Tag: schools

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crime and punishment election law initiative, referendum, and recall

Methinks the Mayor

petition, private property, taxes, schools

“So, Walmart has no rights?!”

The frustration flowed from Yakima Mayor Janice Deccio to a 911 operator. Her compassionate heart bled profusely for the long-​suffering stockholders and executives of one of the world’s richest companies. 

“Hi, this is Mayor Deccio. I know that this isn’t an emergency call, but I need to talk to somebody,” she told the dispatcher. “There are far rightwing petitioners at Walmart and they are not leaving after Walmart has asked them repeatedly to do so. And the police have not taken them off the premises.”

But, as the voice at 911 explained to the distraught officeholder, Washington State law requires that commercial property must make a public accommodation for First Amendment activity such as petitioning. 

The mayor’s thirst for a police solution to these “far rightwing” petitioners went unquenched.

“Obviously, the extreme left is freaked out by these initiatives,” offers Glen Morgan on his We the Governed podcast.

He’s referring to six conservative-​oriented initiatives being promoted by Let’s Go Washington and petitioned onto Washington State’s 2024 ballot.

“Four of these initiatives reduce taxes,” Morgan points out. “One of them allows the police to actually chase violent criminals once again. And the other one confirms that parents have the right to know what strangers are doing to their kids at school or in unsupervised medical settings.”

Deccio now claims that mystery constituents told her the petitioners were aggressive and threatening … something she didn’t mention that on the call. The fact that her 911 plea has been made public might have something to do with her change of tune.

And don’t even mention ideology! “I don’t care,” she contends, “nor even know what they were petitioning about.”

The mayor added: “No one told the group they couldn’t petition, and it was certainly not my intention to stop them.”

No, of course not — she intended for the police to stop them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights media and media people

License for Leftists

censorship, education, schools, Marxism

Libertarians should avoid taking sides in left-​right antagonisms when promoting a principled third position would make more sense.

Regrettably, in “Christopher Rufo Wants To Shut Down ‘Activist’ Academic Departments. Here’s Why He’s Wrong,” libertarian magazine Reason fails to offer that alternative.

“In an essay published this week in City Journal,” author Emma Camp begins, “conservative activist Christopher Rufo argued that universities — or rather, the state legislatures governing these universities — should shut down ‘activist’ academic departments. But rather than protecting higher education, forcibly shutting down left-​wing academic departments would be nothing more than routine censorship.”

Tellingly, she never defines “routine” censorship.

Let me help: routine censorship is the governmental policy of preventing or punishing private speech on private property. 

State colleges and universities are public institutions, politically established and subsidized by taxpayers. With few exceptions, “private colleges” are also routinely tax-​funded at the demand end, and are further supported with research contracts.

Getting rid of Marxist professors preaching political revolution is no more anti-​free speech than preventing the CDC and Anthony Fauci from conducting gain-​of-​function virus research within some college laboratory.

Ms. Camp quotes the Supreme Court about the importance of “safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned.” Freedom sounds great, but as usual, the Supremes forget that taxpayers have an interest, and that constraints on public schools was once routine.

So how not to “cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom”? 

Offer a third position: de-​subsidize and dis-​establish government “education” by empowering higher education’s customers. Let Marxist professors find payers in the private sector.

Instead, Emma Camp effectively tells conservatives they have no choice but to fund every leftist program that politics and the bureaucracy allow. She could have recognized that “Academic freedom” in the context of tax-​subsidized schooling is merely ideological license.

Which is itself a sad alternative to real liberty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture

The Liars

teacher, education, gender, trans

Talk about proof positive that school officials have a policy of lying to parents about their children!

According to Fox News, Kansas teacher Pamela Ricard contends that “deceiving parents about their children’s pronouns was against her Christian beliefs.”

Yet her bosses demanded this precise deceit.

Officials at Fort Riley Middle School suspended Ricard for referring to a transgender child by his or her legal name and by standard pronouns rather than by his or her preferred name and pronouns. (The Fox News report is coy about the actual sex of the child.) Ricard had also been ordered to use only the legal name and standard pronouns when speaking to the child’s parents — i.e., to conceal the child’s stated preferences.

Parents of any religion, or none, may well dispute the notion that when their kid suggests that he or she is “really” a member of the opposite sex, this profession of sexual faith points in a direction that any supportive adult ought only to encourage and sanction.

