Expansion of parental rights in education belittled in local newspaper

Duplicity reigns at leftist Arizona Republic

Rating prominent placement in the Valley & State section is a report headlined, “These contentious education bills now law.”

The report begins with these words:

“Two controversial education bills that would create procedures for parents to review library books and allow parents to sue if they believe a school has violated their access to a student’s records were signed into law by Gov. Doug Ducey.” 

The slippery, agenda-driven reporter obviously means “their” child rather than “a” child’s student records.  This deceit is standard operating procedure at the Hillary-endorsing, open-border promoting, failing newspaper.

Reporter Yana Kunichoff, a Chicago transplant, cites House Bill 2161 and House Bill 2439 as examples of what she views as egregious parental overreaches that warrant the descriptive words “controversial” and “contentious.”

If you are among the few who still subscribe to this overpriced, putrid garbage masquerading as news…Cancel! Tired of having your intelligence insulted? Cancel! Call 1-800-332-6733. You’ll get someone in the Philippines who is paid 50% less than an American-based employee as the dying newspaper tries to keep costs down.

Gender identity lessons invade N.J. 1st grade classrooms

This revealing editorial, “NJ gender-identity lessons for first graders prove parents were right to worry,” by Karol Marcowicz was prominently displayed in the New York Post over the weekend.

The disturbing lesson plans are being foisted upon young children, teaching them that their gender is malleable.

Randi Weingarten, the former president of the American Federation of Teachers, (AFT) wields tremendous clout as an AFL–CIO union leader and a lawyer. She is also a lesbian married to another woman as reported in Teachers for Choice, an organization that opposes government imposed medical mandates in order for any Americans — especially educators — to remain employed.  To no one’s surprise, Weingarten has long opposed charter schools and school choice.

The AFT was the first national union to endorse Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primaries. These are the people who influence America’s students each and every weekday.

Open Secrets reveals teachers unions have steadily amped up their political involvement: From 2004 to 2016, their donations grew from $4.3 million to more than $32 million — an all-time high. Even more than most labor unions, they have little use for Republicans, giving democrats at least 94 percent of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties since as far back as 1990, where Open Secrets data begins. Check out where they see fit to place their considerable resources.

This is all important reading.

Who “owns” our children?

Parents haven’t abdicated their rights, but schools attempt to usurp them

Using the newly trendy pronoun “they” rather than “he” and “she,” the local newspaper displays its hipness with a prominently featured, lengthy report headlined, “Advocates warn Arizona bill could hurt LGBTQ students.”

Written by Endia Fontanez, a leftist ASU Cronkite Journalism School graduate, who interned last year with OUTvoices Phoenix, her niche at the vacuous and hemorrhaging subscriptions Arizona Republic, is ostensibly covering health but actually focuses on the promotion of what is now being mainstreamed as LGBTQ — an acronym for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (or questioning).”

The headlined article focuses on House Bill 2161, which defines the rights of parents over their own children and clarifies existing parental rights laws by stating that a parent has access to a minor child’s medical and educational records, whether written or electronic. It ensures that public and charter schools that intend to survey students, must first provide the survey language to parents to properly obtain written informed consent. The bill also allows parents to sue the government, including public schools, for violations of their rights.

This is a bill that would never previously have been regarded as necessary, but times have unfortunately, changed, as homosexuality has relentlessly been promoted in every phase of entertainment and now has its long tentacles reaching into taxpayer-funded schools that intend to seize and obliterate parental authority over their own children. Teacher’s unions are generous supporters of democrat candidates.*

This alarming concept, now gaining momentum, is not new. Nearly a decade ago, CNSNews exposed a 30-second promo for MSNBC’s Lean Forward campaign, featuring educrat Melissa Harris-Perry, advocating that society end the “private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families,” and instead institute a “collective notion” that kids “are our children,” they belong to the community.

While U.S. schools focus on sexualizing our children and mandating masks, U.S. News and World Reports presented this distressing report, U.S. Students Show No Improvement in Math, Reading, Science on International Exam in Dec. 2019, coinciding with the onset of the COVID pandemic. The situation worsened as unionized teachers stopped teaching and schools closed.

Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), a non-profit advocacy group whose mission is to promote and defend the foundational values of life, marriage, family and religious freedom, does an exceptional job of summarizing and following the progress of HB 2161.

