Free Republic

A 29-year-old Polk County teacher was arrested Monday night on charges of having sex with a 17-year-old student during a four-month romance that involved a pregnancy and abortion, Lakeland police said. Jennifer Christine Fichter, an English teacher at Central Florida Aerospace Academy, told the boy’s mother that she was in love with her son and admitted to several sexual encounters, police said.

OAKHURST, CA, April 11, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Gary Sconce, a 56-year-old male teacher at Yosemite High School in California, will return to school as “she” after spring break. He has rejected every facet of his male identity over the last year and told NBC News, “I will not return as my male persona ever again.” Instead, he would now like to be known to students and faculty as Karen Adell Scot and referred to as “she.” The New York Daily News reports that Sconce wrote, “I covered the female inside with hyper-masculine behavior, trying to provide I was not the...

A children’s book that is part of the Common Core curriculum portrays white voters as racists who would never vote for Obama for president. The book called, “Barack Obama,” says: “Some people said Americans weren’t ready for that much change. Sure Barack was a nice fellow, they said. But white voters would never vote for a black president,” the book reads. This is in spite of the fact that millions of whites voted for the sitting president. Follow TLR on Google+ Common Core’s implementation has gotten off to a rocky start. States like Indiana have opted out of the unified...

ARKPORT, N.Y. – Were officials in the Arkport Central School District being petty and vindictive in their treatment of children whose parents removed them from Common Core testing? ice creamIf so, they went about it in the worst possible way – by giving an ice cream treat to the third through sixth grade students who took the tests, and denying those who didn’t. Parents of the opt-out kids were simply exercising their legal rights, and they’re angered that their children had to pay the price in such an obviously nasty manner. After all, The fair and equitable distribution of ice...

We’re told that there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to Common Core. If that’s true, what’s with the intimidation and the punishment for those who oppose it: A 13-year-old student at Orange-Ulster BOCES believes she was suspended from school this week as a result of telling other students they didn’t have to take the Common Core English test Tuesday. The girl, eighth-grader Seirra Olivero, was suspended for two days for insubordination. While she acknowledges the charge, she contends in a complaint filed with the district that she felt bullied by three administrators because she told other students they...

Building the Machine introduces the public to the Common Core States Standards Initiative (CCSSI) and its effects on our children’s education. The documentary compiles interviews from leading educational experts, including members of the Common Core Validation Committee. Parents, officials, and the American public should be involved in this national decision regardless of their political persuasion. What is the common core? The Common Core is the largest systemic reform of American public education in recent history. What started as a collaboration between the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to reevaluate and nationalize America’s education standards...

An excellent summary of the history and character of the Common Core. Every conservative should take the forty minutes to watch this. Be informed!

TUCSON, AZ, March 27, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Parents with children attending a school in the Tucson Unified School District are outraged after school officials decided that transgender students could use whichever bathroom they "identify" with rather than be restricted by their biological sex. According to KVOA TV, the Tucson Unified School District voted on March 25 to update its non-discrimination policy to include "gender identity and expression." Parents with children at Anna Henry Elementary School in Tucson voiced their concern at a meeting on Wednesday night where they related incidents that made their kids very uncomfortable. John Bellisario, principal of...

A first grader in California has been told she’s not permitted to talk about the Bible at school. A teacher at Temecula Valley School told her first grade class to bring an object to school that represented a family Christmas tradition and then give a one-minute presentation. Brynn Williams brought the star that tops her family’s Christmas tree and shared how her family remembers Jesus’ birth at Christmas. “The star is named the Star of Bethlehem,” Brynn said. “The three kings followed the star to find the baby Jesus, the Savior of the world.” Brynn had planned to end her...

Imagine hearing this story from your 5-year-old when you ask her how her day was in kindergarten. Kudos to these parents for staying calm and teaching this little girl that she can pray absolutely anywhere she wants.

We don't need to know anything else about this kid to know they're a good one...

