Free Republic

POLK COUNTY, Fla. - An elementary school teacher was arrested for a DUI after deputies nabbed her with a blood alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office. Leslie Spence of Tampa was arrested and charged with driving under the influence after she was pulled over on Friday night in Lake Wales. She was also given a citation for failing to maintain a single lane. A witness reported a vehicle driving east on State Road 60 at about 25 mph, swerving across lanes, according to deputies. A Polk County Sheriff's Deputy was able...

A 75-year-old female teacher's aide has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for the repeated sexual assault of a 14-year-old student in the basement of a Wisconsin religious private school. Anne Nelson-Koch worked at the Tomah Baptist Academy located in Tomah, Wisconsin during the 2016-2017 school year. During that time, she lured the teen to the school's basement and forced him to perform heinous sexual acts. At trial she was found guilty on over a dozen counts, including sexual assault of a child, child enticement-sexual contact and exposing genitals/pubic area/intimate parts to a child. She initially had been facing...

A Virginia first grade teacher who was shot in class by a six-year-old student appeared in court on Friday as she bids to claim $40 million in damages. Abby Zwerner is suing Newport News Public Schools for $40 million, alleging gross negligence against school administrators. But the school board is trying to block the lawsuit, arguing that Zwerner's injuries fall under workers' compensation, and as such are limited to 10 years' pay and limited medical benefits. Zwerner, 26, spent two weeks in hospital after the January incident, which saw a bullet hit her hand and chest. She accuses the school...

Families are voting with their feet to charter schools, which are increasingly resisted by school boards and teacher unions. Diana Diaz-Harrison, above, started a charter in Arizona to fill a gap: no specialized services for children like her autistic son Sammy. . A vote by the Los Angeles board of education vote last month to ban charter schools from sharing space at 300 district campuses is the latest big-city attack against alternatives to struggling traditional public schools. With the strong support of United Teachers Los Angeles, school board members say the ban will protect black and Latino students from the...

Non-binary teacher introduces 6th graders to the importance of using correct pronouns In a world with immense diversity, it's imperative to educate the younger generation about the LGBTQIAP+ community and foster inclusivity from an early age. Nairobi Colon, affectionately known as Teacher Robi among their students, is a shining example of how this can be achieved. At 28 years old, Colon-who goes on TikTok by @robigotsoles-shares their experiences as a sixth-grade art teacher while seamlessly integrating lessons on inclusivity and diversity alongside the standard curriculum

Laura Whitehurst, a former English teacher and soccer coach at Redlands High School, pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with three former students.A Southern California school district will pay $2.25 million to settle the latest lawsuit involving a teacher who became pregnant by one of at least two students she was accused of sexually abusing. The settlement brings to $8.25 million the amount paid by Redlands Unified School District to Laura Whitehurst’s victims since her 2013 arrest, the Southern California News Group reported Sunday. In August 2016, the district agreed to pay $6 million to a former student who impregnated Whitehust...

A fourth-grade teacher in Tennessee could face 25 years behind bars after she was arrested for allegedly raping a 12-year-old and befriending other former students online. Alissa McCommon, 38, was arrested outside her home Friday by Covington Police Department and booked into the Tipton County Jail. The mother-of-two has been accused of sexually assaulting a former student in 2021 in her home, Covington Police Chief Donna Turner said. The Charger Academy teacher admitting to inappropriately communicating with students, the police said. McCommon was suspended without pay on August 24 after a parent came forward with the allegation, according toAfter the...

Stacy Davis-Gates is undoubtedly Illinois’ most prominent and rabid opponent of school choice — and pretty much everybody and everything associated with it, all of which she labels racist or worse. As president of the Chicago Teachers Union, she is at the forefront of its campaign to kill Illinois’ meager Invest in Kids Act, which currently gives about 9,000 disadvantaged kids scholarships to attend private schools. “It must be ‘game over'” for the program, the CTU says. But, as initially reported** by SubX News, she sends one of her kids to to Chicago’s De La Salle Institute, a private, Catholic...

A Colorado public school diversity teacher said in private emails that he was struggling with the urge not to "burn things down" which didn't represent equity, according to records reviewed by Fox News Digital. Casey Menninger is a diversity teacher in Jefferson County Public School District's Foster K-8 school. Menninger was involved in crafting the curriculum for other teachers to present to their classes. Menninger wanted classes to be focused on bad things done by White people.

A former Chicago social studies teacher who was arrested for threatening to shoot former President Donald Trump and his son Barron “straight in the face” was allegedly also stalking the 17-year-old at his Florida high school. Tracy Marie Fiorenza, 41, traveled to West Palm Beach in March and started asking questions about the former first son outside the elite Oxbridge Academy, police records obtained by the Chicago Tribune show. A security guard who spotted her at the school called 911 on March 7, telling police officers she was a “known stalker of a high-profile student.” But when deputies arrived on...

