Archives for the year of: 2023
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Indiana: High School Play Canceled, Students Raise Money to Stage It Themselves

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2023 //
10

School administrators and school boards are canceling school plays that include LGBT characters. When this happened in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the students started a GoFundMe and raised the money to stage the play on their own. A professional stage director came back to Fort Wayne to help the students. This generation of young people is our hope for the future.

Students at an Indiana high school are moving ahead with an LGBTQ+ inclusive play after administrators canceled the production earlier this year.

Carroll High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana is just one of many schools across the country where student plays and musicals have been canceled or censored this year due to concerns over content. Howard Sherman, the managing director of the performing arts center at New York’s Baruch College, recently noted that the wave of opposition has been focused largely on productions with LGBTQ+ content.

As The Washington Post and other outlets have reported, students at Carroll High were informed two days into auditions for Marian, or the True Tale of Robin Hood that the play had been canceled due to complaints from parents about its LGBTQ+ characters. A re-telling of the Robin Hood story, the play features a nonbinary character and a same-sex couple.

“I know there were people who were upset that the play was being considered to be put on, I think there was worry about protests and things like that,” Northwest Allen County Schools superintendent Wayne Barker said at a school board meeting.

Almost immediately, students began talking about putting the play on themselves. They soon connected with Fort Wayne Pride, which organizes Pride events in the community, and launched a GoFundMe campaign on May 4.

As of this week, the campaign has raised over $79,000, well exceeding its $50,000 goal. The funds will go toward renting a venue, insurance, costumes, and set construction.

Fort Wayne native Blane Pressler, the artistic director of Ozark Actors Theatre, has returned to his hometown to help put on the play, which will run for one night only at the Foellinger Outdoor Theater on May 20.

The students are thrilled. The show is likely to be a huge success. The students demonstrated their independence and courage. Those who object to the play can stay home. The GoFundMe has already exceeded its goal and may produce enough money to fund future shows.

Categories Censorship, Courage, Creativity, Extremism, Gender, Indiana

Florida: Legislature Passes Law to Keep Secret DeSantis’s Travel Records

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2023 //
20

The Florida legislature passed a law, which Governor DeSantis signed, exempting records of his travel from the state’s robust public disclosure laws. The law is retroactive so no one can get information about where the governor and other public officials have traveled in the past. The justification is that the governor needs secrecy for security but this does not explain why travels in the past will be hidden from the press and taxpayers.

The Governor’s travels are paid for with taxpayer money, but the taxpayer has no right to know how much was spent and for what purpose.

DeSantis continues to build his authoritarian record, which all can see, unlike his travel record.

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Fascism, Florida, Funding

South Carolina: Charter School Builds a Sports Powerhouse

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2023 //
6

I remember when the idea of charter schools was first introduced. Charters would provide innovative schools whose basic purpose was “to save poor kids from failing public schools.” Vouchers had the same rationale.

Charters would provide better academics, more transparency, and more accountability. Charters would require less funding than public schools because they would be free of bureaucracy. Parents would hold them accountable by pulling their kids out. The competition with charters would improve public schools.

None of this turned out to be true.

Consider South Carolina. Entrepreneurs are using the charter law to create competition for private schools, at least on the sports field.

The moment was nearly nine years in the making.

A large crowd was on hand in January to see the Gray Collegiate Academy War Eagles basketball teams play in the school’s new on-campus gymnasium in West Columbia. No more bus rides downtown to Allen University, where Gray played most of its home games since opening in 2014.

“It brings everything that we have been working toward for nine years, full force,” Gray Collegiate athletic director and football coach Adam Holmes said. “There is nothing that we don’t have and can’t work toward to get.

“Our academics is second to none. Now, we have a turf football and soccer stadium, state-of-the-art gym, baseball, softball fields on campus. Hopefully, this will elevate us even more.” Less than two months later, Gray’s boys and girls basketball teams won state championships.

In the past 12 months, Gray also won state titles in softball and competitive cheer, and it won the 2021 football state title.

What once was a dream for Gray Collegiate was now reality. But for many of the high school teams that have had to play the War Eagles, the milestone of Gray adding new on-campus facilities might sound like more of a nightmare.

