Musings, opinions, observations, questions, and random thoughts on island life, Fernandina Beach and more

Musings, opinions, observations, questions, and random thoughts on island life, Fernandina Beach and more

Florida Leads U.S. In Movement To Take Back Public Schools; Nassau School Board Sued For Access To Student Curricula

Left-wing indoctrinators have infested all levels of academia across the country, from Maine to Florida and California to Texas, not just the recently exposed Ivy League institutions of Harvard, Penn, and MIT.

Local school boards around the country have been contaminated by “gender affirming” radicals who attempt to isolate parents from their children while universities have been taken over by faculty and administrators preaching political correctness instead of teaching.

As leftist teachers are coaching students to hate themselves, their country, and sexualizing youngsters, the FBI even joined in labelling alarmed and angry parents “domestic terrorists.”  The school’s progressive faculties have made it abundantly clear that they have no interest in engaging or exploring ideas that differ from their own.

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Nassau County Is Not Immune: Late Thursday evening, February 8, I was informed that the Nassau County School District was served with a law suit by the Nassau County chapter of the County Citizens Defending Freedom (CCDF) organization to gain access to what it claims is public information.

“This suit is about getting access to curricula that is being placed before Nassau County school children for behavioral health needs,” said Jack Knocke, Executive Director of the Nassau County CCDF chapter.

Knocke said: “The ‘programming’ , a series of over 400 videos provided by the defendants, offers modules on many controversial topics. Florida law requires disclosure of this content; something the defendants have refused to provide since August 2022. It is unfortunate that now precious taxpayer funds must be expended to obtain compliance with basic legal requirements over material that contains very controversial subjects. ”

According the lawsuit material that I saw the titles for some of these video modules range from “Masturbation” and “Motivating” to “Transgender Trauma” and “Tolerance”. Why has the school district fought to refuse to release this information that will be shown to the children of country residents?

It’ll be interesting to hear how a traditionally tight-lipped Nassau School District Superintendent Kathy Burns responds particularly as rumbling continues over her  jumbled communications surrounding the pricey one mill school tax increase and her bid for reelection. Rumors swirl over who her opponents may be.

More on this local late breaking story when I receive additional information.

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Antisemitic Mobs Prowl Campuses: It’s not just the classrooms that are being contaminated. Antisemitic mobs are currently freely roaming U.S. college campuses openly threatening, intimidating, harassing, and viciously assaulting Jewish students. These deliberate acts of actual violence and threats are not being addressed. Instead the phony educators warn against “microaggressions” or “inadvertent slights” or thoughts that might distress other students.

The corrosion starts as early as kindergarten and continues through to the highest levels of  the educational system.

The Center Square, reported this month how a failing California school’s test scores continued dropping after spending $250,000 on a program called “Woke Kindergarten,” which deployed anti-police, anti-capitalism, and anti-Israel messages to advance “abolitionist early education and pro-black and queer and trans liberation.”

The Woke Kindergarten teacher training and curriculum program, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, was available to all of Glassbook Elementary’s 474 students, who most recently fell to new lows of grade-level math and English proficiency at 4% and 12% respectively.

Woke Kindergarten founder Akiea “Ki” Gross recently said on TikTok: “I believe Israel has no right to exist. I believe the United States has no right to exist. I believe every settler colony who has committed genocide against native peoples has no right to exist.”

Barrage of Academic Garbage

Primary schools’ report card.

Once these brainwashed kindergarten kids make it to high school the barrage of academic garbage continues. A Connecticut high school in Ridgefield, CT along with elected state officials publicly demonstrated to its students and their tax paying parents why they should immediately scramble to abandon public education and embrace private and charter schools.

Without explanation, school administrators, who obviously skipped biology classes, recently installed a tampon dispenser in a boys’ bathroom that was mandated by equally clueless Democrat state officials who passed a law declaring: “Every school must provide free menstrual products in women’s restrooms, all-gender restrooms, and at least one men’s bathroom.”

