Free Republic

Texas school superintendent salaries continue to rise, despite falling enrollments and flagging student performance, leaving taxpayers wondering what they are getting for their money. Newly released Texas Education Agency data for the 2023-24 school year shows eight superintendents with salaries above $400,000 and another 81 receiving $300,000 or more. Texas’ highest-paid school superintendent was again Cypress-Fairbanks ISD’s Mark Henry, who pulled down a base salary of $536,775 before retiring in December 2023. Last school year, 77 superintendents received taxpayer-funded salaries above $300,000, with five making $400,000 or more. During the 2021-22 school year, 60 superintendents scored salaries at or above...

Weird how we never hear about men's toilets or locker rooms becoming gender-neutral or 'unisex', isn't it? Only women's locker rooms and bathrooms must be converted to accommodate men who think they're women. In Brisbane, girls are afraid to use the bathroom -- a basic and necessary biological function -- because the now unisex spaces are populated with boys loitering outside and urinating in waste bins. But suck it up, young ladies. Can't make a man feel unsafe or unwelcome. Why were the girls facilities converted to “gender neutral”? Why is it the girls who lose out? Who thought it...

The Biden administration’s new Title IX regulations issued last week avoided using the word “transgender,” but the rules, which go into effect on August 1, are already being interpreted as protecting transgenderism, especially in the use of specialized pronouns when transgender and LGBTQ students demand their use. Throughout the document, the term “gender identity” is used to describe certain actions that the new rules will force all public schools — not just colleges, but all publicly funded schools — to obey or risk being sued and/or losing federal funding. The new rules announced last week define sex discrimination as discrimination...

Parents opted out of vaccines for Louisiana’s kindergartners at the highest rate in at least a decade as several new bills to weaken vaccine requirements continue to advance in the Louisiana Legislature. During the 2022-23 school year, about 2.3% of children entering school requested exemptions, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 0.1% of those were due to medical reasons. That’s around double the year before, when 1.1% of kindergarten students requested nonmedical exemptions. From 2011 to 2017, the average exemption rate was around 0.75%. … “It’s a slippery slope,” said Dr. Mark Kline, physician...

A recent survey by Intuit found that U.S. high school students want to learn about personal finance in schools but that many lack access to such courses at school, while parents may be reluctant to teach their children about financial literacy. Intuit's Financial Education survey found that 85% of U.S. high school students said they're interested in learning about financial topics at school and that 95% of those who currently receive a financial curriculum find it helpful. "Ultimately, what we learned is that 81% of students said they really try to discuss financial topics with their parents, but parents typically...

Time to Change Our Language.. It is time to stop blaming “Covid” for breaking the economy, destroying businesses and livelihoods, and wreaking untold havoc upon families. It was not “Covid” that did this. It was not even the Chinese. It was our government. The government has conditioned us to blame the impersonal “Covid” for the destruction it wrought upon our businesses and families. We need to change the discussion by using the proper language to fix the blame where it belongs. Good generals can win a battle by picking the terrain upon which they fight. At Waterloo, Wellington forced Napoleon...

Scholastic is both a publisher and a distributor of books. It’s well-known for publishing educational material for schools, teachers, and parents, as well as books and resources for children. Scholastic’s publishing arm is responsible for producing a wide range of content, including books, magazines, and digital products and includes popular series and titles that cater to children and young adults. Scholastic is also well-known for its book fairs in schools where it children can attend and purchase books without direct parental supervision—and some of the stuff you might find at these book fairs is rather disturbing. So parents, beware. First...

Seattle Public Schools is dismantling its gifted and talented program, which administrators argued was oversaturated with white and Asian students, in favor of a more “inclusive, equitable and culturally sensitive” program. The district began phasing out its Highly Capable Cohort schools and classrooms for advanced students in the 2021-22 school year due to racial inequities, the school district notes. The program will completely cease to exist by the 2027-28 school year, with a new enrichment-for-all model available in every school by the 2024-25 school year. “The program is not going away, it’s getting better,” school officials said on the district...

Author’s Note: Today’s article is not to state what you should do when it comes to the choices you make for your family. I am passing on vital information about schools being used, one more time, to overreach into those decisions, especially when it comes to vaccination. Regardless where you live, your family’s freedom to decide should be yours, and yours alone. Not coerced by a system which cares little to nothing about your family. LMT March 2024 is upon us. Have you heard or seen the February 2024 announcements from the Centers for Medicaid/Medicare Services? While this may seem...

Remember when Democrats made a big deal about how Joe and Jill Biden were putting 'decency' back on the ballot? Like Trump had been this villainous, grotesque monster stomping out decency during his presidency because he sent mean tweets. Or said mean things. We'd imagine if Trump had compared Democrats to Nazy Germany because they want abortion up to and including birth they would have said that wasn't DECENT. But it's ok for DOCTOR Jill Biden to compare parents who don't want their kids reading sexually explicit content in elementary schools to Nazy Germany. Watch this: Jill Biden, Ed.D., compares...

