Today’s read is from Amy Swearer and Abby Kassal. Amy Swearer is a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Abby Kassal is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. Here’s an excerpt:
Almost every major study on the issue has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to the most recent report on the subject by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For this reason, The Daily Signal each month publishes an article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place.
To honor Women’s History Month, we decided to highlight 10 incidents from last month in which the Second Amendment made all the difference for women, either because they were armed or because another armed person came to their defense.
Bremerton assistant football coach Joe Kennedy, obscured at center in blue, is surrounded by Centralia High School football players as they kneel and pray with him on the field after their game against Bremerton on Oct. 16, 2015, in Bremerton, Wash. After losing his coaching job for refusing to stop kneeling in prayer with players and spectators on the field immediately after football games, Kennedy took his arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, April 25, 2022, saying the Bremerton School District violated his First Amendment rights by refusing to let him continue praying at midfield after games. Photo: Meegan M. Reid/Kitsap Sun via AP, File
Over the course of my lifetime I have attended or worked at about 700 high school football games. Many times after a game one team and sometimes both kneel down as they’re talked to by a coach.
Are they praying? I don’t know because I couldn’t hear. Probably not. But even if they were, at the risk of sounding nowhere near analytical, a big fat so what?
On Oct. 16, 2015, the varsity football team at Bremerton High School (state of Washington) took on the varsity team from Centralia High School. After the game, there was an all-American moment. It involved a longstanding postgame activity engaged in by Bremerton assistant coach Joseph Kennedy.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has provided a description of it.
“Kennedy is a practicing Christian,” said the court. “Kennedy’s religious beliefs required him to ‘give thanks through prayer, at the end of each game, for what the players had accomplished and for the opportunity to be a part of their lives through football.
“Specifically,” the court continued, “‘(a)fter the game (was) over, and after the players and coaches from both teams met to shake hands at midfield,’ Kennedy felt called to kneel at the 50-yard line and offer a brief, quiet prayer of thanksgiving for player safety, sportsmanship, and spirited competition.’ Kennedy’s prayer usually lasted about thirty seconds. Kennedy’s religious beliefs required that his prayer occur on the field where the game was played, immediately after the game concluded. This necessarily meant that spectators — students, parents, and community members — would observe Kennedy’s religious conduct.”
The Bremerton School District had barred Kennedy from engaging in this postgame prayer.
The school district fired Kennedy and the 9th Circuit agreed with the district.
The case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Betsy McCaughey, Ph.D, is a former Lt. Governor of New York State and author of Beating Obamacare. She asks a terrific question.
Why should traditional religion be discriminated against, while teachers and coaches are allowed to proselytize their woke belief system, displaying Gay Pride symbols and BLM slogans in the classroom? Are children any less at risk of coercion or indoctrination by these ideas presented by authority figures whom they’re eager to please?
Bremerton officials told him praying within sight of students violated the Establishment Clause and asked him to go across campus and pray in the janitor’s office. Kennedy refused, arguing that would send a message that prayer is bad and must be hidden. The refusal cost him his job.
Kennedy’s lawyer told the justices on Monday that the firing violated the coach’s right to freely practice his religion.
And now to today’s read from, again, Terence P. Jeffrey, the editor-in-chief of CNSnews.com. Here’s an excerpt:
When the House of Representatives convened for a three-minute session on Monday, the proceedings opened with a written statement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“I hereby appoint the Honorable Andy Kim to act as Speaker pro tempore on this day,” Pelosi declared.
As recorded by C-SPAN, Kim, empowered by Pelosi, then instantly announced: “The prayer will be offered by Chaplain Kibben.”
The Rev. Margaret Kibben stepped to the podium. “Would you pray with me?” she asked with a smile.
Her prayer, as recorded by C-SPAN, lasted about 1 minute and 20 seconds.
Across the street that same day, the Supreme Court was considering Joseph A. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the case of an assistant coach who prayed in public after football games.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said, “‘(a)fter the game is over and the players and coaches from both teams have met to shake hands at midfield,’ Kennedy feels called to ‘take a knee at the 50-yard line and offer a brief, quiet prayer of thanksgiving for player safety, sportsmanship, and spirited competition.’ Kennedy’s prayer usually lasts about thirty seconds.”
That makes it shorter than the prayer delivered this Monday by the House chaplain.
MORE ABOUT CANDIDATE COREY GOLLA, MOST RECENTLY THE SUPT. AT MENOMONEE FALLS
Golla has worked to cover up incidents related to police involvement with students/teachers to minimize transparency of potential threats and keep the district record clean.
The school district removed the “Exceeds Expectation” academic indicator because of their equity initiative to make underachieving students feel better.
The school district was no longer saying the pledge of allegiance daily and not requiring kids to stand for the pledge. Parents complained and they are still not doing this consistently in the district.
Golla has not had a recent performance review required by contract. The former board did not enforce this requirement.
The district has still not pulled numerous pornographic books discovered from the library and these are still accessible to students without restriction. The newly elected school board plans to act on this issue.
COMMENTS RE: CANDIDATE ANNALEE BENNIN, SUPERINTENDENT FOR THE SHEBOYGAN FALLS SCHOOL DISTRICT
Young.
