When District Policy Might Violate State Law

What's a teacher to do?

Teachers working in California school districts with conservative school boards are increasingly finding themselves with a difficult decision: violate district policy and risk losing their job, or potentially disobey federal and state laws and policies and take a chance on ending up in court.

Last Monday was the first day of school at Chino Valley Unified campuses since the passage of a controversial board policy that would require teachers, counselors and administrators to notify parents if a child asks to be identified by a different gender or name, or to access a bathroom or take part in a program not aligned with the gender on their official records. 

After the Chino Valley Unified decision, California Attorney General Rob Bonta warned the school district that the parental notification policy could violate the state’s anti-discrimination laws and students’ rights to privacy guaranteed under the U.S. and California constitutions, as well as federal Title IX protections and the state education code. Bonta launched a civil rights investigation into the school district last week...

(Local teachers union president) Walker sent a memo to teachers last week advising them to follow the district’s new policy but to object to it if they think the policy is improper or unlawful. If a teacher feels uncomfortable talking to a parent about a child’s gender identification, they should ask one of their administrators to take on that task, the memo directed.

“Members are expected to comply with directives given by their administrators, and if a member or the association find that there has been a violation of the collective bargaining agreement, then a grievance can be filed,”  Walker said...

Guidance from the California Department of Education recommends that schools ask transgender students who, if anyone, they would like to be informed of their transgender status. The department says that rule should only be broken in rare circumstances when district officials feel there is a compelling need for parents to know the information and the student is given advance notice before parents are informed.

If you're keeping information from all parents because you think some might act in a way that you wouldn't agree with, well... 

It shouldn't be a teacher's place to keep information from parents.  What a horrible position to put teachers in.

Why Students Don't Perform Well

You can poor millions into a school, provide all sorts of services, but if you're not changing what happens at home, it's probably for naught (with a few unique exceptions here and there around the country):

The inaugural class of third graders at the LeBron James-supported I Promise School in Akron will soon start eighth grade, and, for each of the last three school years, none of those students have scored “proficient” in Ohio’s math proficiency test.

That fact was alarming to some Akron Board of Education members who listened to an update during their meeting Monday on the school’s progress.

Meanwhile, the school — which, by design, only takes students who are two or more years behind grade level — was placed on a state academic watchlist for schools flagged for “Additional Targeted Support and Improvement (ATSI)." To be added to the watchlist, at least one of the schools' student subgroup’s performance must be in the lowest 5% of schools in the state. At I Promise, Black students and students with disabilities meet that criteria.

The school is 60% Black and 28% of the 554 students have disabilities.

No doubt they took some very difficult students, and on some measures the students have shown improvement: 

Stephanie Davis, who became principal in June, struck a hopeful tone in a statement provided by the LeBron James Family Foundation. She pointed to students’ “i-Ready” scores, which show students’ mastery of topics separate from tests.

“Our students have not yet met the grade-level mastery mark but they are demonstrating growth based on (i-Ready) scores,” she said. “Of our incoming 8th graders, 32% met their annual typical growth in reading while 11% met their stretch goal for the year. Despite not mastering the grade-level standards, 42% of students demonstrated growth in i-Ready math across their 7th-grade school year.

“When working with students who are achieving below grade level, growth is as important as a measure of progress as proficiency. And the type of growth that is important to us is not made overnight," she concluded. "It takes time.”

Growth is good, but how much time do you need?  And why did less than half grow sufficiently?  Extra millions have been sunk into these students over the past 5 years without appropriate growth and achievement. 

So who are the lefties gonna blame here?  Racist teachers?  Not enough money?  Republicans?  Not enough support?  Read the article for how much extra support was provided by LeBron James and his foundation.

Here's how you know the school isn't going to improve much this year:

He added that next steps include more professional development and training for teachers, along with a deeper focus on analyzing data and what best teaching practices might be.