Of course, it is precisely the fact that parents may well disagree with school officials about the appropriate response to such intimations that inspires dishonest officials with an ideological-​cultural agenda to demand that parents be lied to.

With the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, Pamela Ricard won a settlement of $95,000 from the Geary County school district for its treatment of her. After she filed the lawsuit, the district dropped its policy of lying to parents.

At least, so they say.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling government transparency

Parents Kept in the Dark

education, sexual orientation, teachers, parents, children

When does it become irresponsible to send children to a public school? 

Has the line been crossed in Fairfax County, Virginia?

Their school board now prohibits teachers from telling parents when children “change gender” or pretend to change gender. Such decisions may be evidenced by a student’s changing his name or by identifying as a member of the opposite sex or as “nonbinary” on a school’s learning portal.

The district is not inviting teachers to exercise discretion about whether to inform parents. One can imagine cases in which a teacher knows parents to be physically abusive and likely to come down on a kid like a ton of bricks if alerted to such an event.

Rather, the policy stipulates that parents needn’t ever be told about such matters. To the extent teachers obey, parents won’t know unless informed by the children themselves.

If you live in Fairfax County, you could protest.

And you could do other things, such as

  • attend school board meetings to object, as parents attended a Fairfax board meeting to object to the policy of suspending fourth-​graders for using the “wrong” pronouns for classmates;
  • join the shadow board that parents have formed to criticize the doings of the Fairfax County board;
  • vote against a school board member or try to recall members — unless a judge decides that your recall petition fails to show “probable cause for removal.”

Or you could just get your kids the heck out of the public schools.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling judiciary

School Choice Rescued

Tennessee, education, schools

Though not yet a complete victory for school choice, a recent decision by the Tennessee Supreme Court constitutes a big win for the Tennessee Education Savings Account Pilot Program.

The court rejected a major claim in a lawsuit filed by Nashville County and Shelby County to challenge the constitutionality of the program, which awards scholarships up to $7,300 to qualifying students so they can escape failing public schools.

The lawsuit contends that the program flouts a rule prohibiting the state legislature from passing local laws that are “applicable to a particular county . . . either in its governmental or its proprietary capacity.”

Judging that school districts aren’t counties and that the ESA program does not impair the ability of counties to govern themselves, Tennessee’s highest court threw out a determination to the contrary by lower courts and sent the case back down for review of other claims in the lawsuit.

The Institute for Justice and the Beacon Center of Tennessee, which have been working together on the case, are optimistic about the final outcome.

According to IJ attorney Arif Panju, the ruling means that “thousands of Tennessee parents and children trapped in failing school districts can look forward to seeking a better education this fall at a school of their choice.”

In its description of the program, the Tennessee government mentions the lawsuit and expresses the hope that the state will “succeed on appeal” and begin enrolling students in 2022.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling insider corruption

Principal Gets F and Payoff

education, school, cheating

Former principal of Maspeth High School, Khursid Abdul-​Mutakabbir, exemplifies the who-​gives-​a-​crap approach to education.

After a foot-​dragging investigation, the New York City Department of Education finally fired the man for urging staff to concoct fake grades, fake classes, fake graduation rates.

His attitude: “I don’t care if a kid shows up at 7:44 and you dismiss at 7:45, it’s your job to give that kid credit.”

An official report outlines the many derelictions at this public school. Yet when the local DOE removed the principal, it also gave him a seven-​year sinecure paying $260,000 a year.

Wha — ? Why? 

Well, they’re all members of the same club.

Such nihilism and grift are rampant, if not universal.

Calling the settlement a “deeply symbolic insult” to taxpayers and students, columnist Bob McManus wants Mayor Eric Adams to “claw back” the payoff to prove that he really does mean to “fight for public education.” 

Frankly, the conduct of everyone involved is life-destroying — not just a matter of insults and symbolism. 

The minds and futures of young people are at stake.

In many schools, things only get worse. Maybe your kids are stuck in a public school that cannot be reformed, with perverse ideological agendas displacing reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic, never mind how to learn and think. Maybe homeschooling isn’t an option.

Glenn Reynolds advises shutting down the imploding public schools and replacing them with “universal vouchers, in the name of public health.”

Regardless of what specific reform we take to this mess, remember the goal: a learning lifeline to every kid who wants better. A choice. A chance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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