Tag Archives: #Education

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When public officials are too weak-willed to do the right thing

The Catholic Church’s handling of sexually abusive priests has been an enormous scandal, almost as bad as the abusive priests themselves. In far, far, far too many instances, the Church ‘handled’ the problem priests, when the dioceses became aware of them, not by reporting such to law enforcement or removing them from any duties which brought them in contact with minors, but by transferring them to other parishes, without telling parishioners why, in the frequently vain hope that the priest had somehow been reformed and wouldn’t try it again.

In Philadelphia, then-District Attorney Seth Williams brought Monsignor William Lynn to trial not for abusing any victims himself:

His trial attracted a packed courtroom full of press, priest-abuse victims and outraged Catholics, along with a few church loyalists. Lynn, the longtime secretary for clergy, was accused of sending a known predator — named on a list of problem priests he had prepared for Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua — to an accuser’s northeast Philadelphia parish.

The trial judge allowed nearly two dozen other priest-abuse victims to testify about abuse they had suffered in the archdiocese over a half century. An appeals court later said their weeks of testimony over uncharged acts were unfair to Lynn — who some saw as a scapegoat for the church, given that the bishops and cardinals above him were never charged.

Also see: Fr Gordon MacRae: Msgr William Lynn is Free and a Prosecutor is “Disgusted”

By the time of Msgr Lynn’s trial, Cardinal Bevilacqua was retired, suffering from dementia, and was unable to defend himself; that is why he was never charged.

The jury found that Msgr Lynn allowed Fr Edward Avery, who had a history of sexually abusing children, to live in a Northeast Philadelphia rectory, where he later assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy. Fr Avery pleaded guilty in the 1999 attack and was sentenced to five years in state prison.

Finally, after two separate appeals by Msgr Lynn, vacating his convictions, current District Attorney Larry Krasner, who had nothing to do with Msgr Lynn’s trial, finally offered a plea deal to end the whole farce, and Msgr Lynn pleaded no contest to “a charge of failing to turn over records to the 2002 grand jury,” and saw no further penalty; he had already served three years in state prison for the offenses of which he had been improperly convicted.

Now, why do I bring this up? It was a paragraph from this article , referred to me by Kirby McCain:

The boy was transferred out of Richneck and placed in a different institution within the district, but was allowed to return for the 2022-23 school year when he was enrolled in Zwerner’s class.

Here’s the article:

Virginia teacher shot by 6-year-old files $40M lawsuit after she says school ignored warnings

The lawsuit mentions new details about the boy, who is identified as John Doe, and an alleged pattern of troubling behavior.

by Erik Ortiz | Monday, April 3, 2023 | 7:30 AM EDT| Updated 6:10 PM EDT

Abigail Zwerner. Photo by Carlos Bernate for NBC News.

Almost three months after Virginia teacher Abigail Zwerner was shot by a 6-year-old student, she filed a $40 million lawsuit Monday alleging school administrators shrugged off multiple warnings from staff and students who believed the boy had a gun and posed an imminent threat on the day of the shooting, and did so knowing the child “had a history of random violence.”

The Jan. 6 shooting of Zwerner at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News stunned the country as police announced the child’s actions were intentional. The student shot her with a 9 mm handgun while she sat at a reading table in their first-grade classroom, according to officials.

The injured educator’s complaint, filed in the Newport News Circuit Court, says Richneck Assistant Principal Ebony Parker chose to “breach her assumed duty” to protect Zwerner, “despite multiple reports that a firearm was on school property and likely in possession of a violent individual.”

What follows is a fairly lengthy list of safety warnings ignored, which can be boiled down to this:

Lawyers for Zwerner said Monday on NBC’s “TODAY” show that the school leadership knew of at least three separate warnings that the boy was believed to have a gun and some other students reported seeing it.

The NBC News article is not behind a paywall, so you can easily see them yourself. But this is the important part:

School knew of boy’s behavioral issues

The lawsuit mentions new details about the boy, who is identified as John Doe, and an alleged pattern of troubling behavior.

While in kindergarten at Richneck in the 2021-22 school year, the boy strangled and choked a teacher and was removed from the school, according to the complaint.

That same school year, the boy also pulled up the dress of a female student who had fallen on the playground, the complaint says, and “began to touch the child inappropriately until reprimanded by a teacher.”

The boy was transferred out of Richneck and placed in a different institution within the district, but was allowed to return for the 2022-23 school year when he was enrolled in Zwerner’s class.

He was placed on a modified schedule last fall after “chasing students around the playground with a belt in an effort to whip them with it, as well as cursing at staff and teachers,” according to the complaint. At least one parent was also required to attend school with him daily “because of his violent tendencies.”

“Teachers’ concerns with John Doe’s behavior was regularly brought to the attention of Richneck Elementary School administration, and the concerns were always dismissed,” the suit says. “Often when he was taken to the school office to address his behavior, he would return to the classroom shortly thereafter with some type of reward, such as a piece of candy.”

Why was this child even allowed to be in a public school? Yes, I know he was only six years old, but he was clearly violent and out of control. Despite his age, this boy should have been institutionalized in some form. Yes, the assistant principal allegedly ignored notifications that the boy had a gun the day of the shooting, but the truth is that he should not have been in that school in the first place. That he brought a gun to school was simply the last manifestation of the problem; the problem is that he was wholly uncivilized and the teachers and administrators knew it. He was assaulting teachers and students long before he brought the gun to school.