Absent evidence that the teachers absolutely suck, focusing on teachers as a whole is not going to give you any bang for the buck.  Sure, get rid of those everyone knows suck, but then what?  Until you can change what goes on at home, most of your efforts will fail.  It's so obvious, but no one wants to admit it for two reasons:

1. because it eliminates the possibility of a silver bullet to fix everything, and
2. because it takes the focus away from the easy target of teachers and puts it on the unpopular backs of the parents.

Too many of those students are doomed to academic distress, and there's no political or social will to fix the problem.  Sad.

Update:  Remember what happened in Kansas City?

School reformers rejoiced when Federal District Judge Russell Clark took control of the district in ’85. He ruled it was unconstitutionally segregated, with dilapidated facilities and students who performed poorly.

To bring the district into compliance. the judge ordered it and the state over the next 12 years to spend nearly $2 billion to build more schools, renovate old ones, integrate classrooms and bring student test scores up to national norms.

But when the judge finally took himself off the case last year (1997), there was little to show academically for all that money. Although the district’s 37,000 mostly minority students enjoyed some of the best‐​funded school facilities in the country, student performance hadn’t improved.

It was a major embarrassment and an ideological setback for backers of vastly increased funding for public schools...

For decades, critics of excess spending for public schools had said, “You can’t solve educational problems by throwing money at them.” To which educators and public school advocates replied, “No one’s ever tried.”

Kansas City settles the argument. Judge Clark invited the district to “dream.” Forget about cost, he said. He urged administrators to let their imaginations soar and assemble a list of everything they might possibly need to boost the achievement of inner‐​city blacks. Using the extraordinary powers granted judges in desegregation cases, Clark said he would find a way to pay for it...

For more than a decade, the Kansas City district got more money per pupil than any other of the 280 major school districts in the country. Yet in spite of having perhaps the finest facilities of any school district its size in the country, nothing changed. Test scores stayed put, the three‐​grade‐​level achievement gap between blacks and whites did not change, and the dropout rate went up, not down...

Of course, the district’s biggest problems weren’t just administrative. The ideological biases of local educators, politicians and Judge Clark against accountability made them reject solutions that might have worked — merit pay for teachers, penalties for failure or vouchers for private schools.

Schools can only do so much in 6-7 hours a day; if what happens outside of school doesn't change, what happens inside of school won't change.  Sure, there are Joe Clark and Jaime Escalante and Bob Moses superheroes, who can have an impact here and there, but if you expect every public school teacher to be a superhero, you're not being realistic about the problem or the solution. And you can continue to throw money at the schools--I love it when I get a pay raise--but if you think that by itself is going to improve student achievement, I will politely ask to see your supporting data.

Teacher Credentialing Requirements

Expecting people to work for 9-10 months, even part time, for no pay at all, is an injustice that should be corrected:

A California bill proposes that student teachers get paid for the mandatory hours they need to work to obtain a teaching credential.

Currently, California teachers need to complete 600 hours of unpaid student teaching to earn their credentials, according to California’s Commission on Teaching Credentials. The requirement has been considered a roadblock for teacher candidates who can’t afford to work for free while still being responsible for paying school and living expenses, such as tuition, books and housing. 

I couldn't have done it.  I went through an "alternative" credentialing program, where I was an paid "intern" for the 2 years of my program; I would teach during the day and attend classes at nights and on weekends.

Can/Should You Be Fired If It's Not Illegal?

I go back and forth on this issue:

A teacher (assistant) struggling to make ends meet is fighting to win her job back after she was fired for making OnlyFans content, according to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Kristin MacDonald, 35, was let go after eight years as a teaching assistant in Canada when she received a letter from board officials issuing her termination.

“Your misconduct in this matter is egregious,” the termination letter obtained by the outlet read, including multiple reasons as to why MacDonald would be fired.

MacDonald, who said she earned $1,000 CAD every two weeks, turned to OnlyFans to help support her family and young daughter.

“It’s so far-fetched to me. It seems very petty,” the ex-teacher let out in frustration to CBC.

“I feel strongly that in this day and age, we should be able to do what we want as long as it’s not illegal,” she added. “I’m not hurting anybody.”

