The Dom Giordano Program
Readin' Writin' and Reason | October 4, 2024
Dom Giordano, WPHT host and former teacher, has dedicated much of his daily show toward parents who are taking it into their own hands to push back against school boards that have a negative impact on their children. This has culminated in a weekly podcast on education, Readin', Writin', and Reason, which has allowed wonderful relationships to develop between Giordano, educators, and parents throughout the country who are speaking out against overbearing school boards.
- Broadcast on:
- 04 Oct 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
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Tell them that your girl Tasha McKeea sent you, the sharpest rides, affordable, sexy, sharp. Hey NFL fans, you can start the season with a big return on FanDul, America's number one sports book. So when you get a hunch in the middle of the game, you can check out the latest stats, view live play-by-play, and so much more on the same page where you place your bets. You'll get started with $200 in bonus bets, guaranteed, when you place your first $5 bet. That's FanDul.com/sportsfan. Never waste a hunch, and make every moment more with FanDul, an official sports book partner of the NFL. Must be 21 plus and present in Colorado. First online real moneyweights are only $10 first deposit required. Bonus issued is now a throwable bonus bet set expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanDul.com, gambling problem, call 1-800-522-4700. Dear Autumn Leaves, you won't be covering roads alone this season. Toyota's lineup of cool, colorful vehicles is ready to ride by your side. Take on fall in a trail tacky Tacoma, or go for the powerful Tundra. Head to toyota.com for more info, or visit your local Toyota dealership today. Toyota, let's go places. Now a special talk radio 1210-W-P-H-T presentation, it's reading, writing, and reason. Now here's your host, Dom Gerdano. Hey, welcome in everyone to reading, writing, and reason with Dom Gerdano, our weekly look at all those things that influence parental rights, the money we spend on education and kids, safety, and to that point here on reading, writing, and reason this week, a survey out indicates that teachers question the idea of all these active shooter drills. In other words, they don't believe that these things make a whole lot of sense and that we ought to be taking a look at cutting them down. This recent survey was released by Rand and it found that teachers don't feel any safety or are more prepared to respond to active shooter incidents after lockdown drills. The sentiments expressed regarding school safety mirror that of teachers across the country. Researchers administrated a survey to a randomly selected 1020K through 12 teachers using the American Teacher Panel. According to this, specifically asked whether such drills made teachers feel more or less safe. The Rand survey pointed out key findings. In 2006, K through 12 teachers nationally works in a district that has been touched by gun violence, wow, since 2019, 2020, one in six. Schools do not typically announce when an active shooter drill will occur to students and parents. Many schools are not providing support to help students manage any level of stress or anxiety. Teachers are split on whether participation in drills makes them feel more prepared, slightly less than a half, say that drills make them feel more prepared, half-proceed drills is having no impact on preparedness. A slight majority of teachers reported that drills made students feel more prepared. Most teachers, 69%, indicated that participating in active shooter drills has no impact on their perception of safety at schools. All right, so I am not a fan of this. We do too many. They're too graphic. We've gone too far with this stuff, would be the way that I see it, and I hope that surveys like this convince people this is not going to have the type of benefit that you want. The big story locally this week on reading, writing, and reason here in our area was that Upper Darby has approved $1.1 million in a weapons detection system after finding AR-style magazine at the school. We had on the superintendent of schools and talked with him last week, but I just wanted to remind you as this goes into effect, it will take 40 to 60 minutes to process high school students through the system, and that to me seems to be a bit much. Just a reminder to this weekly podcast reading, writing, and reason, please tell people wherever they get their podcast, they'll be able to find us, and we do bring you the best national guest, local guest insight into all these issues, even as they play out politically. By the way, Pennsylvania, Willow Grove Park Mall, shopping mall, has added a new parental supervision policy. Now, Rowan and I have shopped at Willow Grove over the years, maybe some years, seven, eight, ten times, some years, four, or five, and I've noticed they started to have difficulties, the food court and the like, under the new policy. Any visitor under 18 years old will have to be joined by a parent or guardian, at least 21 years old, Monday to Saturday starting at 5 p.m., and on Sunday starting at 3 p.m. The policy applies to the Willow Grove Park parking lots, garages, et cetera. Mall security will enforce this. The park says, Willow Grove Park Mall, one parent or guardian over 21 can supervise up to four minors, but at least one of them has to be the child of the parent or guardian who's present. Now, there is no doubt about it that they've had problems at this mall, and you know, classically kids would go and hang at the mall. It was a sign of independence, food court, a little bit of shopping, but, you know, we've had on Pat Malloy, Abington Police Chief, and we've talked about this, and there have been concerns. There has been violence. There have been difficult things that have happened there, so I support the mall in this. I could understand why. If you work at the mall, it's not as restrictive, you just have to show identification, but the point being, this is the type of thing where we are, and, sadly, what's often necessary. A couple more items here on reading, writing, and reading with Dom Gierdano. Philadelphia School's dress code is now a national model, says the Philadelphia Inquire, with kids allowed to dress in a way that celebrates their identities. The dress code spells out protected hairstyles such as braids, locks, puffs, afro's, twists, wigs, including styles with elements such as headbands, head wraps, bonnets. They were big on the bonnet here. Rats or bees. I'm not