I get it: the brat cannot be criminally charged because he’s only six years old, but, like Nikolas Cruz at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the administrators didn’t do anything about the ‘student’ because they were too soft-hearted and soft-headed and didn’t want to scar the poor dear. They simply did not do their duty to get these savages out of school entirely.

So, what will happen?

Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn told NBC News last month that he would not seek charges against the boy, citing his age and inability to adequately understand the legal system, but said he was still weighing whether he might hold any adults criminally liable.

The family of the boy said in a statement in January that the weapon was “secured” in the home and that they have “always been committed to responsible gun ownership and keeping firearms out of the reach of children.”

The family also said the boy has an acute disability and was receiving the “treatment he needs” under a court-ordered temporary detention at a medical facility.

A bit late for that! Note that the “temporary detention at a medical facility” was ordered by the court, after the boy’s criminality became publicly known; if the school system had ever sought such a thing before he shot his teacher, it has not been reported. But my question is: if the Commonwealth’s Attorney is still considering whether any adults should be charged, is he weighing this only concerning the little savage’s parents, or are the school administrators who failed to take any serious action also being considered for charges? That is what happened to Msgr Lynn, and if Seth Williams went overly broad in his prosecution, and Judge Teresa Sarmina allowed it, such that the convictions were thrown out on appeal, Msgr Lynn and Cardinal Bevilacqua still did nothing positive to stop the sexual abuse of minors in the Archdiocese.

Msgr Lynn’s trial and convictions should have put the fear of the law into other diocesan officials; charging the school administrators in Newport News who took so many wrong decisions in this case would send a message to schools everywhere to not just ignore threats such as this kid, or they just might wind up behind bars themselves.

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Trying too hard? The Philadelphia Inquirer tries to put lipstick on a pig.

As we have previously reported, the shooting of seven people near Strawberry Mansion High School has led parents of students at another school whose children were going to be transferred to Strawberry Mansion due to asbestos remediation to protest that vigorously, claiming that the Mansion was inherently unsafe. When the transfer actually happened, only 28 students actually showed up at Mansion.

So now The Philadelphia Inquirer is telling us what a great school Strawberry Mansion is!

Strawberry Mansion High School continues to fight an old reputation. But students say the school is an oasis.

“We will meet our students where they are, and really work to get them to their highest potential,” Strawberry Mansion Principal Brian McCracken said.

by Kristen A Graham | Monday, March 13, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

When Patience Wilson shares with people that she attends Strawberry Mansion High School, they often shake their heads and tell her all the bad things they’ve heard about her school.

But Wilson, a smiley 17-year-old senior, knows the real Mansion, the one behind the hasty headlines and deep-seated stereotypes.

The real Mansion, she says, is different: a place where students can start on a path to a building trades career, partner with nonprofits, spend their lunchtime in clubs and activities, and have access to trips, career and technical education programs, college classes, and adults who surround them with expectations and supports and love — no matter where they’re coming from or how long they’re able to stay.

“People usually judge us based on what’s happened in the past. But they’re not focusing on what’s happening right now,” said Wilson.

Reporter Kristen Graham focuses on Philadelphia schools, and it’s a good thing that the newspaper has someone who does that with such a large public school system. Mrs Graham then began to tell us about the school’s problems:

For years, Strawberry Mansion has fought on several fronts: against the challenges of its surroundings (the neighborhood has the highest number of shootings this year in the city; a full 52% of children under 18 in the immediate area live in poverty, according to Philadelphia and federal data), against a mismatch between available funding and concentrated student need.

It’s coped with a system that, because it emphasizes choice, has made things tougher for comprehensive high schools, which accept all students who walk in the door. Less than 10% of the students who live in Mansion’s attendance zone go to the school, according to district data, and those who do tend to be the most vulnerable.

I’m actually impressed that these two paragraphs were placed where they were, fifth and sixth in the story, because much of the remainder of the story is extremely positive about the school itself. But when Mrs Graham tells us that the neighborhood has the highest number of shootings in the city so far this year — and plenty of them in previous years — one thing is obvious: the concerns that the Building 21 parents raised are valid: it doesn’t matter how great a school might be if the students are getting shot!

There are several more paragraphs telling readers — and the newspaper didn’t restrict it to subscribers only, so if you don’t have too many Inquirer story reads, you can access it online — what the school has been doing to try to be better, almost to the point of pro-Mansion propaganda, Mrs Graham comes to this point:

On paper, Mansion’s statistics are startling: By the district’s measure, last year, 41% of the school’s ninth graders were on track to graduation. Just 9% met state standards in reading, 2% in math.

But the intense needs of Mansion’s students mean those numbers require lots of context. Consider the student who’s never been identified as requiring special-education services but who reads at a second-grade level. Or the teen whose attendance and grades are spotty but recently had been removed from his family’s care and now lives with a foster family, whom the school can’t reach.