In their eyes, here is a burgeoning Goliath in athletics, a public charter school with advantages in attendance guidelines and whispers of recruiting tactics that result in all-star rosters that can dominate opponents. Gray and other charter schools — along with several private schools that compete in the public school league — are increasingly dominating small school athletics in South Carolina.

In the current school year, 13 of the 16 S.C. High School League fall and winter sports team championships in Class A and Class 2A were won by charter or private schools.

Administrators at traditional schools are starting to push back. One, the superintendent of Fairfield County schools, said he would not force teams in his district to play games against Gray if they didn’t want to.

The tension is pushing high school sports in South Carolina to a tipping point that could reshape not only their structure and oversight but force a fundamental reckoning on how the state deals with core issues such as fairness, sportsmanship and the boundaries of competition.

Read more at: https://www.thestate.com/sports/high-school/article271087367.html#storylink=cpy

Please open the link and keep reading. Is this why we needed charter schools? To create an athletic powerhouse that dominates the state?

Categories Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, South Carolina

Robert Reich: Why Did CNN Do it?

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2023 //
49

Writing at Alternet, Robert Reich explains why CNN gave Trump an hour to peddle his vainglorious lies and narcissism. CNN has a new owner. He wants the network to be “centrist,” to bring on equal numbers of Democrats and MAGAnuts. And behind the new owner is an investor and board member who has given significant money to Trump.

Why did CNN give Trump this gift?

Reich writes:

The germ of an answer could be found last August, when Chris Licht, CNN’s new chairman and CEO, canceled Brian Stelter’s Sunday show, “Reliable Sources,” which had been a reliable source of intelligent criticism of Fox News, right-wing media in general, Trumpism, and the increasingly authoritarian lurch of the Republican party.

Licht also fired Stelter and his staff.

The show had been commercially successful. It was doing better than several of CNN’s prime-time shows.

Around the same time, Licht told CNN staff they should stop referring to Donald Trump’s “big lie” because the phrase sounded like a Democratic party talking point. Licht also told the staff he wanted more “straight news reporting,” along with more conservative guests.

This explains to me why CNN invited a female Trump lawyer on the air on the day that E. Jean Carroll won a civil judgment against Trump for $5 million for sexual abuse and defamation. I suppose I expected to hear from an impartial legal expert, but instead there was a beautiful angry Trump lawyer, speaking through clenched teeth. Her unconcealed rage undermined her credibility, but I was nonetheless surprised to see the network turn to someone so partisan.

Reich continues:

Follow the money. CNN’s new corporate overseer is Warner Bros. Discovery Inc, whose CEO is David Zaslav.

Zaslav has been pushing Licht to reposition CNN to be a network preferred by “everybody … Republicans, Democrats….”

How is it possible to report on Trump and not speak of the big lie, or say they’ve broken norms if not laws?

So, what’s motivating Zaslav? Keep following the money.

The leading shareholder in Warner Bros. Discovery is John Malone, a multibillionaire cable magnate. (Malone was a chief architect in the merger of Discovery and CNN.)

Malone describes himself as a “libertarian” although he travels in right-wing Republican circles. In 2005, he held 32% of the shares of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. He is on the board of directors of the Cato Institute. In 2017, he donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration.

Malone has said he wants CNN to be more like Fox News because, in his view, Fox News has “actual journalism.” Malone also wants the “news” portion of CNN to be “more centrist…”

When you follow the money behind deeply irresponsible decisions at the power centers of America today, the road often leads to right-wing billionaires.

We have known a long time. You never go wrong following the money.

Categories Billionaires, Media, Trump

Ex-Trump Advisor Chosen as New College Commencement Speaker; Graduates Plan Alternate Ceremony

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2023 //
14

A few months ago, Governor DeSantis engineered a takeover of Florida’s only progressive public college, New College. First he gained a majority of the board, then the board fired the president of the college and hired the unqualified Richard Corcoran, who had been a hard-right speaker of the House and state commissioner of education.

For the first commencement under the new regime, Corcoran invited Dr. Scott Atlas to be commencement speaker. Atlas was Trump’s coronavirus advisor. He frequently clashed with Dr. Anthony Fauci because Atlas believes in herd immunity, not public health measures.

The graduates are planning an alternate commencement.

Students at New College of Florida are planning their own graduation event after a conservative speaker with ties to former president Donald Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis was selected to give the college’s commencement address.

