The California media is finally reporting what common folks knew for two years. Unnecessary lock downs put the children behind. It’s apparent that California’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which included shuttering schools and forcing students into sporadic forms of on-line instruction, had the effect of widening the achievement gap. Not only did California kids score very low, vis-à-vis other states, in the most recent round of federal academic achievement tests, the National Assessment of Education Progress, but there were sharp differences in how individual school districts fared.
So how does the media say it can be fixed? California’s school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic widened the state’s “achievement gap” and addressing the crisis should be a major issue for the Legislature. They learned nothing.
According to a memo from Senior Deputy Commissioner James N. Baldwin that was circulated to all Empire State school districts, the department has “consistently opposed” Native American mascots, citing a 2001 memorandum “conclud[ing] that the use of Native American symbols or depictions as mascots can become a barrier to building a safe and nurturing school community and improving academic achievement for all students.”
Districts have complied, but Senior Deputy Commissioner James N. Baldwin called out Cambridge Central School District as one of a few that has not complied. Cambridge voted to retire its “Indian” imagery only to reinstate it, which sparked community members to file a legal appeal to Commissioner of Education Dr. Betty A. Rosa, who ruled to continue to retire the imagery. The district went on to appeal to the Supreme Court, where Rosa’s determination was upheld.
Jeniffer Sey on speaking against COVID-19 school closures: I took this stance in defense of children Jennifer Sey reveals why she spoke up about opening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic on 'Tucker Carlson Today.'
A longtime Levi Strauss & Co. executive is revealing how she was allegedly pushed out of her high-profile role after speaking out against the COVID-19 school closures on Fox Nation’s “Tucker Carlson Today.”
Jennifer Sey, who spent nearly 23 years at Levi Strauss & Co. and described herself as a “lifelong liberal,” said she took her stance against school closure “in defense of children, which should have been a progressive value,” but soon realized it was not a welcome idea at the company.
“I kept my advocacy to schools because I knew all that other stuff was controversial, but I thought we could agree on kids,” Sey told Tucker Carlson. Her work included being vocal on social media, leading rallies and writing op-eds with data to back her point.
Advocates for keeping schools open during the pandemic were deemed racists and accused of wanting to “murder teachers,” Sey explained. Soon people were emailing the CEO and head of human resources and calling for boycotts of the company.
“The feedback was when you speak, you speak on behalf of the company and I said, but I don’t,” the former executive said as she recalled being told multiple times to cool it. “I’m just a mom. I mean, I know I have this big job, but I am not saying it as the Levi’s brand president. I am saying it as a public school mom in San Francisco.”
A critical turning point occurred after Sey moved her family to Denver and appeared on “The Ingraham Angle” to discuss opening America’s schools. While the company said there was nothing wrong with her commentary, Sey said she was also told she should not have spoken out on Fox News.
“In the fall of that year, I was told I could be the CEO if I just cool it in my advocacy,” the former brand president told “Tucker Carlson Today.” “Schools at this point had been open for a hot second, two weeks … They needed to do a background check, not just on me, but on my husband.”
Prior to the background check, the former executive told the company they would think her social media was a “gray area” and her inclinations were right. Due to her position being the “succession role,” she was not able to keep her job if she was not eligible for the next.
After being told there would be severance, she resigned publicly. While she never received her requested severance package, she believes it would have come with a non-disclosure agreement, despite company denial.
“I wanted to be able to talk about the terms of the separation because I wanted to be able to tell you the story… In addition to the children being harmed, this idea that we can’t hold different views and work together, like the idea that I couldn’t have this view and work in this company is so disturbing to me that I did not want to sign my right away to talk about that,” Sey argued. “I wouldn’t do it.”
Research from the Department of Education shows that math and reading scores declined more during the pandemic than they have in decades, according to a previous Fox News report. Tony Kinnett, the executive director of the heterodox education publication Chalkboard Review, told Fox News Digital that some children are coming back to school “several grade levels behind.”
