Baton Rouge residents tired of poor schools and services will likely soon have separate city, even as opponents cry racism



Thousands of Louisiana residents who voted years ago to create a separate city out of a section of Baton Rouge will likely soon have their wish now that the state supreme court gave a major ruling in their favor.

The move to create a separate school district in the St. George region of southeastern Baton Rouge began more than a decade ago and quickly evolved into a movement to create a separate City of St. George in the hopes that residents there would receive better services in exchange for their hard-earned tax dollars.

A 2015 measure to create the city fell just short. Four years later, a similar measure passed with 54% of the vote.

As often happens when disgruntled voters don't get their way, opponents of the new city quickly went to court to try to stop it from being officially established, claiming that St. George would take tens of millions in desperately needed tax resources from Baton Rouge.

For a while, the naysayers succeeded. In 2022, a district judge ruled that the proposal for the City of St. George was "unreasonable" and doubted that the city would operate under a balanced budget. Then last year, the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that those who created the initiative to put the proposal on the ballot in 2019 failed to follow state law.

On Monday, those victories came to a screeching halt at the Louisiana Supreme Court, which ruled 4-3 that organizers had followed the proper procedures to incorporate the new city, thus overturning the lower courts' decisions.

State leaders have already taken steps to create the city. In 2020, the legislature created the St. George Transition District with the power to levy taxes for the time being. Should St. George become officially incorporated, as is expected, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry will appoint an interim mayor and five interim council members. In the future, city residents will elect leaders for themselves.

The initial proposal to create St. George established boundaries that would have given the city a population of about 68,000, but subsequent changes to the boundaries mean that the city will actually have closer to 100,000 people.

As is the case in the general U.S. population, 12% of the residents living inside the borders of St. George residents are black. However, since the black population in Baton Rouge is 47%, detractors are claiming that the creation of St. George is yet another manifestation of racism.

The St. George region is "predominantly white and affluent," the AP noted with concern. The Advocate likewise added that "the St. George movement" may be "inherently racist as it creates legal lines of segregation."

Indeed, an NAACP statement about the state supreme court's ruling similarly fretted about "potential segregation and unequal resource distribution." "Our children and community deserve a stable, equitable, and inclusive environment, and we implore decision makers to prioritize these fundamental values," it asserted.

But St. George proponents insist that they just want to see their tax dollars better spent. In fact, the campaign slogan for the measure to create the city was "Better Government, Local Control."

Chris Rials, one of the leaders of the movement to create St. George, called for healing and unity with their Baton Rouge neighbors. "We extend an open invitation to neighborhoods and businesses contiguous to the city of St. George to be a part of the coming renaissance of East Baton Rouge Parish," he said.

"We are open for growth and your business."

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Teachers lean further into obsolescence, using AI to grade and provide feedback on assignments



Americans' confidence in public schools has plummeted to all-time lows. The eagerness with which teachers' unions and school districts have subjected children to mask mandates, lockdowns, and radical propaganda in recent years likely didn't help.

It also doesn't help that teachers have been doing a poor job overall of teaching reading and mathematics compared with previous years, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Unsurprisingly, homeschooling has become the fastest-growing form of education with nearly 4 million homeschooled K-12 students nationwide.

Rather than evidence their value in the face of record-low public confidence, poor assessments, and increasing competition, teachers appear to be offloading more of their duties onto their potential replacements.

According to Axios, teachers are increasingly adopting ChatGPT and other AI-boosted tools to do their jobs for them. Writable is one such tool.

Acquired last year by the education company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Writable supposedly "scaffolds student learning and builds lifelong writing and reading skills for students in grades 3-12, while saving teachers time on daily instruction and feedback."

It works thusly: A student submits a writing assignment to a teacher electronically, then the teacher submits it to Writable. Writable runs the essay through ChatGPT. ChatGPT then does the work customarily performed by an engaged teacher, providing comments and feedback. The teacher is afforded an opportunity to review or adjust the chatbot's work, then sends it back to the student.

According to the Writable website, the RevisionAid feature will provide students with feedback and constructive criticism so that students can improve their writing. The GrammarAid feature will help students with grammar, mechanics, and style.

