Cedar rapids community school district

2 Montgomery County School Districts To Require Masks Again Due To County’s COVID-19 Level

May 19, 2022 by philadelphia.cbslocal.com Leave a Comment

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Pa. (CBS) — Masks are coming back for at least two suburban Philadelphia county school districts. Both the Lower Merion School District and Cheltenham School District said Thursday night masks will now be required in all district schools and on buses beginning Friday.

The school districts cited the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 level for Montgomery County.

Due to change in CDC COVID level for Montco, masks will be required in LMSD schools/on buses starting tomorrow, Friday, May 20, 2022. pic.twitter.com/ny52syonmP

— Lower Merion SD (@LowerMerionSD) May 20, 2022

“Please remember to send your child to school with a mask. If your child doesn’t have a mask, they are available in the nurse’s suite. Once the county has returned to ‘medium’ on the data tracker, the district will pivot back to ‘mask recommended.’ We are still offering Test to Stay and Mask to Stay for eligible students and staff,” Cheltenham Superintendent of Schools Dr. Brian Scriven said in a letter sent to parents.

Montgomery County’s community COVID-19 level is listed as high , according to the CDC.

(Credit: CDC)

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The county has a 281.26 case rate per 100,000 population and 10.4 new COVID-19 admissions per 100,000 population.

Boulder Valley School District Moves Some Graduation Ceremonies Inside Due To Snow, Cold

May 19, 2022 by denver.cbslocal.com Leave a Comment

BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4) – Boulder Valley School District is moving some of its graduation ceremonies inside due to the forecasted snow and cold. CBS4’s First Alert Meteorologists have called for a First Alert Weather Day on Friday due to the rapid drop in temperatures, along with a Winter Storm Warning calling for snow and rain.

(credit: iStock/Getty)

According to BVSD, Centaurus and Peak to Peak high schools have changed locations, moving to the 1ST Bank Center, at their regularly scheduled date and time; Broomfield and Monarch high schools have changed location, date and time, moving up to Friday and to the 1ST Bank Center; Boulder High School moved date and time to Sunday morning, but they will remain at Recht Field.

(credit: CBS)

Here is a listing of the following BVSD school graduation locations and times for this weekend:

Fairview High School

Boulder Prep

Broomfield High School

Monarch High School

Centaurus High School

Peak to Peak

Boulder High School

Nederland High School

Boulder Universal

Arapahoe Ridge High School

Justice High School

New Vista High School

What rules should Baton Rouge school staff follow on social media? New policy raises questions.

May 19, 2022 by www.theadvocate.com Leave a Comment

Superintendent Sito Narcisse is asking the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board to adopt a new, far-reaching policy tightly regulating what school employees can do on social media when it comes to interacting with students and discussing their jobs and the school district.

The proposed policy, entitled “ Employee Use of Social Media ,” is scheduled to be voted on when the School Board meets at 5 p.m. Thursday. With little discussion, the board gave unanimous preliminary approval to the new policy on May 5, but some parents have raised questions about the proposed policy in the days since.

Harmony Hobbs, a parent of public schoolchildren, sees the new policy as a clear effort to muzzle employees tempted to share their concerns about their school or the school district.

“Basically, our leadership wants to be able to fire any employee who has the audacity to speak out against them on social media,” Hobbs wrote Monday in a public Facebook post . “SILENCING WILL NOT WORK.”

Benjamin Owens, another parent and a practicing attorney, said it took him just a few minutes to conclude that the proposed policy is unconstitutional and “has no prospect for surviving a legal challenge.”

“In particular, it is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, implicates due process, and would chill speech that is protected under the First Amendment,” Owens said.

Despite such concerns, several school districts in Louisiana have similar policies for employees using social media. One of the first was the Orleans Parish School Board back in June 2016, which is almost identical to the one East Baton Rouge Parish is considering now.

Locally, Livingston Parish schools adopted a similar policy in July 2020 . Lafayette Parish schools c onsidered a version of this policy in November 2018 , but quietly dropped the idea.