Sey suggests reasonable conversations about school closures may have prevented their devastating effect on children.
The U.S. Department of Education building in Washington, D.C. (STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
“I want it to be ok for us to talk to each other, to debate ideas,” Sey implored. “I really, in my heart of hearts, believe if we could have had a public conversation about the schools where people like me, invested parents, doctors… instead of us being vilified, we could have had a reasoned conservation, I think we would have gotten to the right answer much sooner.”
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Fox News’ Yael Halon and Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.
New Jersey’s teachers are now required to teach climate change beginning in kindergarten and across most subjects, including art, social studies, world languages, and PE. Supporters hope the lessons will spread.
This article appeared in both WaPo and The Hechinger Report.
PENNINGTON, N.J. — There was one minute left on Suzanne Horsley’s stopwatch and the atmosphere remained thick with carbon dioxide, despite the energetic efforts of her class of third graders to clear the air.
Horsley, a wellness teacher at Toll Gate Grammar School in Pennington, New Jersey, had tasked the kids with tossing balls of yarn representing carbon dioxide molecules to their peers stationed at plastic disks representing forests. The first round of the game was set in the 1700s, and the kids had cleared the field in under four minutes. But this third round took place in the present day, after the advent of cars, factories and electricity, and massive deforestation. With fewer forests to catch the balls, and longer distances to throw, the kids couldn’t keep up.
“That was hard,” said Horsley after the round ended. “In this time period versus the 1700s, way more challenging right?
“Yeah,” the students chimed in.
“In 2022, we got a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” said Horsley. “What’s the problem with it, what is it causing?”
“Global warming,” volunteered one girl.
Two years ago, New Jersey became the first state in the country to adopt learning standards obligating teachers to instruct kids about climate change across grade levels and subjects. The standards, which went into effect this fall, introduce students as young as kindergarteners to the subject, not just in science class but in the arts, world languages, social studies, and physical education. Supporters say the instruction is necessary to prepare younger generations for a world — and labor market — increasingly reshaped by climate change.
In Suzanne Horsley’s climate change lesson, yarn balls represent carbon dioxide molecules. Students try to clear the atmosphere — or playing field — of the balls. Credit: Caroline Preston/The Hechinger Report“There’s no way we can expect our children to have the solutions and the innovations to these challenges if we’re not giving them the tools and resources needed here and now,” said Tammy Murphy, the wife of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and a founding member of former Vice President Al Gore’s Climate Reality Action Fund, who pushed to get the standards into schools. Just as students must be able to add and subtract before learning calculus, she said, kids need to understand the basics of climate change — the vocabulary, the logic behind it — before they can tackle the climate crisis.Historically, climate change has not been comprehensively taught in U.S. schools, largely because of the partisanship surrounding climate change and many teachers’ limited grasp of the science behind it. That started to change in 2013, with the release of new national science standards, which instructed science teachers to introduce students to climate change and its human causes starting in middle school. Still, only 20 states have adopted the standards. A 2020 report from the National Center for Science Education and Texas Freedom Network Education Fund found that many states that didn’t follow the new guidance weren’t explicit in their standards about the human causes of climate change, and a few even promoted falsehoods about its causes and degree of seriousness. Meanwhile, discussion of climate change outside of science class remains relatively rare, educators and experts say.New Jersey is trying to change that, but it’s not a simple task. Like teachers around the country, educators here are exhausted after years of Covid disruptions, and, as elsewhere, some schools face dire teacher shortages. On top of this, many educators don’t feel prepared to teach climate change: A 2021 survey of 164 New Jersey teachers found that many lacked confidence in their knowledge of the subject, and some held misconceptions about it, confusing the problem with other environmental issues such as plastic pollution.
For now, the climate instruction requirements haven’t faced much pushback from climate deniers and conservatives, who’ve trained their attacks instead on the state’s new sex-education standards. But state officials anticipate some criticism as the lessons begin to roll out in classrooms.