Dr. Scott Atlas was chosen by New College of Florida interim president Richard Corcoran to address seniors at a May 19 graduation ceremony in Sarasota.

The radiologist was appointed as Trump’s special coronavirus adviser in 2020.

He resigned after clashes with other public health leaders over his advocacy for herd immunity as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Students say the current administration is made up of new hires, who have only been part of the community for a handful of months.

They say the additional graduation event on May 18 will give them a chance to celebrate on their own terms.

A GoFundMe account set up to help pay for the separate commencement had raised nearly $20,000 by Wednesday afternoon.

Atlas is a senior fellow at Stanford University and a fellow in the Academy for Science and Freedom at the Washington, D.C., campus of Hillsdale College, the small Michigan Christian school DeSantis has said he wants to model New College after.

Atlas’s conservative ideology is in line with a month’s long process to change the culture at the small liberal arts college in Sarasota.

The overhaul began in January when DeSantis appointed six new conservative trustees to the college’s board. The trustees then fired the school’s president and appointed former state education commissioner Richard Corcoran as interim.

In the span of just a few months, trustees fired the school’s director of diversity, equity, and inclusion and abolished the school’s small DEI office. They fired the school’s librarian and dean of academic engagement and denied tenure to five faculty members. They also hired a director of athletics, although the college currently offers only intramural sports.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Creativity, DeSantis, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom, Health, Higher Education, Science, Trump

Florida: Unqualified DeSantis Ally Will Be Sole Candidate for State College Presidency

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2023 //
1

Governor Ron DeSantis continues his takeover of higher education in the state of Florida, in this case, by appointing a board of cronies who appoint another crony.

A Republican politician with no higher education experience has emerged as the lone finalist to lead a Central Florida state college after three other candidates abruptly withdrew from a selection process that has raised concerns about political influence.

Republican state Rep. Fred Hawkins, a close ally of Gov. Ron DeSantis, was picked by the South Florida State College District Board of Trustees on Wednesday morning — two days after Hawkins submitted his application and five days after the board voted to lower the education requirements for the position, a move that allows Hawkins to qualify.

Hawkins is still considered a candidate and is scheduled to be interviewed on May 31.

But he is already claiming the job. “Pages turn and new chapters begin. I am looking forward to becoming the next President of South Florida State College,” Hawkins posted on Twitter Wednesday evening.

The seven political appointees on the board of trustees are scheduled to vote for the college’s next president on June 7. Five of the trustees were appointed by DeSantis in 2020.

A side note about Hawkins:

A former rodeo rider, he was arrested in 2020 for impersonating a law enforcement officer. Prosecutors agreed to drop the charges, if he completed a diversion program. DeSantis suspended him from being an Osceola County commissioner due to the charges.

The talent pool for college presidents seems to be shallow. That won’t deter DeSantis from his determination to cleanse higher education of WOKE professors.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article275305071.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Curriculum, DeSantis, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Fascism, Higher Education

NYC: Mayor Adams Is Unfit to Control the Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2023 //
33

During the mayoral campaign in New York City, Eric Adams won the support of many leaders of the city’s orthodox Jewish community, which often votes as a bloc for the candidate who promises to protect their insular world and the flow of government funds. In a recent speech to a Modern Orthodox Jewish audience, Mayor Adams said that the city’s public schools should try to duplicate the “achievements” of the city’s yeshivas (most of which are run by Hasidim, not Modern Orthodox). The Hasidic yeshivas have been heavily criticized for their failure to teach a secular education.

This is astonishing.

Mayor Adams was probably just pandering to his audience, but he revealed profound ignorance about the failure of yeshivas, as well as profound ignorance about his own city’s public schools, which have produced Nobel Prize winners and generations of scientists, scholars, business leaders, performers, professionals, and other successful people.

The private yeshivas for the children of Hasidic Orthodox Jews have been criticized by an organization of some of their graduates called Young Advocates for a Fair Education for failing to teach English and other subjects, leaving graduates unprepared for life.

The New York Times reported that the city’s yeshivas had received over $1 billion in public funding but were academic failures. Typically, they don’t take state tests, but when one of the larger Hasidic schools administered the state tests in reading and math, every student failed.

