Federal authorities sent a subpoena to the Jefferson County School District in June.
Then-Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran, left, motions back to Gov. Ron DeSantis at a news conference at St. Petersburg Collegiate High School on March 15, 2022, in St. Petersburg. [ DIRK SHADD | Times ]
TALLAHASSEE — A federal grand jury is investigating allegations of bid-rigging involving Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Department of Education, charter school operators and the control of a small North Florida school district.
Federal authorities issued a subpoena to the Jefferson County School District in June seeking communications between district officials, charter school lobbyists and former top officials in DeSantis’ education department.
It also seeks records relating to the department’s attempt to steer a multimillion-dollar contract to a politically connected company with ties to DeSantis’ former education commissioner, Richard Corcoran. The contract would have been funded by federal coronavirus relief dollars.
The subpoena, obtained by the Times/Herald in a public records request, was issued by a federal prosecutor in Gainesville. The subpoena requests the records be sent to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General in Pembroke Pines.
A spokesperson for the federaleducation department’s Office of Inspector General said the office does not confirm or deny investigative activity.
The federal inquiry comes a year and a half after the Times/Herald reported on the bid-rigging allegations involving Jefferson County’s school district, which became the first, and only, district to be privatized by the state.
Control of the small three-school district near Tallahassee was turned over to private charter school operator Somerset Academy Inc. in 2017. The five-year contract was scheduled to end in 2022, when the school board would resume control.
But under Corcoran’s leadership, the Department of Education decided in 2021 it would hire consultants for up to three years to help the district’s transition, and it would use $4 million in federal coronavirus relief dollars assigned to the district to pay for it.
School district officials were against the plan, arguing that its annual budget was only $8.5 million, so it couldn’t afford to spend $4 million on consultants. When thestate Department of Education solicited offers to help the district, bidding was open for only a week. Only one qualified company responded: MGT Consulting, led by Trey Traviesa, a former GOP state representative from Tampa with ties to Corcoran.
Procurements are supposed to be free of favoritism. But the Times/Herald found that on Nov. 1, 2021, a week before the procurement was announced, top education officials were already meeting with Traviesa, top charter school lobbyists and Jefferson County officials about the procurement.
MGT was ultimately never hired. The Department of Education restarted the bidding after two senior department officials — former K-12 chancellor Jacob Oliva and former Vice Chancellor for Strategic Development Melissa Ramsey — and a member of the State Board of Education created their own company and filed a competing bid. Ultimately, the plan to spend the money on consultants was dropped.
Oliva is now Arkansas’ Department of Education secretary.
The Florida Department of Education’s inspector general investigated Ramsey and Oliva’s bidfor potential conflicts of interest but never addressed any apparent irregularities with MGT’s bid.
The federalsubpoena, dated June 12, does not mention Corcoran. But it names Oliva, Ramsey and Suzanne Pridgeon, the state Department of Education’s deputy commissioner for finance and operations.
The subpoena also requests text messages, emails and other communications between Traviesa, MGT Consulting, Jefferson County schoolssuperintendent Eydie Tricquet, representatives of Somerset Academy Inc. and Ralph Arza, a prominent charter school lobbyist and longtime Corcoran ally. At the time that Somerset was operating the district’s schools, Arza had four relatives working for the company in Jefferson County.
The subpoena seeks records relating to the procurement, along with records of the Nov. 1 meeting and other meetings in 2021 between Arza, school district officials and Department of Education officials.
The Florida Department of Education and DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to emails sent Friday afternoon seeking comment. After the Times/Herald reported the allegations last year, the governor’s office said Chief Inspector General Melinda Miguel would review how the Department of Education and its inspector general handled the bid for the multimillion-dollar contract. The state has never produced the results.
Corcoran declined to comment. He is now serving as interim president of New College of Florida, a public liberal arts school in Sarasota County that DeSantis and political appointees are trying to turn into a beacon of conservatism.
Oh clutch my pearls, classical literature is not as pure as today’s fundamentalist Christian nationalist who just don’t want their children to get an education but they demand the right to stop your child or anyone from getting one. This is not about parental control, it is about one minor fundamentalist religious group having complete control over the education of all the children in the entire state. But only for public schools. The schools paid for with tax dollars and that educate the lower incomes. The private schools do not have to follow these stupid bigoted rules. My dogs that love gravy, this has been a Christian Taliban moral police take over. Next girls will only be allowed to attend school until the 8th grade and must wear ankle length dresses, and everyone will be in drab colors. Hugs
School district officials in Hillsborough County, Fla., have implemented a newly designed curriculum guide for English teachers that will see students reading only selections from William Shakespeare plays.