* H/T Open Secrets

AZ high school: Parents shut down transgender awareness week

Goodyear’s Estrella Foothills High School mission statement: “Inspire minds to change the world … everyone, everyday.“

Today we take our readers directly The Federalist, which shines a bright light on the social absurdities advancing in our taxpayer-funded schools, while actual education falls through the cracks. 

Spencer Lindguist writes an outstanding exposé on the insanity overtaking public schools, as he reports on the promotion and celebration of ‘Transgender Awareness Week’ at Estrella Foothills High School in Goodyear, AZ. The program was successfully shut down by outraged parents. 

“Arizona High School Halts Transgender Spirit Week After Outcry From Parents,” contains important information and clearly illustrates why parents need to be vigilant when it comes to what is passing for education at their children’s schools.

According to 2018-2019 Public School Review* of Goodyear’s Estrella Foothills High School, the percentage of students achieving proficiency in math stood at 60-64%. The percentage of students achieving proficiency in reading/language arts was less than half at 48%, clearly indicating the teaching time could be better spent on educational basics rather than celebrating transsexuality.

Following objections from enraged parents, Principal Kimberly Heinz canceled “Spirit Week” after the first day, telling parents in a mass email that “our administrative team met this afternoon and have made the decision that we will not move forward with the remaining awareness days this week.”

Lindquist’s report includes email exchanges between 24-year-old instructor Courtney Ratkus and Principal Kimberly Heinz, as well as to students. Ratkus, the sponsor of the Coexist Club, needs to find employment other than indoctrinating students in transsexuality. Solitary street sweeping would be a better fit for this radical.

National Review has written how the perverted scheme passing as education has been gaining traction within the educrat community as schools disallow parents to opt their children out of the programs that begin in kindergarten. Your eyes did not deceive you. Kindergarten is where the sexually deviant brainwashing begins. Open Secrets shows where the teachers unions send their political donations. It isn’t to conservatives.

* Updated numbers are not available due to schools being shuttered during COVID.

Exceptional exposé of agenda-driven public/government schools

Columbia University Law Professor Philip Hamburger has written a stellar assessment of America’s public school system, titled “Is the Public School System Constitutional?” It was posted as a commentary in the Wall Street Journal.

His summery includes these words: “Education consists mostly in speech, and parents have a right under the First Amendment to exercise authority over what their children hear.”

The WSJ requires a subscription, so the link may not work. Tap “Read Article” in the WSJ’s pop-up box. It’s important reading. If the first paragraph link doesn’t work, SRAZ located the commentary on the Fry Electronics site, which advertises itself as “an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media.” The paragraphs are oddly spaced, but the content remains. One way or another, this is a must read.

Sham scheme to “eliminate racism” dumbs down math students

Who knew math was “capitalist, imperialist, and racist”?

Today we’re taking our readers directly to a head-spinning example of the lunacy that leftist billionaire Bill Gates is funding through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Washington Examiner tops its crucial exposé with these words: “Gates Foundation behind effort to end white supremacy in math instruction by eliminating need for students to show work.”

No kidding.

This opinion piece by Jeremy Beaman explains The “Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction” which is best described as racist.

The actual guidelines to the Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction uses these descriptive words, claiming to facilitate an ”Integrated approach to mathematics that centers Black, Latinx, and Multilingual students in grades 6-8, addresses barriers to math equity, and aligns instruction to grade-level priority standards.” The site includes “5 Strides on the Path to Math Equality,” each with its own download

Rather than focusing on one correct answer, the program encourages math teachers to “come up with at least two answers that might solve a problem.”

It continues with this indecipherable jargon: “Challenge standardized test questions by getting the ‘right’ answer, and justify other answers by unpacking the assumptions that are made in the problem.”

The scheme also encourages teachers to “center ethnomathematics,” which includes a variety of guidelines. One of them instructs educators to “identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.”

The consequences of this radicalism passing as education can’t be overstated. A catastrophe is first invading America’s far left, educrat-run classrooms* and will then envelop our nation unless we expose and eradicate it now.

* Center for Responsive Politics displays shocking charts showing the $multi-millions teachers unions give to democrat candidates and their own lobbying “clients” who push their educrat agenda in the halls of congress.