ATLANTA, Ga. - Your tax dollars could be used to put some Georgia students through private school. The House Education Committee passed Senate Bill 233, also known as the “school choice bill,” on Wednesday. Now it heads to the floor of the Georgia House for a final vote. If the proposal becomes law, students in Georgia’s lowest-performing schools could be eligible for a $6,500 voucher. Families could take that money and put it toward private school tuition. Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns is leaning into the push to pass the voucher plan. Burns, a Screven County Republican, made what he...

A bill that would allow concealed carry of firearms in schools and government meetings is headed to Wyoming's governor after clearing the state Legislature by a wide margin Thursday. What happens next is somewhat uncertain because Wyoming governors traditionally don’t say if they plan to sign or veto bills. Gov. Mark Gordon has not spoken publicly about the bill, but he is a Republican gun rights supporter. Wyoming is among the gun-friendliest states and the bill passed the state Senate 22-8 after supporters dismissed fears about allowing guns where they're currently banned. People carry concealed guns in Wyoming all the...

North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt lost Tuesday's Republican primary to Michele Morrow, a home-schooling parent critical of public schools' "radical agendas" on race and gender ideology. Morrow, a nurse and former Christian missionary who ran unsuccessfully for the Wake County school board in 2022, garnered 52% of the vote Tuesday, while the incumbent Truitt tallied 48%, WTVD reported. The Super Tuesday upset came despite Truitt's sizable fundraising advantages and GOP establishment support. Morrow, a supporter of former President Donald Trump who accused Truitt of not being conservative enough, collected backing from rural education leaders and will now...

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—A Christian who faced persecution for her faith in Communist Romania in the 1980s and barely survived an assassination attempt orchestrated by dictator Nicolae Ceausescu warns that the undermining of parental rights in the U.S. today echoes Ceausescu’s totalitarian government. “It’s the same system that the socialists use in order for parents to be put in jail that the students, kids, will be taught in school to report their [parents] to school,” Virginia Prodan, a human rights lawyer who grew up in Communist Romania but came to the U.S. after President Ronald Reagan secured her release... She raised the...

An Oklahoma high school has apologized for hosting a vile 'toe-licking' challenge at a student fundraising event. Deer Creek High School in Edmond has admitted it 'failed to uphold the dignity of our students' over the grotesque competition held February 29. Outrageous videos of ninth through twelfth grade students licking other pupils' bare feet at the ticketed event called Clash of the Classes quickly went viral online. 'Through this specific game we failed to uphold the dignity of our students and the proud image of our community,' the school district said in a statement March 1. 'We have a responsibility...

Supporters of Rick Ledesma and Madison Miner, members of the Orange Unified School District's Board of Trustees, who are targets of a recall campaign by a coalition of politicians and public employees' unions, rallied in Orange, California during the first weekend in March, 2024. Ledesma and Miner are conservatives who favor academically rigorous curricula, parent's rights and charter schools and oppose the ideological indoctrination of students. The rallies took place in Orange, on Chapman Avenue on Friday, March 1, and at the traffic circle in the heart of Old Town Orange the next day. On Sunday, March 3, they held...

More public-school districts are being sued for allegedly using taxpayer resources to instruct staff to vote against school choice candidates in the Republican primary election regardless if they are Republicans. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Huffman and Aledo independent school districts on Friday alleging they used state resources to influence political races through illegal electioneering. This is after Paxton first sued Denton, Frisco, Denison and Castleberry ISDs within one week “for illegal electioneering by using taxpayer-funded resources” to “stump for specific candidates during an election” and/or “promote certain political candidates and policies” related to school choice. School choice is...

The American Psychological Association (APA) has adopted a policy statement that promotes K-12 transgenderism and denounces child-protection laws.

Berkeley Unified School District teachers and students have promoted anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment on campus.. Multiple California K-12 schools are being accused of promoting "viciously hostile environments" of "severe and persistent" antisemitism in a recent federal civil rights complaint... Brandeis Center .. along with the U.S. Department of Education filed the complaint against the Berkely Unified School District ... The complaint alleged that the district has allowed the ongoing "harassment and discrimination" of Jewish students to skyrocket since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel. "Over the past four months, BUSD has knowingly allowed its K-12 campuses to become viciously...

A federal court dismissed a case Tuesday against Republican Iowa Gov. Kimberly Reynolds’ prohibition of mask mandate in school districts across the state, official documents showed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit found “persuasive” the argument that “the general risks associated with COVID-19, even though COVID-19 remains an ever-present concern in society, are not enough to show ‘imminent and substantial’ harm,” court papers showed in part. The court also decided that “because Plaintiffs have only alleged the potential risk of severe illness should they contract COVID-19 at school, the risk of harm is too speculative to satisfy...