This was “failure “by design,” said the Times.

The leaders of New York’s Hasidic community have built scores of private schools to educate children in Jewish law, prayer and tradition — and to wall them off from the secular world. Offering little English and math, and virtually no science or history, they drill students relentlessly, sometimes brutally, during hours of religious lessons conducted in Yiddish.

The result, a New York Times investigation has found, is that generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency.

Segregated by gender, the Hasidic system fails most starkly in its more than 100 schools for boys. Spread across Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley, the schools turn out thousands of students each year who are unprepared to navigate the outside world, helping to push poverty rates in Hasidic neighborhoods to some of the highest in New York.

The story about Mayor Adams’ obsequious speech to Modern Orthodox leaders was reported by a newspaper called Shtetl:

In a speech given Wednesday night, mayor Eric Adams suggested that yeshiva students are better off than public school students, and that religion should be in schools “anywhere possible.”

The speech was given at an event for Teach NYS, which is part of the Orthodox Union, which represents Modern Orthodox Jews. In it, Adams condemned yeshiva critics, but made no distinction between Hasidic and Modern Orthodox schools. A September report from the New York Times found that many Hasidic yeshivas fail to provide an adequate secular education, to the point where some boys graduate high school without speaking fluent English. The Times also found that teachers at some Hasidic yeshivas regularly use corporal punishment.

In 2015, New York City’s education department announced it would investigate complaints about the quality of secular education in Hasidic schools. (The complaint did not include Modern Orthodox schools, which generally provide a thorough secular education.) In January, the state education department ordered that the city complete its investigation no later than June 30, including specific reviews of individual schools.

The mayor began his speech by painting a grim picture of the secular world. He described problems that children across the city and country face, such as cannabis and fentanyl use, harmful use of social media, and mental illness, suggesting that yeshiva students don’t have these problems.

“The children are in a state of despair at an epic proportion, but instead of us focusing on how do we duplicate the success of improving our children, we attack the yeshivas that are providing a quality education that is embracing our children,” he said.

“I saw numbers just the other day, asking questions about what is happening at our yeshivas across the city and state. At the same time, 65% of Black and brown children never reach proficiency in the public school system,” Adams said, citing a statistic that he uses often in speeches. “We’re asking what are you doing in your schools. We need to ask, what are we doing wrong in our schools, and learn what you are doing in yeshivas to improve education.”

“We need to be duplicating what you are achieving,” he said.

Adams also discussed the role of religion in government.

“Let’s embrace those that believe in the quality of this country and the quality of this state, and uplift families, and children, and education, and that appreciate the religious philosophies that are a part of the educational opportunities,” he said. “I don’t apologize for believing in God.”

“Faith is who we are,” Adams added. “We are a country of faith and belief, and we should have it anywhere possible to educate and to help uplift our children in the process.”

“You were there for me when I ran for mayor,” Adams concluded, to loud applause. “I’m going to be there for you as your mayor.”

In City Council District 44, which includes most of Hasidic Boro Park, 56% of voters picked Republican Curtis Sliwa in the 2021 mayoral election.

On election night in 2021, Mayor-elect Adams was surrounded by prominent supporters on the podium, including leaders of the Hasidic community.

A man who knows so little about yeshivas or public schools or the reasons for separation of church and state should not be in control of the New York City public school system.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Funding, New York City, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Shame

Garry Rayno: History Is Not Always Comfortable

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2023 //
13

Like many other states, New Hampshire passed a law forbidding the teaching of “divisive concepts” or anything that might make students “uncomfortable.” Such laws ban teaching truthfully and direct teachers to engage in self-censorship. Teachers who dare to violate these ridiculous laws risk being fired and losing their teaching license. Such laws are, in fact, shameful and an insult to freedom of inquiry, the freedom to teach and the freedom to learn. Petty tyrants suppress knowledge.

This article was written by Gary Rayno, InDepthNH.org’s State House Bureau Chief.

History is a funny thing.

For example, two communities claim to be the birthplace of the Republican Party, Exeter, New Hampshire and Ripon, Wisconsin.

Around here Exeter is thought to be the holy place, but almost everywhere else in the country — including Wikipedia — believe it was Wisconsin.

