Free Republic

In urban centers around the country, rental prices are soaring. Cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City routinely report double-digit increases that make it nearly impossible for residents to make ends meet. But it’s not just dwellers of those metropolitan areas who are having a hard time paying the rent. According to a report out this week from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, more than half of renters in America are considered to be financially burdened by their rent, meaning that they spend more than 30 percent of their income just on where they live. High...

SOROS NAILED: Liberal Sugar Daddy George Soros May Face A ‘Monster’ Named, “Tax Evasion.” Which will Eat Away his Political Power. [ Full title]. George Soros is one of the left’s most powerful money men. In January of this year, Western Journalism reported on the millions of dollars that liberal billionaire George Soros and his politically involved foundations gave to help various groups of Ferguson protesters. “Buses of activists from a litany of organizations — all funded in part by Mr. Soros” showed up in the Missouri city scorched by riots related to the police-involved death of Michael Brown. Soros,...

The principal of an innovative West Harlem public school killed herself the day after her students took the state Common Core exams — which were later tossed out because she cheated ... Jeanene Worrell-Breeden, 49, of Teachers College Community School, jumped in front of a B train in the 135th Street station ... She was pulled out from under the train and taken to Harlem Hospital, where she died eight days later. The city Medical Examiner’s Office ruled it a suicide. The leap came at 9:20 a.m., less than 24 hours after her 47 third-graders wrapped up three days sweating...

An American kindergarten teacher who is the mother of twins was stabbed to death in the bathroom of an Abu Dhabi shopping mall by a robed figure dubbed the "Reem Island Ghost," police said Wednesday. The teacher was identified by her family as Ibolya Ryan. The attack comes just weeks after the U.S. embassies in the Middle East warned citizens of an anonymous posting on a jihadist website encouraging attacks against teachers at American schools in the Middle East.

During U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech on Wednesday regarding a new government initiative to bring high speed internet access to low-income groups, the topic of South Korea’s education system came up. “In South Korea they pay their teachers the way they pay their doctors,” he said in front of an audience at Durant High School in Durant, Okla. “They consider education to be at the highest wrung of the professions.” The reason it came up at all had to do with South Korea’s widespread high speed internet access especially in the city’s capital of Seoul. Obama voiced a similar statement...

City officials are pushing property-tax hikes, sales-tax hikes, and even a commuter tax and financial-transaction tax. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s wish for a $474 million sales-tax increase to help pay for the county’s growing pension debt has been granted. The hike pushes the sales-tax rate back up to 10.25 percent in Chicago – the same as it was when Preckwinkle took office in 2010. And that’s not the only new tax residents have to face. Preckwinkle is just the latest local leader to usher in a tax increase. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel created a new tax earlier this...

WASHINGTON — Furious American Federation of Teachers members are demanding the union withdraw its endorsement of Hillary Rodham Clinton, calling it premature and undemocratic. “There was no internal discussion. Zero. Zip,” said Steve Conn, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers. “This is wrong and something needs to be done.” The 45-member AFT executive board voted Saturday to back Clinton despite an AFL-CIO request to wait until July when the presidential field is more set.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has won the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers. It's the first major labor union to make an endorsement in the 2016 presidential campaign. The president of the union, Randi Weingarten, says in a statement Saturday that Clinton is the "champion working families need in the White House." The endorsement has been widely expected....

Schools in St. Paul and Cannon Falls threw out dozens of Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments results this spring because of cheating by teachers assigned to monitor the standardized tests, according to state Department of Education reports. At St. Paul's Linwood Monroe, the department found, 21 seventh-graders had their math scores invalidated after the exam proctor gave students "direct prompting and direction on test items while they took the test." The teacher was placed on administrative leave, but the district wouldn't comment on any further discipline. In Cannon Falls, the school district tossed the scores of 26 fifth-graders after a teacher admitted...

Security forces have arrested six Israeli Beduin men from the Negev town of Houra, four of whom work as school teachers, for allegedly supporting the Islamic State terrorist organization. The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed Monday that the men were arrested over the past two months. They allegedly took part in secret meetings in which they discussed Islamic State doctrine, and spread the group's propaganda among their family members and associates. Some of the suspects planned to join the ranks Islamic State in Syria. Those who worked as teachers at schools in the Negev used their positions to spread...

BARNEGAT, N.J. – Teachers unions during the past decade have known their share of scandal. Add the case of Wayne Wedderman Jr. to the list. This Monday, June 29, Wedderman, treasurer of the Barnegat Education Association, pleaded guilty in Ocean County, New Jersey Superior Court to theft from the union. He had been arrested last November for stealing roughly a combined $23,000 from two union accounts in the wake of a county probe begun the previous month. A grand jury in February subsequently indicted Wedderman on two counts of thefts and one count of computer theft. Sentencing is scheduled for...