If fewer than half, barely 41%, of freshmen are on a path to graduation, a figure I find questionable if “(j)ust 9% met state standards in reading, 2% in math,” it’s difficult for me to see how the school is doing its job. If there are students, in a high school, who need “special education services” going unnoticed by teachers when reading at the “second-grade level,” how are readers supposed to believe that the teachers are doing a good job? How would the parents of the displaced Building 21 students ever think that Strawberry Mansion High School is a good place to send their kids even without the question of violence in the neighborhood?

You know, I get it: Mrs Graham wanted to inform readers of the good things happening at Mansion, and pointed out several things that are supposed to be good, about vocational education to get some students into trades which don’t require college, several things telling readers how hard the school under principal Brian McCracken is trying. But when fewer “than 10% of the students who live in Mansion’s attendance zone go to the school,” it’s an inescapable fact: parents and students, people who are most familiar with the neighborhood and the school, are voting with their SEPTA passes, voting against the place. With fewer than 10% of the students in the school’s attendance zone going there, is it any surprise that the parents of the Building 21 students don’t want their kids there?

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More public school failure in Kentucky

Linda Blackford is a long-time columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, and, despite being a long-time Kentuckian, she’s liberal to her core. We have previously noted the newspaper’s endorsements, and they are all to the left:

The voters of the Sixth District, and of Kentucky as a whole, rejected every one of the newspaper’s endorsements.

Come 2023, they’ll endorse Governor Andy Beshear, he who unconstitutionally suspended the free exercise of religion and freedom of peaceable assembly in 2020, for re-election, and in 2024, whichever Democrat runs for the Sixth District seat, assuming he’s not a kook like this year.

So I’ll admit it: even though I am subscribing to what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal, I don’t usually pay much attention to Mrs Blackford’s columns. I did, however read this one, in which she pushed for the Fayette County School Board to select “a person of color who understands what many of our students face in school”, as the replacement for Christy Morris, who resigned her position. The usual race-based drivel followed, and was mostly unremarkable and unimportant. There was, however, one very important statistic given:

Students of color make up about 53 percent of students, while about 48.5 percent of all students are considered low income.

Really? The Fayette County Public Schools are 53% “students of color”? According to the Census Bureau, a full 70.0% of Fayette County’s population are non-Hispanic white, with another 2.8% being white, but Hispanic as well. Perhaps they are being counted as “students of color”, “brown” perhaps, the way the left do these days. But it has to be asked: if Fayette County’s population are 70% non-Hispanic white, why are the public schools majority “students of color”?

Let’s face it: private schools are expensive! I know, as we put our girls in parochial schools for part of the time. Sayre School is the hoitiest and toitiest of the private schools in Lexington, with the high school tuition being $26,625 per year. That’s more than tuition at the University of Kentucky’s College of Law!

Lexington Catholic High School’s tuition is significantly lower, at $11,170 for one student, if the family are Catholic parishioners, and $13,690 for non-Catholics. That’s a significant chunk of change that people have been willing to pay rather than send their kids to the Fayette County public schools. In very liberal Lexington — Fayette Countians gave 59.25% of their votes to Joe Biden in 2020, in a year when Kentuckians as a whole voted to re-elect President Trump, 62.09% to 36.15% — much of the white population have rejected the public schools.

And today, the state Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a Republican plan to assist poorer families to afford private schools.

Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of the bill was overridden with a slim 51-member majority in the House.

In his veto message, Beshear said the bill would “harm public education in Kentucky by taking money away from public schools.” In a post to Twitter on Thursday, the governor took his message a step further. He compared the EOA law to the newly passed law funding charter schools in Kentucky.

“Today’s ruling by the Kentucky Supreme Court couldn’t be more clear: state funding for private or charter schools is unconstitutional – period. It’s time for the General Assembly to invest in our public schools, our teachers and our children,” Beshear wrote.

Fayette County Public Schools argued against the law, saying that it stripped resources away from its schools and students.

The Kentucky Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, celebrated the ruling.

“This decision protects the power of the people to decide important questions of public education policy and holds the legislature to account to uphold their oath to support and defend the Kentucky Constitution… We simply can’t afford to support two different education systems — one private and one public — on the taxpayers’ dime, and this ruling supports that concern. This decision is proof that the courts continue to serve as an important check against legislative overreach,” KEA President Eddie Campbell wrote.

So, what do we have? The state Supreme Court’s ruling that the law was unconstitutional may well be fundamentally correct based on the state constitution, but the fact remains that, in the Commonwealth’s wealthiest county, about as many families who can afford to send their children someplace other than the Fayette County public schools are choosing to do so. Even before the law was passed — it never took effect because Franklin County Judge Phil Shepherd, a Democrat and stooge of Governor Beshear, issued an injunction against it — parents in Lexington who could afford it were voting against the public schools with their private school choices. They were still being taxed to support the public schools, but sure didn’t want to send their own kids there.

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Just because a public school library does not carry sexually-charged books does not mean that such books are banned

The image to the right is a screen capture if the results I got when I Google searched for libraries in Bucks County. This section of the map shows other libraries.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is, of course, aghast that concerned parents might not want their impressionable children exposed to certain materials, primarily sexually explicit materials, and things which glorify what the federal government has sometimes referred to as “minority sexual attractions.”