No one disagrees its founding was in opposition to slavery, but where it started, well even Jackson, Michigan was thought to be the birthplace for a long time. So, it is anyone’s guess just where the Grand Old Party first emerged.

And the founding place for Aerosmith, which is about to begin its final tour, is also contested.

The Boston Globe and all things Boston, claim the band was formed in the city’s Allston neighborhood.

But a case can be made that the band really formed at the Barn in Georges Mills, a section of Sunapee, and not in Boston.

Two bands played the Barn in the summers of 1968 and 69 and various other places around the Lake Sunapee region, the Jam Band and Just in Time.

Tom Hamilton and Joe Perry were in the Jam Band and Steve Tyler, Joey Kramer and Ray Tabano were in the other band.

They all moved to Boston in 1970 with the idea of making it big with Tabano being replaced by Brad Whitcomb.

But they all played together here and there in Sunapee before moving to Boston.

While the origins may be contested, people in Exeter, Ripon, Sunapee or Boston still feel pride about their place in history.

But some people may not feel pride, they may be embarrassed by the notoriety.

Aerosmith may be one of the greatest American bands selling millions of records and selling out stadiums around the world.

But their lifestyle may not be what you would want your child to experience as some of the members spent considerable time in rehab.

The same could be said about the Republican Party today as it is not the party of 50 years ago and has changed considerably since its founding as an anti-slavery organization.

Several state agencies work together to put up historical markers touting some bit of the state’s history or recognizing state residents who went on to do great things.

I don’t believe there are any historical markers for Aerosmith, but there is a historical marker in Exeter in front of what once was the tavern thought to be the birthplace of the Grand Old Party.

On Route 3A in Bow is a historical marker noting the birthplace of Mary Baker Eddy, an author and religious leader who founded the Church of Christ, Science in 1879, and the Christian Science Monitor and several other publications.

While Christian Science is a well-known religion, some find its teachings controversial.

But the marker remains near the home of her birth.

In Boscawen there is a historical marker and a monument to Hannah Dustin, a woman who was captured by Native Americans in Haverhill, Massachusetts and taken north to an island in the Merrimack River. At night she killed 10 Native Americans and scalped them and freed two others who were captive.

While there were few questions asked years ago about the monument, now it is considered controversial.

There are numerous other monuments to Native Americans and settlers’ interactions, often not for the best, around the state.

In Canaan there is a historical marker for Noyes Academy, the first co-ed academy for black students.

But it was not long before the outraged local citizens forced the black students to leave and dragged the academy building down Canaan Street to the middle of town.

However, a number of the students went on to be black leaders including Henry Highland Garnet, who was the first African American to preach in Congress.

A new historical marker installed in Concord will be removed because of concerns raised by two Executive Councilors, Joe Kenney of Wakefield and David Wheeler of Milford, and backed by Gov. Chris Sununu.

The marker honors Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, “The Rebel Girl,” who was born in Concord in 1890, and went on to be a noted union organizer, women’s rights activist and a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.

What could be the problem with any of those three accomplishments?

Well, the issue that had councilors upset was she was a member of the Communist Party.

“Wonderful, we are recognizing and honoring someone who joined the Communist Party and died a Soviet,” Kenney wrote in an email to the council. “The same Soviets I fought against during the Cold War with patriotic Americans. This is Crap!”

At the council meeting last week, he called her “Unamerican” and a “Communist.”

During her heyday, many unionists were members of the Communist Party as the polar opposite of capitalism. Many artists and musicians were also members, but as folk singer Dave Van Ronk used to say “communist with a little ‘c.’”

Flynn was convicted in 1951 under the Smith Act which made it illegal to be a member of the Communist Party and jailed for 28 months.

Flynn went to the Soviet Union where she died and is buried.

“One thing I am doing right now is review who does have the final say, the authority when it comes to state markers on state lands and all of that. So we will review that whole process,” Sununu told reporters after the Executive Council meeting. “I don’t know whether it is the council that should have the final say or view or anything like that. It is something we can definitely talk about. But we are going to look at the process internally.”

So now deciding on which historical markers will be a political decision?

Flynn was a controversial figure but so was Mary Baker Eddy and the Noyes Academy certainly is not New Hampshire’s best foot forward.

History is not always comfortable, and really shouldn’t be.