AZ’s flush public schools closed due to deceit, not COVID

It appears that all it takes to reopen Arizona schools is more money. According to the Arizona Education Association, the educrat union, everything is hinged on more money. The union, which partners with the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers,  blandly refers to itself is the largest professional association for public school employees in Arizona, dodging the word “union.”

This is its message to its members under the banner, ‘Advocating for Change‘: “All across Arizona, we are with you. We are right there next to you fighting for our students. Fighting for our future.

We need to dismantle unjust systems. We need to fully fund public schools. We need to hold our elected leaders accountable to our communities. And we need your help to make it happen.” The “fighting” message would not be complete without tossing in the trendy leftist word, “equity,” which reliably shows up.  Equity is meant to induce shame for ‘white privilege,’ another favorite term.

“Fully fund” definitely falls under the heading of subjective. A recent news report was headlined, “Ariz. schools to receive $1 billion in federal funds.”  Arizona Superintendent of Education, Kathy Hoffman released this ludicrous statement in response:

“While this significant infusion of federal recovery dollars is good news for Arizona’s schools, it’s not a substitute for sustainable funding from the state as they move through and beyond the crisis of this pandemic.”

Hoffman’s memory is too short for the position she holds. Either that or she’s become a comedian. In 2018 as teachers abandoned over 840,000 students and shut down over 1,000 Arizona schools as they followed an avowed 23-year-old socialist and uncredentialed hip-hop music teacher as they protested for 20% raises, SRAZ posted, #REDS for ED: Union thugs demand more $ for less. It contained these two paragraphs:

Teachers unions* have steadily amped up their political involvement: From 2004 to 2016, their donations grew from $4.3 million to more than $32 million — an all-time high. Even more than most labor unions, they have little use for Republicans, giving democrats at least 94 percent of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties since as far back as 1990 when Center for Responsive Politics initially began collecting data.

Passage of ballot propositions — 301 in 2000 increasing the state sales tax and 123 in 2016 a grab from the state land trust — guaranteed more money for education, which apparently is never enough. School districts routinely hold budget overrides and bond elections to “get more money into the classroom” —- eduspeak for bolstering teacher’s salaries. A major premise of passing the Arizona Lottery in 1980 was that money from ticket sales would fund schools.

In 2020 an irrevocable $5 Billion tax increase for education was passed on the fallacious premise of “taxing the rich,” aka those who create jobs.

This was in addition to these State & Federal Grants displayed by the Arizona Department of Education.

Teachers who aren’t teaching are still getting paid as students are falling further behind, suffering academically, emotionally and socially after missing a year of actual instruction, ultimately rendering them less able to compete in the global economy.

Despite the fact that far-left teachers’ unions wield tremendous influence in terms of donations and votes, Center for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky. M.D. has repeatedly confirmed that schools can open without teachers being vaccinated since children are less prone to contracting or transmitting the virus. Her assertion is substantiated by the official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“I also want to be clear that there is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely,” Dr. Walensky confirmed.

* Center for Responsive Politics

AZ unionist teachers threaten another walkout

Scare tactics continue despite wage hikes

Educrats in Gilbert and Chandler Unified School Districts are threatening sickouts when school resumes January 5, 2021. It’s what they do best, as evidenced by the fact that Arizona students are woefully under-educated, though they are authorities on global warming and recycling while being propagandized — both subtly and overtly, with leftism, and short-shrifted on the foundations of our democracy, history, math, geography  and other basics. They won’t be able to sign their names since cursive is deemed unessential.

This Dec. 30, 2020 statement from the Chandler Education Association, which proudly declares its affiliations* with the AEA (AZ Education Association) and NEA (National Education Association unions) exemplifies the fact that too much is never enough for the teachers who walked out on over 840,000 students for nearly two weeks as they demanded a 20 percent wage increase for their part-time jobs. Gov. Doug Ducey foolishly capitulated, but even that wasn’t enough. This past November their allies put the unconscionable Proposition 208, deceptively titled, ”Invest in Education Act,” that incorporated an irrevocable tax “on the rich” which includes small business owners already struggling during the COVID-19 virus. It passed.