“There’s some raunchiness in Shakespeare. Because that’s what sold tickets during his time,” said Joseph Cool, a reading teacher at Gaither High School.
“I think the rest of the nation — no, the world, is laughing us,” he added. “Taking Shakespeare in its entirety out because the relationship between Romeo and Juliet is somehow exploiting minors is just absurd.”
Schools in Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa Bay and the surrounding area, are mostly assigning excerpts by the English language’s most famous writer. The schools previously required students to read two of Shakespeare’s novels or plays, in their entirety, per year.
The decision comes as educators must prepare students for a new set of state exams that cover a wide variety of subject matter, and also, “in consideration of the law,” according to a school district spokesperson, which means teaching it could open educators up to disciplinary measures if a parent were to file a complaint.
The “law” in question is the new Parental Rights in Education Act, which prohibits teaching any content that is sexual in nature.
Florida high schools are now removing Shakespeare, including the full text of “Romeo and Juliet,” to comply with Republicans’ new law restricting “sexual content.”
“I think the rest of the nation — no, the world, is laughing at us,” a teacher said.
If your kids are go to school in Tampa, thanks to bigly failing @GovRonDeSantis, they will read Shakespeare "while avoiding anything racy or sexual," i.e. "excerpts" from "Romeo & Juliet," "Othello," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Macbeth" not full plays https://t.co/jETfpNm6Vy
[Jerusalem] saw this, yet she was more corrupt than [Samaria] in her lusting and in her prostitutions, which were worse than those of her sister. She lusted after the Assyrians, governors and commanders, warriors clothed in full armor, mounted horsemen, all of them handsome young men. And I saw that she was defiled; they both took the same way. But she carried her prostitutions further; she saw male figures carved on the wall, images of the Chaldeans portrayed in vermilion, with belts around their waists, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them looking like officers—a picture of Babylonians whose native land was Chaldea. When she saw them she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their lust, and after she defiled herself with them, she turned from them in disgust. When she carried on her prostitutions so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her, as I had turned from her sister. Yet she increased her prostitutions, remembering the days of her youth, when she prostituted herself in the land of Egypt and lusted after her paramours there, whose members were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of stallions. Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians fondled your bosom and caressed your young breasts. – Ezekiel 23:11-2
It is happening in Sarasota County too: “Teachers offloading books in DeSantis’ Florida, resellers say,” Aug. 4.
I work in a Sarasota County thrift store. This summer, the store has received thousands of books from schools and classroom libraries. They are marked with the names of teachers or schools.
It is clear from the wide variety of titles that teachers work hard to help every student feel validated and included in a diverse classroom.
I literally cried in the store when I saw the titles: Newbery Award and Honor Books, the highest award a children’s book can receive from the American Library Association, no longer available to children in their schools. Most of the books depict characters from minority and vulnerable populations.
Reading novels with characters that face struggles the reader does not experience develops empathy for others. Perhaps our governor could read a few and develop a little empathy himself.
I feel sorry for all the youngsters in Florida who are being deprived of everything except a selective education which intentionally leaves gigantic holes in their curriculum.
Those who go off to college (esp. out of state) are going to find out they’re years behind their classmates.
Only the public schools. The elite private schools are not bound by the state curriculum and will be able to teach real history, literature, art, etc. Rhonda’s children go to private school.
The ones who are exceptionally smart will find a way to get educated. I’m concerned about the others. Not every child is going to be able to do what Tara Westover did.
By my dogs that love gravy this is so asinine I really doubted it could be true. First the trend by religious people to think they have the right to push their god and religious driven opinions on everyone else is increasing to a level that is stunning. That a judge thought it was OK for a religious Christian woman to spam and harass her co-workers with her church views and offensive pictures is also something I don’t understand. The judge was appointed by trump if that helps to understand she is a fundamentalist Christian nationalist. But what really scares me is the actions of the judge who went full fundamentalist Christian on the defendants to the point of forcing a religious indoctrination on them. HOW IS THAT LEGAL? Forcing a nonbeliever on threat of the court to not only attend forced religious indoctrination, but to also pay for it. Plus it seems a large part of the woman’s story was made up as it is becoming increasingly a tactic by religious fanatics to get their cases in court. Plus the religious hate group was no way involved with the case but the judge forced his fundamentalist views and support of the religious hate group to force them into the case. What has Texas and this country become? Hugs
The lawyers must take religious freedom classes from the Alliance Defending Freedom, the right-wing Christian group that has systematically rolled back civil liberties.