The students, exhibiting how much more knowledgeable they are about biological anatomy than school and state officials, ripped the dispenser off the wall just 20 minutes after it was installed. The principal, striving to become that state’s Deylan Mulvaney of woke primary education, was enraged.

Instead of awarding the boys an “A”  for extra credit the school’s principal labeled the action “disgusting” and an “egregious instance of vandalism and destruction of property” in an email he sent out with a subject line that read “I am feeling ‘dis-’ right now.” How does he think the young fellows that spotted the tampon dispenser felt?

The biologically challenged nitwits that run that state and school system, might want to ponder the fact that of today’s world population of 8,030,610,062, women gave birth to 8,030,610,062. Men gave birth to 0.

Exclusionary Programs

“…and this explains why heterosexuals are privileged.”

At a high school in Illinois a parental rights organization filed a civil rights complaint a week ago against a high school for allegedly offering programs and activities exclusively for black and Hispanic students excluding whites and Asians.

Parents Defending Education (PDE) brought the complaint against Illinois Math and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois. It says school emails obtained by PDE indicate that BHSC’s annual retreat is racially discriminatory toward individuals who aren’t black or Hispanic.

In another example of the prioritizing of left-wing activism over education in the nation’s institutions of higher learning, Houston’s Rice University is being  ridiculed over a course that takes DEI idiocy to new absurdity levels. The course, which is called “Afrochemistry: The Study of Black-Life Matter,” claims to address “inequities in chemistry and chemical education” and doesn’t conclude with a final exam. Why? Is a final in this course considered racist?

Hopping on the educational nuttiness bandwagon is Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, whose Chief Diversity Officer wrote “Privilege is a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group. Privilege operates on personal, interpersonal, cultural, and institutional levels, and it provides advantages and favors to members of dominant groups at the expense of members of other groups.”  

The Maryland-based hospital identified white people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males, Christians, middle or owning-class people, middle-aged people and English-speaking people as being privileged.

Wait! What? Heterosexuals? Think about that.

An Ivy League Backtrack

In stark contrast to other Ivy League institutions Dartmouth College recently backtracked and said it will restore its SAT requirement for admissions beginning with the Class of 2029, making it the first Ivy League university to reinstate the testing requirement after doing away with it after Covid.

Dartmouth president Sian Beilock wrote that the decision to reimplement the standardized test was made in response to a faculty study which found that “standardized test scores are an important predictor of a student’s success in Dartmouth’s curriculum” regardless of a “student’s background or family income.”

They didn’t need a study to figure that out. The racialists started complaining that the test was racist and discriminatory because blacks on average did poorly on it. Black scholar, author and economist Tom Sowell agrees that the tests discriminate. He says they discriminate against people who after years in school still don’t know anything.

Florida Takes The Lead

“Welcome home Governor!”

Florida governed by a clear-headed Ron DeSantis, who abandoned his presidential campaign, is picking up where he left off much to the relief of state residents.

The governor’s influence is forewarning schools, parents, and students to remain alert to progressive academic malfeasance.

A discerning young Fernandina Beach freshman student enrolled at Florida State College at Jacksonville took the governor’s advice to heart, demonstrating how much more perceptive she is than the far left indoctrinators that staff that institution anticipated.

She pointed out to her family, friends, and local media the irrational nonsense the college was inflicting upon unsuspecting impressionable neophyte students in a required course called “Strategies for the Pursuit of Knowledge” that promotes sexual reassignment or transgenderism as normal.

In a January 20 Wall Street Journal piece James Taranto said Florida is  “…a state whose governor and Legislature have declared war on identity politics pointing out there are no racial preferences in college admissions.” He added that the University of Florida is “ideally positioned to become the Harvard of the Unwoke.”

Sarasota’s New College recently voted to abolish its gender studies concentration, fired its president, and suspended the college’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices.

It’s looking a lot sunnier on campuses in the sunshine state.