A former social studies teacher arrested earlier this week for threatening to shoot Donald Trump and his son Barron, 17, has now been accused of previously stalking the teen at his high school. Tracy Marie Fiorenza, 41, was arrested Monday morning in Chicago on a charge of transmitting threats to kill or injure - months after she traveled to Florida to allegedly stalk the former president's youngest son. Police in Palm Beach questioned the teacher outside the Oxbridge Academy in March, as reported by the Chicago Tribune. Florida prosecutors asked that Fiorenzia be held without bond during her Wednesday hearing,...

A divided Georgia school board upheld a decision to fire a fifth-grade teacher who read a picture book to her students about gender identity amid ongoing discussions nationwide about the content kids are exposed to in the classroom. Katherine Rinderle, who has been employed as a teacher for a decade, read the book My Shadow is Purple to her students at Due West Elementary School in Cobb County in March, prompting complaints from parents. The book uses colors to represent the concept of gender identity, as the main character's shadow is purple, but for others, their shadow is blue or...

An Illinois art teacher has been fired after parents made school officials aware of social media posts that read “Hail Satan” and indicated the teacher is “violent and hurtful.” During a special board meeting Sunday, officials with the District 33C Board of Education in Homer Glen, located about 30 miles southwest of Chicago, dismissed a teacher who was identified by conservative influencer Libs of TikTok as “Kris Martin.” Video from the meeting shared by Libs of TikTok showed the decision was made to dismiss art teacher Kristopher Martin "effective immediately." A statement provided to a local Patch reporter said officials...

A teacher at a private Christian school accused of sexually assaulting an eighth-grade student allegedly gifted him a gun for his 14th birthday before he ran away in a relative’s car. Tyesha Bolden, 34, and the boy met while she was teaching at Pilgrim Lutheran School in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin last fall and exchanged over 2,200 text messages — some allegedly containing nude images and flirtatious language. Bolden was released on $2,500 bond this week on felony charges of second-degree child sex assault and giving a dangerous weapon to a child, Fox News Digital reported. In June, Bolden took the boy...

... Teachers unions and educators are sounding the alarm about sweltering conditions in classrooms as the school year kicks off following a summer that wrapped the country in record-setting heat. The issue of excessive heat in classrooms is not new, as in previous years aging school buildings with inadequate air conditioning have led schools to shut down early and switch to remote learning. But some educators said the longer periods of hot weather, particularly in places that haven’t historically experienced multiday heat waves coupled with inadequate cooling systems, are making it difficult to teach and are putting students even more...

National Education Association is the most evil labor organization on the planet. All of the teachers’ unions are evil, but the NEA is the biggest, ... The teachers’ unions weren’t able to hide their nastiness from the public ... They did what they’ve always done — put their interests above those of the students and, as we are now finding out, doomed those kids to being forever behind. One of the more bizarre things we saw back then was the far-left regime in Chicago battling with the teachers’ union there to let the kids go back to school. Then-Mayor Lori...

The 6-year-old Virginia boy who shot and wounded his teacher with his mother’s gun later bragged about it to a school employee – shockingly claiming, “I shot that bitch dead,” according to newly unsealed search warrants. After the first-grader shot Abigail Zwerner at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News on Jan. 6, reading specialist Amy Kovac held the boy until cops arrived, according to the documents obtained by WTKR. “I did it … I shot that bitch dead,” the pint-sized pistol packer bragged, the docs show. “I got my mom’s gun last night.” The unsealed records of Zwerner’s statement to...

A school district in Texas has begun the termination process for a newly-hired teacher after he was arrested in a sex trafficking case. Police in Dallas, Texas, arrested Gershon Caston on July 20, according to FOX 4, and are charging him with compelling prostitution under 18, sexual assault of a child, and trafficking of a child. Police said that the alleged crimes were committed in both June and July. Red Oak Independent School District, which has schools located just south of Dallas, said in a statement that Caston is suspended without pay, adding that a termination process has begun. Caston...

A former award-winning teacher has been sentenced to jail over a sexual assault of a student more than a decade ago. Leah Ruthann Queen, 44, pleaded guilty to having a sexual relationship with a student. Benton County Circuit Judge Brad Karren sentenced Queen to six years of state-supervised probation and 58 days in the Benton County Jail. She was also ordered not to have any contact with the victim.Queen was a teacher at the Gentry Intermediate School in Arkansas.

A Las Vegas teen has been jailed for up to 40 years for a savage attack on his teacher where he raped and strangled her before trying to slash her wrists. Jonathan Martinez-Garcia, 17, smirked at his sentencing Wednesday as the court heard in harrowing detail how he ambushed the teacher by asking if he could speak about his grades after class at El Dorado High School in April 2022. Martinez-Garcia waited until her back was turned before trying to choke her with a 'rope or string'. He then slammed the young woman's head against a table, knocking her unconscious....