As for fleshing out a curriculum, teachers need only pick a lesson from one of thousands of ready-made plans, which they can then customize if they are feeling up to the challenge.

"We have a lot of teachers who are using the program and are very excited about it," Houghton Mifflin Harcourt CEO Jack Lynch told Axios.

There are various other AI tools besides Writable that spare teachers the onerous task of grading tests and papers. These include Gradescope, EasyGrader, and Canvas.

Blaze News reported last March that a poll commissioned by the Walton Family Foundation and conducted by Impact Research found that 51% of 1,002 K-12 teachers surveyed were using ChatGPT to perform their duties.

"Three in ten teachers have used it for lesson planning (30%), coming up with creative ideas for classes (30%), and building background knowledge for lessons and classes (27%)," said Impact Research.

Education Week reported last month that 73% of educators surveyed by the EdWeek Research Center said their districts do not presently prohibit the use of ChatGPT and other large language models powered by AI. Another 20% said there were prohibitions on such use but that the bans only applied to students. Only 7% of respondents indicated teachers were prohibited from offloading their work onto AI tools.

According to the same survey, 56% of respondents said they expected an increase in the use of AI in schools.

One unidentified Texas teacher told Education Week, "I frequently use ChatGPT to write lesson plans, syllabi, and parent letters. It can be a very effective tool, but I still look over and edit anything that looks off."

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NJ school district drops transgender policy mandating that officials 'accept a student's asserted gender identity'



A New Jersey school district has abolished its policy on transgender students, which had mandated that officials “shall accept a student’s asserted gender identity; parental consent is not required," NJ.com reported.

What are the details?

The Freehold Township Board of Education voted 6-3 last week to throw out the policy, which also said students don't need to meet “any threshold diagnosis or treatment requirements” in order for district officials and staff members to recognize their gender identities, the outlet noted.

Freehold board president Michelle Lambert confirmed the vote to the outlet but did not specify why the policy was abolished: “Each board member voted for various reasons."

Superintendent Neal Dickstein in a letter sent to families the day after the vote said “a great deal of misinformation” was circulating about the policy, NJ.com said, adding that Dickstein didn't cite specific examples.

He did say that the abolished policy “does not translate to the forced outing of children as it is being interpreted by some,” the outlet added.

NJ.com said Freehold joined a number of other districts in the state that have "controversially" revised or dropped their transgender student policies.

In Union Township in Hunterdon County, the school board on Monday conducted a first reading of a motion to abolish the district’s policy on transgender students, the outlet said, adding that board president Lou Palma said the second reading will take place in December.

NJ.com said at least five other districts in New Jersey also recently dropped their policies on transgender students.

More from the outlet:

The changes come as state Attorney General Matthew Platkin and Sundeep Iyer, the director of the state Division on Civil Rights, are pursuing lawsuits against four school districts that passed policies requiring school staff to notify parents about gender-related requests and changes.

How are folks reacting?

A couple of commenters weighed in on the NJ.com story about the Freehold district abolishing its transgender student policy, with one noting succinctly on X: "Good."

Another commenter criticized the wording of the story: "You can tell where the writer stands as they frame the droppin[g] of the policy as controversial. Objectively though, by the definition of controversy, the policy itself is equally if not more controversial than dropping it. Yet only one action is framed as controversial."

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Enough teachers can't afford to live in pricey northern California city where they work, so school district asks community members to rent rooms to them



A northern California school district is asking community members to rent rooms to teachers who can't afford to live in the pricey area, National Public Radio reported.

What are the details?

Unaffordable housing in northern California has been a longtime problem that seems to keep getting worse. It's so bad that many folks can't afford to live where they work — and that includes public schoolteachers in Milpitas, a Silicon Valley city north of San Jose.

The Milpitas Unified School District has asked people in the expensive area to rent rooms to district teachers, NPR said, adding that last month's appeal came after staffing losses.

The district in the last year lost 10 teachers, officials told the outlet, adding that seven moved to "more affordable" communities,= and three left California.

Two district surveys conducted in 2017 and 2021 showed that some staff members had long commutes and lacked steady housing, Superintendent Cheryl Jordan said at a recent school board meeting, according to NPR.