A parade against book-banning in Doylestown, as Central Bucks School District targets ‘sexualized content’

Bans, restrictions and challenges to books have reached levels not seen in decades

by Jeff Gammage | Sunday, September 25, 2022

One marcher was costumed as the cover of Lawn Boy, the Jonathan Evison book that was banned for its gay and lesbian content and because it was considered to be sexually explicit.

Another was outfitted as All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, which was banned for similar reasons.

Others wore the oversize dust jackets of other books that have been targeted in libraries and school districts for supposedly inappropriate content.

Note the use of language by Jeff Gammage, the Inquirer reporter: “supposedly inappropriate content.” Any responsible editor would have blue-penciled that loaded phrase right away, but there is no evidence that what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]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. has any responsible editors.

The Central Bucks school district is prohibiting their school libraries from carrying books and other material which are sexually explicit and age-inappropriate, because a great many parents do not want their children exposed to such. But the school district controls only the public school libraries; the ones listed in the screen capture are the Bucks County free public library system, and they can carry whatever books and material they wish. If some student wants to read All Boys Aren’t Blue he can check the public library, or order it from Amazon. The question is whether the school system should be exposing public school students — and Pennsylvania, like every other state, has a compulsory education law — to a book which details and attempts to glorify the experiences of the author “growing up as a queer Black man in Plainfield, New Jersey.”

In addition to describing Johnson’s own experience, it directly addresses Black queer boys who may not have someone in their life with similar experiences.

Perhaps, just perhaps, some parents do not want their sons and daughters exposed to that.

The district superintendent said the measure would ensure that students read “age-appropriate material,” but civil rights groups have been alarmed.

“No one is saying that every book is or should be appropriate for every child,” said parade organizer Kate Nazemi, a parent with two children in the Central Bucks district, one of the state’s largest. “Librarians and teachers work actively to find the right books for the right kids. They are educators. And they’re being treated like they’re not.”

Well, that’s just it. As we have previously noted, child rearing is the responsibility of parents, and not of the school system or of teachers. More, the public schools and their employees should be subject to the wishes of the taxpayers and parents who fund them, but the “educators” are acting as though they should be supervising the parents, rather than the other way around.

Nazemi, a member of Advocates for Inclusive Education, a coalition that opposes extremism, said district parents have the power to restrict the books seen by their own child. But they shouldn’t have the right, she said, to have a book removed for nearly 18,000 district students.

Of course, once the students are past the schoolhouse door, the parents aren’t present to see what library books their children check out, are reading, or even having passed to them by another student or a teacher. And those students who want to read Lawn Boy can easily get it.

Mr Gammage let his bias creep into his supposedly-straight-news article again, when he described Advocates for Inclusive Education as a coalition that opposes extremism. Their own website has a page The Issues, and all of the issues they have listed stem from a very politically liberal attitude about what schools should teach students about normal and homosexual sex.

Discounting LGBTQ Children’s Social & Emotional Needs
We believe school is a place where children should feel safe to learn and grow together, and where all students are given the tools they need to excel. LGBTQ youth are a legally protected marginalized group who have historically suffered discrimination and therefore need supportive and affirming school policies to ensure their protection.

Issue 1: Affirming Symbols of Support
The Pride Flag has been identified as an effective tool in making students feel supported and welcome in the school environment. We don’t believe it is a divisive and political symbol.

Of course it’s a political symbol! It is a symbol which takes the political position that homosexuality and transgenderism are things to be supported and approved, and it is actively hostile to those who believe that homosexuality is just plain wrong. The public schools should be taking no position, either way, on this.

We are keeping an eye on draft Policy 321 that codifies pride flag removal and more (introduced on 9/14.)

Issue 2: Affirming Names and Pronouns
Some schools in CB are rolling out a new “gender identification procedure” where teachers are not allowed to call a student by their preferred/affirming name unless their parents/guardians have approved this change in the student information database, or the requested name is contained within their name, like Sam for Samantha.

Students must feel safe to learn. We believe this directive will adversely affect academic performance, school attendance, and lead to increases in anxiety and depression.

If “students must feel safe to learn,” I have to ask: do the Advocates care about those normal girls who do not feel safe when boys “identifying” as girls are allowed in the girls’ restrooms and locker rooms? Or doesn’t that feeling of unsafety count?

One wonders what the Advocates for Inclusive Education would say if a student persisted in calling a ‘transgender’ student who wanted to be called Lia by his previous name of William. Would the Advocates state that he should be punished? Jared Jennings, the boy who thinks he’s a girl and goes by the name “Jazz”, whined to Oprah Winfrey:

For the most part boys aren’t really accepting of me because I am transgender and therefore not many guys have crushes on me at my school. They think if they like me they will be called gay by their friends because they like another ‘boy.’

Clearly, there are at least some people who wouldn’t accept young Mr Jennings’ claim that he was actually a girl.

Note that, in every instance, the Advocates for Inclusive Education are pushing policies to normalize homosexuality and transgenderism. Some of us, myself most certainly included, see pushing those types of things as extremism on the left.

Far down in the Inquirer article was a single paragraph which proved that books aren’t banned:

Glenda Childs, owner of the Doylestown Bookshop, set up two displays of banned books in her store, proudly offering them for sale.

I absolutely support Miss Childs and her right to sell what she calls “banned books”. Given that the store website lists Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls as a “banned book,” I’d say that her definition is rather expansive, but that’s another subject.

