education
NY to withhold funds from schools with Native American mascots
Senior Deputy Commissioner James N. Baldwin sent a memo to all New York Empire State school districts stating the department has “consistently opposed” Native American mascots.
The memo cited a 2001 memorandum “conclud[ing] that the use of Native American symbols or depictions as mascots can become a barrier to building a safe and nurturing school community and improving academic achievement for all students.”
Not all district have complied with the 2001 memorandum, leading the state to determines that failure to comply can result in “the removal of school officers and the withholding of State Aid.”
“Schools are learning environments; students learn as much through observation of their surroundings as they do from direct instruction,” Baldwin concludes. “In addition to their legal obligations, boards of education that continue to utilize Native American mascots must reflect upon the message their choices convey to students, parents, and their communities.”
Breitbart reports:
According to a court case regarding the district, a judge ruled that the school district not heeding the 2001 memorandum was an “abuse of discretion.” The department’s new memorandum takes that decision to mean that the argument that those mascots are “respectful” is “no longer tenable.”
An elementary school in the suburbs of New York City has been teaching a “gender curriculum” to kindergarten children in an effort to promote “inclusion” in the school. Hillside Elementary School, part of the Hastings-on-Hudson Union Free District, uses photos of children to introduce “different identities.”
The New York Post reports that the course includes showing kindergarten students photos of other children which are used to “introduce vocabulary to describe characters of different identities,” including teaching them about the terms “cisgender, transgender, and non-binary,” according to a message to parents regarding the curriculum.
“Our gender curriculum focuses on Hillside’s core value of respect and aims to center discussions on gender identity. The students will learn and discuss that there is a lot you can’t tell about a person by simply looking at them,” the kindergarten level course description reads.
“The students will look at pictures of children and talk about what they notice and what they think they know about the children just from the pictures. Using their observations, we will then take the opportunity to introduce vocabulary to describe characters of different identities,” the school writes.
The “identity” being taught to children includes discussing “gender and the pronouns that you use,” and that “as we learn and grow, the words we use to describe our gender identity can grow too,” as described by the school.
Fox News Digital reached out to the school about the curriculum, to which the Hastings-on-Hudson Union Free District communications team said that the lessons have been in place for several years and are rooted in “Hillside’s core values of respect and fostering dignity for all students.”
“One 30-minute gender lesson is taught in each class one time per year. The classes are led by a certified educator, following a specific set of lessons designed to help students value the full diversity of their classmates,” Superintendent William S. McKersie said in a message to faculty and parents.
“The lessons have been created in alignment with the NYS Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework,” he wrote. The school noted that the lessons do not address sex education or sexuality. The school district said that while they usually have the courses posted publicly online, the gender lesson description has been taken off the website since going viral.
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