey, who has been charged with aggravated sexual assault, among other crimes, for seducing and having a four-year-long affair with a 14-year-old girl. I expressed some surprise that the credentialed media, which have frequently tried to downplay or conceal the sex of victims of such crimes when that information would inform readers that the abuse was homosexual in nature.

Well, here we go again!

Former Bucks County after-school worker sexually assaulted a seventh boy, prosecutors allege

Gerald Spoto, 41, allegedly molested the boy starting in 2021 and recorded hundreds of pornographic images, prosecutors said.

by Robert Moran | Friday, February 9, 2024 | 5:48 PM EST

A 41-year-old Bucks County man already charged with sexually assaulting six boys while he worked for an after-school program and as a babysitter two decades ago now faces a slew of additional charges in connection with a seventh boy who allegedly was victimized just a few years ago.

The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office said Friday that Gerald Spoto, of Bristol Township, was charged with an additional three felony counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and related offenses, including 274 counts of photographing or filming a child sex act, and 275 counts of possession of child pornography.

No, of course the Inquirer did not include the accused’s mugshot!

Spoto was arraigned Friday by District Judge Terrance Hughes, who denied bail, citing public safety concerns and Spoto being a flight risk because he is in the process of selling his home. Spoto has been in custody since his original arrest in December.

Last month, Chief Deputy District Attorney Kristin McElroy argued against reducing Spoto’s bail because he allegedly attempted to adopt a child recently.

While the cited news report from The Philadelphia Inquirer continues to note that the police have found “hundreds of images” on computers belonging to Mr Spoto, of a nude boy who appears to be tween 11-and-13-years of age, and that some showed actual sexual abuse, it was a previous story in the newspaper which gave readers more detail:

All six men said they experienced a similar pattern of abuse at Spoto’s hands. He befriended them through the after-school program, and in some instances was hired by their parents to babysit them.

When left alone with Spoto, usually at his home in Langhorne or while he was driving them in his car, police said, he would grope the boys, perform sex acts on them, and force them to perform sex acts on him. The boys were preteens at the time, some as young as 10.

Emphasis mine.

Gerald Spoto, older photo, which Bucks Co. District Attorney’s Office said may more closely resemble the accused at the time of the alleged assaults.

One victim said Spoto threatened to kill him if he told anyone about the abuse, and said he would “move on” to his younger brother, whom police identified as one of the other victims in the case.

The victims also reported other abusive behavior, including being forced to drink alcohol and watch violent videos of people being mutilated. One victim told police that Spoto would invite other men to his home and force the boy to watch as they performed a group sex act.

So, it wasn’t ‘just’ pedophilia, which some quack psychologists tell us has nothing to do with an abuser’s sexual orientation, but Mr Spoto was, allegedly, engaging in some form of homosexual sex with adult men males.

The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office stated that some of Mr Spoto’s victims were as young as 7-years-old, and another victim reported around 50 encounters with the accused between 2000 and 2003, when he was 9-to-11-years old. Would you entrust your child’s care to someone who looked like that?

I apologize to any readers who felt an urge to vomit upon reading that, but Inquirer reporter Vinny Vella didn’t pull any punches, and I believe that readers really do need to know what is being done to children. If the charges are proven — and Mr Spoto is legally innocent until proven guilty — he needs to never again see the sun rise from outside of prison walls.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, girl It would be horribly, horribly wrong to call her a 'groomer'

Rebecca Coddington, July 28, 2023, from her Facebook page. Click to enlarge.

[Sigh!] Yet another teacher who has (allegedly) seduced and raped a minor. But it would be wrong, just wrong, to call her a groomer.

NJ substitute teacher charged after allegedly sexually assaulting teen for years, prosecutors say

By Cherise Lynch and Emily Rose Grassi • Thursday, February 8, 2024 • Updated: Friday, February 9, 2024 • 12:21 AM EST

A substitute teacher who works in Camden County, New Jersey has been charged with aggravated sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl, according to authorities.

