Category Archives: Children and families

Assault and Battery in Schools – Virginia Law and School Division Policies Make “Marks” of Principals

Posted on April 15, 2023 by | 10 comments

by James C. Sherlock

This is addressed directly to Virginia public school principals.

You are compliant with current Virginia law whether you report assault and battery to police or do not.

Bad law makes for bad policy.

Depending upon your school division, your requirements may vary. A lot.

In gambling, and this issue is a big gamble for you, if you don’t know who the mark is, it is you.

The current law on reporting of assault and battery to police reflects a poorly conceived and poorly written attempt by Virginia Democrats in 2020 to break what they called the “school-to-prison pipeline.” They made reporting to police conditional upon on-scene medical and legal findings – by you.

The Board of Education has done nothing to improve the matter. School divisions are all over the spectrum on what to do about reporting. You cannot carry out either the law or many of the school division policies without personal jeopardy. Continue reading →

10 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Civil Rights, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Discipline and disorder, Education (K-12), General Assembly, Government workers and pensions, Law enforcement, Scandals, Unions

School Bullying and Victimization Data: Just the Facts

Posted on April 14, 2023 by | 15 comments

by Dr. Kathleen Smith

Earlier this week on Bacon’s Rebellion, James Bacon posted “The Fruit of School Disciplinary ‘Reform.’” Regarding the matter of bullying, I am adding a few additional statistics from the Youth and Juvenile Justice System 2022 National Report from the National Center for Juvenile Justice.

The abstract embedded in the report includes the following:

The report draws on reliable data and relevant research to provide a comprehensive and insightful view of youth victims and offending by youth, and what happens to them when they enter the juvenile justice system.

It offers empirically based answers to frequently asked questions about the nature of youth victimization and offending, and the justice system’s response.
Continue reading →

15 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Discipline and disorder, Education (K-12), Public safety & health, Uncategorized

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Changes to the Virginia Law Requiring Schools to Report Incidents to the Police Makes them Far More Dangerous

Posted on April 12, 2023 by | 43 comments

I wrote originally about the 2020 changes to the school incidents reporting law.

I have removed the content of this column in order to reconcile issues with the current reporting law, including 2022 changes, with the Department of Education.

I will repost it when those issues are resolved.

43 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Civil Rights, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Discipline and disorder, Education (K-12), General Assembly

Five Questions: An Interview with Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears

Posted on April 11, 2023 by | 108 comments

by Shaun Kenney

Last week, The Republican Standard had the opportunity to follow Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears as she toured the Richmond Slave Trail — which included not only the site of the notorious Lumpkins Slave Jail but also the site where Gabriel Prosser was executed and presumably buried in 1800.

Winsome Earle-Sears brought a narrative rooted in the role of hope in human liberation, whether it was in her own tradition from Jamaica to the hopelessness that seems to infect so much of our political discourse today. TRS was able to sit down with the Lieutenant Governor in order to explore her thoughts on this topic and many others.

We just toured Lumpkin’s Slave Jail site. Clearly this is a place with a lot of hurt and anguish, but a little bit of courage and heroism. Where do you think that resilience — that hope — comes from given the experiences of the past?

People look at me and think that I have courage, but I don’t. I have no special store of courage more than the next guy, but I have counted the cost and what I say and do comes with consequences.
There are times when people believe that I am not willing to take that stand, but God comes along and tells me to pick up my cross. Many people attribute that to me being a Marine, but it is really not: it is attributable to my Christian Faith.
Continue reading →

108 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Business and Economy, Children and families, Civil Rights, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Education (K-12), Elections, Feminism and women's rights, Freedom, Immigration, Individual liberties, Political Influence, Politics, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

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Gun Owner Whose Son Shot His Teacher Will Get Her Day In Court

Posted on April 11, 2023 by | 69 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Four words came to mind when news broke yesterday that a Newport News grand jury had indicted the mother of a 6-year-old school shooter: what took so long?

It’s been 13 weeks since a FIRST GRADER brought a handgun to school in his backpack and used it to shoot his teacher in front of his classmates.

It’s been 94 days since the 6-year-old sociopath got his hands on his mother’s gun and took it to school.