Currently, the East Baton Rouge Parish school system has an array of rules about what school employees can do on school grounds and with school computers. But it does not have specific rules dealing with what employees can do on the Internet outside of school.

The school district does have a policy setting out general “standards of conduct” for employees that can be invoked if they do something questionable outside of school.

The new policy includes several new, specific employee restrictions that, if violated, could lead to discipline, up to being fired:

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No posting of confidential information about students, employees or school district business.
No posts that “libel or defame” the School Board, School Board members, school employees or students.
Any posts “related to or referencing the school district, students and other employees” must be “professional.”
No posting of “profane, pornographic, obscene, indecent, lewd, vulgar or sexually offensive language, pictures or graphics or other communication that could reasonably be anticipated to cause a substantial disruption to the school environment.”
No posts with “inappropriate content that negatively impacts their ability to perform their jobs.”
No posting of “identifiable images of a student or student’s family without permission from the student and the student’s parent or legal guardian.”
Never accept current students as “friends” or “followers” or otherwise connect with students on social media sites unless there’s a “a family relationship or other type of appropriate relationship which originated outside of the school setting.”

The policy defines social media to include personal websites, blogs, wikis, social network sites, online forums, virtual worlds and video-sharing websites. It also has a catch-all that covers “any other social media generally available to the public or consumers that does not fall within the School Board’s technologies network (e.g., Web 2.0 tools, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedln, Flickr, YouTube).”

Gwynn Shamlin, the board’s general counsel, told the School Board on May 5 that he helped develop the new policy after getting a request from Nichola Hall, chief officer for human resources.

“This looks at our employee’s use of social media, which can happen outside our system, including the internet and use of email,” Shamlin said. “So this is the use of platforms like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.

Shamlin said the policy was developed in order not to violate employee rights.

“We had to walk a bit of a tight rope developing this because there are free speech issues you have to be careful with,” Shamlin said.

In his letter, Owens notes that a judge on May 10 struck down an employee policy used by Jackson Public Schools in Jackson, Mississippi that has similarities to the one East Baton Rouge is considering. In that case, the judge ruled that the rules that the policy there violated the Mississippi state constitution , “but also that they gravely threaten the public interest in public education.”

“By silencing its teachers, staff, employees, and their organizational advocate, JPS deprives its students, their parents, and other interested parties such as legislators and taxpayers, of important information necessary to fully understand and take part in their public education system, and meaningfully call for its improvement where and when needed,” special Circuit Judge Jess Dickinson wrote in the ruling.

In Louisiana, the City of New Orleans recently settled litigation over an employee social media policy in a case brought in 2020 by two public library workers who said the policy violated their First Amendment rights. As part of the settlement, the city government removed the most controversial aspects of the previous policy, including a provision that said city employees are not allowed to “engage or respond to negative or disparaging posts” about city government.

Katie Schwartzmann, director of the Tulane University Law School First Amendment Clinic , helped represent those two city employees. She said the City of New Orleans policy was different in key ways, but she said the proposed policy in East Baton Rouge raises several potential First Amendment concerns for her. For instance, the policy does not define “professional” when it comes to what employees post on the internet and could be used to target otherwise protected free speech.

“What does it mean to be professional and does that purport to cover criticism of otherwise public matters?” Schwartzmann said.

Teachers speak out about frustrations with unions slow-walking school reopenings: ‘Politics seems to rule’

February 25, 2021 by www.foxnews.com Leave a Comment

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White House confirms teacher vaccinations not needed to reopen schools

FOX News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel joins ‘America Reports’ with the latest

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President Biden’s plan to reopen schools within 100 days has faced opposition from teachers unions due to coronavirus safety concerns, leaving other teachers frustrated.

“For the past year, there has essentially been a national teachers union strike that has left tens of millions of families without access to an adequate education,” said Tommy Schultz, vice president of the American Federation for Children, a nonprofit supporting school choice programs.

Schultz cited numbers from October 2020 showing that roughly 3 million children haven’t had a day of education since last March , “completely falling through the cracks.”

“This will haunt our country for decades to come, and the teachers unions’ blatant refusal to disregard science in the name of political extortion is outright shameful,” he said.