Energetic.
Positive.
Confident.
Inexperienced.
OTHER OBSERVATIONS I’VE RECEIVED
Important to remember: The Franklin School Board has three new liberal members; two have this week only been on the board for one year and are clueless; another (Ann Sepersky) has only about a year and a half of service. And they are now required to make a critical decision. Could be a disaster.
School Exec Connect, a national search and consulting firm, handled the search process. Fourteen applied for the position. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and one of my sources School Exec Connect presented six semifinalist candidates to the Franklin School Board to interview. Ideally the school board should have reviewed all of those applications and not leave it up to the consulting firm. It’s the board’s responsibility. The board eventually knocked the candidates down to three.
If the final three came out of the board interviewing six, it’s hard to imagine how bad the other three were (My personal favorite).
Final applicant Annalee Benning was curriculum director and assistant superintendent of Oak Creek until she became Sheboygan Falls Superintendent in 2020. Candidate Stephen Plank ran the Burlington schools. Both Oak Creek and Burlington school districts rate considerably lower on national comparisons done by Niche and other groups. Niche maintains in-depth profiles on every school and college in America.
Why bring in these administrators from districts that do not perform up to Franklin’s level?
Franklin Public Schools will get a new business manager this summer who previously worked in underachieving Oak Creek as their business manager. So there’s the possibility of Franklin getting a new superintendent (Benning) who previously worked with the new business manager (Andrew Chromy) in an underperforming district.
FINAL NOTE:
What if the school board ultimately isn’t satisfied with any of the three candidates?
The board then has the option of declining to hire, and the entire process would start all over.
Martin Schreiber visits his wife Elaine Schreiber as the two share a lighter moment at The Lutheran Home on W. North Ave, in Wauwatosa in November 2015. Photo: MIKE DE SISTI, MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
When a loved one suffers from a life-sapping illness, often times the affliction is more difficult on the caregiver.
Homeschooling has increased dramatically since the onset of COVID-19 and the lockdowns that followed. Census data reveals that by the fall of the 2020-2021 school year, 11.1 percent of households with school-aged children reported homeschooling, double the amount of the previous year. Then, by May 2021, the percentage was 19.5.
In WI data from the state Department of Public Instruction show 3.25% of all students or nearly 32,000 were home-schooled last academic year.
Why the surge? Overbearing COVID restrictions, politically motivated curriculum, and a growing perception that overall there’s been a decline in the quality of education their children are receiving in government-run schools.
Today’s read is from Marguerite Bowling, Senior Communications Manager at the Heritage Foundation. Here’s an excerpt before the final article:
Any working mom can attest that work never quite turns off.
We don’t necessarily get to sleep in on the weekends or kick back and sip wine when we get home from our jobs.
Most likely, we’re cooking dinner, giving baths, refereeing fights, negotiating on bedtime or television, reading stories, and trying to accomplish the million things on our to-do lists once we get home.
So, why add one more responsibility to the list—especially one as important as educating our kids?
Corey Golla wants to be the next school district administrator in Franklin. Here’s more about Golla and his reign as superintendent at Menomonee Falls.
I’ve learned:
Golla was instrumental in keeping kids in masks while other surrounding districts made masks optional in schools. This was done to continue receiving government funding and maintain Covid related policies, in direct opposition to parents’ requests to change to optional.
He condoned the segregation of students between vaccinated and unvaccinated in schools.
He supported contact quarantining of healthy kids well after other districts did away with the practice that was detrimental to the achievement of these students.
He instructed teachers and staff not to use any terms keywords like equity, SEL, or CRT in any correspondence so they could not be revealed in open record requests by the public.
Since 2016 average student testing scores have dropped in all MF district schools and the numbers have been skewed to make the district appear to have maintained adequate scores by not revealing all the metrics.
Franklin’s subpar school board is now entrusted with selecting the replacement for retiring district administrator (supt.) Judy Mueller. The fact they now have this critical responsibility is scary.
Finalists have been narrowed down to three, and the selection process appears to now be on a fast track.
Having reached out to anyone that could shine some light on the candidates the feedback is beginning to trickle in.
Here are some of the comments I’ve gotten about Corey Golla, most recently the superintendent at Menomonee Falls:
When all of Waukesha county schools went mask optional last spring Golla dug his heels in. MF was the only school district in all of Waukesha county to keep masks.
Golla is a tool of the teachers union and the Progressive party.
You don’t move from Menomonee Falls to Franklin.
If he gets in he will he will then in a year or two implement and divide up the grade schools. One grade school for the 4K-5K, another for 1st grade and 2nd grade and so on. Getting rid of the schools as you know it. Scary thing is, with a backing of a liberal progressive board, he will get it done even if 20,000 residents oppose it,, he will do it and not a damn thing can be done about it>
This guy will never ever, ever listen to the parents. He is told what to do by the union and the Democrats.
Look at him, how after 3 moms sworn in to the MF school board he announced leaving for Franklin as if it’s a done deal.
The school board spent $600,000 on air filter systems to “battle Covid.” No other district did. Golla still kept the kids masked up for a whole year.
Given there are two sides to a story Mr. Golla and others are more than welcome to respond here.
This Just In... From Franklin, WI 
