Category: Education
Minneapolis Schools Offer Remote Learning Due to ICE Activity—After Saying They Could Only Do So for ‘Severe Weather’
The Minneapolis public school system is offering remote learning until Feb. 12 amid unrest over immigration enforcement in the city, a move that came shortly after the school said “e-learning” is “only allowable for severe weather.”
The post Minneapolis Schools Offer Remote Learning Due to ICE Activity—After Saying They Could Only Do So for ‘Severe Weather’ appeared first on .
A Nation That Can’t Explain 1776 Urgently Needs a Civic Education Revival
Why did the United States of America declare its independence from England in 1776? If you know the answer to…
If parental rights can be bypassed in Alabama, no state is safe
Millions of Americans fled deep-blue states like California and New York because they believed the rules were different elsewhere. They moved to places like Alabama to escape lockdowns, mandates, and ideological capture of public institutions. They believed red states meant red lines.
That belief is proving dangerously naïve.
If red states cannot enforce their own parental rights laws, then the red-state refuge is a myth.
Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the country. It has a Republican supermajority and some of the strongest parental rights laws on the books: bans on gender-transition procedures for minors, curriculum transparency requirements, legal definitions of male and female, protections for girls’ sports, and a rare requirement that parents must opt in before schools provide any mental health services, including discussions of suicide or bullying.
And yet those protections are now being quietly hollowed out — not by legislators, but by bureaucratic subversion.
The footnote loophole
The Alabama State Department of Education is undermining parental consent by inserting exceptions into the fine print of a required opt-in form distributed after a new parental consent law took effect Oct. 1.
The law itself is unambiguous. Parents must provide prior written consent before schools offer mental health services, including discussions related to suicide or bullying. But the department claims in the footnotes that mental health-related conversations may still occur “as appropriate” in other school settings — and that these interactions do not require parental permission.
The ALSDE has stated that “instruction, advisement, and occasional interventions are not subject to opt-in requirements, as these are regular duties of school counselors and other educators.”
That language does more than stretch the statute. It appears designed to bypass it entirely. When schools engage minors in discussions with clear psychological or therapeutic implications — trauma, gender identity, suicidal ideation — without parental consent, they move into legally and constitutionally questionable territory.
Same playbook, new label
Parents have seen this before. During COVID, mandates were imposed first and justified later. Dissent was sidelined. Authority flowed downward, not outward.
Now the same model is being applied to school-based mental health. Whether embedded in social-emotional learning, “student wellness,” or character education, the result is the same: psychological interventions delivered by school employees, not licensed physicians, without parental oversight.
This is not a gray area. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed parents’ fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children. When school systems create end runs around opt-in requirements — especially on matters involving suicide or gender ideology — they invite serious legal and civil rights challenges.
No state is immune
This is not an Alabama anomaly.
Illinois now mandates mental health screenings for public school students, with no opt-in. Mississippi is rolling out a statewide “youth wellness platform.” Tennessee is placing mental health clinicians in every public school through a $250 million trust fund. Ohio is expanding school-based health centers that embed mental health treatment directly on campus.
These programs erase the line between education and health care. They normalize a system in which children’s emotions are monitored, recorded, and interpreted by the state without parental consent. That is state-sponsored emotional profiling.
Who decides what helps?
This debate is not about whether children need support. It is about who decides what support looks like — and who has the authority to provide it.
Parents possess a fundamental right to make decisions about their children’s mental and physical health. The Supreme Court’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor reaffirmed that when schools impose ideologically loaded services or content without notice or opt-out, they burden parental rights and religious liberty.
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Photo by Luis Soto/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Alabama’s counseling framework includes DEI-driven language encouraging students to “identify individual differences” and “describe and respect differences among individuals.” In practice, that language provides a vehicle for embedding gender ideology and values-based content into guidance lessons.
When that content is paired with school-based interventions, the issue is no longer education. It is ideological formation funded by taxpayers and imposed without consent.
Alabama’s warning
If this can happen in Alabama — arguably the most pro-parental-rights state in the country — then no state is safe.
Agencies should not be allowed to bury statutes in footnotes, reinterpret laws by memo, or use therapeutic language to bypass parental authority. These are not technical disagreements. They are unconstitutional and demand legal pushback.
If red states cannot enforce their own parental rights laws, then the red-state refuge is a myth.
Strong laws matter, but enforcement matters more. Parents must demand both.
Artificial Intelligence In The Classroom Destroys Actual Intelligence In Students
Students should aspire to be more than mere ‘prompt writers,’ but minds capable of thinking, reasoning, and perseverance.
Seattle professor punished for mocking land acknowledgments fights back, scores win against woke university
A professor at the University of Washington was punished for having the audacity to poke fun at the school’s moral exhibitionism. Stuart Reges, a professor at UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, fought back and, on Friday, secured a decisive victory.
