I am really becomeing in favor of this person for governor. I love how he talks about trans kids and how he wants them to feel included in society. He said that because of the risk of suicide and self harm if these children are excluded he won’t do that to them. He is not giving an inch on trans issues. As for advantages or not as Emma and Sam discuss there is a basket ball player so tall that he can stand on his toes and put the ball in the net. Is that an unfair advantage? Hugs
Category: Schools / Schooling / Education / Libraries
My Favorite Sport Has A New Champion
Shrey Parikh wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee, beating Ishaan Gupta in lightning round
WASHINGTON (AP) — Shrey Parikh felt the pressure of arriving at the Scripps National Spelling Bee as a favorite, but his confidence showed every time he got a word he knew. And when it all came down to a lightning-round tiebreaker against Ishaan Gupta, Shrey left no doubt.
Shrey turned a tense, high-quality final into a blowout Thursday night, racing through the 90-second “spell-off” and getting 32 words right to be crowned the best young speller in the English language. Ishaan spelled 25 words correctly in the tiebreaker.
A 14-year-old from Rancho Cucamonga, California, Shrey finished third in 2024 but lost his school bee last year when he was battling a fever. He has dominated the bee circuit since, winning several online competitions against many of the same kids he outlasted this week in the nation’s capital. His winning haul includes a custom trophy and $52,500 in cash.
“Right now I’m probably the happiest I’ve ever been. I’m just so happy and relieved, and just such a flood of emotions,” Shrey said. “At my school bee last year, I was really dejected and just very upset. It didn’t even sink in until the next day. I had a really tough time, but I’m glad I was able to bounce back.”
Eco-News
It was actually some Canadian-made little-kids’s science TV show on The Learning Channel (when it actually was!) that first got me acquainted with Dr. Suzuki, then I read more in a “The Nation” interview. I’m glad he’s still out here kickin’.
David Suzuki Turns 90, Says We’re All Screwed!
Dr. David Takayoshi Suzuki — an author, environmental A-lister and original host of CBC’s long-running documentary series The Nature of Things — marked his 90th spin around the sun at a star-studded gala Friday night in Vancouver. Jane Fonda and Al Gore were among the VIPs who flew in to show the old tree-hugger some love and enjoy performances from Sarah McLachlan, Bruce Cockburn, Snotty Nose Rez Kids, and even a surprise set from Neil Young.
Dr. Suzuki may not be a household name outside of Canada and maybe Japan but he came in a solid fifth place in a big CBC contest back in the early aughts to name the best Canadian ever, ahead of the more problematic Don Cherry and Wayne Gretzky, the only other living finalists to make the top 10.
Imagine if Bill Nye the Science Guy and Sir David Attenborough had a baby and you’re on the right track. The hot ticket event was livestreamed for free but hasn’t yet been uploaded anywhere, presumably to cut down on the footprint from permanent data storage, so we may never know if he had anything interesting to say about attending a lavish celebration of his life’s work when it has widely fallen on deaf ears.
He was pretty blunt when asked about his hopes for the future in a recent interview with Piya Chattopadhyay where he said hunkering down in communities is our best shot at survival now that we’ve reached the point of no return:
For years I was told on The Nature of Things, “you can’t say that, that’s too depressing.” So I’ve been held back from telling the truth. And now, when the science has said “we have passed a tipping point, we cannot go back,” people are going “oh well, what the hell, it’s too late.” It’s true we are now headed for a catastrophic way and it’s unavoidable. The science is telling you that. So do you just throw up your hands? If you have children or grandchildren, you can’t do that. So you have to hunker down and say “it’s coming.” Because when the emergency comes, we don’t know what it will be. Government won’t be able to respond with the speed and the scale that you’re going to need so get your act together. The reality is the science says we’ve come to that point, and so I believe that the unit of survival is going to be your local community.
This is coming from a father of five who watched Justin Trudeau sign the Paris Climate Accords to limit the rise of global temperatures and then turn around to buy a new frickin pipeline two years later. And now the new prime minister has essentially declared war on the environment by tossing regulations aside to fast-track new projects because Donald J. Trump poses a more immediate threat to the country than Mother Nature does.
Mark Carney recently announced plans for a potential new bitumen pipeline from Alberta to somewhere in the Pacific, with construction expected to begin as early as September 2027 if they can find anyone to put build it. “This is Canada working, this is co-operative federalism, this is Canada building,” he told reporters at a press conference with Alberta preem Danielle Smith. “In effect, it creates an energy transition — all aspects of energy — but really sets the stage for an industrial transformation.”