a big fan of the school uniform. I get what the argument is. I've always felt it was too restrictive and doesn't necessarily have the impact that you would think, but some of the things that Philadelphia is saying here, as far as this being the model, seems to me to be not exactly, we'll see. You'll see how this plays out this year and what they report on it. In the good news fronts, California now, and this may be a reaction to the Supreme Court ruling on discrimination against Asian students with DEI and the like, but California has banned legacy admissions in all colleges and universities. They've become the fourth state to ban legacy admissions, a practice that's long been criticized as favoring wealthy students and familial alumni connections, and this is going to be interesting to see if these schools say they're following the law, whether or not they'll actually do it. What that means is if somebody in your family went there, then you get to go there almost by rote. We'll see because these legacy admissions often can be people that are big contributors or somewhat contributors, and that may be something these schools certainly want to continue to encourage. All right? I'll keep my eye. It's a reaction to a pushback by the Supreme Court and others on the DEI type of stuff that's going on. One final item this week on reading, writing, and breathing, a Virginia school board now, just in the last couple of days, has to pay $575,000 to a teacher fired for refusing to use trans students pronouns. The conservative legal advocacy group, the Alliance Defending Freedom announced a settlement this week, and it cleared Peter Villeng's hiring from his record. The former French teacher at West Point High School sued the school board and administrators after he was fired. It took all the way back to 2018. The principal told the school board that Villeng allegedly refused to call a ninth-grade student by the male pronouns he and him because he considered it a lie. The student had transitioned and used male pronouns. He said he would refer to the student by his new name but wouldn't use pronouns, citing his devout Christian faith. He was fired, the superintendent said, because he refused to follow the school's directive numerous times and created, oh, there it is, a hostile environment. Glenn Youngkin, I think, is a driving force here in Virginia with the changes around transgender policies and that may have made quite a difference here. Listen, I hope you enjoy the podcast reading, writing, and reading each week, the big guests that we bring you, the information that you don't hear in other places, please tell other people about it wherever you get your podcast and often hear it on usually Saturday afternoons on Talk Radio 1210WPhD. Thanks to Dan and Henry for producing this. We'll have more next week of reading, writing, and reason, but coming up. Also in the news this week, we had a great guest, Beth Ann Rosica, local education expert in the Philadelphia Public Schools. She came on to talk about the issue of upper Darby High School putting in this AI sort of device to detect metal that is going to cause tremendous difficulty for students getting into school coming up on reading, writing, and reason, Beth Ann Rosica. Doors take us to summers away or winter adventures and afternoon getaways. Your dedicated fidelity advisor can help you open those doors by working with you on a comprehensive plan to help you reach your wealth's full potential, because doors were meant to be opened. Visit fidelity.com/wealth, investment minimums apply, Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC Member NYSE SIPC. The seasons may be changing, but the deals of the sharpest rides are unbeatable as ever. Hey, what's going on? It's your girl, Tasha McKia, and I need you to join the sharpest rides for their fall into savings events where they're offering incredible prices on their massive inventory. That's right, everything is on sale now. 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You'll get started with $200 in bonus bets guaranteed when you place your first $5 bet. That's Fandal.com/sportsfan. Never waste a hunch, and make every moment more with Fandal, an official sports book partner of the NFL. Welcome back in to Reading, Writing, and Recent, our weekly podcast on parental rights and all things happening in schools, Bette and Rosica, Philadelphia area, education expert, join me this week on my noon to three show, talking about mainly Upper Darby High School, going to $1.1 million, but they do not have anyone there that's a school resource officer as we understand it that's armed. To fair it out weapons, they've had one issue in this school year, it's a high school of 4400 students, here's what Bette and Rosica told me about that. Hey, Bette and welcome back. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me on the show, Dom. Well, Bette and I first wanted to talk with you about Upper Darby High School. It was, and I told some people today that are more insiders, they didn't fully know about this and they were shocked, they'd be spending the amount of money they're spending, $1.1 million, and something that's going to take students 40 to 60 minutes a day in the morning to get into the building and something drastic without a school resource officer who's armed, what are your thoughts on Upper Darby High School overall? Well, I've written about Upper Darby many, many times and their academic decline and the myriad of issues that are going on there and have been going on for quite some time. So, I have really mixed feelings about this specific issue with the monitors that they're putting in. I mean, 1.1 is an extraordinary amount of money. However, what I will say is that districts waste more money than that on all sorts of other garbage that is far inferior. So, for me, the money is the least of the issues because if it is actually something that would keep students and staff safe, then I think that that's a no-brainer, $1 million to keep everybody safe is certainly worth the money. The question becomes, is this really the best way to instill a feeling of comfort and security inside of a school building and I think that the bigger issue that I've seen raised by parents and community members is that this was very much rushed through. This is a really big purchase. It's a really big change and the fact that there wasn't a longer dialogue, there wasn't a community task force, advisory force, parents, people be able to give comment and to really discuss through the pros and cons of this, I think that this is just yet another example