Reges ruffled feathers at the university where he has worked for decades by including a parodic land acknowledgment in his 2022 course syllabus.
‘The Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land.’
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the outfit that represented Reges, the university recommended in its “best practices” guide that instructors incorporate an “Indigenous Land Acknowledgment” in their course syllabi, providing the following as an example statement: “The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip, and Muckleshoot nations.”
In a December 2021 faculty email thread, one of Reges’ colleagues referred to an article that characterized land acknowledgments as “moral onanism.” Reges said in response that he was uncertain about the value of making such statements and noted that he might include a mock statement in his syllabus.
Sure enough, the professor included the following land acknowledgment on the syllabus of his winter 2022 computer science course: “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”
Administrators at UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering punished Stuart Reges over his failure to conform, which they claimed had caused a “disruption to instruction” but had in reality enraged only ideologically delicate members of the faculty and the school’s DEI student committee.
Stuart Reges. Courtesy of Twinkle Don’t Blink
The director of UW’s computer science department, Magdalena Balazinska, ordered Reges to remove the statement because it was supposedly “offensive” and generated a “toxic environment.”
According to court documents, when Reges refused to remove his dissenting statement, Balazinska unilaterally removed it, then apologized to Reges’ students, detailing ways that they could file complaints against their professor.
‘Land acknowledgments are performative acts of conformity that should be resisted.’
In addition to inviting students to switch out of Reges’ computer programming course and into a “shadow” class section taught by a different professor, university administrators launched a years-long disciplinary investigation into Reges.
In July 2022, Reges sued Balazinska, then-UW President Ana Mari Cauce, and other school officials, accusing them of violating his First Amendment rights.
“University administrators turned me into a pariah on campus because I included a land acknowledgment that wasn’t sufficiently progressive for them,” Reges said at the time. “Land acknowledgments are performative acts of conformity that should be resisted, even if it lands you in court.”
U.S. District Court Judge John Chun, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, dismissed Reges’ lawsuit last year, claiming that “the disruption caused by Plaintiff’s speech rendered it unprotected.”
Reges appealed and found a court that viewed his case differently.
In a 2-1 decision on Friday, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel disagreed with and reversed the Biden judge’s ruling, remanding the case for further proceedings.
Circuit Judge Daniel Bress, writing for the majority, noted, “Debate and disagreement are hallmarks of higher education. Student discomfort with a professor’s views can prompt discussion and disapproval. But this discomfort is not grounds for the university retaliating against the professor. We hold that the university’s actions toward the professor violated his First Amendment rights.”
Bress, an appointee of President Donald Trump, highlighted the long-standing debate over the value, factual basis, and political nature of land acknowledgments as well as Reges’ sense that they are part of “an agenda of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ that treats some groups of students as more deserving of recognition and welcome than others on account of their race or other immutable characteristic.”
While acknowledging the right of members of the UW community to speak out against Reges and his views, Bress stressed that “Reges has rights too. And here, we conclude that UW violated the First Amendment in taking adverse action against Reges based on his views on a matter of public concern.”
Will Creeley, the legal director of FIRE, said that the ruling “recognizes that sometimes, ‘exposure to views that distress and offend is a form of education unto itself.'”
“If you graduate from college without once being offended, you should ask for your money back,” added Creeley.
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UVa board defies Spanberger in naming new president
The University of Virginia’s (UVa) board on Friday announced that Darden School of Business dean Scott C. Beardsley will serve as the university’s next president, defying Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger’s request to choose a new president after she is sworn in. The board unanimously voted for Beardsley. In a statement, the board said Beardsley “will…
Large School Systems See Plummeting Foreign-Language Students Thanks To Immigration Enforcement
‘It is the American kids from poorer families, who already face significant obstacles, that are trapped in failing schools that are burdened with the impossible task of addressing the educational needs of large numbers of migrants,’ FAIR’s Ira Mehlman said.
California’s Hitler Youth
At Branham High School in San Jose this month, eight students formed a human swastika on the football field. A photo of…
Police share videos of new person of interest in Brown shooting; FBI offers $50K reward
Police in Providence, R.I., and the FBI released new photos and video of a person of interest in Saturday’s deadly shooting at Brown University, as the manhunt for the gunman passes 48 hours. In one video, the individual, donning a dark green and gray jacket, dark shoes, dark pants, a dark beanie and a dark…
At least 2 dead in shooting at Brown University
At least two people were killed on Saturday in a shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island and a suspect is still at large, according to authorities. The university initially said that multiple people were shot and transported to local hospitals, and later confirmed at least two deaths. Providence Mayor Brett Smiley told reporters that…