But Miss Childs and her bookstore are private businesses, which may do as the owners choose; the government may not prohibit her from doing so. Public school libraries? Those are government institutions, and yes, they are subject to the decisions of the public. Other than the Library of Congress, no library in the United States, public or private, carries everything that is published; librarians have to take choices based on what is available, and what they can afford, concerning what they will and will not purchase and carry.

Public school libraries have a special duty, because they have what is, in effect, a captive audience, students in attendance because they are required to be there, by law. And they already take decisions based on content: how many carry Mein Kampf, or, Heaven forfend!, that great American classic, Huckleberry Finn? Do the Advocates for Inclusive Education bemoan schools which do not carry those very famous books, or would the Advocates say that, hey, if you want to read Huckleberry Finn, it’s easily available on Amazon?

The left were horrified, horrified! when some conservatives, looking at the overly-sexualized presentations in support of homosexuality and transgenderism, started calling them “groomers.” But it is reasonable to ask: what purpose other than “grooming” do they have, in their attempts to normalize homosexuality and transgenderism? Tolerance is one thing, but the constant pushing of those subjects is something else entirely.

References

References
↑1 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.
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The myth of “banning books”

Other than the Library of Congress, which is supposed to receive two copies of every copyrighted work, every library in the country exercises some discretion as to what books, magazines and other material to purchase and add to its collection. Discretion is what the Central Bucks School Board has mandated:

Central Bucks approves contentious library policy targeting ‘sexualized content’ in books amid community opposition

The policy, said the superintendent, would create a process for the selection of new books and for parents to challenge “gratuitous, salacious, over-the-top, unnecessary, sexualized content.”

by Oona Goodin-Smith | Tuesday, July 26, 2022

By US Census, Ruhrfisch – taken from US Census website [1] and modified by User:Ruhrfisch, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=808255

Facing heated community opposition, the Central Bucks School District on Tuesday approved a contentious library policy that takes aim at challenging books with “sexualized content” — guidelines the district’s superintendent says ensure students are reading “age-appropriate material,” but that the Pennsylvania Library Association calls one of the most restrictive in schools across the state.

In a 6-3 vote, after a rally and more than an hour of public comment — most of which was vehemently opposing the policy — and questions by some board members about its origins, the Republican-dominated board voted to advance the policy that’s raised alarm among civil rights groups. . . . .

Wielding signs reading “dictators ban books, not democracies,” and “love not hate makes CB great,” dozens of parents, students, community members, educators, and advocates rallied outside the Doylestown school district headquarters Tuesday night ahead of the vote, calling for the board to strike the policy. Many repeated their remarks during public comment before the school board. Only a couple speakers voiced their approval for the policy.

“This is not a ban, this is not censorship, it’s common sense,” said one mother, who said she was “against minors being exposed to sexually explicit content.”

Full disclosure: before I retired, I did some work in Bucks County, and specifically in the Doylestown area, where the Central Bucks School District is located, though none for the schools specifically.

A very obvious point: attendance at school is compulsory for children in the United States, and the public schools have, in effect, a captive audience. Thus, when schools take decisions on what books and other materials are to be housed in their libraries, they are exposing that captive audience to those materials.

Another very obvious point: while the Central Bucks School Board can limit what materials are bought and housed in the schools’ libraries, they have exactly zero authority over library choices in any other place, or over bookstores, or amazon.com, or any other place which buys, sells, lends, or distributes anything. If the students in the district want to read about sex, it’s widely available, in other places, including, sometimes for free, over the internet. Central Bucks is not exactly a poverty-stricken area; it’s difficult to imagine that more than a handful of homes of school-aged children lack internet access.

The public schools do not exist, and should not exist, for sexualizing children. There should be no normalizing of homosexuality or ‘transgenderism,’ or of promiscuity. That’s what concerns normal parents, and that’s what concerned the elected school board. If some parents want their children to learn about abnormal sexuality, hey, that’s on them!

Karen Downer, president of the NAACP’s Bucks County branch, noted that books most frequently flagged for sexual content “tend to include certain themes,” including the history of Black people, LGBTQ topics or characters, and race and racism. The books also are often written by marginalized authors, she said.

Does Miss Debbie Downer mean books which stir up racial strife or that push the normalization of homosexuality? Guess what? Those should not be part of school libraries! If some parents want to stir up racial strife — and, despite bordering Philadelphia at its extreme southeastern end, Bucks County’s population are only 4.7% non-Hispanic black, 6.1% Hispanic, 5.5% Asian, and 82.4% non-Hispanic white — that’s their business, but it should not be what the public schools teach.

“The policy is vague and overbroad,” said Richard T. Ting, an attorney with the ACLU.

“We’re also talking about library books, …not required reading for classwork. This is just books in the library that are there for students, and students should be free to choose what they read. Families should be able to discuss those things with their kids, as well. It shouldn’t be up to a few people … to decide what everyone else gets access to.”

But that’s just it: in any library, “a few people .  .  . decide what everyone else gets access to,” as far as their collection is concerned. Any materials not present in the school libraries can be found elsewhere, often by an internet search, so that people don’t have to leave home to do so. If families wish to discuss “those things,” with their children, they can find “those things” on amazon.com, and download them onto their computers or Kindles immediately.