LAS VEGAS (KSNV News3LV) – Teachers who work for the Clark County School District may not get a pay raise in the upcoming school year. They are not happy about it and they are making sure the district hears them loud and clear. Teachers say they feel under valued at a time when the district is offering a sign-on bonus to new teachers of up to five thousand dollars. They say the district should focus on retention, rather than recruitment. "My stomach just dropped. It was just another punch to the stomach," said Elizabeth Harris.

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Hundreds of Chicago Public Schools teachers and parents protested at City Hall Thursday morning following 1,400 layoffs and $200 million in cuts to meet a teachers' pension deadline. Mayor Rahm Emanuel delayed a $634 million pension payment until the eleventh-hour on Tuesday, waiting to see any relief would come from state lawmakers. It never came. The mayor and Interim CPS CEO Jesse Ruiz outlined on Wednesday who would be laid off and where cuts would be made. Ruiz said most of the 1,400 jobs cut were in administration and special education programs. Very few teachers were laid...

"Black Teacher Hits Handicapped White Child, Tells Him Black People Fought To Not “Serve White People Like You”" Excerpted from The Social Memo: A Cincinnati teacher has resigned in the wake of racist comments and abusive actions taken toward handicapped children. Intervention Specialist Pamela Bullock has left her position at Wayne Local Schools in Warren County, after four teaching assistants wrote a letter to administrators detailing her abuse toward students. In one incident, the assistants reported that Ms. Bullock was taking care of a handicapped, non-verbal student, when she became irate at him. Bullock threw a marker at the boy,...

The presidents of America’s two largest unions have vowed to fight tooth and nail against a lawsuit now in front of the U.S. Supreme Court which, if successful, could strike down a California law permitting mandatory union membership. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit assert that the mandatory-dues law forces teachers to finance union political positions. Thus, the plaintiffs say, the law violates the First Amendment rights of teachers who disagree with the union’s politics. The Supreme Court granted certiorari for the suit, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, on Tuesday. “We are disappointed that at a time when big corporations and...

Wisconsin unions Monday are once again attacking Republican Gov. Scott Walker, this time over a proposed budget that may result in cuts to tenure for state college professors. With the upcoming budget session, the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee is expected to propose a plan to reform the University of Wisconsin System. While it is not yet finalized, unions warn the plan will cut $250 million in funding and will remove academic protections for professors such as teacher tenure. This latest union battles comes at the heels of a likely announcement Walker will run for president. With his previous labor reforms,...

Powerful public-sector unions are facing another high-profile legal challenge that they say could wipe away millions from their bank accounts and make it tougher for them to survive. A group of California schoolteachers, backed by a conservative group, has asked the Supreme Court to rule that unions representing government workers can’t collect fees from those who choose not to join. Half the states currently require state workers represented by a union to pay “fair share” fees that cover bargaining costs, even if they are not members. The justices could decide as early as next week whether to take up the...

An outraged mom is pleading with her son’s Brooklyn high school: Please educate my child! Annette Renaud, PTA president at the Secondary School for Journalism in Park Slope, is furious that her son got grades of 85 to 95 on his class work but failed Regents exams in the same subjects. “He wasn’t educated,” she said. “He can’t compete with students at Millennium, Brooklyn Tech or Stuyvesant. It’s a joke.” She says conditions are bad at the school, with one teacher allegedly selling jewelry instead of holding lessons and another frying doughnuts and leaving to do his laundry. Just 17...

Thousands of Chicago Teachers Union members and their supporters blocked a downtown stretch of LaSalle Street early Tuesday evening, staging a show of force amid an intensifying contract battle.. "You have to remember that what you're fighting for is not just a fair contract, it is the history of fair contracts," CTU President Karen Lewis told supporters gathered outside the Thompson Center. "And if we have a chance, this is it. This is the time where you have to stand up and tell 'em all, 'No, we're not going to take that.' " **SNIP** Chicago Public Schools says it is...

A couple of weeks ago, we reported that the war waged by the Jeffco teachers union against school district staff, particularly those in the communications office, was the most vitriolic in history. We couldn’t figure out why the union would be such abusive bullies to staff members – not even elected officials. And, now, the reason is clear. Documents recently uncovered show that the teachers union and other school staff were using the Jeffco Schools communications department as a de facto campaign headquarters – and had been since at least 2003 (see last picture of memo). With a contentious election...