Scalping Native Americans is not a comfortable notion, neither is intimidating young black students, nor is the work Flynn spent her life doing to uplift, particularly textile workers in the mills of New England and around the country.

History should reflect what happened, not what we wished happened or what we want to hide from our children.

That is what is so troubling about the divisive concepts law passed two years ago and the rush to ban books someone doesn’t agree with for whatever reason.

If we cannot be honest about our history and what was and was not done, we cannot learn from it, and we will keep repeating it and repeating it.

History should not be Groundhog’s Day.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Freedom, Freedom to Read, History, Lies, New Hampshire

Texas: Conservative Christian Mobile Service Won Control of 4 School Boards

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2023 //
18

In Texas, people with strongly held conservative Christian beliefs wanted to send their dollars to a cellphone service that shared their values. Before long, such a company came into being, and it’s now selling mobile service to customers across the state. The money generated has been used to win control of four school boards.

NBC reported:

DALLAS — A little more than a year after former Trump adviser Steve Bannon declared that conservatives needed to win seats on local school boards to “save the nation,” he used his conspiracy theory-fueled TV program to spotlight Patriot Mobile, a Texas-based cellphone company that had answered his call to action.

“The school boards are the key that picks the lock,” Bannon said during an interview with Patriot Mobile’s president, Glenn Story, from the floor of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Dallas on Aug. 6. “Tell us about what you did.”

Story turned to the camera and said, “We went out and found 11 candidates last cycle and we supported them, and we won every seat. We took over four school boards.”

“Eleven seats on school boards, took over four!” Bannon shouted as a crowd of CPAC attendees erupted in applause.

It was a moment of celebration for an upstart company whose leaders say they are on a mission from God to restore conservative Christian values at all levels of government — especially in public schools. To carry out that calling, the Grapevine-based company this year created a political action committee, Patriot Mobile Action, and gave it more than $600,000 to spend on nonpartisan school board races in the Fort Worth suburbs.

This spring, the PAC blanketed the communities of Southlake, Keller, Grapevine and Mansfield with thousands of political mailers warning that sitting school board members were endangering students with critical race theory and other “woke” ideologies. Patriot Mobile presented its candidates as patriots who would “keep political agendas out of the classroom.”

Their candidates won every race, and nearly four months later, those Patriot Mobile-backed school boards have begun to deliver results.

The Keller Independent School District made national headlines this month after the school board passed a new policy that led the district to abruptly pull more than 40 previously challenged library books off shelves for further review, including a graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl,” as well as several LGBTQ-themed novels.

In the neighboring city of Southlake, Patriot Mobile donated framed posters that read “In God We Trust” to the Carroll Independent School District during a special presentation before the school board. Under a new Texas law, the district is now required to display the posters prominently in each of its school buildings. Afterward, Patriot Mobile celebrated the donation in a blog post titled “Putting God Back Into Our Schools.”

And this week at a tense, eight-hour school board meeting, the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District’s board of trustees voted 4-3 to implement a far-reaching set of policies that restrict how teachers can discuss race and gender. The new policies also limit the rights of transgender and nonbinary students to use bathrooms and pronouns that correspond with their genders. And the board made it easier for parents to ban library books dealing with sexuality.

To protest the changes, some parents came to the meeting wearing T-shirts with the school district’s name, GCISD, crossed out and replaced with the words “Patriot Mobile Action ISD.”

“They bought four school boards, and now they’re pulling the strings,” said Rachel Wall, the mother of a Grapevine-Colleyville student and vice president of the Texas Bipartisan Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting school board candidates who do not have partisan agendas. “I’m a Christian by faith, but if I wanted my son to be in a religious school, I would pay for him to go to a private school….”

Initially, Patriot Mobile’s founders said their goal was to support groups and politicians who promised to oppose abortion, defend religious freedom, protect gun rights and support the military.

After the 2016 presidential election, the company’s branding shifted further to the right and embraced Trump’s style of politics. One of Patriot Mobile’s most famous advertisements includes the slogan “Making Wireless Great Again,” alongside an image of Trump’s face photoshopped onto a tanned, muscled body holding a machine gun….

Patriot Mobile has also aligned itself in recent years with political and religious leaders who promote a once-fringe strand of Christian theology that experts say has grown more popular on the right in recent years. Dominionism, sometimes referred to as the Seven Mountains Mandate, is the belief that Christians are called on to dominate the seven key “mountains” of American life, including business, media, government and education.