KENT NISHIMURA/LOS ANGELES TIMES/GETTY IMAGES
Kristen Waggoner, president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, speaks to members of the press outside the Supreme Court on December 5, 2022.
A Trump-appointed Texas judge has ordered three senior Southwest Airlines lawyers to take eight hours of “religious-liberty training” from the far-right Christian hate group Alliance Defending Freedom.
In his late Monday ruling, U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr specifically mandated the lawyers take the training as part of court-ordered sanctions for religious discrimination. He described ADF as one of several “esteemed non-profit organizations that are dedicated to preserving free speech and religious freedom.” The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated ADF as an extremist hate group.
The mandated hate-group training is the latest phase of a lawsuit brought by flight attendant Charlene Carter, who sued Southwest for firing her in 2017 after she sent confrontational anti-abortion messages to her union’s former president. Carter argued she had been discriminated against based on her religious beliefs, and U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr sided with her in December, ordering she be reinstated.
Starr, who was appointed by Donald Trump in 2019, also ordered Southwest to issue a statement telling its employees that the airline “may not” engage in religious discrimination against them. Instead, Southwest said that it “does not” do so, prompting Carter to demand additional sanctions against the company.
Carter had made no request for Southwest to undergo religious liberty training. ADF is not representing Carter, nor is it otherwise related to the case at all, so it’s unclear why Starr felt the need to involve the group.
It’s hard to overstate ADF’s role in rolling back civil liberties. One of its lead lawyers is Erin Hawley, who is married to far-right Senator Josh Hawley. ADF helped overturn Roe v. Wade and then sued to remove mifepristone, one of the drugs used in medication abortions, from the national market. That case is still in limbo, as the Fifth Circuit Court has yet to issue a ruling.
ADF also represented the plaintiff in the recent Supreme Court case 303 Creative v. Elenis. Web designer Lorie Smith was suing to have the right to refuse services to LGBTQ people. The design request she claims she received that prompted her suit appears to have been entirely fabricated.
The judge, a Federalist Society member, worked for Texas AG Ken Paxton before being appointed to the federal bench by Trump in 2019.
NEWS: Federal judge in Texas orders airline lawyers to take "religious-liberty training" from the extremist advocacy organization, Alliance Defending Freedom, in issuing sanctions in an employment case on Monday. https://t.co/onHycu5zmfpic.twitter.com/WE6cuJDr5d
If upheld, Trump Judge Brantley Starr's order would let courts force lawyers to undergo religious indoctrination sessions from an extremist group that may well contradict their own deeply held spiritual beliefs and freedom of speech. This cannot possibly be legal.
Yes, this is even worse than the state requiring attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous, which many courts have held violates the Establishment Clause:
A number of state Supreme Court and federal circuit court cases–including Arnold v. Tennessee Board of Paroles (1997), Griffin v. Coughlin (New York, 1996), Warner v. Orange County Dep’t. of Probation (2nd Cir. 1997), Rauser v. Horn (3rd Cir. 2001), and Kerr v. Farrey (7th Cir. 1996)– have defined Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and other treatment programs based on AA’s 12 steps as religious in nature.
Yeah, and I also wondered how it was legal for the State of Florida to contract out supervision of those on probation to a group like The Salvation Army, but it has been that way in several FL counties for a very long time.
While the rest of the country wasn’t paying attention, evangelical Christianity became the de facto national religion. Expect the US Supreme Court to make it official any day.
1. Wear rainbow shirts, pro-choice shirts, etc. 2. Put on headphones the entire time, browse phone. 3. See how long you can hold up a middle finger during the lecture.