Let’s face it: the “groomers” want to normalize the abnormal, and want to use the public schools to help them with that. Let’s face it: the “groomers” want to normalize the abnormal, and want to use the public schools to help them with that. Not just no, but Hell no!

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Two more Philadelphia public schools closed due to #COVID19

We noted, just yesterday, that the Philadelphia School District closed Emlen Elementary School due to positive CIVID-19 tests. Now, two more have been shut down.

    COVID-19 has forced three Philadelphia schools to close

    by Rob Tornoe | Wednesdat, September 15, 2021

    The Federalist: Stanford Faculty Smear Professor Who Accurately Summarized Data On Masks

    Three Philadelphia schools have now been forced to temporarily close due to COVID-19 cases, including one Philadelphia School District building.

    Emlen Elementary in East Mount Airy will be shut for in-person learning until Sept. 24, officials said in a letter to families. The K-5 school enrolls about 300 students, all of whom are too young to be vaccinated.

    “Due to multiple positive cases of COVID-19 in our school, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH) has determined that our school building will temporarily close from 9-13-21 to 9-23-21 to help stem the spread of the virus,” principal Tammy Thomas wrote to Emlen families Monday. “Students and staff may not return to our school building during this time.”

    In addition, two charter schools — Lindley Academy Charter School and Pan American Academy Charter School — have also been temporarily closed for 14 days due to COVID-19 cases, a city spokesperson said Wednesday.

    Cheryl Bettigole, MD, from her Twitter biography.

    “In general, most transmission is not happening in school, it’s happening at home,” acting Health Secretary Cheryl Bettigole said Wednesday. She said the best way to keep school buildings open is for parents to get themselves and their eligible children vaccinated, and to not send their kids to school when they’re sick.

    “I think most of us imagined most of the spread happening in school, because all these kids are together,” Bettigole said. “But it’s typically the adults bringing it home, and then spreading it in the house.

Really? And how does Dr Bettigole know this? Or is she just defending a mask mandate, which has been in effect for all Philadelphia public schools, since the first day of school, but for which there is no evidence that it has actually slowed or prevented the spread of the virus?

The fact is simple: despite ‘contact tracing,’ despite all of the wailing of the left that they know the hideously unvaccinated are spreading the virus, no one can say that person A caught the virus specifically from person B.

Of course, the school district knows that even fully vaccinated persons can contract and spread the virus, which is why the Philly schools have mandated weekly testing for vaccinated employees.

That’s the important part here: the public schools in Pennsylvania all have these mask mandates, but, how about that, the virus is still spreading.

Despite vaccinations and despite mask mandates, this school year is looking very much like it will be like the last one.

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Philadelphia public schools: will this school year be like last school year?

Governor Tom Wolf’s (D-PA) authoritarian dictates during 2020 pushed the Republicans who control the state legislature to set up two constitutional amendments to rein in a tin-pot dictator, something that certainly sounds familiar to Kentuckians! Well, though those constitutional amendments passed, Governor Wolf found a loophole, getting the state’s Secretary of Health to issue a mask mandate for public schools, but now Mr Wolf is angry because some districts are interpreting ‘exemption’ requirements very loosely. We have previously noted that some districts had chosen not to require masks, and some of the Karens were suing the school district, though they didn’t have the courage to identify themselves.

In the City of Brotherly Love, the public schools have a vaccine mandate, sort of:

    20,000 Philly schools employees must get vaccinated by Sept. 30. Here’s what happens if they don’t.

    If they choose to not get vaccinated, district workers will have to be COVID-19 tested twice a week, and they lose access to a bank of 10 “quarantine leave days.”

    by Kristen A. Graham | Monday, September 13, 2021

    The Philadelphia School District’s 20,000 employees must be vaccinated for COVID-19 by Sept. 30, but they won’t lose their jobs if they opt not to get the shot.

    If they choose to not get vaccinated, teachers, administrators, and support staff — as well as contractors — will have to be COVID-19 tested twice a week, and they lose access to a bank of 10 “quarantine leave days” that allow them to be absent from work with pay if they’re sick with the coronavirus or must isolate because of exposure.

    All employees, regardless of vaccination status, are already tested weekly.

    “The testing provider will return to schools for a second time each week to test partially vaccinated or unvaccinated staff,” Larisa Shambaugh, the district’s chief talent officer, said in an email to staff. “If these employees do not test two times a week, they will be subject to discipline.”

We can see what they are doing here.

COVID testing is unpleasant. A nurse sticks a long stick mounted swab up your nose to try to get material from your sinuses. The Centers for Disease Control said, on August 26, 2021:

    Vaccines are playing a crucial role in limiting spread of the virus and minimizing severe disease. Although vaccines are highly effective, they are not perfect, and there will be vaccine breakthrough infections. Millions of Americans are vaccinated, and that number is growing. This means that even though the risk of breakthrough infections is low, there will be thousands of fully vaccinated people who become infected and able to infect others, especially with the surging spread of the Delta variant.

