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Texas Senate Approves Bill Allowing Guns in Locked Cars on College Campuses

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Photo Credit: Andrew-HydeA bill that would allow Texas college students to keep handguns locked in their cars in college campus parking lots easily passed the state Senate on Tuesday.

The bill, OK’d in a bipartisan 27-4 vote, would override rules by several state colleges and universities that prohibit guns on campuses.

During the debate on the Senate floor, Democratic Sen. Jose Rodriguez of El Paso argued the bill would lead to allowing guns in college classrooms. He later told FoxNews.com, “I opposed the bill because, given today’s climate and the rise of crime on ours campuses, the last thing we need to do is pass a bill like this.”

Supporters say the measure isn’t a traditional concealed weapons bill because the legislation would restrict students to keeping their guns in a locked vehicle. But Rodriguez says that would do little to deter a determined shooter.

“You allow it in the glove compartment of your car in the college campus and if you have a disgruntled student who wants to take (his or her) anger out on the teacher or an administrator, what’s going to stop the student from walking to the car and getting it?” Rodriguez said.

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Teacher Suspended for Showing Kids Pliers

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Photo Credit: MAURO CATEBA veteran Chicago teacher is suing the school district after he was suspended and charged with possessing tools that school officials said violated their weapons policy.

Doug Bartlett, a second grade teacher at Washington Irving Elementary School, was suspended for four days after administrators determined the tools he used for visual aids endangered students.

In 2011 Bartlett was teaching a mandated course on “tools.” He showed students several tools that he used in his classroom including wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers, a box cutter, and a small pocketknife. He explained how the tools were used and kept the items secured in a tool box.

“The visual aids were used in an effort to facilitate student understanding and remembrance of the curriculum,” the lawsuit states. “As he displayed the box cutter and pocketknife, Plaintiff specifically described the proper use of these tools. Neither of these items was made available to the students.”

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8th Grade Book Defines Conservatism= 'Restricting Personal Freedoms'; Liberalism= 'Personal Freedom for Everyone'

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Photo Credit: EAG News

A mother at a Wisconsin public school said her daughter’s eighth grade class was assigned a worksheet with some eyebrow-raising definitions for “conservatism” and “liberalism.”

Conservatism, it stated in part, believes in “preserving traditional moral values by restricting personal freedoms” while liberalism is for “equality and personal freedom for everyone.”

“This is indoctrination,” Tamra Varebrook, a Republican activist in Racine, Wis., told TheBlaze on Thursday after her 13-year-old daughter showed her the crossword-style vocabulary sheet from Union Grove Elementary School earlier this week. Varebrook first talked about the assignment with the news arm of the conservative Education Action Group.

Varebrook said she complained to Brenda Stevenson, district administrator at Union Grove, who apologized profusely and said it never should have been taught. Varebrook was told the teacher was required to correct the definition to the class Wednesday while the assistant principal observed.

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Chicago Public Schools to Start Sex Education in Kindergarten

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Photo Credit: The New American

A new policy approved by the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) will require all public school students to participate in sex education instruction, beginning in kindergarten. According to the CPS website, the new mandate, passed on February 27, will require each student to receive “minimum instructional minutes” of sex-ed information that is “medically accurate” as well as (supposedly) age-appropriate.

“It is important that we provide students of all ages with accurate and appropriate information so they can make healthy choices in regards to their social interactions, behaviors, and relationships,” Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said in the CPS announcement about the policy. “By implementing a new sexual health education policy, we will be helping them to build a foundation of knowledge that can guide them not just in the pre-adolescent and adolescent years, but throughout their lives.”

In its announcement, the CPS explained that in the earliest grades students “will focus on the family, feelings, and appropriate and inappropriate touching, while students in fourth grade will learn about puberty, including the physical, social, and emotional changes that accompany it, and the causes and transmission of HIV infection.”

After that, instruction gets more intimate, said the announcement, with content in grades five through twelve including “information appropriate for each grade level on human reproduction, transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually-transmitted infections (STIs), healthy decision-making, sexual orientation and bullying, and contraception, including abstinence.”

The announcement emphasized that “as is the case under the current CPS policy, parents and guardians are able to opt out of having their children participate in the sexual health education instruction.”

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Wisconsin’s VISTA Program Wants Volunteers to Overcome Their White ‘Privilege’ Bias

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Photo Credit: AP

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) wants its white VISTA volunteers who work with low-income, racially diverse public schools to examine the “privilege” their Caucasian race confers on them.

DPI devotes an entire Web page to “Power and Privilege,” including links to racial justice workshops and online tests where VISTA volunteers can “learn about your personal bias.”

One “diversity” document linked to DPI’s Web site suggests that white people “wear a white wristband as a reminder about your privilege, and as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.”

The document — written by a diversity resource center in New Jersey — also suggests that white people ask themselves questions, such as: “How do I ignore privilege? What am I doing today to undo my privilege? How do I fool myself into thinking I am powerless?”

Other suggestions for white people include:

— Set aside sections of the day to critically examine how privilege is working.
— Put a note on your mirror or computer screen as a reminder to think about privilege.
— Make a daily list of the ways privilege played out, and steps taken or not taken to address privilege.
— Find a person of color who is willing to hold you accountable for addressing privilege.

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DePaul Punishes Student Who Exposed Vandals Of Memorial For Aborted Babies

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller Back in January, on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a group of 13 students destroyed a makeshift memorial for aborted babies on the main campus of DePaul University. The display — 500 pink and blue flags — was set up by DePaul’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom. (RELATED: Abortion display destroyed on campus)

Senior Kristopher Del Campo, who chairs the DePaul YAF chapter, contacted public safety officials after pro-abortion thugs tore the flags from the ground and threw them in trash cans around campus.