Thanks to Ali for the link. This is important information that in red states run by republicans it is illegal to teach to kids. In Florida, even 18-year-old seniors in high school and higher education college kids are too sensitive and delicate to learn that not all heroes are cis straight people. After all the important people in history were a cis straight people and it is important to never mention the LGBTQ+ people at all or people might think they were normal and great. Hugs
“Baron Von Steuben” was responsible for whipping the the U.S. military into shape when things were looking bleakest
I followed the link to this article from Ten Bears post. This is a serious plan from the republican right wingers to weaponize the government against their enemies just like the Jim Jordan / Matt Gaetz / Boebert types keep screaming that the left is doing. The difference is Biden is keeping hands off of the DOJ, letting justice be the rule of law. Instead the right has the plans below to target and attack those who have different opinions while allowing themselves to break the laws at will. Hugs
The thrice-indicted former president and his allies have long been drawing plans to undo Smith’s investigations, as well as to punish everyone involved
A man with a plan [that’s deeply corrosive to the rule of law] JEFF SWENSEN/GETTY IMAGES
DONALD TRUMP IS a long, long way from winning the GOP primary, let alone retaking the White House. But he always has revenge on his mind, and his allies are preparing to use a future administration to not only undo all of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s work — but to take vengeance on Smith, and on virtually everyone else, who dared investigate Trump during his time out of power.
Rosters full of MAGAfied lawyers are being assembled. Plans are being laid for an entire new office of the Justice Department dedicated to “election integrity.” An assembly line is being prepared of revenge-focused “special counsels” and “special prosecutors.” Gameplans for making Smith’s life hell, starting in Jan. 2025, have already been discussed with Trump himself. And a fresh wave of pardons is under consideration for Trump associates, election deniers, and — the former president boasts — for Jan. 6 rioters.
The preparations have been underway since at least last year, with Trump being briefed on the designs by an array of attorneys, political and policy advisers, former administration officials, and other allies. The aim is to build a government-in-waiting with the hard-right infrastructure needed to turn the Justice Department into an instrument of Trump’s agenda, according to five sources familiar with these matters and another two people briefed on them.
Trump’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
One idea that has caught thrice-indicted former president’s attention in recent months is the creation of the so-called “Office of Election Integrity,” which would be a new unit inside the Justice Department. It would be tasked not only with relitigating Trump’s lies about his 2020 election loss, but also with aggressively pursuing baseless allegations of election “fraud” (including in Democratic strongholds) in ways that Trumpist partisans believe the department has only flirted with in the past.
This idea was recently pitched to Trump by a longtime Republican activist and an attorney who’s known the ex-president for years, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. (Republican officials have also begun voicing their own support for state-level offices of election integrity. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made the proposal a reality in his state. Officials in Tennessee, Missouri, and Wisconsin have proposed the offices, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, proposed a similarly named office.)
And when it comes to Special Counsel Smith’s office — which just handed Trump his third indictment, this one related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election — the former president and his fellow travelers already know what they want: They want the FBI and DOJ to name names.
This year, close advisers to Trump have begun the process of assembling lists of the names of federal personnel who have investigated the former president and his circle for years, and are attempting to unmask the identities of all the DOJ attorneys and others connected to Smith’s office. The obvious purpose of this, according to one source close to Trump, is to “show them the door on Day 1 [if Trump’s reelected]” — and so “we know who should receive a subpoena” in the future.
Such subpoenas would of course be instrumental in Trumpland’s vows to its voters that, should he return to power, Trump and his new attorney general will launch a raft of their own retaliatory “special counsel” and “special prosecutor” probes to investigate-the-investigator, and to go after their key enemies. As it were, Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ official and a central figure in Trump’s efforts to subvert the legitimate 2020 presidential election results, has been on Trump’s informal shortlist for plum assignments, including even attorney general, in a potential second administration.
Sources familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone that Trump and his close ideological allies — working at an assortment of MAGA-prone think tanks, advocacy organizations, and legal groups — are formulating plans for a wide slate of “special prosecutors.” In this vision, such prosecutors would go after the usual targets: Smith, Smith’s team, President Joe Biden, Biden’s family, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI director Christopher Wray. But they’d also go after smaller targets, from members of the Biden 2020 campaign to more obscure government offices.
“There are almost too many targets to keep track of,” says one Trump adviser familiar with the discussions. Trump and members of his inner orbit have already outlined possible legal strategies, examining specific federal statutes they could wield in a Republican-controlled Justice Department to go after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who delivered Trump’s first indictment of this year.
The FBI’s investigation of over a thousand rioters who breached and trashed the Capitol on Jan. 6 — officially the largest criminal investigation in Justice Department history — is another area where Trump has stated he would like to reverse course. “I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can’t say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control,” Trump told host Kaitlan Collins during a CNN town hall in May.