Rebecca Friedrichs, who was an elementary school teacher in California for 28 years, echoed Schultz’s concerns for U.S. children and the state of their education.

TEACHERS UNION HEAD ‘DEBUNKS’ RUMOR THAT IT DOESN’T WANT REOPENING, DODGES ON WHETHER KIDS BACK THIS YEAR

“Most good teachers are deeply troubled by the strikes,” she said. “We never want to deny the children even one day of learning, and we understand that we are servant leaders to those children.”

Chicago Teachers Union leadership list their demands and leave a box of coal outside the entrance of City Hall following a car caravan where teachers and supporters demanded a safe and equitable return to in-person learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in Chicago on Dec. 12, 2020. (Photo by Max Herman/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Friedrichs is also a former union representative and was the lead plaintiff in the 2016 Supreme Court Case, Friedrichs v CTA , the case against the National Education Association and the California Teachers Association, which sought to give teachers and other public employees the right to decide for themselves whether or not to fund unions. The case lost after the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked in a 4-4 decision and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately ruled against it.

Friedrichs said unions are using strikes to “push their muscle,” and essentially pressure communities into meeting their demands, sometimes at the expense of children’s education.

“Unions use these tactics on good teachers and threaten their jobs and peace on the job,” she said. “So most teachers participate in strikes only to ‘go along to get along.'”

Lisa Disbrow, an elementary school teacher in California with 34 years of experience, agreed, saying that teachers stay in the union because they’re afraid of the union response to them leaving.

CHICAGO TEACHERS UNION AGREES TO REOPENING DEAL FOR IN-PERSON LEARNING

“They’ve been told that no one else will take care of them, no one else will protect them,” she said. “They’re surrounded by people pushing in on them and trying to undermine a focus on academics, quality classroom management and a pursuit of real academic growth as the whole spectrum of agendas and indoctrination platforms swoop in. It’s very politicized.”

Teachers and PSC CUNY union members hold signs during a strike outside Hunter Campus High School in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020. (Photo: Paul Frangipane/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Willie Preston is the father of six children who all attend public schools in Chicago. He said said his children’s teachers and Chicago public school teachers in general are “very afraid” to speak out publicly because the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is a “very unforgiving organization.”

“I don’t know if a CTU member even those against what’s going on would be willing to publicly speak out,” he said. “CTU has teachers reaching out directly to parents for making social media statuses that don’t align with their views. These teachers won’t be saying anything.”

Karen Cuen, an elementary music teacher for over 25 years in the Chino Valley Unified School District in California, believes other teachers are frustrated with their unions too, because schools need to reopen.

“Teachers unions are never correct to strike,” she said. “Teaching is not just a job, it’s a calling. Our ‘clients’ are precious children who deserve to have their teachers teaching them, not walking a picket line.”

Cuen said she understands workplace issues and the need for bargaining power, but said that some union demands to reopen schools “are often not even related to education.”

REPUBLICANS SAY BIDEN COVID PACKAGE PAYS OFF TEACHERS UNION ‘RANSOM NOTE’

“We have been told to ‘follow the science,’ which increasingly points to opening schools, yet politics seems to rule at every turn,” she said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that schools can open for in-person learning without teacher vaccines “even in areas of the highest community spread” with proper safety precautions.

“We have a consensus among non-political medical experts, including top CDC leaders who wrote in the top medical journal, JAMA, three weeks ago that schools do not contribute to transmission — a position that contradicted the official CDC guidelines,” said Dr. Marty Makary, a physician and professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, as well as a Fox News Contributor.

Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a family and emergency medicine doctor and Director of CityMD and Fox News contributor, agreed.

FILE – In this Jan. 11, 2021, file photo, pre-kindergarten teacher Sarah McCarthy works with a student at Dawes Elementary in Chicago. (Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, Pool, File) ((Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, Pool, File))

“I understand the fear teachers may have,” she said, “however let’s look at the data, and the science which shows transmission of COVID-19 in the classroom is less than that in the community. I think we need to support our teachers and allow them to have access to vaccinations so that they feel safe returning to the classroom.”