During the ensuing three months, prosecutors repeatedly said they weren’t sure the owner of the gun would be charged for the near-murder.

That effectively meant no one would be held criminally responsible for the shooting. It’s widely accepted that a 6-year-old cannot be charged with a crime.

Finally, on April 10, a grand jury indicted the gun owner — the mother of the shooter — and charged her with felony child neglect and a misdemeanor count of recklessly storing a firearm so a child could gain access to it.
Continue reading →

69 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Discipline and disorder, Education - Early Childhood, Gun rights, Weapons in Schools

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A Killer Strategy

Posted on March 28, 2023 by | 171 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Democrats in Virginia and nationally plan to ride abortion to victory in elections as far as the eye can see.

The herald of this strategy was a piece in New York Magazine by Rebecca Traister.  It was titled, unsubtly, “Abortion Wins Elections.”

She is probably right, if her positions are presented in a softened way.

She is right if progressives can set the terms of the debate and avoid the hard questions which the press will try feverishly to help them bury.

But I hand it to her. She is straightforward. She advocates boundless abortions. In that she is probably making the wrong bet.

In the progressive vision:

  • There are no fathers, no husbands in the brave new world. Reproductive choice does not apply to men;
  • Babies don’t exist until the moment of birth. Some would like the opportunity to take a look after birth — about which Dr. Northam spoke — before deciding;
  • They insist on tax money — from everyone — paying the bills.

The far right counters the left’s list of demands with its own. No abortions ever, under any circumstances.

I suspect Virginians are unprepared to go to either extreme. But there are questions directly applicable to Virginia politics.

  • Will abortion drive education and parents rights from the front of Virginia voters’ minds?
  • Will killing — sorry — terminating babies prove more important to voters than how the survivors are raised and educated?

In either case, it will be about children.

Who don’t get a vote. Continue reading →

171 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Children and families, Culture wars, Elections, Politics

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Crime in Virginia — the Statistics of Race and their Causes

Posted on March 27, 2023 by | 121 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Crime, especially violent crime, is a constant topic in private conversations and in public politics, and thus here on Bacon’s Rebellion.

Comments on BR crime-related articles turn quickly to race, often without basis in fact.

I will offer below the actual crime statistics by race from 2021, the latest available year, in an attempt to cure that.

Then I will write about the causes.

I will almost certainly be called a racist. Continue reading →

121 Comments

Posted in Budgets, Children and families, Civil Rights, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Education (K-12), Efficiency in government, General Assembly, Governance, Government Oversight, Health Care, Housing, Land use & development, Law enforcement, Mental illness and substance abuse, Parental Rights, Politics, Public corruption, Public safety & health, Race and race relations

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Arlington CPS Seizes Baby Girl Over Tylenol

Posted on March 23, 2023 by | 9 comments

by Asra Q. Nomani and Debra Tisler

Late Wednesday afternoon, in Courtroom 4B of Arlington County’s Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, Sean Jackson beamed widely as a judge granted him and his parents, Carlos Makle and Kim Jackson-Makle, joint custody of Sean’s baby girl, Amoria, instead of relegating her to foster care or instability with a mother struggling with drug addiction.

Kim later said, “Hallelujah,” thinking the nightmare they had been living for over a year with the County’s inept Division of Child Protective Services was finally over. But it was just about to begin all over again. Arlington County’s Child Protective Services was about to dispatch a social worker to an apartment in Arlington to seize Amoria’s second cousin, London, also a cute baby girl, from her mother, Paris Adams.

Why?

Over an alleged missed dosage of Tylenol Wednesday morning that the baby wasn’t even required to get, per doctor’s orders, but was rather prescribed “as needed.” With so much written in the news about public policy, legislation and politics, this story is disturbing because of the sheer inhumanity of bureaucrats operating with complete disregard for actual child welfare or a mother’s heartache.

First, a rewind.
Continue reading →

9 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Courts and law, Demographics, Efficiency in government, Government Oversight, Individual liberties, Parental Rights, Race and race relations, Social services, Uncategorized, Virginia Law

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Public School Climate Lessons Terrorize Virginia’s Children

Posted on March 17, 2023 by | 115 comments

Courtesy of the BBC

by James C. Sherlock

A headline from the home page of Save the Children:

“Climate Change Is a Grave Threat to Children’s Survival.” 