“A Mother Of A Revolution” by Omar Thomas:
Very Bad Behavior At A School Board Meeting
No, it’s not feisty attendees, it’s a Board member, and geez. I really hope he’s prosecuted.
Tennessee student stands up to school board with fiery speech after a member called her ‘hot’
“I believe that you are all cowards.”
By Evan Porter
An April 2 Washington County School Board meeting in Tennessee took an uncomfortable turn after high school student Hannah Campbell finished delivering her remarks. Seated with the board and directly next to the superintendent, Campbell confidently participated in a discussion with members after presenting research she had conducted on other schools.
That’s when the board member seated next to her, Keith Ervin, reached over, put his arm around her, and said, “God, you’re hot, you know that? Where do you go to school at?”
What happened next
The comment is not a baseless allegation. The interaction was caught on video. A few people in the room laughed, Campbell herself quickly brushed off the comment, and the meeting continued as scheduled. Any viewer watching the meeting in person or on YouTube could clearly see what happened.
To many, it was clear that a line had been crossed, and the mood in the room was tense afterward.
The board chair, Annette Buchanan, called an emergency meeting the following week, where members voted to censure Ervin—a public rebuke meant to show that they did not support his comments. But otherwise, as an elected official, Ervin would keep his position on the board.
For his part, Ervin issued a statement apologizing for the incident but insisting that he had not meant any harm.
“I understand why people are reacting the way they are. But that’s not the full conversation, not even close,” he wrote. “When I mentioned she was hot, I meant she was on a roll. It was nothing to do with her appearance.”
The board’s response was not good enough for Campbell, who was also unconvinced by the apology statement.
Student boldly appears at another board meeting to speak up for herself
Campbell refused to shrink or hide. Instead, she returned to a school board meeting on May 7 and confronted not just Ervin, but the entire board, in a courageous four-minute speech.
“I do not forgive you,” she said to Ervin, adding, “The failure to act on the board’s behalf was and is equivalent to his actions, and it has hurt me just as much. To watch the chairperson be so quick to bang her gavel, to control the public, yet not use it once to control her own peer was disgusting … I believe that you are all cowards.”
She sarcastically thanked the board at the end of her speech for showing her that she would do well not to trust adults and authority figures to stand up for her—that she would have to do it herself.
The student’s brave stand earned the support of the community
Campbell was wrong about one thing: There were others in the community who were willing to stand up for her.
One irate father vowed to raise enough money to oust every single board member should they fail to act. “Would you want your kid around that guy without a camera around? I wouldn’t,” he said.
Meanwhile, an online petition calling for Ervin’s removal from the board, along with Superintendent Jerry Boyd’s, has collected nearly 7,000 signatures.
Even more enraging to parents, students, and community members is the fact that Ervin has been accused of inappropriate conduct before. According to WCYB-TV, records show that in 2009, Ervin made a “lewd, juvenile gesture of a sexual nature” in front of students and teachers at a school. He was censured then and barred from school property unless accompanied.
Campbell’s willingness to use her voice may be the difference between a censure and something that makes a real difference for all the students who come before the board after her.
Trump DOJ investigating ‘gender ideology’ in 3 dozen Illinois school districts
Trump DOJ investigating ‘gender ideology’ in 3 dozen Illinois school districts
Feds cite Title IX, recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings as basis for inquiry
Article Summary
- The Trump administration is investigating three dozen Illinois school districts to assess if their curriculums include “gender ideology” — and parental opt-outs — and whether trans students can participate in competitive sports.
- The districts are the latest in a string of public schools, colleges and universities across the country named as subjects of similar federal investigations since President Donald Trump began his second term last year.
- The ACLU of Illinois said the Trump administration is wrongly interpreting both federal and state law.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
Three dozen Illinois school districts are the latest in a string of public schools, colleges and universities across the country named as subjects of federal investigations into whether the institutions teach about sexual orientation and “gender ideology,” and whether parents can opt out of such curriculum.
The inquiry, announced by the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday, will also “assess” whether the 35 school districts around the state, plus Chicago’s largest charter school network, allow transgender students to use single-sex bathrooms or participate in competitive sports.
The DOJ’s notice did not say what prompted the investigation or why the districts — which range from rural schools with extremely small enrollment to one of the largest districts in Illinois — and the agency did not respond to a request for clarification. More than half of the school districts are in the Chicago area, though the list does not include any of the large suburban school districts that have attracted attention in recent years for litigation over trans students’ access to bathrooms and locker rooms.
