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As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

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Today’s blacklisted American: Mother sued by teacher’s union for requesting her child’s kindergarten curriculum

Nicoletta-Solas
Nicoletta-Solas testifying to Congress

They’re coming for you next: Nicoletta Solas, a Rhode Island mother of a 5-year-old, was harassed by her school board and sued by the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teacher’s union in the nation, for simply requesting her child’s kindergarten curriculum. As she stated bluntly during her testimony at House hearing on March 2, 2023,

If you ask questions about public education, they will come after you. … My school district and my teachers’ union didn’t want to just hide the curriculum from me, they wanted to ruin my life.

Below is video of her full testimony. All she wanted to know was whether the school would be teaching queer theory to her 5-year-old. The ugly and vicious response to this request, by the school, the school board, and the NEA, is striking.

It is important to note that after the school itself refused to answer Solas’s questions, the school district worked in tandem with the union to attack her. First the school broad threatened her with a lawsuit, running a show trial against her at a school board meeting. When it realized it would be a mistake to sue her for simply asking for the curriculum, it apparently then arranged for the NEA to step forward and sue her instead.

Parents Bill of Rights Act fact sheet

The hearing was arranged by the House Education and the Workforce Committee in order to lobby support for its bill called the Parents Bill of Rights Act [pdf]. The fact sheet to the right outlines what that bill would require of local school districts nationwide. According to the bill, school districts that do not follow these rules would lose their federal funding.

While it is perfectly correct for the federal government to establish in what circumstances it will or will not fund local school districts, and these rules are clearly designed to protect the rights of parents from the kind of abuse experienced by Solas, the fact that we as a nation continue to ask the federal government to wield its power to help us is unfortunate.

No federal law is really going to fix this. All it does in the end is transfer more power from local districts, where it belongs, to a distant federal bureaucracy that has shown itself in recent years to be clearly hostile to parents.

The real solution is local action, by more parents like Solas. Take over the school board. Fire the administrators and teachers who teach queer perversion to preschoolers and elementary school children.

Above all, don’t sit back like peasants, allowing you and your children to be abused. Act like free citizens of a free country and defend your rights and your children. It is not only your own life you will save, but the future you wish to give to your kids.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

11 comments

  • Phill O

    Seems quite logical to define what the rights of parents are and to defend them. However, being a pessimist, I think parents need to pull kids from these schools and establish private schools. And funding must go to the private schools from the taxes collected.

  • ShainS

    See also [Dr. Panda substack:] “Doctor Deceived and Forcibly Vaccinated Children”

    “Mother is suing a doctor who vaccinated her children for COVID-19 against their will during their annual school physical exams”

    https://tinyurl.com/2p8jt42j

  • Eric Buhrer

    I don’t know for a fact that it’s the vaccinations I got that kept me from getting smallpox and polio, but I never felt oppressed because I had them.

  • Chris

    @Eric Buhrer How could you possibly know whether or not you would have become ill w/ a particular illness but, for your vaccination? No one could know such a thing. At best, you could prove you were exposed to these diseases, but not everyone who is exposed gets the disease – what you’re claiming is sheer medical nonsense. Indeed, the chance that any one would contract both polio AND smallpox is pretty slight (if only because the chance of dying from the latter would substantially reduce your chance of contracting the former). Unless you were working in a biowarfare lab, you weren’t likely to have been exposed to both in such a time & order that you could get both, so – again – your point seems silly, medically speaking.

    Besides, who cares? Even if you do not feel oppressed, why do you have to oppress others? I personally wouldn’t care if I had to recite the Lord’s Prayer before every test, but I can see why others might. The whole point of freedom is that it protects those who don’t agree w/ our decisions, including the decision on whom to pray or what vaccines to take. In short, your claims – if true – are non sequitors.

    BTW, the only “cure” to this problem is school choice. Let parents choose the school, don’t force them to “control” the school boards. Public eduction is innately evil – it was started to abolish Catholicism & to make soldiers for WWI style warfare, neither of which are noble aims. Choice is, thus, a moral necessity (unless you really hate Catholics and/or want more WWI style warfare).

  • Jeff Wright

    While I think Rick Perry was an idiot for going after the Dept. of Energy (nukes, not viruses guys!) why is this still here?
    https://www.ed.gov/

  • Ron Van Beek

    Parents own their own children. No school, board, union or teacher can violate that, as they are supposed to be teaching our children, reading, writing and arithmetic, etc., not social woeness !!!

  • Andy

    That’s a perfect opportunity for Mrs. Solas. If they’re suing you, lawyer up and motion for discovery. Request every last scrap of information and communication about a diverse range of topics *that they don’t want to confess to*, then just *drag* them with that dirty laundry.

    Because that’s what the left has done in the past to people who’ve sued their organizations.

    And turnabout is fair play.

  • Phil Berardelli

    This horrific problem cries out for radical change. The three quickest and cleanest measures would be 1) stop all federal funding of primary and secondary education — and abolish the increasingly useless and harmful Department of Education; 2) promote laws across the land to use tax dollars to fund individual students, not schools, and 3) revoke President John F. Kennedy’s executive order permitting public employee unions. Do all three and the situation will begin to turn itself around. In the meantime, all parents should be furious at what has been going on.

  • David

    Zimmerman’s story disappoints by failing to address several pieces of information. He says nothing above about the 200 requests for information Solas filed and to detail what those requests wanted. Why is that? Solas wasn’t just asking for curriculum outlines. Do folks really think that filing hundreds of requests for information is a reasonable approach? How about every parent filing dozens or hundreds of such requests?

    It’s not that I agree with how school officials and the NEA handled this. I don’t. But what Zimmerman wrote above is not a complete portrait of this story.

    The Parents Bill of Rights Act is a fine thing. I hope it is passed and signed into law. How much good it does is an open question.

    I think it would be more helpful if more parents would be interested in active participation with their local school systems, something I’ve commented about before. Teachers and administrators need to stop being so defensive, remember who pays their salaries and that they are subject to the same expectations of performance as any other group of employees in any other field.

    Also, please vote. Participation levels by voters in local elections, school board elections and the like are shamefully low in many parts of the country, another thing I’ve commented about before. Our kids are certainly worth it!

  • Star Bird

    America needs fewer Trial Lawyers and Teachers Unions and More Common Sense

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