The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has issued a warning to parents to make arrangements tp "tele-school" their children as the coronavirus moves closer to a pandemic.
Senior CDC official Nancy Messonier said she called her children's school and asked if there are plans for tele-schooling if the school closes to prevent the spread of the virus.
"We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad," Messonier said.
So far, 57 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in the U.S. 40 of the cases came from the infected Diamond Princess cruise ship.
More than 80,000 people are infected and 2,700 people have died worldwide. But the numbers are believed to be much higher.
A Harvard professor predicts 40-70 percent of the world's population - 3 billion to 6 billion people may become infected with the coronavirus.
A student who fought with a substitute teacher at a Miami high school faces criminal charges. The fight was captured on cell phone video and went viral online.
The incident happened on Monday, Jan. 13, at Miami Central High School in North Miami.
The video footage shows the substitute teacher and the aggressive student brawling in a classroom as other students record the chaos on their cell phones.
The teacher, who has short hair, traded punches with the unidentified student before putting her in a headlock. The student trapped the teacher against a desk then body-slammed her to the floor.
A male student pushed the girl off the teacher and held her down while the teacher climbed atop the girl and pinned her to the floor. The video doesn't show what sparked the fight.
A Miami-Dade Public School spokesperson said the student was not supposed to be in the classroom.
"All indicators point to the student having been the aggressor," said Daisy Gonzalez-Diego, chief communications officer for MDCPS, in an emailed statement to Bradenton.com.
"This is a regrettable and isolated incident between a student and a teacher, who otherwise maintained an amicable relationship. The Miami-Dade Schools Police Department continues to investigate this unfortunate matter," Gonzalez-Diego said. "It is evident the employee used great restraint in her attempts to de-escalate the situation."
A Florida teacher was arrested and charged with simple battery, a misdemeanor, for carrying an unruly 14-year-old boy out of his classroom.
Jeffrey Paffumi, 47, said the boy disrupted the classroom by playing music on his laptop computer. When Paffumi turned the music down, the student "slapped his hand away and turned the music back on," according to a police report.
Paffumi said the boy called him a "cracker".
"Show me how tough you are. Wanna Call me a 'cracker,'" he told the boy.
Paffumi lifted the boy out of his chair and carried him to the classroom doorway, then pushed him out into the hallway. Paffumi told police he removed the student from the classroom because the boy was "being disobedient."
The incident occurred during first period at Buddy Middle School in Palm Coast, Florida on Tuesday.
Later that night, the student told his parents about the incident. An unidentified student sent them cell phone video of the incident.
Even though the boy's father said his son was wrong for slapping the teacher's hand, the parents filed a police report with the Flagler County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday.
The teen said the teacher did not restrict his airway and the boy was not harmed in any way.
"As a teacher you have to control your temper even when students test you," said Sheriff Rick Staly. "This is an unfortunate incident involving a teacher and student... Corporal punishment like the old days is not allowed today."
Flagler Schools Superintendent James Tager said in a news release: "We immediately removed Mr. Paffumi from the classroom following the incident... I have stressed to my executive team the importance of handling this investigation with the utmost seriousness it deserves."
He added that an internal "investigation will encompass the incident in its entirety and not just what is captured on a camera."
Girls in one Illinois public school district will now share restrooms and locker rooms with boys who identify as girls.
The Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 voted unanimously to give male-to-female transgender students unrestricted access to girls locker rooms and restrooms.
Previously, cross-dressers and male-to-female transgenders had to use the nurse's office or private stalls to change clothes, according to CBS 2 Chicago.
The school board took up the issue after a MTF transgender student, known as "Student A," wanted to use the girls' locker room, but was denied access in 2015.
The federal Office of Civil Rights, under the Obama administration at the time, said denying access to women's restrooms was a violation of non-discrimination law and gave the district 30 days to comply or else jeopardize its Title IX funding.
The district caved and allowed that student to use a private changing stall in the girls' locker room, but that wasn't sufficient. MTF trans and cross-dressers want to observe biological females in female-only spaces.
Using a private restroom defeats that purpose. Which is why there is no push by the LGBT community for private restrooms for trans individuals.
Remarkable video. First the cross dressing boy gloating that he gets access to girls locker rooms, and then the girl in tears and terrified now that she has to change around boys. You really are just evil if you support this.
Teachers are being encouraged to use a "Gender Snowperson" graphic to teach students about gender identity in sex education classes.
The gender snowperson image was tweeted by Teacher2Teacher, a left leaning nonprofit organization that provides lesson plans and other resources to teachers.
Teacher2Teacher is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The organization identified Johnny Cole, a "diversity officer" for the Lexington School District, as the source of the image.
The image shows a genderless snowman on a board accompanied by stickers that explains the gender identity ideology. One sticker says:
"Gender Identity
Girl, Boy, Neither
Who you are and how you feel as a person."
Another sticker reads:
"Sexual orientation
Who you love or are attracted to".
A third sticker says:
Sex Assigned at Birth
Girl, Boy, Intersex
Pronoun assigned at birth".
Twitter users were confused and baffled by the agenda behind the lesson.
"What is the target age for this lesson?" asked one Twitter user.
"This is just awful. This is not something prepubescent children should have to deal with," wrote another user.
A third user tweeted: "Why is the snowman white?".
By gender identity you just mean personality, don't you? Except you're encouraging children to categorise their feelings and interests in line with stereotypes, then to check whether their bodies "match". It's hyper-conservative.
I have no problem with transgender people, even if my own child was transgender. But I would not want to put the idea in my child's head. If they are truly transgender they will find a way to express it to me and I will support them in anyway I can...
A Texas schools superintendent is under fire for telling a woman to cut her grandson's dreadlocks or put him in a dress for wearing his hair too long.
The unusual demand was made after the school notified the grandmother that her grandson was in violation of the school's dress code.
Randi Woodley and parents of children attending a Texas school say the school board altered the dress code to discriminate against Black children.
"I went to the principal's office, where she explained to me that my grandson's hair was too long," Woodley told KETK.
Woodley said she attended the school board meeting where she addressed the restrictive dress code with Tatum Independent School District's superintendent.
"He told me that I could either cut it, braid it and pin it up or put my grandson in a dress and send him to school and, when prompted, my grandson must say he's a girl," Woodley said.
The school district's policy states: "No ponytails, ducktails, rat-tails, male buns or puffballs are allowed on male students. ALL male hair of any type SHALL NOT extend past the top of a t-shirt collar, as it lays naturally."
But Woodley says the dress code targets Black boys like her grandson who wear dreadlocks past their collars.
Parent Kambry Cox told KETK that her son thinks something is wrong with his dreadlocks.
"With my son's dreadlocks, sometimes they do fall in front of his face, so I felt it would be easier to put his hair up, but then that's a problem," Cox said.
There's an old saying that goes, "If you let a person talk long enough, they will reveal their true intentions." Presidential frontrunner Joe Biden, who has dubbed himself the "gaffe machine", made another Freudian slip while speaking to voters in Iowa on Thursday.
NBA superstar LeBron James opened his first elementary school for at-risk students in his hometown of Akron, Ohio on Monday, July 30. "If we get to them early enough, we can hopefully keep them on the right track to a bigger and brighter future for themselves and their families,” the father-of-3 said at a press conference in the school's temporary building on Monday, July 30.
3X NBA champion LeBron James will fulfill a dream on Monday, July 30, when he opens his first elementary school for academically at-risk students in his hometown of Akron, Ohio.
A Pennsylvania school is ordering students to smile -- or get sent to the office. Northern Lebanon School District students in Pennsylvania must smile while walking in the hallways, according to a report.