A more pressing concern — and one that plagues any education initiative because of local control of schools — is that the lessons are rolling out unevenly across the state. Schools in affluent towns like Pennington tend to have more time and resources to introduce new instruction; schools in poorer communities like Camden, which are often the most vulnerable to climate disasters, may lack the resources to do so.
“I am happy to see New Jersey as a pioneer of climate change standards,” said Maria Santiago-Valentin, co-founder of the Atlantic Climate Justice Alliance, a group that works to mitigate the disproportionate harm of climate change on marginalized communities. But, she said, the standards will need to be revised if they fail to adequately emphasize the unequal impact of climate change on Black and Hispanic communities or ensure that students in those communities receive the instruction.
New Jersey is making some effort to help teachers adopt the standards, setting aside $5 million for lesson plans and professional development, and enlisting teachers like Horsley, who holds a master’s degree in outdoor education and has a passion for the environment, to develop model lessons.
Supporters are trying to ensure that teachers have plenty of examples for teaching the standards in age-appropriate ways, with racial and environmental justice as one of the key features of the instruction.
“It’s not like we’re asking kindergarteners to look at the Keeling Curve,” said Lauren Madden, a professor of education at the College of New Jersey who prepared a report on the standards, referring to a graph showing daily carbon dioxide concentrations. “We’re trying to point out areas where we can build some of those foundational blocks so that by the time students are in upper elementary or middle school, they really have that solid foundation.”
On a recent weekday, Cari Gallagher, a third grade teacher at Lawrenceville Elementary School in central New Jersey, was reading to her students the book “No Sand in the House!” which tells the story of a grandfather whose Jersey Shore home is devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Later, the students sat down to write about what they’d heard, drawing connections between the book and their own lives, world events or other books they’d read.
After the writing exercise, Gallagher directed the students to split into small groups to build structures that would help provide protection against climate change calamities. The kids used Legos, blocks, Play-Doh and straws to create carports, walls and other barriers.
That same morning, a kindergarten class at the elementary school listened as their teacher, Jeffrey Berry, held up a globe and discussed how different parts of the world have different climates.
At Hopewell Valley Central High School, in Pennington, art teacher Carolyn McGrath piloted a lesson on climate change this summer with a handful of students. The results of the class — four paintings featuring climate activists — sat on the windowsill of her classroom.
“It felt empowering to see people like me, who reflect me and my identities,” said Mackenzie Harsell, an 11th grader who’d created a portrait of 24-year-old climate activist Daphne Frias, who, like Mackenzie, is young, and is disabled. “This project told me I could do anything.”
Research suggests education does have an impact on how people understand climate change and their willingness to take action to stop it. One study found that college students who took a class that discussed reducing their carbon footprint tended to adopt environment-friendly practices and stick with them over many years. Another found that educating middle schoolers about climate change resulted in their parents expressing greater concern about the problem.
Jeffrey Berry, a kindergarten teacher at Lawrenceville Elementary School, encourages his students to care for plants and nature. Kindergarteners tend to the “garden of good manners,” pictured here. Credit: Caroline Preston/The Hechinger Report
“Education is certainly a way that we could have perhaps slowed down where we are right now in terms of the climate crisis,” said Margaret Wang, chief operating officer with SubjectToClimate, a nonprofit that is helping teachers develop and share climate lessons. More jobs related to climate change are already opening up, said Wang, and kids will need skills not just to discover scientific innovations but to tell stories, advocate, inspire and make public policy.
Back at Toll Gate elementary, Horsley, the wellness teacher, was getting ready to hand off the third graders to their classroom teacher. Before filing back into the school, a handsome brick building that suffered flooding last year during Hurricane Ida, students reflected on the lesson.
Ayla, a third grader dressed in jeans and tie-dye sneakers, said it made her want to “do something” about climate change because “I don’t want it to get so hot.”
Wes, another third grader, said adults could have done more to protect the environment. “I think they’ve done a medium job because they’re still producing a lot of carbon dioxide and a lot of people are littering still.”