On one hand, her behavior isn't illegal, so what's the problem?  I'm reminded of the teacher who was threatened for having pictures of herself with a rifle on her Facebook page (yes, she won that challenge handily).  Are there other legal behaviors, unrelated to school activity, that can get teachers fired?

On the other hand, as a high school teacher I can see problems arising (pun intended) if students have seen their teachers in naked or erotic pictures.  Such pictures or similar videos break down that wall of separation that is required for the smooth running of a class.

What do you think?

When They Aren't Pissing It Away On Ideology...

...they're giving it away via incompetence.  My retirement, that is:

We’re talking about names, social security numbers and other personal information of almost 770k retirees potentially being compromised.

Letters from CalPERS started going out to their retired members on Thursday about exactly what happened, and where they go from here...

The concern: A Russian ransomware gang, known as Clop’s, and its worldwide cybersecurity hack. 

Myers said on June 6, CalPERS’ third-party contractor, PBI Research Services, first notified the government agency about a potential data breach.

Then on June 9, PBI confirmed that the information sent for them to verify was impacted...

The California state teachers’ retirement system was also affected. 

A member of CalSTRS spoke with FOX40 and said, “CalSTRS is working with PBI to identify the CalSTRS members whose information was involved in PBI’s incident. CalSTRS will provide notice to any members and beneficiaries whose personal information was involved in accordance with applicable law.”

sigh

They're Playing With My Retirement Money

Do this with your own money, not with mine:

If you think that CalSTRS, the behemoth pension system that supports California’s retired teachers, is focused on pensions, you are wrong. The largest teacher-focused pension system in the country is abandoning its core fiduciary role to chase left-wing political goals. Its mission creep will hurt teachers, taxpayers, and students alike.

In April, CalSTRS issued an extraordinary press release stating their priorities for the companies they invest in, including corporate greenhouse gas disclosures. CalSTRS is interested in achieving a “net zero” emissions portfolio. Of course, CalSTRS is also interested in corporate diversity, and states: “CalSTRS will vote against an entire board of directors that does not include at least one woman and against a board’s nominating and governance committee if at least 30% of its board members are not women. Furthermore, CalSTRS will vote against the nominating and governance committees of Russell 3000 companies that do not disclose their board members’ diversity characteristics.”

CalSTRS’ Board has morphed into Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a $300-billion billy club to swing at businesses that aren’t sufficiently Progressive.

If you were scouring the news for a few words about supporting corporate boards trying to grow profits, entering or creating new markets, utilizing innovation, expanding geographically, then CalSTRS is not the investment entity for you.

The Last Time

Have you seen that meme that says something like, "There was that last time you and all your childhood friends went out to play together, and none of you knew it was the last time."  I guess it's supposed to be nostalgic.

Yesterday was our last day of school with students.  Today was a teacher work day, and I slept in a bit before going in to work to prepare my classroom for the summer.  All the tile is being torn out and carpeting will be put in, so I had to "put everything away" so the furniture could be moved.  I pulled into the parking lot, which wasn't anywhere near full...and someone was in my spot.

The parking lot is being expanded, resurfaced, and even reoriented over the summer.

Yesterday was my last time parking in my spot, and I didn't know it at the time.

Yes, it's summer vacation now, but we go back to work on August 7th or 8th.  August 7th or 8th.  Exactly 2 months to recharge those batteries.

Well, There Goes My Retirement

As long as the crazy lefties in California pay for the retirement they've promised me, I guess I shouldn't care what silliness they do--but they won't be able to pay me if they keep up silliness like this:

The California State Senate has passed legislation that would require the state’s two powerful public employee pension funds to stop investing in fossil fuel companies. It would also force them to liquidate close to $15 billion in holdings to aid the nation’s transition to clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas production.

The bill, SB 252, would prohibit the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or CalPERS, and the California State Teachers' Retirement System, or CalSTRS, from making or renewing investments in the 200 largest publicly traded fossil fuel companies beginning Jan. 1.

