The fallout is widening in the Virginia school district where a 6-year-old allegedly shot his teacher in the chest earlier this month, with school officials leaving their posts in the face of a potential lawsuit amid questions about whether the shooting was preventable. Ebony Parker, the assistant principal at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, resigned Wednesday, a district spokesperson told CNN hours before the school board voted to oust superintendent George Parker III, whose last day is scheduled for February 1. The board has appointed an interim superintendent. view article

In the hours before a 6-year-old boy shot his first-grade teacher in Virginia this month, school leaders were warned three times that the boy might have a gun, a lawyer for the teacher said on Wednesday, including requests from employees to search the boy’s pockets and a report from another child who said that the boy had shown him the gun at recess. view article

A white male Texan who was rejected by six Texas medical schools filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday claiming that they illegally consider race and sex during admissions because they accepted Black, Hispanic and female students whose academic credentials were inferior to those of white or Asian applicants.  Plaintiff George Stewart filed the lawsuit against Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, the University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, as well as their presidents, medical school deans and admissions officers.  The lawsuit comes as the conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to roll back policies that allow race to be considered in college admissions in two cases argued before the court last fall. The court is expected to rule on those cases this spring. view article

The school districts allege that the companies' practices have led to increased anxiety, depression, eating disorders and bullying among children. view article

The Virginia school district where a 6-year-old is alleged to have intentionally shot a teacher Friday has had three instances of gun violence on district property in the past 17 months. Police say a 6-year-old boy seriously injured a teacher at Richneck Elementary School when he opened fire in a classroom. James Madison University identified the wounded teacher as Abby Zwerner, a graduate of the university. A person by the name Abigail Zwerner is listed on Richneck's website as a first-grade teacher. view article

Survivors of the fatal mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, have filed a $27 billion class action lawsuit against multiple law enforcement agencies in Texas, according to court documents. view article

The mother of a 13-year-old girl who died from an asthma attack at a Southern California school will receive $15.75 million from the school district, their lawyers announced. The Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District in San Bernardino County agreed to settle a negligence lawsuit over the October 2019 death of Adilene Carrasco, attorneys said. view article

The highly contagious virus is spreading amid slipping vaccination rates.  A measles outbreak in Ohio has swiftly expanded, spreading to seven childcare facilities and one school, all with unvaccinated children, according to local health officials. The outbreak highlights the risk of the highly contagious but vaccine-preventable disease mushrooming amid slipping vaccination rates.On November 9, the health departments of the city of Columbus and Franklin County, which encompasses Columbus, announced an outbreak at one childcare facility, which had sickened four unvaccinated children. Officials reportedly expected that more cases would follow.  As of Wednesday morning, there have been 18 confirmed cases from seven childcare facilities and one school. All of the cases are in unvaccinated children, and at least 15 cases are in children under the age of 4. At least six have required hospitalization, Kelli Newman, spokesperson for Columbus Public Health, told Ars.  Health officials are now working to curb the outbreak, including conducting contact tracing at affected facilities, coordinating with local health care providers on measles awareness efforts, and reaching out to families to educate them about and encourage vaccination with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine.    (28) view article

There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It's the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility. Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, says in an article in the Washington Post, "Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism."  view article

A Mississippi school district has been ordered to desegregate its schools after what the Justice Department called a five-decade-long legal battle. The Cleveland School District, about two hours northwest of Jackson, was told that it must consolidate its schools in order to provide real desegregation for students in the city of about 12,000. view article