“The CDC already issued school guidance in September. The Biden administration’s call for another updated set of guidance stalled the reopening of schools and resulted in more pediatric suicide, worsened the child hunger crisis and created other health problems in children,” he said. “The overly onerous requirements for schools in the CDC’s guidance has further stalled school reopenings and further harmed children. Time is lives.”

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Preston said he wants his six children to be able to return to school in Chicago for multiple reasons, but principally that “the science from the CDC and others says schools can reopen safely as long as mitigation policies are put in place, which the Chicago Public School system has done.”

“In fact, CPS spent nearly $100 million to set CPS classrooms up to be safe,” he said.

Preston believes it is possible for Biden to achieve his goal of reopening schools in his first 100 days if he stands behind science and “stands up for American children and their families, and does not allow education to become a political fight.”

Ex-Arizona High School Counselor Accused of Sex with Student

May 19, 2022 by www.breitbart.com Leave a Comment

A former Tucson High School counselor who promoted the school’s “First Annual Drag Show,” is accused of having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student.

The Tucson Police Department (TPD) Child Sexual Assault Unit (CSA) received a report of an inappropriate relationship between Zobella Brazil Vinik, 29, and a student off campus on May 3, TPD said in a statement . Detectives investigated the claim, and a search warrant allegedly “revealed inappropriate messages between the two that supports a sexual/romantic relationship,” News4Tucson reported . Vinik turned herself in on May 11, and by May 13, the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) released a statement saying Vinik was removed from campus and placed on administrative leave — she resigned the next day, according to the Arizona Daily Star .

In an interim complaint obtained by News4Tucson , police said Vinik’s ex-wife told officials they had allowed the student to live with them.

Arizona school counselor who arranged drag show for students is accused of having sex with a 15 year-old student pic.twitter.com/l2Q7AlZrGY

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 15, 2022

The report continued:

She reported that the 29-year-old and the 15-year-old have been co-sleeping together and she recently found Vinik’s “underwear hidden under a pillow on the bed” the student had been sleeping in…

The interim complaint said TPD conducted a forensic interview on Monday where the 15-year-old victim reportedly “confirmed she had a sexual relationship” with the high school counselor. In that interview, the victim said “that the relationship turned sexual around February 2022,” according to the interim complaint.

A March 9 report from AZ Free News confirmed Vinik and another counselor who says she is a transgender man and goes by “Hamilton” were behind the school’s first-ever drag show set to take place in early May. Vinik also reportedly led the LGBTQ+ student club called “Q Space.”

“In this space students will learn about LGBTQIA+ history, create community, and engage in individual and group work exploring identity and collaborating to discover community care and joy. Mondays 3:30-4:30 in M317 with counselors Sunday and Zobella,” the website reads.

TUSD spokeswoman Karla Escamilla told AZ Free News the drag show was coordinated by students and not staff.

“The event is a student club activity. It is driven by students, not TUSD staff. This is not an instructional activity and it’s being held on a Saturday. Tucson Unified has a strong policy of nondiscrimination regarding gender expression and restricting the free expression of these high school student club members would be inconsistent with that policy. Participation in the show is voluntary in all capacities (performances, lighting, audio & visual, and outdoor stage set-up),” Escamilla said.

The outlet reported that the counselors created an Instragram page for the drag show and “invited students to access a drag inquiry form using their Microsoft Office student account.” AZ Free News noted that the original Instagram post of a flyer announcing the event was removed. The Instagram account bio still says the event is “hosted by Q Space.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by TMHS First Annual Drag Show (@tucsonhigh_drag)

The outlet noted that Vinik had previously worked as a preschool teacher and a K-12 substitute teacher, and had a master’s degree from New York University in counseling.

“[Zobella] is working to unlearn practices maintained by white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy and recommits daily to prioritize mental health, community care, and visions for freedom offered by Queer BIPOC organizers,” Vinik’s profile stated, according to the report.

Vinik is facing a charge for one count of sexual conduct with a minor, and the investigation is ongoing, police said.