By July 1, 2031, both funds would have to liquidate investments in those 200 companies, which are defined by the carbon content in their proven oil, gas and coal reserves. Because of underground reserves, companies on the list of 200 are deemed to have the most potential for future emissions if enabled by investment capital.

The bill next must be approved by the state Assembly and then signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Supporters say they are confident both will happen.

Am I What's Wrong With Education In California?

One of the complaints lodged against me this year is that I don't inflate grades enough.  Seriously.  The parent actually said that if I don't artificially inflate grades like everyone else does, I'm doing a disservice to my students.  That parent's words, not mine.  It doesn't matter that, over time, I'm sure the standards of my courses have eroded somewhat; no, I have to do that and ensure that the most common grade given in a class is a B.  

Seriously, that's what the parent said.  Several times.  To me and to school and district administrators.

There's a lot that's wrong with education in California, but somehow I doubt I'm the problem:

No issue is more pressing in California than education. In late October, the state released scores for the first post-Covid-shutdown state standardized test, conducted earlier last year. The results were horrendous. Less than half of all students who took the Smarter Balanced test—47.1 percent—met the state standard in English language arts, down 4 percentage points from 2018–19. One-third of students met the standard in math, down 6.5 percentage points. Only 16 percent of black students and 9.7 percent of English learners met standards in math.

Not only did test scores plummet; the state’s chronic absenteeism rate has also skyrocketed. The no-show rate leapt from 14.3 percent in 2020–21 to 30 percent in 2021–22. (California defines chronic absenteeism as students missing 10 percent of the days they were enrolled for any reason.) But amazingly, during the 2021–22 school year, data showed that the state’s four-year high school graduation rate climbed to 87 percent, up from 83.6 percent in 2020–21.

How is this possible?

No, I don't think test scores are plummeting because I refuse to lower standards at an even faster rate than those around me. 

According to World Population Review, California now leads the country in illiteracy. In fact, 23.1 percent of Californians over age 15 cannot read this sentence. While some of this poor showing is due to a huge influx of migrants from California’s porous southern border, much of the blame falls on the state’s failing public schools.

California seems in no rush to correct these educational shortcomings.

No, too many in California have far more important issues to address: 

What if I offered you a retroactive 10% pay raise covering this year, a $5,000 signing bonus, and a 22% pay raise starting next year?

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

It’s not enough for the Oakland Education Association, the teachers union in Oakland, California, however. In addition to extremely generous financial concessions, the OEA is also demanding “common good” goals be included in the union contract, including measures on climate change, shared governance with the school board, and reparations for black students. 

Yeah, pretty sure my attempts to teach, and to hold students accountable to learn, are not the big problems in California education. 

(Full disclosure:  I serve with Larry Sand, the author of the first linked article, on the board of directors of the California Teachers Empowerment Network.)

Of All The Reasons For A Strike...

If you're going to go on strike, it should be over pay, benefits, and/or working conditions.  Anything else is just foolish:

Furious parents marched their children across picket lines of striking teachers in Oakland, California, on Friday on the seventh day of a strike in which teachers are demanding reparations for slavery, among other demands.

Even Governor Newsollini is backing away from slavery reparations:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declined to endorse the cash payments — which could reach as high as $1.2 million for a single recipient — recommended by his reparations task force, telling Fox News Digital that dealing with the legacy of slavery "is about much more than cash payments." 

"The Reparations Task Force’s independent findings and recommendations are a milestone in our bipartisan effort to advance justice and promote healing. This has been an important process, and we should continue to work as a nation to reconcile our original sin of slavery and understand how that history has shaped our country," Newsom said in a statement to Fox News Digital. 

It'll be quite "healing" when people who were never slaves are told they're "entitled" to $1.2 million from a state that never allowed slavery, and then they don't get the money.

Race hustling should have no place in American politics, but it has a home--no, a palace--in the Democrat Party.

Should Teachers "Look Like" Their Students?

