Uvalde parents demand financial transparency over school security grants

During Monday night's school board meeting, Uvalde citizens demanded financial transparency regarding the millions of dollars in grants announced last week aimed at strengthening school security before children return to the classroom this September.

"We just saw lump sum $100,000 here, $500,000 here," one community member said during the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District meeting. "Now what I would like to see is further breakdown. OK, who is that money going to?"

A meeting of the School Board is held in Uvalde, Texas, Aug. 15, 2022.

Uvalde CISD vua YouTube

The school board announced last week that it plans to spend more than $3.5 million on projects such as replacing locks, installing fences and hiring more counselors. The school district received grants from the state of Texas, the Department of Justice and the Las Vegas Raiders football team to fund these projects.

Uvalde:365 is a continuing ABC News series reported from Uvalde and focused on the Texas community and how it forges on in the shadow of tragedy.

The district also outlined its plan to offer remote classes this year in response to parents' concerns that their children do not feel comfortable returning to school in person.

Becky Reinhardt, the administrator for virtual learning, said there would not be a limit on the number of students who can be virtual, and that students could switch back to in-person learning whenever they wanted.

A makeshift memorial site to victims stands outside the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Aug. 8, 2022.

Nick Wagner/Xinhua via Newscom

For their part, the school board members did not speak much about the massacre that killed 21 people in May. They did not answer when asked about the progress of fence-building at the other schools, the likelihood they would conduct their own investigation or the timing of Police Chief Pete Arredondo's termination hearing, which has been delayed twice.

The board will meet next Monday to hear community grievances.

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Arizona parents arrested trying to get in locked-down school

PHOENIX -- Police arrested three Arizona parents, shocking two of them with stun guns, as they tried to force their way into a school that police locked down Friday after an armed man was seen trying to get on campus, authorities said.

The parents were arrested as they tried to get to their children to protect them, authorities said. Officers in the Phoenix suburb of El Mirage used a Taser to stop two of them as they tried to help a man whose own handgun fell to the ground while he was being taken into custody, authorities said.

The scene at Thompson Ranch Elementary School developed nearly three months after hundreds of law enforcement officers in the small Texas city of Uvalde failed to act for more than an hour as a gunman killed two teachers and 19 students.

No shots were fired at Thompson Ranch, the school wasn't breached and no one was hurt, other than a woman taken to a hospital with Taser injuries from officers who say they were trying to stop her from attacking them.

By the time the confrontations with the upset parents began, police had already confirmed that there was no longer a threat, removed a suspicious package and were planning to begin reuniting parents with the children, El Mirage police Lt. Jimmy Chavez said.

But the school was still on lockdown, meaning no one would be allowed on campus, according to the protocols police and the school district have set up. That's when upset parents demanded to be allowed into the school so they could find their children and began confronting police, authorities said.

“Several parents continued with their agitation, made several statements that they were going to come on campus to help protect their kids,” Chavez said. “As a parent I understand that philosophy. However, there are procedures that law enforcement and the school were following.”

Chavez said a man began pushing to get past officers and as police were arresting him, a man and a woman who had also been confronting officers came to his aid. Officers used a Taser to subdue them and they too were arrested. As the first man was being taken into custody, a gun fell to the ground.

The armed parent will face a weapons charge — guns are not allowed on school grounds — and a disorderly conduct charge. The two parents who were stunned with the Taser will face unspecified charges. The woman was taken by ambulance to a hospital, Chavez said. None were immediately identified.

The incident began at about 10:30 a.m. Friday when school officials called police to report that a man, possibly armed with a gun, was trying to get into a locked school building. He could not get in and was chased off by staff before police from El Mirage and two other agencies arrived at the school, Chavez said.

Officers searching the school to ensure it was safe found a suspicious package and called a bomb squad, Chavez said, and moved some children to another part of the campus.

That's when parents began arriving and the confrontations with officers began, with parents "forcefully pushing on the officers trying to get on to campus."

“The parents need to understand that when the school is on lockdown and law enforcement is on scene, nobody is going to be allowed on campus,” Chavez said.

Chavez said the school lockdown procedures between the school district and law enforced “worked to a T.”

Police later located the man who had triggered the lockdown. He was being evaluated late Friday by mental health professionals and a police statement said charges were pending.,

Efforts to reach El Mirage Police Saturday to get additional information were not immediately successful.

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Oklahoma parents protest explicit books in public school libraries

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Oklahoma parents on Tuesday night spoke out against explicit library books at a school board meeting. 

Stillwater Public Schools, which serves more than 8,300 students, says their library is selected by professional Library Media Specialists in a statement released to the media. The district said that there is a process by which parents may call for material to be reviewed, and they have not received any such requests recently.

