All posts tagged "Schools"

This story has been updated with comments from the Department of Homeland Security, received after publication.

One recent weekday, a group of Chicago kindergartners visited their neighborhood high school. It should have been an unremarkable moment — but as the visit was in motion, parents learned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents had been spotted nearby.

Instantly, the community mobilized. Teachers left school and hopped on their bikes. Around 100 volunteer patrollers came out to “protect these kindergarteners … and make sure that they got back safely,” said Lizzie Turner, a parent of a sixth-grader at the Peirce School of International Studies in the Andersonville neighborhood....

Education bosses in Los Angeles voted Tuesday to work towards a complete ban on the use of smartphones in the city’s schools.

The move came as the governor of California, the most populous state in the US, voiced support for restrictions on the devices and as concerns grow about their impact on the mental health of young people.

The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, which manages the second biggest school district in the country, ordered staff to devise a plan to prohibit cell phones and social media throughout the school day....

Conservative group Moms for Liberty is reportedly struggling, and a good example of that was a recent school board meeting about a potential book ban, according to CNN.

Moms for Liberty saw a lot of early successes, but there is growing "pushback" about the group's conservative education agenda, according to the outlet's news report. This is reportedly occurring even on the group's home turf.

"In Florida, where the right-wing Moms for Liberty group was born in response to Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates, the first Brevard County School Board meeting of the new year considered whether two bestselling novels – 'The Kite Runner' and 'Slaughterhouse-Five' – should be banned from schools," according to the Saturday report. "A lone Moms for Liberty supporter sat by herself at the January 23 meeting, where opponents of the book ban outnumbered her."...

Thousands of Houston ISD students have lost a teacher already this school year as the district experiences a spike in educator resignations.

About twice as many teachers left HISD in the first six weeks of school this year than has been typical in recent years, according to data obtained by the Houston Landing through a public records request.

The records show 170 teachers resigned during the first six weeks this school year, while an average of 84 left during the same time span from 2019 to 2022. As Texas’ largest district, HISD employs roughly 13,000 teachers, meaning the early-year resignations account for about 1 percent of HISD’s classroom instructors. ...