Do students perform better academically with teachers of their own race?  Some people think so, but on the other hand there's evidence:

A recent study has disproved the widespread belief that teachers of the same race as their students will result in better instructional effectiveness due to shared cultural understanding, role modeling, and mentoring on behalf of the teacher. Published in the journal Early Childhood Research Quarterly, the study concluded that were “null effects of student-teacher racial or ethnic matching on academic achievement, social-emotional behavior, or executive functioning.”

In an article for USA Today, the authors of the study also conclude that “preliminary work finds that matching’s effects may be specific to whether teachers attended historically black colleges and universities, regardless of their ethnicity.” The effects of matching are also seen more on “subjective measures like classroom behavior than on objective measures of academic achievement,” a pointed response to widespread fixation on those subjective measures.

The study should not come as a surprise — verified teaching methods are what should be used to improve student outcomes, not race.

The article then mentioned two examples of school which considered laying off teachers by race rather than experience.

Unfortunately, these appeals to “representation” are self-sabotaging: Studies show that teacher experience can decrease student absenteeism, provide mentorship for less- experienced teachers, and, yes, standardized test scores.

A new progressive narrative that teachers need to look like their students to better understand and help them sounds appealing at first, but identity politics sacrifices students and their futures.

It amazes me that anyone could think anything different, but obviously plenty of people do.

Next School Year's Schedule

We got Version 1.0 of next year's course schedule today.  A few weeks ago we got to put in our wish lists for what classes to teach, what planning period we'd like, and how many different courses we'd like to teach, and in the math department at least, it seems like most of us got most of what we asked for.

The schedule will no doubt go through many iterations between today and the beginning of school, which is now the 2nd week of August, but for myself at least, I like this rough draft and hope my part of it doesn't change.  For the first time in a lot of years, I'll be teaching all "upper level" courses, at least for the first semester.  It's likely that one of my upper classes will switch to a lower level course in the 2nd semester but I don't know that for sure.

I have 4 more years.  I'd like a nice schedule for my last 4 years.

Made Me Look Good

For some silly reason, certain probability and statistics topics are included in our integrated math standards.  It's like including a couple topics in cell biology in a physics course, it just doesn't make sense.  And for that reason our math teachers have usually skipped those standards in the past.

In order to raise test scores, though, since these standards are identified as super-dooper-important standards, our integrated math teachers have decided that they need to teach these standards.  Today during my Financial Math class, one of those teachers popped his head into my class and asked, "What's the probability of getting a royal flush?  I answered, "Being dealt one?  One in 649,740."  He paused a moment and then asked, "Is that the same as 4 out of 52-C-5?"  (52C5 is a shorthand for the number of unique groups of 52 objects taken 5 at a time.)  I answered, "Yes, and it simplifies to 1 out of 649,740."  He said thanks and closed the door.

My students were looking at me, seemingly flabbergasted.  How could I know that, they asked, off the top of my head?

They don't need to know the actual reason.  It's enough that impressed them with my math knowledge.

California Teacher Pay, Working and Retired

Let's start with working:

There’s a bill with bipartisan support to increase teacher pay by 50% by 2030.

The author of the bill, California Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, says teachers are paid significantly less than college graduates in other fields. It’s getting more difficult to convince people to enter into teaching if they can’t afford to live on it. 

Pay is only part of the problem.  You couldn't pay me enough to work another year past 2027.

The state is facing a projected $22.5 billion deficit. So even if this does have strong bipartisan support, there are going to have to be some tough decisions made in the capitol.

This article is dated yesterday.  I have been given to believe that the bill has been amended from completing the pay raise by 2030 to starting in 2030.  To be determined...

Now let's go to retired, which I hope to be in 49 months and a few days:

If you think that CalSTRS, the behemoth pension system that supports California’s retired teachers, is focused on pensions, you are wrong. The largest teacher-focused pension system in the country is abandoning its core fiduciary role to chase left-wing political goals. Its mission creep will hurt teachers, taxpayers and students alike.