The parents were summoned to speak as their names were called to address matters on the meeting's agenda. 

"You guys probably are aware that TPS [Tulsa Public Schools] and Mustang Schools are going through some accreditation problems via House Bill 1775," said Riley Flack, a parent that spoke at the podium while holding a book. 

Flack went on to say, "[Stillwater] is going to have the same issue if you don't clean it up. And I'm going to find it and I've got some connections that I've made over the last couple of years battling [Stillwater]. I'll bring that to bear."

Flack called out a book titled "It Feels Good to Be Yourself," which he said was in two elementary schools and is about "gender identity." 

"It teaches the kids whether the doctor is guessing whether it was a boy or a girl," he said.

SOUTHWEST FLORIDA SCHOOL DISTRICT PLACES WARNING LABELS ON OVER 100 BOOKS

Protesters and activists hold signs as they stand outside a Loudoun County Public Schools board meeting in Ashburn, Virginia, on Oct. 12, 2021.  (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

Doubling down on the explicit material in the books, a woman named Karen Flack, who lived in the Stillwater community for "35 years," highlighted books at the public library that alarmed her. 

Among the books she flagged at the school board meeting are "The Truth About Alice," a story involving "abortion," and "Perfect," which contains "sexual activities, including sexual assault, profanity, racial commentary, self-harm" and other "high concerns on what the subject matter is."

She said that there is no need for the content in the libraries and compared the books to "video pornography" and criticized it as "not appropriate."

"This is just not appropriate. To me, it's like if you had a section of pornography, video pornography, for kids to check out," said Flack. 

One parent seemed to agree with the inclusion of the controversial material. A woman named Robin, who said she is a former elementary teacher, came to the podium to say that "if we never give our children a broad array of perspectives, we're doing them a disservice and setting them up to struggle when they go out into the wider world."

"But, books that are recommended for the age range that is well reviewed by professionals or award-winning must remain available for our children. I'll quickly add that the addition of new voices doesn't mean the expulsion of others," she said.

"Since books that face challenges are often books that offer diverse perspectives, choosing not to add those voices to our classrooms can perpetuate existing inequities." 

RHODE ISLAND MOM SUES AFTER DISCOVERING ‘SECRET’ ‘ANTIRACIST’ MEETINGS HELD IN DISTRICT

Stillwater Public Schools released a statement in response to the tumultuous school board meeting.

"In every situation, we take parent concerns seriously and hope to partner with them to find a solution that's right for their child. If a child is assigned a book to which the parents object for a class, we ask that they start at that level; alternative texts can be provided for students by their teacher. If there's a book they don't want their child to have access to, we ask that they have a conversation with their school so that their wishes for their child's library access can be honored," Stillwater Public Schools said.

Recently, a southwest Florida school district placed warning labels on over 100 books that related to race or the LGBTQ community, deeming them "unsuitable for students." The district started adding the labels in February based on a "Porn in Schools Report" issued by a conservative group.

Parents all over the country have been speaking out against coronavirus-related mandates in schools and progressive curriculums that have been associated with critical race theory or gender theory. 

Parents and community members attend a Loudoun County School Board meeting, just 40 minutes from Fairfax, Virginia. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)

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Education advocates have highlighted CRT curriculum in schools and opposed COVID-19 related mandates and lockdowns, with these issues leading to protests and recalls of school boards across the nation.

Republican elected officials in several states have sought to ban discussion of gender ideology and critical race theory in classrooms, particularly for young students.

Joshua Q. Nelson is a reporter for FoxNews.com. You can find him on Twitter @joshuaqnelson.

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Alex Jones must pay Sandy Hook parents $45.2 million more in punitive damages

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A Texas jury has determined Inforwars host Alex Jones must pay the parents of a Sandy Hook school shooting victim $45.2 million in punitive damages. The Friday decision comes a day after the same jury awarded the plaintiffs $4.1 million in compensatory damages, culminating the final phase of a defamation case first brought in 2018 over Jones’ repeated false claims that the deadliest elementary school shooting in U.S. history was a hoax.

Jones was not in court as the jury read the unanimous verdict.

The damages phase of the trial that ended Friday marks the first time Jones, an influential purveyor of far-right conspiracy theories, has faced financial repercussions in court for the outlandish lies he told via his Infowars broadcast about the shooting. Since the early days that followed the 2012 shooting that killed 26 people, including 20 young children, Jones said on his program that “no one died” at Sandy Hook and that the attack was a ruse “staged” by gun-control advocates to manufacture anti-gun sentiment.