A Facebook update from a father frustrated with the Common Core math program at his son's school is making the Internet rounds after the father Jeff Severt expressed (via what looks like a kid's homework assignment) how convoluted the teaching approach is. The worksheet posted to Facebook shows the elaborate Common Core (CC) formula for solving a math problem (as opposed to the simple strategy of subtracting the smaller number from the larger one). It instructs the student to explain why a fictional kid named "Jack" should be using common core strategies to solve the problem: “Jack used the number...

A social studies workbook, used in an Illinois public middle school, is generating controversy among gun rights supporters because it claims that the Second Amendment permits only strictly regulated, registered gun ownership. A screenshot of the workbook was first posted to the Facebook page for Illinois Gun Owners Rights. It provides the following description of the Second Amendment:

Two of the most powerful unions in the country have voiced objections to a bill that would provide better background checks for teachers, Campbell Brown writes in a Thursday Wall Street Journal column. After the Government Accountability Office found “hundreds of potential cases of registered sex offenders working in schools” across the United States in 2010, the House passed a bill that would streamline the vetting process and close inconsistencies across state lines. The bill is a common sense measure, according to Campbell, yet powerful teachers unions are opposed to the new standards. Anyone with violent or sexual convictions against...

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – News reports of frosted pop tart guns! Paper guns! Bubble guns! Pointed finger guns! Bang, bang, you’re dead! OMG! sound the alarm These days, everything’s a federal offense, so to speak, and no institution is ratcheting up the war-of-words like public education. This winter, public school administrators in Thousand Oaks, CA attended a “safe school” and “threat assessment” workshop, a collaboration of the local Ventura County Department of Education and the Ventura County Sheriffs where the education code was redefined to include a 21st Century list of words, phrases and expressions that can hurt. Literally. Yes,...

A former custodian for St. Paul Public Schools is accused of peeking underneath a bathroom stall and smiling at a male student in February. Sixty-two-year-old Walter Happel of Newport is charged in Ramsey County with one count of surreptitious interference with privacy. Happel was charged for a Feb. 20 incident at Linwood Monroe Arts Plus School. During their investigation, authorities learned that Happel kept a room in the building that contained topical intensifying gel, energy capsules and a bottle of testosterone. The Star Tribune reports the bathroom incident is the latest in a number of alleged transgressions with young boys...

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SC — A Hilton Head Island High School substitute teacher admitted she sent an inappropriate picture to a student, kissed him and asked him to buy marijuana for her, according to a Beaufort County Sheriff's Office report released Saturday. Margaret Ann LaMantia, 23, was charged Tuesday with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and disseminating harmful material to a minor, according to the jail log. During an investigation of the incident, LaMantia, a long-term Spanish substitute at the school, told deputies she and a 16-year-old male student in her class began talking around Nov. 25. They...

The Michigan Education Association is going to arbitration to try to force the West Branch-Rose City school district to pay a former teacher who was convicted of molesting a student a $10,000 severance buyout. The father of the victim is outraged, calling the union’s efforts on behalf of the sex criminal “ludicrous” and saying any school money due to the teacher should go to his son, who is “out there trying to make it in this world all messed up.” Neal Erickson, a former math teacher at Rose City Middle School, was convicted this summer of raping a young student...

More than half of the third graders at Three Lakes Academy in the Upper Peninsula failed to score proficient on the state reading test in 2010-2011. But none of the school's 14 third-graders were held back. At Howell Public Schools, none of the 35 third-graders who didn't rate proficient at reading were held back. However, a proposed bill would require those students show they are proficient at reading before advancing to fourth grade. House Bill 5111 would hold back third grade students who were not proficient in reading on the state assessment. The bill grants exemptions for students with a...

A Chattanooga, Tennessee mom is suing Hamilton County Schools after it was discovered that Apison Elementary School was strip-searching her five-year-old special needs daughter on a daily basis without her consent. The young girl with special needs was diagnosed with congenital herpes while attending school, and despite being given consent to return to school by a doctor, school officials decided that they needed to check to see if the child had legions. So, for a few weeks, a school nurse would check the young girl’s body to make sure there weren’t any new outbreaks. The girl’s mother, Brandy Madden, says...