Climate change is thus not a “challenge.” Not a threat to children’s happiness. But rather a threat to their “survival.”

That is what children are being taught in many Virginia public school classrooms. Kids, being sponges, have learned that lesson, and are understandably severely depressed about it.

Parents and the Board of Education, take note. That cannot be allowed to continue.

For years, studies have shown the existence of psychological distress about climate change that has dimensions within feelings, emotions, cognition and behavior. That stress has been demonstrated to disproportionately affect young people.

The largest and most international study of climate anxiety in young people was peer-reviewed and posted in The Lancet in December 2021.

Regardless of one’s personal feelings about climate change, no caring adult would want, as revealed in that study, children feeling “very or extremely worried” (46% of children in the United States) or, worse, negatively affected in their ability to function (26% of children in the United States).

None would want near half or more than half of children reporting feeling “sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless and guilty” and “betrayed” about anything, much less a phenomenon that is measurable as a current event with which we are dealing but arguably is overstated by progressives as a future prospect.

Climate change can, and should, be taught to children. But it must be done without terrorizing them. That cannot be too much to ask.

Scaring children to turn them into political activists is child abuse per se.

It must stop. Continue reading →

115 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Culture wars, Education (K-12), Environment, Governance, Health Care, Mental illness and substance abuse, Parental Rights, Psychology

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Meet Abrar Omeish, Exhibit A in the Woke Army

Posted on March 15, 2023 by | 60 comments

by Asra Q. Nomani

Exclusive: In 2019, Abrar Omeish canvassed for support at a fundraiser for the anti-Semitic group American Muslims for Palestine and said she wanted to change the “narrative” on Palestinians. She was elected to office and launched a tirade against the state of Israel, which she smeared as an “apartheid” nation, repeating the talking points of an anti-Semitic brigade in the Woke Army. Here is the full transcript.

Last month, at Luther Jackson Middle School, parents gasped as a Fairfax County Public Schools board member, Abrar Omeish, stumbled through a clumsy speech and called the historic battle of Iwo Jima “evil,” even though the decisive victory by U.S. Marines led to eventual victory by Allied forces against Japan and Nazi Germany and its leader Adolph Hitler, ending the brutal genocide of Jews in the Holocaust.

In the days after, the remarks sparked a national outcry, even spilling over globally, with Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears, a former U.S. Marine, assailing the remarks and a pair of comedians asking indelicately: “How did this clown get elected to a school board?”

Editor’s note: For Asra’s twitter conversation on the event see here.

I know the answer because I witnessed it happen, and the answer reveals an unholy alliance that I expose in my new book, Woke Army, between the Democratic Party and rigid anti-Israel, anti-Semitic establishment Muslim leaders in the United States. These establishment Muslims include activists, politicians, and academics — from Women’s March co-founder Linda Sarsour to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), University of California at Berkeley academic Hatem Bazian. and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

What is particularly disturbing is that this Woke Army set its sights on K-12 schools and their children. School board member Abrar Omeish is Exhibit A in this dangerous alliance in K-12.

I saw it first-hand one Saturday night on Sept. 7, 2019, documenting the evening in video shared here for the first time.
Continue reading →

60 Comments

Posted in Book review, Children and families, Courts and law, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Education (K-12), Elections, General Assembly, Leadership, Money in politics, Political Influence, Politics, Uncategorized

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Virginia’s Best-Attended School Divisions 2021-22 – It’s Not About Money

Posted on March 13, 2023 by | 45 comments

Overall best attendance among Virginia Public School Divisions 2021-22

by James C. Sherlock

We often, because it is important, concentrate on what is not working in Virginia’s state and local governments. Occasionally it is equally important to congratulate the winners.

In this report I will list Virginia’s best-attended school divisions in 2021-21, both by all students and by sub-groups.

You will be surprised by some of the winners.