Since the fully vaccinated can, and do, spread the virus, there’s no logic in letting the fully vaccinated escape testing, if the goal is to prevent the spread of the virus, so the Philadelphia public schools were mandating continued testing of the vaccinated as well as the unvaccinated. But, if the vaccinated are subjected to the same testing regime as the unvaccinated, then there’s no particular incentive to those who are vaccine hesitant to take the jab. Thus, the school system had to make it worse, by mandating testing twice a week rather than once.

Further down in the Inquirer:

    Most district unions have endorsed the mandate, including the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which represents 13,000 educators, paraprofessionals, and school nurses. . . . .

    PFT has, in fact, called on the district to require COVID-19 testing for all students. Children are now only tested if they display symptoms during the school day, or if they participate in contact sports or extracurricular activities like band or choir.

If the goal is to prevent the spread of the virus, why not test the students? It’s simple: unless a student’s parents have agreed, in writing, for their child to be tested, something which will be the case for those who sign permission slips for their kids to “participate in contact sports or extracurricular activities like band or choir,” testing students would be considered a physical assault.

If you’ve ever had a COVID test, you know what I mean: while it does not actually harm the subject, it’s a hugely uncomfortable experience that could be used to question prisoners at Guantanamo. If I had a kid in the public schools, and the school system forcibly tested him, I would soon be several million dollars wealthier.

    But Unite Here Local 634, the union that represents food service workers and some school climate staff, is not pleased by the vaccination mandate, said Nicole Hunt, president.

    “I don’t think it’s appropriate,” Hunt said. “For the School District to mandate the vaccine, people will just leave. This is the most vacancies I’ve ever seen.”

The union noted that there were 195 vacant positions in its unionized jobs, and the Inquirer noted that the school district was already short on crossing guards and school bus drivers, something we have already noted.

The Philadelphia School District stated that there were 202,944 students enrolled in the 2020-2021 academic year; the numbers hadn’t been updated for this fall at the time of this writing, and was, in fact, last updated on February 19, 2021, when the schools were almost all ‘virtual.’

Interestingly, though the 2020 census put the city’s non-Hispanic white population at 34.3%, the school district says that only 14% of the student body population are non-Hispanic white. Non-Hispanic blacks make up 38.3% of the city’s population, but 52% of the student body. The other student body percentages are fairly close to their percentage of the population, which tell us one thing: white Philadelphians don’t trust the city’s public schools and are sending their kids to private or parochial schools. We have already noted that the city zip code areas with the highest black percentage of the population have the lowest vaccination rates, meaning that it is probable that a higher percentage of the student body are unvaccinated than normal. Of course, since none of the vaccines have been approved for use in children under 12, the vaccinated percentage of the student body in kindergarten through the fifth grade must be virtually zero.

But those kids can’t be tested unless their parents approve, and even with approval, who wants to be the nurse forcing a swab up into the sinuses of a struggling second grader?

And now there’s this:

    2 weeks into the school year, COVID-19 has closed the first Philly public school

    Learning will continue during the Emlen Elementary building closure; teachers will be instructing students remotely.

    by Kristen A. Graham | Tuesday, September 14, 2021

    Two weeks into the new term, COVID-19 has temporarily closed the first Philadelphia School District building.

    Emlen Elementary, in East Mount Airy, will be shut for in-person learning until Sept. 24, officials announced in a letter sent to families. The K-5 school enrolls about 300 students, all of whom are too young to be vaccinated.

    “Due to multiple positive cases of COVID-19 in our school, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH) has determined that our school building will temporarily close from 9-13-21 to 9-23-21 to help stem the spread of the virus,” principal Tammy Thomas wrote in a letter to Emlen families sent Monday. “Students and staff may not return to our school building during this time.”

    Learning will continue during the building closure; teachers will be instructing students remotely, as they did for most students for the entirety of the 2020-21 school year.

    Students who did not share a classroom with an employee or student who tested positive for COVID-19 do not need to quarantine, the letter said.

Now that’s interesting: does this mean that the school district is sharing the identities of those who have tested positive, or simply specifying classrooms?

    Schools officials are following Philadelphia Department of Public Health guidelines to make decisions about when to quarantine students, entire classes, or schools.

    Three or more cases in one classroom requires the class to quarantine; three or more classes across a grade requires a grade to quarantine; six or more cases across grades within a school within 14 days triggers temporary building closure.

    COVID-19 cases among school-aged children are rising sharply.

There’s more at the original, but I can’t be the only person who thinks it probable that we’re going to have another year in public education like the last school year.

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Andy Beshear hates the state legislature, but he had no choice but to call them in

Most of my articles on Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) are primarily sourced from the Lexington Herald-Leader, but he wrangled an invitation from NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, and came to the attention of The New York Times:

    Kentucky governor says the state’s Covid surge is ‘dire.’

    by Melina Delkic | September 5, 2021

    Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)

    Kentucky’s Democratic governor on Sunday described the state’s surge of Covid cases as “dire,” and pointed out that Republican state lawmakers had limited his options to control the record wave of infections there.

    “If I had the ability to do it right now, we would have a masking order when you are in public and indoors,” said Gov. Andy Beshear, on NBC’s “Meet the Press” news program. “We know that’s a proven way to slow the spread of the virus and ultimately help our health care capacity.”

Right: if the Governor had the authority to issue a statewide mask mandate, he would have done so, and that is precisely why the voters of the Commonwealth gave Republican state legislative candidates such a huge margin in last November’s elections, because Mr Beshear had issued a statewide mask mandate last year.