Alex Jones must pay $4.1 million to Sandy Hook parents, jury rules

In the case brought by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, the damages hint at what Jones could face in the months ahead in addition Sandy Hook defamation cases in Texas and Connecticut. It remains to be seen how much of the punitive damages the parents will ultimately receive as Texas laws cap such awards.

Jurors on Friday heard additional testimony about Jones’ finances before they began deliberations on what sum would would both punish Jones for his falsehoods and deter him from making them again.

In court Friday, Bernard Pettingill, Jr., a forensic economist and former economics professor at the Florida Institute of Technology testified he estimated the combined net work of Jones and his business entities to be between $135-$270 million.

“You cannot separate Alex Jones from the companies. He is the companies,” Pettingill said.

The testimony is in stark contrast to Jones’ public statements that he is financially bereft; his defense team originally asked the jury to award the plaintiffs $1 for each claim after contending Jones lost millions of dollars and followers when he was kicked off social media platforms like YouTube and Spotify.

Free Speech Systems, the parent company for Infowars website, filed for bankruptcy during the trial, though Pettingill and other witnesses said it was impossible to fully scrutinize Jones finances since he failed to provide documents to the court.

Jones’ refusal to comply with court orders around documents and other evidence resulted in District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County, Tex., issuing default judgements against Jones last September, which made him liable for all damages.

But in a dramatic courtroom moment Wednesday, it was revealed that Jones’ legal team inadvertently sent the contents of his cellphone to a lawyer representing the parents. The apparent blunder led the plaintiff’s attorney Mark Bankston to accuse Jones of lying under oath when he testified that he did not have any text messages related to the Sandy Hook massacre.

During the jury’s deliberations, Jones’s lawyers requested a mistrial and demanded that Bankston delete the phone data they had handed over, which the judge denied.

Jones’s lawyers have said the legal battle against him is an attack on First Amendment rights, while the parents’ legal team argued that his rhetoric was defamatory and not protected.

Sandy Hook lawyers say Alex Jones’s attorneys accidentally gave them his phone contents

Heslin and Lewis testified during the nearly two-week defamation phase of the case that Jones’ relentless false claims that their son never died and they were “crisis actors” created a “living hell” for them.

While on the stand Tuesday, Heslin said as he grieved his son, he also contended with death threats and abuse from those who embraced Jones’ rhetoric.

“I can’t even describe the last nine and a half years, the living hell that I and others have had to endure because of the recklessness and negligence of Alex Jones,” Heslin told the jury.

In his closing arguments Friday, Bankston said jurors are tasked with with punishing and deterring Jones with their verdict and implored them to use their vote to “stop Alex Jones.”

“Truly, you have the ability today to stop this man from ever doing this again: from continuing to tear the fabric of our society apart for the great monetary gain that he has received thus far,” Bankston said.

“Speech is free,” he added. "Lies, you pay for.”

Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report.

Source https://www.globalcourant.com/alex-jones-must-pay-sandy-hook-parents-45-2-million-more-in-punitive-damages/?feed_id=7171&_unique_id=62edaa3d1bd77

Alex Jones ordered to pay Sandy Hook parents more than $4M

Alex Jones has been ordered to pay more than $4 million in compensatory damages to Sandy Hook parents, a jury ordered Thursday.

The conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder was successfully sued by the parents of a 6-year-old boy who was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre after he claimed that the shooting -- where 20 children and six adults were killed -- was a hoax, a claim he said he now thinks is "100% real."

The parents sued Jones for $150 million. A verdict on punitive damages is expected Friday.

Alex Jones steps outside of the Travis County Courthouse, to do interviews with media after he was questioned under oath about text messages and emails by lawyer Mark Bankston, in Austin, Texas, Aug. 3, 2022.

Briana Sanchez/Pool via Reuters

A lawyer representing the Sandy Hook families had said in court on Thursday that he intends to hand over two years' worth of Jones' text messages to the House committee investigating Jan. 6, after they were inadvertently provided to him by Jones' lawyers.

"I've been asked to turn them over. I certainly intend to do that unless you tell me not to," Mark Bankston told the judge, saying he's been asked by the Jan. 6 committee to turn them over.

A source familiar with the matter also told ABC News that the committee and Bankston have been in touch about receiving the messages.

A jury made the determination in Jones' defamation trial Thursday.

Bankston revealed Wednesday that Jones' lawyers mistakenly sent him two years' worth of text messages.

Bankston referenced "intimate messages with Roger Stone" that he said were not "confidential" or "trade secrets." He said that "various federal agencies and law enforcement" contacted him about the information.

"There has been no protection ever asserted over these documents," Bankston said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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