Category: Children and Families
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How are Virginians Preparing for the Coming Food Price Shocks?
by James C. Sherlock Virginians have only begun to experience price inflation at the grocery store. Price increases are in the food pipeline that will be a much bigger problem starting this summer. Farmers and ranchers invest up front. They borrow money to do it. They are incredibly efficient at what they do, but are…
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“The Kids Are Out of Control”
Here’s more evidence that the social fabric is fraying: a high school senior was stabbed to death in a fight that spilled into an Alexandria neighborhood shopping center a couple of days ago. Just as Americans seem powerless to stop tragedies like the Uvalde school shooting, we seem impotent to halt the far more…
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Relentless Promotion of Transsexuality in Children – Fairfax County School Board Edition
by James C. Sherlock Family Life Education – Board of Education Guidelines and Standards of Learning for Virginia Public Schools, updated in 2020 by a famously progressive Virginia Board of Education, requires: A plan for teaching sensitive content in gender-separated classes shall be announced publicly. Current Fairfax County School Board Regulation 3204.9 Effective 09/15/2020 requires both elementary…
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Charter School Lessons for the Youngkin Administration from the New York Times
by James C. Sherlock Probably surprising to many of my readers, one of the newspapers to which I subscribe is The New York Times. Another is The Washington Post. Of the two, the Times demonstrates far more balance in its reporting. Not opinion – reporting. Times education writers, direct witnesses to the astonishing achievements of…
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Bad News For Deadbeat Dads: Virginia’s Coming For You
by Kerry Dougherty One of the first things Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares did after arriving in Richmond was meet with various departments in the AG’s office. “I asked, ‘Do you have all of the tools to do your job with excellence?” Miyares recalled Wednesday morning on the “Kerry and Mike” morning radio show on…
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School Daze
by Jim McCarthy Governor Glenn Youngkin had an opportunity to withdraw his big-footed amendment to a bill that would have moved the election date of the Loudoun County School Board from 2022 to 2023 and vacate the nine board seats for a new election. The original bill sought only to stagger the terms of five…
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No, Joe, They’re Not Your Kids
by Kerry Dougherty Let’s try this again, for those eating paste in the back of the class: Children belong to their parents. Parents don’t surrender their rights to the people paid to educate their offspring when they drop their kids off at school. Parents want to know what’s being taught in the classroom and they…
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Richmond Parents and Taxpayers, Welcome to Chicago Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock The gulf between what the City of Richmond School Board (RSB) and the Richmond City Council (RCC) on what will be negotiated with their public unions is actually an ocean. The RSB has authorized the negotiation of virtually everything about how the schools are run. It leaves nothing off the table…
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Governing by Edict
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Although the issue of school mask mandates is now behind us, it is instructive to examine the legal arguments advanced by Attorney General Jason Miyares in a court case seeking to overturn the mask mandates instituted by the Loudoun County School Board (“school board”). Not only does Miyares advocate judicial activism and…
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New York Governor Removes Mask Requirement for School Kids – Virginia Mask Advocates Confused
by James C. Sherlock Headline: “New York City says it will end the school mask mandate and indoor vaccination requirements.” And “New York indoor school mask mandate to be lifted this week.” Progressive Virginians have been stabbed in the back. Et tu, New York? So, imagine you have filed a law suit against Governor Youngkin…
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School Threat Assessment Teams Revisited
by James C. Sherlock I wrote on February 12 of this year about what I consider an indicator of a potential overreach by the Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS). FCPS security has published an RFP for corporate support for web search to support its threat assessment team. Since that article, I have conducted extensive email…
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Everybody Wins – Nurse Practitioners for Underserved Communities
by James C. Sherlock The University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing has instituted a terrific program thanks to a wealthy alum who gave $125 million to recruit and train nurse practitioners to practice in underserved communities. The Leonard A. Louder Community Care Nurse Practitioner Fellows program will be tuition-free and students who still need help…
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Virginia ACLU Sues to Keep Schoolchildren in Masks – Forever
by James C. Sherlock The ACLU of Virginia is suing under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act in United States District Court in Charlottesville to keep all Virginia school children in masks. Potentially forever. The lawsuit contends that Governor Youngkin, with his EO making masks optional, “has effectively barred…
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The National Association of School Psychologists is Going to Get Its Members Fired
by James C. Sherlock I had dinner with George Will once years ago aboard ship. He is very smart, uncannily observant, understatedly amusing and a terrific dinner guest. He published yesterday in The Washington Post a column, “Witness how progressives in government forfeit the public’s trust.” The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) has proven…
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School Discipline – a Big Debate with Big Consequences for Education
by James C. Sherlock Learning can only happen in an appropriate learning environment. How to establish and maintain that learning environment is one of the most consequential debates in public education. In a lot of schools in Virginia, what we are doing now is not working. Laura Meckler, writing in The Washington Post about a…