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Katy Grimes

Attn Parents: CA Democrats Have Replaced Educational Curricula With Perversion

California lawmakers are not only bulldozing classic liberal education, they are legislating more LGBT lifestyle and pornographic perversion in education curricula. At the same time, they are also trying to outlaw homeschooling, removing all doubt that the left is indoctrinating your kids, and using them as revolting sociological experiments.

Friday April 27 is the annual GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) pro-homosexual “Day of Silence,” celebrated on K-12 public school campuses across the country. I remember my introduction to this agenda when my son’s high school celebrated it without first notifying parents, and… Read More

Katy Grimes

Oust California Teacher and Councilman Who Called Military ‘Dumbsh*ts’

I’m just a Navy mom of a United States Naval Academy graduatewho is currently a Navy special ops officer, and has had two long Middle East deployments. I wasn’t going to weigh in on the liberal California councilman and public school teacher who told his students “military Are ‘dumbsh*ts” and “lowest of our low.” That is, until I read that the school district officials of Gregory Salcido, El Rancho High School history teacher and a current member of thePico Rivera City Council, were covering for him, even after he said when speaking about our military, “They’re the frickin’ lowest of our low,” in one of three videos that surfaced last week.

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Edward Ring

The CTA Empire Strikes Back

Emperor Palpatine: There is a great disturbance in the Force. Darth Vader: I have felt it. Emperor Palpatine: We have a new enemy, the young Rebel… Darth Vader: How is that possible? Emperor Palpatine: Search your feelings, Lord Vader. You know it to be true. He could destroy us.The Force is strong with him. – Quote (edited for brevity) fromStar Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, 1980

There are indeed great disturbances in the force. There are indeed challenges to the imperial monopoly that, for nearly 40 years, has eroded the quality and escalated the costs for California’s system of public K-12 education. And the imperial stormtroopers who enforce their educational edicts on California’s state legislature, its thousands of public school boards, and by extension, millions of parents and children, are all part of an evil empire called the California Teachers Association, or CTA. In plain English, the teachers union.

A comprehensive summary of just how harmful… Read More

Katy Grimes

Schools Superintendent Horse Race Provides Stark Contrasts

Only ten months ago, I wrote a story about the California Schools chief who at that time announced he wanted to extend Proposition 30’s “temporary” taxes. Only one year into Proposition 30’s five-year life, Democratic State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson called for an extension ofthe 2012 ballot initiative.

Set to expire in 2018, Prop. 30 was sold to voters as a temporary tax.

Today, Torlakson has many Democrats lined up with him, pushing for the tax extension, essentially lying to the public.

The 2013 Brown budget plan blamed “economic uncertainty” as the result of “global economic developments that tempered investment” and “Hurricane Sandy.”

“’We need to renew Prop. 30,’ Torlakson, the state Superintendent of Public Instruction, said at a coffee meeting with local PTA leaders in a Sacramento home,” theSacramento Beereported in January.

TorlaksonRead More

Katy Grimes

CA teacher tenure ploy ruled unconstitutional: students win big

A landmark ruling Tuesday by Los Angeles County Superior Court JudgeRolf M. Treu found the two-year teacher tenure rule in California, unconstitutional.

The plaintiffs in the Vergara vs. the State of California case, nine California public school children,argued they were directly harmed and deprived of a quality of education by the state statute that forces schools and districts to pink-slip good teachers, and retain ineffective teachers, because of tenure.

But most telling in Treu’s ruling was his outing of the teacher tenure rules — a practice which could only be describes as “stacking the deck.”

Treu found that new… Read More

Katy Grimes

‘Jailed’ teachers protected by union; other teachers vote to decertify CTA

November and December proved interesting times for teachers and their unions as the calendar marched toward 2014. While some unions are protecting teachers accused of abusing children, other teacher groups voted to decertify their union.

In the first major development, theLos Angeles School Report, an online reform news site, highlighted theNational Day of Actionsponsored by the teachers unions. On that day, theAmerican Federation of Teachersnationally emphasized “The Principles that Unite Us.” The AFT’s California affiliate is the California Federation of Teachers, the state’s second largest teachers union.

The… Read More

Edward Ring

Opt-out campaigns log incremental gains, but two court cases could change the rules

Whenever anyone suggests that public sector unions are forcing their members to make political contributions, the unions retort that the contributions are strictly voluntary. Technically speaking, this is true, but the tedious process of opting out of making political contributions is a powerful deterrent.

The California Teachers Association, for example, allow their members to become “agency fee payers,” which means they no longer belong to the CTA, do not have to make political contributions, and merely need to pay their “fair share” of the collecting bargaining expenses from which they still presumably benefit. But even if a CTA member has served written notice and been given agency fee payer status, they still will have 100% of the regular union dues withheld from their paycheck as full members; about $1,200 per year. They then have to request, in writing, between Sept. 1st and Nov. 15thevery year, that the CTA issue them a check for the portion of their dues that was used for political spending.

This amounts to a rigged system that ensures that very few CTA members bother to opt-out, and even fewer manage to consistently… Read More

Edward Ring

Why Did the California State GOP Accept Donations from Public Sector Unions?

As reported in the Sacramento Bee on Sept. 26 “Teachers union, SEIU open wallets to California Republican Party,” in recent weeks the California Teachers Association donated the California GOP $15,000, the SEIU Local 1000 donated $10,000, and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association donated another $25,000. Representatives of all three of these powerful public sector unions were present at the GOP convention in Anaheim last weekend.

As a proportion of total GOP fundraising in California in 2013, $50,000 is small potatoes. Under the leadership of their new chairman Jim Brulte, theCalifornia GOP has raised over $3.0 million so far in 2013, enough to pay off their debts and put them onto viable financial footing. As a proportion of total public sector union political spending in California, $50,000 is even smaller potatoes. Just the CTA, with 325,000 members who on average pay over $1,000 per year in dues – about 30% of which is used for political activities – spends around $100 million per year to… Read More

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