The Milpitas school board declared in a resolution that "the gap between those who can afford a home in the San Francisco Bay Area and those who cannot, is widening at an alarming rate, with some having to hold part-time jobs to meet monthly housing expenses, and affordable rental housing is in short supply," the outlet added.

NPR also said the district also has explored fixes such as coordinating with agencies that offer loans to educators and considering building small homes on the same lots as larger ones.

What happened since the call went out?

Jordan added to the outlet in a statement that the district has received 55 responses to its rent-to-teachers request — apparent proof that district staff members are "valued by our Milpitas community members, parents and caregivers."

However, the district had not yet heard from employees who secured rooms due to the district's appeal, district spokesperson Scott Forstner told the outlet.

Citing Realtor.com, NPR reported that the median home price in Milpitas is $1.3 million. The outlet added that about 4 in 5 California counties have experienced median home price increases year over year, according to data released last month by the California Association of Realtors.

Minneapolis school district agrees to 'excess' white teachers first in the event of layoffs, signaling shift in union focus from 'seniority' to 'underrepresented populations'



Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers have come to an agreement that will, among other things, protect members of "underrepresented populations" from possible layoffs at the expense of white teachers with more experience.

The two sides came to the agreement back in March to end a two-week strike. According to the Tennessee Star, the agreement contains specific language to protect non-white teachers in the event that the district needs to reduce or relocate teachers within the district.

In a section outlining which "Designated Programs/Staff" may receive an "Exemption from Layoff," the agreement states that certain teachers "may be exempted from district-wide layoff outside of seniority order to remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination." Such teachers include:

  • Those working at one of the 15 "Racially Isolated Schools with the greatest concentrations of poverty";
  • "Members of populations underrepresented among licensed teachers in the District"; and
  • "Alumni of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), Tribal Colleges and Universities and/or Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) programs."
Representatives from MFT have celebrated the added protections for members of these groups, particularly "teachers of color."

“It can be a national model, and schools in other states are looking to emulate what we did,” said Edward Barlow, a member of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers executive board. “Even though it doesn’t do everything that we wanted it to do, it’s still a huge move forward for the retention of teachers of color.”

In order to secure these race-based preferences, though, other groups had to sacrifice some of their protections. The group most impacted by the move toward race-based protections is the group for which the union used to advocate most aggressively: Those with the most seniority.

“Let’s be clear — with a view to get to that place, somebody has to provide one thing up,” said Candra Bennett, interim senior human sources officer for the district. “The seniority-based system is the bedrock of union labor.”

White teachers with the least seniority will now be "excessed" before teachers from "underrepresented populations" with less experience.

The Star Tribune calls the pivot toward race-based protections, unique to MPS, "seniority-disrupting language," an indication that other unions across the country may soon follow suit. Others, however, have challenged the new policy on constitutional grounds.

"When it comes to termination…an employer can’t racially discriminate even against whites," argued Hans Bader, a constitutional lawyer. "The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1996 that an school district can’t consider race even as a tie-breaker, in deciding who to lay off, even to promote diversity, because that (a) unduly trammels the white teacher’s rights…and (b) putting that aside, the school district couldn’t consider race to promote diversity when black people weren’t seriously underrepresented in its workforce as a whole."

Students as young as 12 would have to be fully vaccinated by January to go on campus at America's second-largest school district — if proposal passes



Los Angeles public school students as young as 12 years of age would have to be fully vaccinated by January to go on campus if a school board proposal passes Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The paper said the proposal is expected to be adopted since most board members have indicated their support — and would "catapult the L.A. Unified School District into the forefront of school systems nationwide with the most sweeping and aggressive safety measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic."

What are the details?

The Times said the proposal from the second-largest school district in America would first affect athletes — and that those who are 12 or older would be required to receive a first vaccine dose no later than Oct. 3 and a second dose no later than Oct. 31.

After that, all students 12 and older would have to receive a first dose no later than Nov. 21 and a second dose no later than Dec. 19, the paper said.

More from the Times:

Students return to class on Jan. 11. By Jan 10, proof of vaccination would have to be "uploaded and approved in LAUSD's Daily Pass program except for those students with qualified and approved exemptions and conditional admissions," the proposal says.

The Daily Pass allows a student onto campus and, up to now, has tracked weekly coronavirus test results. Parents and students also use the pass to self-report whether a student has symptoms.