In April, CalSTRS issued an extraordinary press release stating their priorities for the companies they invest in, including corporate greenhouse gas disclosures. CalSTRS is interested in achieving a “net zero” emissions portfolio. Of course, CalSTRS is also interested in corporate diversity, and states: “CalSTRS will vote against an entire board of directors that does not include at least one woman and against a board’s nominating and governance committee if at least 30 percent of its board members are not women. Furthermore, CalSTRS will vote against the nominating and governance committees of Russell 3000 companies that do not disclose their board members’ diversity characteristics"...

[T]he problem with CalSTRS lifting its leftist political banner above all others is that the organization has an actual role, which is fiduciary. Its job isn’t to be in the political vanguard but to caretake and grow its investments to meet its payout obligations.

CalSTRS pension payments are funded by payments from the state, from teachers and school districts. If investment gains fall short, contributions need to increase.

It would be just my luck that CalSTRS won't be able to meet it's obligations to me just when I need them to.  And soon enough they'll have to come up with 50% more....

All Your Children Are Belong To Us

Seems like schools only want parental involvement when it involves fundraising, volunteering, or being a teacher's "secret pal" for gifts.  Certainly don't want those parents to know what's going on with their kids!

The teachers claim they were mandated under the K-8 school district's policies to accept a child's transgender or gender diverse identity without hesitation and to hide it from families. They said they were instructed to use students' preferred names and pronouns in school, but to revert to their biological pronouns and given names when speaking with their parents.

When encountering "a suspicious parent," teachers were instructed to reply that they were allowed only to discuss "information regarding the student’s behavior as it relates to school, class rules, assignments, etc.," according to the suit.

I hope these teachers win their case, but I'm not holding out much hope here in the Democratik Peoples Republik of Kalifornia.

A Grown-up Conversation

After school today my department chair came to ask me if I'd be interested in teaching AP Calculus next year.  You might think that after what I wrote here that I wouldn't be interested, and you'd be correct.  However, I'm a team player, and told him that if the department needed me to teach that class, of course I would.

The real problem, though, is that I will retire in 4 1/2 years, at which time we'd need someone else to teach that class.  It would make much more sense, and be a better solution for our school, if someone else, someone who plans to be at the school for a lot longer than I do, were to take that class.

It turns out that both of our AP Calculus teachers are considering retiring in the near future, and they're looking to reduce their workloads a bit (AP courses take a significant amount of preparation and grading time).  Over the course of our discussion we came to the conclusion that it might be better for them to give up those classes now while they're still available to train and mentor newer teachers on how to successfully teach them.

As for me, I should probably finish out my career teaching the 3 courses I currently do--financial math, statistics, and pre-calculus.

I've long talked about retirement, but this was the first time it became a practical matter as opposed to something I get to fantasize about.

Conference

For those of you who are math teachers, do you use Desmos?  Do you know its capabilities?

In an effort for this old dog to learn some new tricks, I attended a conference today to learn how to use more of Desmos than just the graphing calculator.  A Zoom conference.

Teachers from across the country were at this conference, and thus it started at 9am.  Eastern Time.  6am here on the left coast.  I'd brought my work laptop home, and by 5:50 I was trying to get into the Zoom conference.

And I couldn't.

Never did figure out what the problem was, and neither could the conference tech people I called.  Instead, I used my personal Chromebook to access the conference.  A Chromebook, that doesn't have the Zoom software installed, worked fine, but my school laptop, new this school year, couldn't get it to run.  Later I emailed our district techies to see what the issue might be.

It's been a long time since I was the "slow person" in a training, the one asking a lot of questions, but there I was.  I didn't realize how much I didn't know!  I sure learned a lot, though, including that it would take several more detailed trainings even to get a handle on some of the higher power capabilities of that web site.

It was nice being done at noon Pacific Time :-)

We Don't Want Bigots In Positions Of Authority, Do We?

Apparently some do as long as the bigot is an anti-Christian leftie:

An Arizona school board member wearing cat ears during a meeting said she would oppose having a contract with a Christian university over the religious and Biblical beliefs they espouse, Fox News Digital found. 

The Washington Elementary School District, which serves students in the Phoenix and Glendale areas, had an ongoing contract with Arizona Christian University for five years, enabling their student teachers to be placed in its schools for field experience. The contract opened up opportunities for recruitment and hiring. 