(An abridged version of this column appeared nationally It’s time to take the schools back (bizpacreview.com) in Biz Pac Review)

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Fernandina’s Planned Spending Spree Questioned:  In a letter to all members of the Fernandina Beach City Commission Jerry Decker, former Fernandina Marine Advisory Board Chairman asked them to answer the following questions about their “visionary plan” to borrow $25 million.

  • “Why are you pushing this seawall folly now?
  • Spending $20+ million for a sunset viewing walkway? Seems a bit pricey.
  • Doing the RR’s work for them? Ever wonder why the tracks are where they are?
  • Helping Rayonier? Flood protection from their north?
  • Why are taxpayers asked to provide flood protection for a privately owned new restaurant.

Decker concluded saying, “I’m waiting for a sensible and coherent explanation for this extravagance. One has to wonder who is really behind this?”

Dr. Decker, who earned a PhD in mathematics at the University of Chicago, tells the commissioners: “Come on—do the job you were elected to do.”

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Reality Check: During a visit to London last October former Bud Light endorser Dylan Mulvaney complained saying: “Some people don’t see me as a woman at all.”  Maybe that’s because he isn’t a woman at all.

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A Perfect Match: It appears that the far left U.S. groups and the extreme Islam ones nationwide have a lot in common. Both hate Jews, Christians, the U.S., Western culture, and capitalism. And both groups are intolerant of ideas with which they disagree.

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Home Insurance Rates: Amelia Island home owners with houses in a flood zone have seen their insurance premiums jump significantly recently. According to the New York-based Information Institute the rate bump is due to the last few hurricanes in the state, even though none of them hit the island. Since 2019 some premiums are averaging $6,000 annually. The high cost accounts for slower sales of homes particularly those in flood zones.

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What About Customer Wealth?  A Monday February 5 front page Wall Street Journal article  headlined “Citigroup Scrambles To Attract Ultrarich” detailed how Citi recruited Bank of America’s Andy Sieg to shore up its global wealth management group. The lengthy article explained how Sieg intends to cut jobs, trim management ranks, eliminate various services, layoff staffers, cut expenses and attract more rich clients to improve its sagging financials.

I found it odd that nowhere in the article did it mentioned programs and services the company was proposing to help its current and future customers improve their finances, which I assume if the purpose of the firm’s Wealth Management function.

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How To Leave Iran Whimpering: Under an impotent Joe Biden the U.S. military is tasked with blowing up empty tents in the desert and scaring camels. To broadcast American strength the wimps in the Biden administration should immediately sink the Iranian radar surveillance ships aiding the Houthis in Yemen, blow up a few Iranian oil refineries, pick off some of their drilling rigs, and take out some of the cowardly Hamas butchers cowering in Tehran and Qatar. Then tell Iran that their remaining oil refineries and rigs are next along with the rest of their navy, then follow through if they dare retaliate. Make Iran a testing ground for the U.S. military’s capabilities and latest weaponry, displaying to the rest of the world what it would face if it confronted the U.S.

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“Find that guy who didn’t vote for MAGA chili.”

Chili Cookoff Saturday, Feb. 10:  The 14th Annual Montessori School Chili Cookoff will be held Saturday, February 10 in downtown Fernandina Beach with tasting from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Live music, children’s activities and gift booths will be available. You can save a lot of time and eliminate any gastro-intestinal issues by first voting for the MAGA (Make Amelia Gassy Again) chili put together with great care and a rash of secret ingredients at the booth in front PJD’s Beer & Wine Garden then leisurely strolling around the event. Simply drop you token in the red or blue containers Pajamadave and I have provided at our booth for your voting convenience.

  • Comment (22)
  • Penn State is not in the Ivy League. The correct school to be named is the University of Pennsylvania.

  • Who’s running our country ? After watching Biden’s odd presser where he celebrated not getting arrested for taking home classified material, he self-flagellated himself proving he’s addled, bewildered, and confused. So who is actually running the country ? It ain’t sleepy Joe.