When the broader topic of possible second-term pardons has come up behind closed doors, Trump has at times said that such pardons should be signed at the start of the term, not saved for the later on, according to those who’ve heard him discuss it since last year. Aside from the rioters themselves, Trump has also privately floated issuing a wave of pardons to higher-ranking figures who were scrutinized in Special Counsel Smith’s two main investigations.
“This would be like hitting the delete-key on all of DOJ’s work on these investigations,” a person intimately familiar with the conversations toldRolling Stone in March. In the past several months, when confidants have quipped to Trump that he may have to “pardon yourself,” should he return to the Oval Office, the ex-president has sometimes simply smirked and replied that they’ll have to wait and see.
Another major focus of some of these counter-probes would be “grand jury violations,” says one person familiar with the matter. The counter-probe of those alleged “violations” is the surest sign yet that in a second Trump administration, the Justice Department would seek to investigate the special counsel’s use of grand juries in the Mar-a-Lago and January 6 cases. (Indeed, Trump has already vowed to sic a special counsel on President Biden if he beats him in 2024.)
Some of these “special prosecutors” wouldn’t even be based out of the Justice Department, as special counsels typically are. In some of these private Trumpworld legal plans, some of the “special counsels” would be based out of places like the White House. This idea is nearly identical to the controversial position that Trumpist lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell tried to convince then-President Trump to give her in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Some lawyers and operatives close to Trump have pitched themselves for these kinds of roles, telling either Trump or some of his closest advisers that they’d be more than happy to take the gig in Trump’s possible return to power in 2025.
And along with having dreams of sweeping retribution and purges, the upper ranks of Trumpworld have spent years putting together projects to vet and prepare a new generation of appointments — for “special prosecutor” posts, as well as much else — and administrative talent.
In this informal vetting for Justice Department candidates, former senior Trump aides and well-connected activists have sought lawyers with a track record of loathing DOJ, particularly what they deem its supposedly “liberal,” “left-wing,” or “Marxist” elements. Between these different Trump allies, different private spreadsheets have been created in recent years, some laying out dozens of possible contenders, while some include upwards of a hundred names, sources with direct knowledge of the situation say. Former top Trump White House policy adviser Stephen Miller and other key Trump diehards have contributed names to several of these lists.
Rolling Stone has reviewed one of these internal spreadsheets that has circulated among Trump lieutenants, and the roster is heavy on individuals connected to America First Legal, the Center for Renewing America, and other Trump-backing entities.
Prominent allies of the former president are open about plans to tie the Justice Department more tightly to the White House.
“I recall talking to a senior official in the Trump administration, who said after all of [these investigations] are over, we’ve got to think of a way to bring the Justice Department back into the government,” says Tom Fitton, president of the conservative nonprofit Judicial Watch and a close ally of the former president.
The Justice Department has typically enjoyed a degree of insulation from White House control, a norm aimed at avoiding the politicization of prosecution. But Fitton argues that the department should be more “responsive” to a president’s priorities, a belief that Trump and various influential conservatives embrace enthusiastically. “Is the Justice Department going to operate as an entity outside the White House as opposed to an entity that’s controlled by the president, as the Constitution requires?” he says.
Putting it another way: “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” Russ Vought, a former top Trump official who heads the Center for Renewing America, toldThe New York Times in a story published last month.
“I think there’s an argument that what the Justice Department’s doing to Trump now is criminal,” Fitton tells Rolling Stone, suggesting — of course — that a future administration should launch an investigation into Special Counsel Smith’s work.
Fitton also says the department should revisit Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the FBI probe of the Trump campaign in 2016. Durham, he argues, was a “failure” and acted only as “a glorified inspector general.”
Once, Special Counsel Durham was supposed to be Trumpworld’s savior, someone who Trump, his allies on Capitol Hill, and large swaths of conservative media were counting on to expose and imprison “Deep State” foes. But when the Durham probe ended earlier this year with lackluster results for a vengeance-hungry GOP, he became much less a hero and more a cautionary tale to the right.
As one conservative lawyer who has discussed “special prosecutor” ideas with Trump in recent months tells Rolling Stone, the guiding principle of this project is simple: “No more John Durham’s — never again.”