On Feb. 23, the board agreed on a motion to dissolve the partnership with the Christian university. 

Fox News Digital asked the shool board whether they had a bias against Christian beliefs, and they said, "The board’s decision to discontinue its partnership with Arizona Christian University was based on the board’s commitment to create a safe place for our LGBTQ+ students, staff, and community. This includes not knowingly entering into partnerships with any organization that explicitly discriminates against protected classes covered by our nondiscrimination policies."

During the meeting, school board member Tamillia Valenzuela blasted the university over its Christian beliefs and said she was "disheartened" to learn about the contract that had been ongoing for five years.  

Valenzuela describes herself as "a bilingual, disabled, neurodivergent Queer Black Latina… who loves a good hot wing (but only with the right ranch) and things that sparkle."

Definitely the kind of person I want in charge....

The Teacher With The Big Boobs

Just two weeks ago I wrote about the teacher in Canada who wears z-cup fake boobs to school.  It turns out, though, that he doesn't wear his bazongas all the time, and because of this his school district has put him on paid leave:

Canada’s fake Z-cup boobs-wearing trans teacher has been put on leave for not wearing his fake boobs enough. This is a real news story. It also might be the most 21st Century scam of … well, of the 21st Century. Bear with me here as we plunge deep into the details of this stand-out story.

Shop teacher Kerry “Kayla” Lemieux, according to the Daily Mail, has “finally been suspended from her Canadian school after pictures showed her in men’s clothing, proving she does not wear the provocative attire all the time.” He gained infamy last year for wearing tight clothes and comically — some would say offensively — large fake breasts, complete with protruding nipples.

There's a pic at the link. 

Here's how I see it.  You can't on one breast hand say it's ok for a guy to wear prosthetics and dress as a woman, and yet on the other hand say he doesn't do it enough so that it's no longer ok.  Is there a requirement for how many hours a day a man has to dress as a woman before he's considered a woman?  And who are you to say that 10 hours isn't enough but 12 hours is?

This is the problem lefties always get into.  Their silliness requires twisting logic into pretzels when someone goes "too far", however that's defined.  Can't a non-binary person be a guy today and a gal tomorrow?  And if so, why can't someone be one "gender" at work and another at home?

This weird dude who wants to wear watermelon-boobs isn't the problem, he's just a symptom.  The problem is all the soft-headed lefties who will say this relatively abnormal behavior is and should be perfectly fine--until they determine that it isn't. And then they can't give a rational explanation for why their new line is the one that must not be crossed, rather than the line that the vast majority of the people on the planet all pretty much agreed with just a few years ago, before people started confusing their personalities with their gender.

When Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, the song that was supposedly played was The World Turned Upside Down.  It's time again to break out the sheet music for that tune.

Lunch at School

All California students are fed at school:

California Universal Meals is the first of its kind in the country. Since the start of this meal program last year, children no longer need to pay for their lunches using cash, tickets or punching in their student identification. Breakfast and lunch are free at all California schools — no application is required.

 It’s an important step to ensuring children are healthy, fed and ready to learn. 

Research shows that receiving free or reduced school meals “reduces food insecurity, obesity rates, and poor health,” according to the Food Research and Action Center. Providing healthy options to students also has an impact on what students choose to consume, especially when it comes to fruits and vegetables.

You know who can't get a lunch at school?  Me. 

Because students don't have to pay for lunch anymore, there's no mechanism to collect money anymore.  Therefore, staff cannot buy lunch.  And our person in charge of Food Services is adamant about that.

Can you imagine having a cafeteria at your workplace but being told you can't get a lunch there?  And we get only 35 minutes for lunch, so there's not enough time to leave campus to get something.  It's either bring something or go hungry.

It's just another of those small things that add up to a large quantity of disrespect directed from our district royalty towards the employees.

(Coda:  some time maybe I'll post about the rules for students--for example, they are required to take one of everything.  So many fruits and baby carrots end up in the garbage cans....)