“I feel bad for the other animals because they don’t know about it, so they don’t know what to do,” added his classmate, Hunter.
“We know about it,” said Abby, who was wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words “Girl Power.” She said it was up to humans to drive less and recycle and protect other species from climate disasters.
“When I first found out we were going to learn about climate change in gym, I was like, that’s surprising, because normally we learn that in class,” Abby added. “But I’m glad we did it in gym,” she continued. “It was really fun.”
Climate CHANGES. Your hubris that we cause it or that we can change it is — unprintable.
You may have heard that the US Supreme Court is hearing a case on affirmative action being used in the colleges. It came about when Oriental ( Asian ) students were being openly discriminated against. Let’s hope that the courts abolish affirmative action. But take it one step further. The Workplace.
In so many situations, folks with less skill or talents are given jobs or promoted just to meet quotas to make it seem as if they’re being socially responsible. California is one of the worst states for this. I know every time I would go there, ( especially Northern California ) I would cross a bridge and praise the lord I made it safely across.
Construction and Manufacturing aren’t the only places you see quota hiring. Banking, Housing, Warehousing, etc. Hire the most qualified. Not the least qualified.
Herschel Walker, U.S. Republican Senate candidate for Georgia, speaks during a campaign event in Carrollton, Georgia, on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022. (Ben Hendren/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
These are some highlights of the beat down Walker gave Warnock.
Walker: "He won't answer that about evicting the people from the church.."
Warnock: "We have not evicted those tenets."
Walker: "He's now telling you 'I didn't evict anyone.' It is written in the paper!..Senator, you did! It's okay to speak the truth. Do not bear false witness! pic.twitter.com/YxBzjr8XeX
WALKER: “For those of you who are concerned about voting for me — a non-politician — I want you to think about the damage politicians like Joe Biden and Raphael Warnock have done to this country.” #GASenDebatepic.twitter.com/cgWkMUi5Yx
WALKER: “Warnock said he stood up. He has NOT stood up to Biden.”
“If he was standing up, he wouldn’t have voted with him 96% of the time, which gave us” an open border, high inflation, and crime in the streets. #GASenDebatepic.twitter.com/Yr18nlTw8H
Herschel Walker to Raphael Warnock: “He told me Black lives matters.”
“In Atlanta, Georgia there are more Black babies that are aborted than anything. So, if Black lives matter why are you not protecting those babies?” #GASenDebatepic.twitter.com/qX485NwboM
Ukraine Seeks Corridor to Evacuate Civilians Near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant – Scores of people tried to evacuate villages near the power plant following an explosion that cut power and water supplies in a nearby town, and U.N. inspectors released a report that detailed damage that has been done to the nuclear plant. A6
Child exploitation suffered a crushing defeat Wednesday after several parent organizations rallied in Sacramento against California Senate Bill 866.
The controversial bill would have allowed minors as young as 15 (12 years old was initially proposed) to agree to receive ANY vaccine without their parent’s consent. But it was pulled by State Senator Scott Wiener just hours before the vote.
Wiener stated he pulled the bill because of “death threats, harassment, and a lack of vote.” But in reality, he was just being a sore loser.
“We’re close but a couple votes short on our teen vaccine bill (SB 866) on the Assembly floor. We’re thus moving the bill to inactive.
The anti-vaxxer harassment campaign worked this time, at the expense of teen health. We lost this round but aren’t going anywhere.”
“A couple votes short,” he said. But that’s not true, according to fellow California politician (D) Patrick O’Donnell.
“Believe me… it was more than a couple votes short!”
In fact, opposition to this bill had BIPARTISAN support from both Democrats and Republicans. No matter what Scott Wiener would like to tell you, it was a very UNPOPULAR bill!
To discuss the impact of this historic victory, co-founder and executive director of PERK, Amy Bohn, joined Del Bigtree on the Highwire.
“Now I don’t know what you feel about being called an anti-vaxxer, Del commented. “But I would call that a win. And I hope there’s a lot of people that are dancing in the streets over this when that happened yesterday (8/31).”