Open interactive map in new tab
But Thursday’s announcement did point to a June 2025 U.S. Supreme Court decision that requires school districts to allow opt-outs for LGBTQ-related lessons in the classroom, plus a more recent March ruling blocking a California policy that allowed schools to keep a student’s gender transition private from their parents.
“This Department of Justice is determined to put an end to local school authorities keeping parents in the dark about how sexuality and gender ideology are being pushed in classrooms,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in the news release.
Dhillon, who advised Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and rose to prominence as the face of several unsuccessful lawsuits against California’s COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, is the administration’s key lawyer on civil rights issues. As assistant attorney general for civil rights, Dhillon oversees the “Title IX Special Investigations Team” — a joint effort between the DOJ and U.S. Department of Education that was launched last year.
“Supreme Court precedent leaves no doubt: Parents have the fundamental right and primary authority to direct the care, upbringing, and education of their children,” Dhillon said. “This includes exempting their children from ideological instruction that contradicts their values or decisions about their children’s health and best interests.”
In a statement, Gov. JB Pritzker dismissed the inquiry as the Trump administration continuing to “punish states the president does not like,” calling it a “sham investigation.”
“The Civil Rights Division used to investigate actual discrimination concerns to ensure all individuals are treated equally under the law, but they’re now focused on belittling the rights and humanity of LGBTQ+ communities,” he said.
In 2019, Pritzker signed legislation requiring Illinois public schools’ history curriculum “include a study of the roles and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this state,” but Thursday’s news release made no mention of the law.
String of investigations
The DOJ’s announcement is similar to more than a dozen from the Trump administration since the president began his second term last January, most citing Title IX, the sweeping 1972 federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.
One of his first official acts back in power was signing an executive order dubbed “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports,” which threatened to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”
That included school lunch funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as the state of Maine found out in early 2025 after a public spat between the president and Gov. Janet Mills at the White House over the executive order. After the Department of Education launched an investigation into the state’s education agency and subsequently froze the funding, a judge ordered the USDA to unfreeze the funds, and the agency settled the suit.
In recent months, Trump’s DOJ and Department of Education have launched investigations into K-12 school districts and state education authorities in New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington and Maine again.
Inquiries announced last year in states like New York, Oregon and Washington are ongoing, though the administration has claimed it found evidence of violation of Title IX in Kansas and Colorado school districts. The administration has also launched, and in some cases wrapped up, similar assessments of public universities and community colleges.
ACLU of Illinois cites wrong interpretation
Ed Yohnka with the ACLU of Illinois said the Trump administration is wrongly interpreting both federal and state law, which he said are both “clear that students have an ability to play on sports teams and to use private areas consistent with their gender identity.”
Yohnka also said it was ironic that the Trump administration, brought to power by Republicans who generally oppose government overreach, was trying to limit local control of school districts.
“None of these schools need some ideological culture warrior in Washington, D.C., telling Watseka what their curriculum should be,” he said. “The notion that Justice Department is going to launch investigations and divert money for education because the president signed a piece of paper is just a misuse of our tax dollars.”
Yohnka said he wasn’t aware of any pattern among the three dozen districts the DOJ is investigating, but one school official from rural northwest Illinois has an “emerging operational theory.” In a social media post Friday, Oregon Community Unit School District 220 Superintendent PJ Caposey said he didn’t have “definitive answers” from the DOJ as to why his district was included, he posited it may have something to do with the districts’ participation in a federal School Violence Prevention Program grant.
“To be absolutely clear, this does not confirm that grant participation is the reason for inclusion, nor can we state that as fact,” he wrote. “It is simply one possible connection being explored as we work to better understand the broader picture.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
John Fugelsang: Reclaiming Jesus’ Teachings
I love this video. John Fugelsang is a wonderful person to elaborate on the bible and he does so as a follower of Jesus, not Paul or the Old Testament. His mother was a nun and his father was a monk and the way he describes his father wearing his robes is as the Christian jedi of Flatbush. He explains how those using the bible to attack or bash others including the LGBTQ+ are not following Jesus that they are following Paul. He explains clearly how Jesus brought a new covenant for the people doing away with the old one in Leviticus. He explained how those using the bible to bash others and not feed & clothe the stranger/ immigrant are totally against what Jesus preached. He also mentioned how those trying to force the Old Testament of the bible in schools never want the words of Jesus hung in classrooms in public schools, they never want the sermon on the mount posted on the walls. Those kind of people only want authoritarian laws or do and dont do pushed on kids. Enjoy the video, I listen to him on The Daily Beans (news with swearing) friday newscast and his Sirius talk show. Hugs
Things We’ve Likely Forgotten About Public Schools
Advance Advice For May Day
which is a classical strike day, and one is scheduled this year (though only for a day.) Anyway, some tips from the Smart Ones:
May 1 General Strike: The Very Best Reason to Stay Home and Read
by Carrie S · Apr 23, 2026 at 2:00 am · View all 3 comments
NB: originally this post was published under Sarah’s byline. This post is by CarrieS.