The Federalist headlines its excellent exposé, “Government Teachers’ Unions Unveil New COVID-19 Demand: Pay Us For Doing Nothing.” It exemplifies the demands of the Gilbert and Chandler educrats.

Arizona students are doing even worse on tests than their previously low scores. More than half who took the 2019 AzMERIT tests failed — for the FIFTH year in a row! This is the educrats’ highly touted program that measures what should be proficiency in student ability to comprehend basic math and reading skills. To conceal the unfathomable failure rate, though prepping specifically for the test, they simply changed the test name to AzM2.

Passage of ballot propositions — 301 in 2000 increasing the state sales tax and 123 in 2016 a grab from the state land trust — guaranteed more money for education. School districts routinely hold budget overrides and bond elections to “get more money into the classroom” —- eduspeak for bolstering teacher’s salaries. A major premise of passing the Arizona Lottery in 1980 was that money from ticket sales would fund schools. The Goldwater Institute joined the Arizona Chamber of Commerce in opposing slippery Prop. 208. These are  the lengthy lists of organization and elected leaders who stood in opposition to Prop. 208.

* Open Secrets/The Center for Responsive Politics shows the $millions the NEA and the AFT lobbying arms give to the most left-wing elected officials. The AFT gave not one thin dime to Republicans.

Chandler AZ teachers boycott, show fake commitment to kids

Following a 20 percent shakedown pay increase after a 2018 debilitating strike and recent passage of an absurd ballot measure giving Arizona’s  part-time teachers (do you get a three-month summer vacation and lengthy holidays from your job?) even more money, 349 teachers in Chandler Arizona participated in  a “sick out” Friday, demanding the district return to virtual learning after winter break. Read the demand letter sent to board members and district officials. Parents who want their students back in school, were not treated to this missive.

The district’s website grandly states its mission, “To empower all students with the knowledge, skills and attitude necessary to excel in college, career and life.” Achieving the basic goal of knowledge and skills is an impossibility when the far left Biden supporting union member teachers,* exemplifying an “attitude” of hostility, walk off their jobs demanding to implement “virtual learning” from home, a system which has been proven an abysmal failure.

On Friday, December 12, 349 educrats were out of their classrooms, compared to 244 one week ago. The district claimed it filled the vacancies with a substitute pool consisting of “deans, assistant principals, teacher specialists.” Students’ learning consisted of being taught by example that not doing your job in violation of a contractual agreement is acceptable.

Proposition 208, implementing an education funding farce incorporating an irreversible and massive tax increase dedicated to additional school funding as student achievement continues to plummet, was passed on the November 2020 ballot. The Goldwater Institute exposes its detrimental effects on our state and economy. Arizona is now among the top 10 states with highest income tax along with California and New York. It will negatively affect small businesses, harming our already struggling economy in a COVID-19 era.

* Center for Responsive Politics

Los Angeles typifies the horror of dems in control

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has issued an edict that should make us all glad we don’t live in democrat controlled California. The open borders proponent, reacting to the COVID-19 virus has now banned bicycle riding and walking outdoors, telling residents of the city, “It’s time to cancel everything.”

Read Garcetti’s newly revised 12-page list of mandates and restrictions.

Garcetti’s election mandate was underwhelming. Though he was re-elected with 81.4% of the vote in 2017, voter turnout was only 20%. A democrat, he carried the endorsement of the radical United Teachers Los Angeles union (UTLA) which donates exclusively to leftists* and supports defunding the police, Medicare for all, increased taxation, redistribution of wealth, including allocating unspecified $billions to illegal aliens and placing a moratorium on charter schools, which provide parents an educational alternative to the failing public schools.

The union, which is currently fighting reopening schools, includes 35,000 teachers who represent more than 1,000 schools, which includes most of the city of Los Angeles. The second-largest teachers union in the nation, it now declares they are “grieving and outraged and have an obligation to act” incorporating a BLM curriculum in K-12 schools to eradicate what UTLA refers to as “deeply ingrained racism.”

Schools have become a fertile ground for indoctrinating and propagandizing school children with extremist views, when they need to learn to read, write, be proficient in math, learn geography and revere the magnificent history of America’s founding that uniquely sets us apart, making the USA the dream destination for so many.

*Center for Responsive Politics.