About a week later, as The Daily Caller reported, Kevin Connolly, an investigator for DePaul’s public safety department, produced a brief report listing the names of 13 students who flatly admitted to wrecking the display. The reports said the vandals “had seen anti-abortion posters around campus earlier in the day that they found offensive.” (RELATED: Students admit vandalizing display)

DePaul’s assistant dean of students, Domonic Rollins, provided Del Campo a copy of the report. The national website for Young Americans for Freedom then published it online.

Take a wild guess which student the nation’s largest Catholic school has now singled out for punishment.

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Teachers Outnumbered In Schools By Administrators, Support Staff In Many States, Study Shows

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Photo Credit: APEach day, students in 21 states will see more librarians, bus drivers, coaches and cafeteria workers than teachers, according to a new study that examined school hiring patterns over the past two decades.

The report, released Thursday by the Friedman Foundation For Educational Choice, found that Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, Maine, Indiana and a number of states- and the District of Columbia- employ more non-classroom personnel than teachers, some by a wide margin.

Virginia came in at the top of the list, with 60,737 more non-teaching staff than instructors, according to the study. Ohio was No. 2, with a disparity of 19,040.

“Taxpayers should be outraged [that] public schools hired so many non-teaching personnel with such little academic improvement among students to show for it,” said Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the foundation, which was founded by the late Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and is among the most vocal proponents of school choice.

“This money could have been better invested in areas that have proved to benefit children,” Mr. Enlow added. But the study’s findings surely will be challenged. Critics have taken aim at previous Friedman Foundation reports, including last fall’s “School Staffing Surge,” which showed that states’ and school districts’ hiring rates have far outpaced the growth of student populations.

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Father Wants School Dress Code Changed After Son Asked To Remove Marines T-Shirt

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Photo Credit: Daniel McIntyre An Illinois father wants a school district to reconsider its dress code after his son was asked to remove a U.S. Marines T-shirt or be suspended, FoxNews.com has learned.

Daniel McIntyre, 44, of Genoa, told FoxNews.com that his 14-year-old son, Michael, was asked to remove the T-shirt by eighth-grade teacher Karen Deverell during reading class at Genoa-Kingston Middle School on Monday. Deverell, citing the school’s dress code, said the garment’s interlocking rifles was problematic and had to be removed from sight, McIntyre said.

“My son is very proud of the Marines, and, in fact, of all the services,” McIntyre said. “So he wears it with pride. There are two rifles crossed underneath the word ‘Marines’ on the shirt, but to me that should be overlooked. It’s more about the Marines instead of the rifles.”

McIntyre said his son was initially threatened with suspension before complying with Deverell’s request to turn it inside out. He has worn the T-shirt to school many times before without incident, McIntyre said.

“He was upset, he couldn’t understand it,” he continued. “He couldn’t understand why a teacher would make him do that.” Brett McPherson, the school’s principal, referred questions to Genoa-Kingston Superintendent Joe Burgess, who reiterated that the shirt is not in violation of the district’s dress policy.

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Students Made To Wear Burqas In U.S. Schools

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Photo Credit: WNDThere’s a new controversy in Texas involving the online public school curriculum called CSCOPE, which already has been the subject of heated debate and state legislative hearings. There are reports now that students were made to wear Muslim burqas as part of their public school lessons.

CSCOPE has been facing criticism over its alleged Islamic and anti-American bias. It is a “curriculum management system” now used in 80 percent of Texas classrooms – and recently was the subject of a heated inquiry that culminated in hearings conducted by the Texas Senate Education Committee chaired by Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston.

According to a joint press release by Sen. Patrick, State Board of Education Chairperson Barbara Cargill and CSCOPE representatives, CSCOPE ultimately agreed to “significant changes,” but it is unclear when these changes will take place, and whether or not the pledged cooperation is legally binding or simply to mollify critics.

WND contacted Sen. Patrick’s office but has been unable to obtain documentation confirming whether CSCOPE compliance is required or optional.

He did release a statement: “Be assured we are working on this issue as is the SBOE almost every day. The hearing was step one, the letter step two. The only thing that is binding from a legislative standpoint is legislation. We are working on those issues based on what we are discovering now. We are doing our job, one that must be thorough and will take time.”

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Anti-Austerity Strike To Bring Greece To A Standstill

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Photo Credit: John Kolesidis Greek workers walk off the job on Wednesday in a nationwide anti-austerity strike that will disrupt transport, shut public schools and tax offices and leave hospitals working with emergency staff.

Greece’s two biggest labor unions plan to bring much of the near-bankrupt country to a standstill during a 24-hour strike over the cuts, which they say only deepen the plight of a people struggling to get through the country’s worst peacetime downturn.

Representing about 2.5 million workers, the unions have gone on strike repeatedly since Europe’s debt crisis erupted in late 2009, testing the government’s will to implement necessary reforms in the face of growing public anger.

“The (strike) is our answer to the dead-end policies that have squeezed the life out of workers, impoverished society and plunged the economy into recession and crisis,” said the private sector union GSEE, which is organizing the walkout with its public sector sister union ADEDY.

“Our struggle will continue for as long as these policies are implemented,” it said. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s eight-month-old coalition government has been eager to show it will implement reforms it promised the European Union and International Monetary Fund, which have bailed Athens out twice with over 200 billion euros.

Read more from this story HERE.