On May 1, you can fight fascism by staying home with a good book. A coalition of organizations across the country is calling for a general strike. This strike calls for no school, no work, and no shopping.
May Day Strong is made up of a coalition including but not limited to Indivisible, 50501, Sunrise Movement, and MoveOn. Many of the coalitions joining May Day Strong are local, so in addition to visiting the May Day Strong website, you should also keep an eye on your local groups.
In addition to withdrawing your labor and your commerce, you can join your community to make the strike even more visible. There will be a lot of demonstrations around the country and local sources are often the best places to get information about them. Because this is a one-day strike, it’s important to be as visible as possible and demonstrate just how many workers, students, and shoppers are on the side of democracy.
Here’s what the strike demands (taken from the main webpage):
- That we tax the rich so our families, not their fortunes, come first,
- No ICE. No war. No private army serving authoritarian power.
- Expand democracy. Hands off our vote.
How is this relevant to the SBTB community? In addition to the fact that we support the causes that this strike promotes, strikes are an important part of feminist history. Women have been crucial in the success of the labor movement in the U.S.A., as leaders, strikers, volunteers, and educators. Here a just a few examples:
- I’ve previously written about Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers Association.
- Our Kickass Woman coming up in May will be Emma Tenayuca, a Mexican-American woman from Texas, who led a strike of 12,000 pecan shellers in 1938.
- The Mink Brigade was the name given to wealthy society women who supported the garment workers’ strikes in the early 1900’s. By marching and picketing along with workers, they lent prestige and respectability to the cause, and their presence tended to reduce violence from police.
- Lucy Parsons
- Lucy Parsons led a march of 80,000 people in 1886 in the first May Day Parade. Among other causes, she championed the 8-hour workday.
- Ai-jen Poo has been organizing domestic workers since 1996 and is currently the president of National Domestic Workers Alliance and the director of Caring Across Generations. Domestic workers had been considered too difficult to organize, making Ai-jen Poo’s success all the more remarkable.
- My personal favorite, Emma Goldman, was a Russian Jewish immigrant who was described as “The most dangerous woman in America.” Despite dedicating her life to her work, she always prioritized joy. She is credited as saying, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution,” but what she actually said was:
I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. . . If it meant that, I did not want it.
The Zinn Education Project has a wonderful list of women in the U.S.A. labor movement. You can also find stories of women in the labor movement at the National Park Service website.
I’m closing with my favorite version of “Bread and Roses,” performed by Judy Collins and choir. In 1911, Helen Todd, a suffragist and labor rights activist, used the phrase “Bread and roses” in one of her speeches:
Not at once; but woman is the mothering element in the world and her vote will go toward helping forward the time when life’s Bread, which is home, shelter and security, and the Roses of life, music, education, nature and books, shall be the heritage of every child that is born in the country, in the government of which she has a voice.
Rose Schneiderman
Rose Schneiderman, a remarkable woman who was born in Poland, came to America as a child, and campaigned for suffrage as well as improved safety condition for workers, used the phrase in her speeches, including this one from 1912:
What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist — the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.
In 1911, James Oppenheim wrote a poem inspired by the slogan. Mimi Farina set to music in 1974. The song will forever be associated with the Lawrence Textile Strike, also known as the Bread and Roses Strike, of 1912. This strike was largely organized and conducted by women, who, along with children, made up the majority of the workforce in the mills.
Women have always been crucial to the success of strikes in America and worldwide. Why stop now? On May 1, protest, march, or stay home and read, but if you are able, join the strike.
No work, no school, and no shopping: by ceasing these three actions, we honor our past and our future.
Monday, Back To It!
Enjoy a couple of political ones that are good, and uplifting. First, Sen. Prof. Warren tells us a bit about Zach Wahls:
Next, well, you can see it’s gonna be nice before you even tap Play. But tap Play!
Scottie's Playtime 