Getting the General Assembly involved is something the Governor very much did not want to do. On July 10, 2020, Mr Beshear stated that he wouldn’t involve the legislature because he believed that they wouldn’t do his bidding.

    Beshear was asked at Friday’s news conference on COVID-19 why he has not included the legislature in coming up with his orders. He said many state lawmakers refuse to wear masks and noted that 26 legislators in Mississippi have tested positive for the virus.

And, as it happens, Kentucky’s legislators are not wearing masks today, as the special session opens:

    Kentucky special session on COVID-19 starts with many lawmakers not wearing masks

    By Jack Brammer | Updated: September 7, 2021 | 5:12 PM EDT

    With most members not wearing masks, a special session of the Kentucky General Assembly started Tuesday morning to deal with the state’s surging COVID-19 pandemic.

    Lawmakers acted quickly on Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s call to extend the COVID-19 state of emergency that has been in place in Kentucky since March 2020 and more time for a state of emergency to deal with August flooding in Nicholas County. House Joint Resolution 1, which extends the states of emergency and many of the governor’s emergency orders, was expected to clear the legislature before the end of the day.

    House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, gaveled his chamber into session at 10:13 a.m. and 94 of the 100 members responded to the roll call and heard the proclamation of the special session. Thirty-four members of the 38-member Senate convened at 12:16 p.m. with most members going without a mask. The two physicians in the Senate — Ralph Alvarado, R-Winchester, and Karen Berg, D-Louisville — wore masks.

    Lawmakers returned to the state Capitol in Frankfort at the call of Beshear, who has presented them with an agenda to fight the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 7,900 lives in Kentucky.

    The Democratic governor made the session call Saturday, two weeks after the Kentucky Supreme Court said his emergency orders dealing with the pandemic needed approval by the Republican-led legislature.

As far as I have heard, Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd has not yet lifted his injunctions against the legislation that the state Supreme Court ordered him to do, and the parties to the lawsuit were supposed to appear before the judge today, but I have been unable to find any reports concerning that. Nevertheless, Governor Beshear at least appears to be acting as though those injunctions have been lifted.

The legislature quickly approved the Governor’s request to extend the state of emergency until January 15th, the state House of Representatives voting 92-3 in favor, and the state Senate 32-4, sending it to Mr Beshear for his signature.

By extending the state of emergency until January 15th, when the General Assembly will be in its regular session, the Governor would have the power to issue a statewide mask mandate, lasting for thirty days, but the General Assembly might just deny him that one:

    Bill ditching mask mandates for KY schools and daycare centers gains momentum

    By Valarie Honeycutt Spears | Updated: September 7, 2021 | 4:32 PM EDT

    Hours after the Kentucky General Assembly began a special session Tuesday to deal with COVID-19 policies, the Senate Education Committee approved a bill that rejects the Beshear Administration’s emergency regulations requiring universal masking of people age two or older in K-12 schools and daycare centers.

    Senate Bill 1 declares the regulations requiring masks in schools and daycare centers null and void.

    The bill, approved by the committee with a 8-5 vote, now goes to the full Senate. Lawmakers who voted no voiced concerns about lifting the mask mandates at a time when transmission of COVID-19 and resulting hospitalizations are at an all-time high in Kentucky.

    Education Committee Chairman Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, said individual school boards will be free to decide their own policies about masking in schools.

    Wise said the bill would become law as soon as Gov. Andy Beshear signs it or the legislature overrides his veto, given that it is considered emergency legislation.

We had previously noted that the Governor had asked school districts to put mask mandates in place, but most districts made them optional. The Governor then got pissed off, and made it an order.

There’s more at the original, much of it devoted to the legislature’s plans to ease the restrictions on ‘non-traditional instruction,’ meaning those days in which school is conducted remotely. The legislature wants to keep schools from closing down for everybody because some students or staffers test positive for COVID-19.

Those were the two things which rankled the legislators, and Kentuckians in general, the most: the mask mandate and the schools being closed, and those are the two things the General Assembly appears to be most eager to prevent from happening again. Of course, it’s going to take a few days to see how this will play out, and what the legislature passes. But at least a wannabe dictator of a Governor has been reined in by the democratically elected General Assembly and the Kentucky Supreme Court.

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So much for Andy Beshear asking When people don't do what he asks, he responds by issuing orders

Two stories from the Lexington Herald-Leader, both dated today:

    Most Kentucky schools are making masks optional, even as COVID-19 surges. Here’s why.

    By Alex Acquisto | August 10, 2021 | 12:48 PM

    In a cramped room with members of the Harlan County Public Schools Board of Education, Darla Heflin steadied herself behind a microphone.

    “I’ll be very quick,” Heflin told the listening board and Superintendent Brent Roark on July 27. “We do believe that masks pose physical, mental and emotional distress on our students and on our children.”

    Heflin explained that her son, a rising eighth-grader, asked to be picked up from school twice last year because wearing a mask plagued him with headaches, dizziness and nausea. “He’s not used to wearing them,” she said. “We don’t make him wear them outside of school. I’m here believing that you all will vote to make them optional. We do not want masks to be mandatory for our students.” Continue reading →