    • Meanwhile in Washington and per the House GOP, “A man who can’t even be held responsible for mishandling classified information properly has absolutely no business occupying the Oval Office.” And they ain’t talking about Biden!

      • Give it a rest Fred. Everyone knows that Biden is incompetent and shouldn’t be trusted with government documents, much less running this country. If he were competent, as his supporters say, let’s see the videos or transcripts that show that. Even John Stewart is shaming that addled ol’ man in the WH.

        • Doesn’t matter because Kamila is poised to step right in whenever needed! More to the point, divert the topic away from Trump’s own lack of competency all you want. He is headed to jail anyways

          • “Kamila is poised to step right in”? That is so laughable it doesn’t even deserve a response.

    • I liked the geography lesson…..Mexico borders Gaza? I think our governor is going to be proved correct when he predicted Gavin would be pressed into the race before the election. That press conference may sink “Walter” the puppet.

    • Well, it did highlight his being against Obama’s sending more troops to Afghanistan. On the other hand, it also highlighted Obama’s view of Biden’s ability to screw (sic.) things up.

      Love the talking points he had though. He says he did not violate the law. Not exactly Joe, they said you did willfully violate the law but were not being referred for prosecution because you are a mental midget.
      (paraphrase). Then again, I guess it all comes down to what the word (not) means.

      So Harry in furtherance of your question, who exactly is running this country? This guy is obviously not.

  • I’ve lost count of how many establishments I’ve patronized where the single room bathrooms were unisex. Never once did I lose my mind over the sight of a tampon dispenser. Can you imagine how nice it was to finish my business without being triggered by a feminine hygiene product? Maybe kids out to focus on the privilege of getting an education and the adults in the room shouldn’t be applauding their vandalism.

    • Were you unable to understand that the tampon dispenser that was ripped down was in a BOYS bathroom? You are untriggered by a tampon machine in a unisex bathroom (Along with everyone else), but triggered by normal people that find having a tampon machine in a boys bathroom bizarre and just plain stupid.

      • Spot on – why are we putting tampon dispensers in the MEN’s room ? Answer – liberal woke insanity.

        • Saw you on JAX Beach the other day. Was that a surfboard leash or a tampon string hanging out of your board shorts?

  • Boys bathroom… unisex bathroom. Both are places where I perform nature’s calling. The fact that you place unique identities on both is a product of your perception and not their function. You allow perceptions to negatively affect your emotions. I.e., it’s all in your head. I choose a happier path.

    • It’s not that complicated Coley. Boys don’t have menstrual cycles and therefore do not need or want a tampon dispenser in their bathroom. It is not a UNIsex bathroom, it is a boy’s restroom. What’s so hard for you to understand? You chose a dumber path…

      • I agree Fred. I have no need for a tampon when I use the bathroom. Nor do I care how Bud Light markets their beer. I also have no interest in LGBTIQA+ choices and lifestyles. These are just a few examples of fake crises invented by the conservative right to be consumed by willing lemmings in order to distract them from the rot that has infested the Republican party. You’re free to get twisted over tampons. I’m free to laugh at those who think it’s an issue worth anyone’s time. As much as I’m disgusted by the Orange Clown running for president, if I saw a poster of him in the men’s room I would simply adjust my aim and then walk away giggling. Joe Manchin FOR President!

        • And who’s policies do you think enacted these ridiculous distractions? Nevermind, you would never admit to your party’s asinine BS, only the reaction from those that oppose them.

    • Why did you omit Women’s Room in your odd statement? Do you have something against women? Whatever those are.

      • Odd? That’s an odd statement. Why would I mention women’s bathrooms if I don’t go in them? Seems the point I was making took flight over your head. But hey, I’ll play anyway. Do you think women get upset by a condom dispenser in their bathroom?

  • y’all should go easy on Bud Light. Pres. Trump has given the green light to given them a second chance. Its good stuff too.

  • Only the United States of America is powerful enough and stable enough
    to be lead by a well meaning senile old man–America is Great, no Again about it.

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