John Fea, a professor of American history at the private, Christian Messiah University in Pennsylvania, has spent years studying Seven Mountains theology. Fea said the idea that Christians are called on to assert biblical values across all aspects of American society has been around for decades on the right, but “largely on the fringe.”

Trump’s election changed that.

“It fits very well with the ‘Make America Great Again’ mantra,” Fea said. “‘Make America Great Again’ to them means, ‘Make America Christian Again,’ restore America to its Christian roots.”

What next? Will every religion set up its own cell service? Why?

Categories Education Industry, Elections, Religion, Texas

What Can Be Done about the Supreme Court’s Lack of Ethical Standards?

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2023 //
37

The stories about payments and gifts from rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas continue to escalate. The revelations began with ProPublica’s report that Crow had given luxurious vacations to Thomas and his wife. Then ProPublica reported that Crow bought the house where Justice Thomas’ elderly mother lives, rent free. Crow paid the private school tuition of Thomas’s grandnephew. The stories of the billionaires’ beneficence to this one Justice continue to roll out. Justice Thomas’ wife, a rightwing political activist, also received large fees from other sources who have cases before the Court.

What have we learned? The Supreme Court is not subject to any explicit code of ethics. Chief Justice John Roberts (whose wife has been paid millions as a headhunter for law firms that appear before the High Court) has refused to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Boston Globe noted that the Clarence Thomas affair is unprecedented in its scope, so much so that it has had a profound effect on public respect for the Court.

As Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas faces a growing number of revelations that have raised intense scrutiny over his ethical practices, legal experts say the high court has found itself in unprecedented territory, its credibility in the eyes of the public rapidly eroding.

The slew of disclosures about Thomas, the most recent of which came Thursday, demonstrate a need for institutional reform and the revision of ethics rules, experts said.

“The revelations showcase how both wealthy and narrow interests cultivate their own relationships with justices with life tenure with the capacity to entrench or undermine policies for generations,” Robert Tsai, a professor at Boston University School of Law, said in an e-mail….

As Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas faces a growing number of revelations that have raised intense scrutiny over his ethical practices, legal experts say the high court has found itself in unprecedented territory, its credibility in the eyes of the public rapidly eroding.

The slew of disclosures about Thomas, the most recent of which came Thursday, demonstrate a need for institutional reform and the revision of ethics rules, experts said.

“The revelations showcase how both wealthy and narrow interests cultivate their own relationships with justices with life tenure with the capacity to entrench or undermine policies for generations,” Robert Tsai, a professor at Boston University School of Law, said in an e-mail.

Democrats are outraged and want accountability and reform. Republican sensors have closed ranks and insist that it’s up to the Court to reform itself. Fat chance.

Mark Paoletta defended Thomas, a friend of his, in a statement Thursday, arguing that, while Thomas was helping a “child in need,” Thomas was not required to report the tuition because his grandnephew was not technically his “dependent.”

But Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University School of Law, said that defense was invalid and that the payments “certainly had to be recorded on his disclosure statements.”

“The gift was to Thomas himself because Thomas had legal responsibility for his nephew’s education,” Gillers said. “He didn’t adopt the great-nephew, but he did become a legal guardian of the nephew and took on the responsibility to support the nephew, including education. The money relieves Thomas of having to pay.”

The report about Leo also poses “serious concern,” Gillers said. “The idea that a person can turn on the spigot, generate substantial income to the spouse of a justice, should be troublesome to the court and to the country.”

As outrageous as the Thomas revelations are, there is no chance that the Supreme Court will reform itself—or that a closely divided Congress will act. That is, unless Chief Justice John Roberts decides that he doesn’t want “the Roberts Court” to go down in history as the Court without ethical standards, unwilling to reform itself, indifferent to the collapse of public respect for the Court. If he has any sense of honor or shame, he might act.

Even if the Justices agree to stop taking gifts and money from interested parties, the Court still has the problem that it can’t solve: it is packed with five rightwing ideologues, three chosen by the Federalist Society, who used Trump as their willing dummy. Their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, after swearing under oath that they would not, will be a permanent scar on the Suprene Court.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Failure
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