Amy replied:
“I don’t really care what he [Scott Wiener] calls us at this point. All that matters is that there was a massive army of parents and organizations, hundreds of organizations, fighting this together. He’s a poor loser right now because we defeated his bill, and it was a group effort.
Freedom Angels were up at the Capitol till midnight almost every single day. Our group was in charge of so many aspects and pivotal moments along the way. Facts, law, truth, justice, this is something that it really doesn’t matter what they call us. The stigma doesn’t matter because we actually have power now.
We have a presence at the Capitol; we have a presence in the media. And it’s because of everyone. It’s historic! Honestly, this is a historic moment for California, and I think that Senator Wiener is just trying to downplay it. But the truth is, he didn’t have the votes! And he was short by probably a lot more than just a few.”
Del responded, “I really think this is the biggest win.”
“This was the next step in this sort of agenda to separate the children from the parents — to basically state the government owns your child. They’re property of the government of California, and they’re not of the parents. Therefore, we should be able to get them to do things and then hide those things from their own parents.
How big do you think this is? When we were watching California go through this on the front lines?
“Oh, this is historic right now,” Amy said.
“That’s what’s happening. And you were talking about the political lines, Republican, Democrat. The reason why we won in California right now is because those lines didn’t matter. The Democrats were unified with the Republicans with bipartisan opposition to this bill. So that shows you that if that can happen in California, the ripple effect of that — and even just the fact that we won here together with everybody — that can happen across the entire country.
So no longer just your political affiliation or political party is going to be what decides these things, the outcome was decided — of course, it related to the votes — [but] because of the Democrats. It was everybody together, and they had to oppose this bill with their colleagues in order for it to be defeated. I think that’s part of [why] we made history yesterday.”
I agree, Amy. It was historic. We can barely get Democrats and Republicans to agree on anything these days, but the fact that parents rallied together in the state of CALIFORNIA to oppose such a bill just goes to show how unified our country is on medical freedom.
If parents in California are thinking like this, you know darn well that every other state is thinking the same way.
It’s truly something beautiful, and it makes me very optimistic that any subsequent vaccine bills that violate medical freedom and ethics are sure to be met with BACKLASH and bound to fail.
Thanks, Amy, for your efforts and the amazing news.
Greenwich, Connecticut – Jeremy Boland, Assistant Principal of Cos Cob Elementary School admitted he discriminates against hiring Catholics. Project Veritas.
Back in the early 70’s I experienced my first example of Religious bigotry. It was working in the steel mill at the time. I was paired up with a guy we’ll call Frank All week he would barely acknowledge me and the conversations were one or two words from him. By the fourth day I lost it and asked him what was his problem? I was Catholic and he was Orange Irish.
Today we still have folks like Frank. Only difference was that Frank was a Republican. Today that hate comes from the left. Project Veritas
caught one of those ass holes.
Greenwich CT Assistant Principal’s Hiring Discrimination Ensures ‘Subtle’ Child Indoctrination; ‘You Don’t Hire’ Catholics Because They Are More ‘Conservative’ … ‘Progressive Teachers’ Are ‘Savvy About Delivering a Democratic Message’
On this matter, Boland affirms that any teacher who refuses to acknowledge a child’s gender preferences has no place in his Elementary School.
“So, if you have someone [teacher] who is hardcore religious or hardcore conservative, they will probably say something detrimental to the effect, ‘Well, I don’t think kids have enough knowledge to make that decision [gender identity] at this age,’” Boland said.
“You’re out. You’re done,” he concluded.
The Elementary School administrator goes on to say that he discriminates against older individuals as well.
Now his hatred comes across politically, and older folks, but in my experience I’ve found WASP’S more conservative as a group.
Our former President put out an awesome add about what is and what we can expect if he runs again. No 2020 election talk or fake to do about nothing hearing. Just the facts.
More great videos from a man who’s really good and a Trump fanatic.