Rebecca Coddington, 27, of Browns Mills has been charged with two counts of first-degree aggravated sexual assault, six counts of second-degree sexual assault, two counts of third-degree aggravated criminal sexual contact and two counts of third-degree endangering the welfare of a child, according to prosecutors.

I will admit to some surprise that NBC10 in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia noted that the victim of a female teacher was a girl. The media like to keep that stuff secret. But Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News published the Camden County Prosecutor’s press release, so it was never a secret which would keep. Her Facebook page states that she is “in a relationship” with a male, but if you want to check that, look quickly, because it will doubtlessly be taken down soon.

Aggravated sexual assault in the first degree is generally punished with a sentenced of 10 to 20 years in prison, and Miss Coddington faces two counts. Second degree sexual assault is a second degree crime in the Garden State, with a usual sentence of 5 to 10 years.

Prosecutors said during an investigation, detectives from the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office Special Victims Unit and the Gloucester Township Police Department had learned during an investigation that a 14-year-old girl was sexually assaulted multiple times by Coddington at a private residence in Gloucester Township during the period of September 2019, until Dec. 29 of last year.

Coddington was a substitute teacher in the Runnemede Public School District, but no allegations have been brought forward involving students, prosecutors said.

So, the victim was being raped from ages 14 to 18 now? And Miss Coddington, who is now listed as being 27-years-old, was 23 when the (alleged) assaults began?

If the lovely Miss Coddington is guilty of the offenses with which she is charged, she should never again see the sun from outside of prison walls, but the odds are that she’ll cop a plea deal.

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The Freedom of Speech comes with an obligation of responsibility; people are responsible for what they say.

I have always believed in the freedom of speech, that people should be absolutely free to say whatever they wished. But I also believe that the speaker is not somehow immune from the consequences of his speech. The Supreme Court noted that freedom of speech doesn’t extend to yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater, or “fighting words,” but both of those incidences are concerns about the consequences of what someone says, causing a stampede in which people are injured, or getting your jaw jacked because you angered someone enough to hit you in the mouth. From USA Today:

Posting ‘Zionists must die’ is awful. But it shouldn’t get student kicked out of college.

Cornell should balance protecting students and campus staff with protecting free speech.

Continue reading →

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We’re not really serious about rape Don't look for complicated answers when there are simple solutions to the problem

We have previously reported on sex crimes against minors in Kentucky, and this morning, the Lexington Herald-Leader continued an investigative effort that began at the end of 2022, with the story “Kentucky’s laws on teacher sexual misconduct are weak. Here’s what needs to change.

Kentucky lawmakers failed to address teacher sex abuse last year. Will they in 2024?

by Beth Musgrave and Valarie Honeycutt Spears | Thursday, February 1, 2024 | 11:00 AM EST | Updated: 11:30 AM EST

Andrew Zaheri, mugshot via Rowan County Detention Center and is a public record.

It started with massages for leg cramps after soccer practice when she was 14.Andrew Zaheri’s attentions to the teenage girl quickly escalated, according to court documents.

No, of course what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal didn’t include Mr Zaheri’s mugshot, but at The First Street Journal we believe such to be public records, and do publish them. Continue reading →

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I guess that Marc Rowan will keep his checkbook closed

Our constitutional rights under the First Amendment include the right of peaceable assembly, and this demonstration on the University of Pennsylvania campus in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia has been reported to be completely peaceful. But, in speaking their piece, the demonstrators, which included some Penn faculty, have exposed themselves to criticism of their message, and, unfortunately for the supporters of the Palestinians and Hamas terrorists, some of that criticism could come from deep-pockets donors. We have covered the backlash of deep-pockets donors against the outbreak of anti-Semitism on our college campuses, as recently as yesterday, but some people just don’t listen. From The Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s student newspaper:

Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine hosts College Hall protest, blocks main entrance

Continue reading →