It’s official: PragerU will now be offered in Florida schools. Additionally, Charlie Kirk announced dozens of new high school and college field organizers are being trained for his Turning Point USA organization to spread propaganda in high schools and colleges across the country. In other words, the right is ramping up their effort to indoctrinate students while they accuse the left of “woke” indoctrination.
Critics condemn superintendent Mike Miles’s ‘new education system’ that removes students’ access to books
The state is to take over the district next year due to poor academic performance. Photograph: Francois Picard/AFP/Getty Images
The largest school district in Texas announced its libraries will be eliminated and replaced with discipline centers in the new school year.
Houston independent school district announced earlier this summer that librarian and media-specialist positions in 28 schools will be eliminated as part of superintendent Mike Miles’s “new education system” initiative.
Teachers at these schools will soon have the option to send misbehaving students to these discipline centers, or “team centers’” – designated areas where they will continue to learn remotely.
News of the library removals comes after the state announced it would be taking over the district, effective in the 2023-24 school year, due to poor academic performance. Miles was appointed by the the Texas Education Agency in June.
In a press release announcing the schools participating in the “new education system” program, Miles said: “I am overwhelmingly proud that this many HISD school leaders are ready to take bold action to improve outcomes for all students and eradicate the persistent achievement and opportunity gaps in our district.”
Lisa Robinson, a librarian retired from the school district, told local news outlet KPRC2 that her “heart is just broken for these children that are in the [NES] schools that are losing their librarians”.
Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, condemned the district’s move and said the solution to the problem of behavioral conduct was not to revoke access to books, especially in these underserved communities.
He said: “Are there students who need additional support? Yes, and I am 100% supportive of that. But it’s not an eithe/or. You don’t close the libraries, remove the librarians, and simply have the books on the shelf. What about all the other students? What are you saying to them?”
He added: “With all due respect to the superintendent, I grew up in this city. I still live in the same neighborhood that exists. I am the mayor of this city, and I am the mayor of every person who lives in the city of Houston.”
He urged schools to open up libraries to avoid creating a two-tier system within the district, as well as providing additional support to students who need it.
The Houston independent school district did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Houston, Texas’ school district is now eliminating librarians and replacing school libraries with “discipline centers” after Texas Republicans forcibly took over the district using state power.
This is the school to prison pipeline. They’re teaching the undesirable kids, ie black and brown inner city teens, that the only future in front of them is a prison sentence.
These motherfuckers aren’t even trying to hide their education-hating bastardy anymore.
I used to practically LIVE in my school’s libraries. They were my sanctuary and my escape.
And now they want to turn them into little day prisons inside their bigger day prisons for children being prepped only for lives of manual labor and poverty.
Same. My neighbourhood library just a few blocks away was my sanctuary. I knew all the librarians and they knew me. I grew up there. I knew all of their names and they knew to leave me alone to find what I was searching for. Art, history, and even sex books as I got older. They were better for me than catholic school or even my parents. Best of all was that none of the other neighbourhood kids or my family, other than my mom, ever went there. She was the person who taught me to love reading and research.
I used to love to walk to the public library when I was in grade school. I loved books about space and about science fiction. I would check out and read as many books as I could on a regular basis. The school library didn’t have as many books. But I liked the libraries in high school and college, and in graduate school as well. One summer when I was in graduate school for an MSW, I drove to the Institute for Sex Research to do a week of independent study of transvestism, and what was then called transsexualism. While there I met Alan Bell, and we discussed some of the latest theories on the origins of homosexuality.
This is terrible for all kids but especially those from low income families. It’s not just about access to books, but also to the internet, computers and other media and technology that many couldn’t afford otherwise. Books are great but only one part of what modern libraries do. And lack of access makes it impossible for them to get themselves to the kind of opportunities their talents might take them.
I’m betting that if Houston actually gets to do this the discipline centers will be 99% Latino, black, gay, poor and ESL students. Right after this Texas will try to legalize slavery, again. Florida will be riding Texas’s coat tails and then the rest of the shit-hole states.
They are going to learn remotely? I recall the MAGA cult hyperventilating over remote learning when it was the emergency option to use in a life threatening pandemic. They said it was an infringement on their freedoms. But now it’s okay to do remote learning when the students being harmed are kids they don’t like.
KENT NISHIMURA/LOS ANGELES TIMES/GETTY IMAGESKristen Waggoner, president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, speaks to members of the press outside the Supreme Court on December 5, 2022.
Scottie's Playtime 