These rankings offer crucial measures of school division effectiveness and reflect the efforts and values of students, families and teachers. Continue reading →

45 Comments

Posted in Attendance, Children and families, Demographics, Education (K-12)

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Private Hospitals show Virginia’s State Hospitals, Colleges and Universities the Way to Efficiency

Posted on March 9, 2023 by | 46 comments

Valley Health Winchester Medical Center

by James C. Sherlock

We read far too often about funding “crises” in government institutions and programs.

The general public, me included, would be far more attentive and sometimes supportive if government would follow the lead of private companies and continually right-size itself and emphasize customer-facing services.

The health care industry — or rather the private healthcare industry — consistently shows the way.

Even not-for-profits are not for losses.

Count, if you can, the number of times in your life that a government organization has announced job cutbacks in administration in order to optimize expenditures and provide better service.

Yeah, me neither.

Students at one of my favorite state schools (it is northwest of Richmond and west of Orange County) are protesting that their faculty is underpaid.

The solution to that problem, if indeed the Board of Visitors considers it a problem, writes itself. Continue reading →

46 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Education (higher ed), Government Oversight, Government workers and pensions, Health Care

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Black Students Disappearing from Classrooms Disproportionately in Ten of our Largest School Divisions

Posted on March 8, 2023 by | 173 comments

by James C. Sherlock

For those who support local control of schools no matter what, I will offer you a “what” to consider.

For those who are nervous about even discussing why some jurisdictions in Virginia have failed to ensure “an educational program of high quality is established and continually maintained” for Black children, that works for Black children no matter their circumstances, you are reading the wrong article.

Twenty percent of Virginians are Black, as were 22% of our public school students in 2022.

Virginia lost 4% of its Black public school student registrations in the last three years, compared to 2.6% of all students including Black students. Black chronic absenteeism statewide jumped from 13.1% to over 25%. All student chronic absenteeism including Black students was 20%.

Ten jurisdictions with at least 2,000 Black students at the start of that period lost higher percentages of their Black students than the state average. Some much higher.

Those ten lost 8,668 Black student registrations. The entire state lost 10,674. Chronic absenteeism of black students in those jurisdictions increased in line with statewide increases.

Without even bringing up school quality, this is unacceptable if we care about the futures of Black kids.

We have to get them in school. I say “we” because it will be a long-term disaster for both these children and Virginia if we don’t.

Lots of different things have to be done to get them there, which is where school quality comes in. But I will share some of the raw numbers. Continue reading →

173 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Civil Rights, Education (K-12), General Assembly, Government Oversight, Race and race relations

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Soft-On-Crime Va. Democrats’ Offal Proposal

Posted on March 8, 2023 by | 30 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Oh look. Another garbage bill courtesy of Virginia’s soft-on-crime Democrats!

Want to see what’s coming our way if Dems regain control of the General Assembly and Governor’s Mansion?

Check out SB1080.

Yep, a gaggle of Virginia’s leading lefties pushed a measure that would classify felons younger than 21 as JUVENILES. Virginia law currently calls those criminals older than 18 ADULTS.

Because that’s what they are.
Continue reading →

30 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Elections, General Assembly, Leadership, Politics, Uncategorized

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Dems Block Bill to Maintain Safe and Effective Classrooms

Posted on March 7, 2023 by | 49 comments

by James C. Sherlock

I have written earlier about a Democratic bill in this recent General Assembly with broad Democratic support that did not pass.

Let’s look at another bill that did not pass, this one from a Republican, and with broad Republican support.

Article VIII. Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution requires the General Assembly to “seek to ensure that an educational program of high quality is established and continually maintained.”

This bill, HB 1461, was an attempt to carry out that responsibility.

It required the Department of Education to establish, within its regulations governing student conduct, a uniform system of discipline for disruptive behavior and the removal of a student from a class. The bill included criteria for teachers to remove disruptive students from their classes:

  • It instituted a requirement for a teacher to remove a disruptive student from a class if the disruptive behavior is violent; or
  • If the student persisted in disrupting the class after two warnings.

It added a prohibition against holding a teacher liable for taking reasonable actions or utilizing reasonable methods to control a physically disruptive or violently disruptive student.  Every school board would be required to adhere to these provisions.

That was it.

The “ensuring an educational program of high quality” thing.

Every Democrat in both bodies voted against it. Continue reading →

49 Comments

Posted in Children and families

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