Vaccine exemptions could be obtained for documented medical reasons.

"The percentage of children hospitalized after testing positive for COVID-19 has been disproportionately rising, indicating that children are at a greater risk from contracting the Delta variant due to high transmission rates with possibility of long-term symptoms from COVID-19," the resolution states, according to the paper.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in late August gave full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for those 16 and older; those 12 and older have been able to receive the Pfizer shot under a federal emergency use authorization since the spring. The Times said full FDA approval for the Pfizer vaccine for those 12 and older is "widely expected in the coming weeks."

Anything else?

Dr. Anthony Fauci in late August said he supported COVID-19 vaccinations as a condition of attending school, calling it a "good idea."

In July, the L.A. school district said it was requiring all students and employees returning for in-person learning to be tested for COVID-19 on a weekly basis.

Meanwhile, the president of United Teachers Los Angeles late last month said that while students away from the classroom during the pandemic "may not have learned all their times tables," they nevertheless "know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup."

'I took the fight to them': Dad battles leftist school board, gets banned from daughters' HS graduation — but there may be hope



Shawn McBreairty — a father of twin daughters who are seniors in a Maine high school — told Fox News' Tucker Carlson that after a yearlong battle against the leftist agenda of the school board and district superintendent, he's still not sure if he's allowed to attend his daughters' graduation ceremony after being banned recently.

What are the details?

McBreairty on Thursday told Carlson it all started last June after he said he received a "white supremacist letter" from the district on the heels of George Floyd's death and the riots across America that followed.

"When I read that, I felt assaulted," he told Carlson. "This wasn't how I grew up. It wasn't how I taught the girls. And frankly, I didn't want the school teaching this kind of information to my kids."

The added that he "pushed back" to Jeff Porter, superintendent of Cumberland and North Yarmouth, and told him "very politely, look, as Minneapolis is burning to the ground, you could have talked about the First Amendment and peaceful protest."

But McBreairty said Porter "missed all of that. And he kind of said, sorry, you took it that way. He then doubled down on that a couple of days later with a you're-not-woke-enough-to-understand-what-I'm-talking-about letter" which the dad said "basically divided the entire community just like our nation is right now."

'I took the fight to them'

With that, McBreairty said he started to do battle.

"So I went to the school board meetings," he told Carlson. "I asked them to make some changes on some things that I had found, and they basically said no. And from there, they tried to cancel me. And once that occurred, I took the fight to them. I really held them accountable to their public comment policy. I used my First Amendment rights and really tried to push the envelope to help them understand that as a parent, I just didn't want that in my community that I've lived in for over 20 years."

Soon McBreairty said he specifically called out one of the school board members — Ann Maksymowicz, whom he described as "one of the more radical folks" on the board.

"I took a picture of her when she was not standing for the Pledge of Allegiance to honor our troops," he recalled. "And before I left the room, I put that on ... social media. And half the town lost their mind; they couldn't believe that I took a picture of a government official, elected official, and then sent that out to the world."

McBreairty added to Carlson that he created a "small political sign of Ann" that he "brought that to a meeting which Jeff Porter kicked me out of, and then I put that sign right beside the road where I live on across the street, illuminated 24 hours a day. And frankly, the leftists lost their mind, Tucker."

But McBreairty said whatever abuse he got, he "just kept counterpunching. They would punch, and I would punch back, and I'd push back harder. And we just kind of work through it."

A sign leads to trouble

According to the Daily Wire, McBreairty was served with a "prohibitive conduct warning" banning him from being on school property for "illegally" hanging a sign of featuring Maksymowicz on a middle school fence.

And while the Daily Wire said Porter has lifted the ban as long as Dad meets certain conditions, McBreiarty told Carlson he's not sure what it all means.

"I pushed back a couple of times on that because, frankly, I don't think there should be conditions set to me going to graduation," he said. "I don't know if he wants me to stand on one leg and rub my belly the whole time. I have no idea what these conditions are."

Porter told the Daily Wire that "as a superintendent, I have good reason not to let him attend this event. However, as a parent I believe that granting this request is important and have chosen to use this lens in making this exception."

The outlet said Porter will provide expectations to McBreiarty before the June 6 ceremony.