of Upper Darby not taking everybody's feelings, thoughts, considerations into the mix before making such a paramount decision for these schools. It's not just the high school, it's the two middle schools as well. Well, I would agree with that, but we have this compromise. People were asking me about it the other day. My understanding of it, I think it's pretty clear, but you may know better in the budget which appear on it was our representative Sheeran and others from Saturday. They got that the state will give $50,000 to the school district to have a school resource officer. They want it to demand they must be armed with a firearm. The compromise was that'll be on the school district to decide. I still think that's better than because with this inconvenience of this detection system, if you had a maniac coming into that school, they can go right there or come in from another door, I'd rather have someone there that I know is going to take them on. Right. Now, and I agree, and I don't see them as mutually exclusive areas. I think that we absolutely need school resource officers in the buildings and in an area like Upper Darby, having somebody armed probably makes sense in order to be able to keep everybody safe. I just think that once again, Upper Darby makes knee jerk decisions and they don't really look at all of the aspects. I mean, I wrote recently, maybe a couple of months ago about the whole cell phone issue in school. I mean, Upper Darby could be taking steps to remove cell phones from the school, which would also help to create a much better environment for the students. So there's a lot of things that they could be doing that they're not doing and it feels like this was a knee jerk reaction and to your point, a lot of money. Woodberry Beth Ann is the latest to do this. Now, you're an education expert. My expertise comes from being on the front lines teaching. I think you've had some of that. It's going to be fairly difficult to be doing that with the removal of the phones. The execution of it is important. I'm in favor of it. I can't imagine having kids distracted by that all day long, what that's like. Well, and I've talked about this before, Dom, the cell phone issue and there are schools in Pennsylvania that have outlawed cell phones. Kids are not allowed to have cell phones in school. And what we're seeing is that student engagement is very much increased and teachers don't have to fight for the attention of kids. I mean, there are two ways to do this and actually the legislature approved funding through the Safe Schools Act to use towards the elimination of cell phones. They can purchase these. They're called cell phone bags that the phone goes in and it's basically locked so that you can't access it during the day. But I also think that you can simply have a policy that phones have to stay in your locker and if they are out of your locker, then you get a detention and you take progressive disciplinary action. We just have to change, we have to change the environment. Everybody's become so accustomed to having access to their cell phone 24/7. We've got to change that environment and I think that the safety issue really is that the cell phones are a part of that because a lot of what leads to kids bringing cell phones to weapons to school is the feeling of not being safe. And part of not feeling safe is the garbage that kids post on social media, the cyberbullying that goes on and kids bring weapons because they think that they need you to feel safe. And if we can improve that climate and make kids feel emotionally and physically safer through the removal of cell phones, I think that that would go a long way to addressing many of the issues that we're seeing in public schools. Beth Ann Rosica with us and Beth Ann writing over at Broad in Liberty. This has become a touchstone issue here. I see the election shaping up. We had the Teamsters president of 96,000 Teamsters in Pennsylvania on this week. He didn't fully concede, but basically he did. The Trump has broken through. We know this now big time with union members, Teamsters and the like. And yet when it comes to these pesky women in the suburbs again, this is an area. And that's why the tell was the Trump people know this. He started talking about being a protector this week. Now, you've been writing about Harris and women, which is an allay up for her. And maybe there's some material, there's some thought process that the Trump people should be looking at because I think you've hit upon several things with VP Harris and women. Yes. Well, I wish that the Trump campaign would call me because I'd be happy to talk to them about messaging that they could 100% improve upon because their messaging has not been stellar either. However, you know, what I am talking about, I've completed three of a four part series on the case against Kamala in Broad in Liberty. And my most recent one on Monday talked about the conundrum of womanhood. You know, Harris and the Democratic Party cannot even define or refuses to define what a woman is, but they champion themselves as, you know, we're the leaders of reproductive services for women in the country. And I really believe that their positions are completely antithetical from one another. You can't support women if you can't even define who and what they are. And you know, you open to this up with the thought of women having to compete against men and sports. I absolutely agree with you. It's abhorrent, it's ludicrous, it makes no sense and it is low hanging fruit. And that is a message and it's been pulled. The majority of people in this country, regardless of their political affiliation, do not think that boys should be able to compete against girls and sports. I have two teenage boys. There is no way I would let them compete against a girl on a sport. It's just, it makes no sense. And I think that that messaging has to be made very, very clear. Harris continues to refuse to answer questions on that issue. She refuses to answer questions on at what point in time is abortion acceptable or not acceptable. I mean, I talk in my article that, you know, I was a former Democrat. I am still a generally pro-choice woman who lives in southeastern Pennsylvania. The demographic that, you know, the Republicans really need to have any hope of winning. However, even as a primarily pro-choice person, I have very clear lines in the sand about when abortion is acceptable. And where Walt has come from and where I believe Harris comes from is absolutely unacceptable. Let me give you a tough question on that, though, in broad strokes. What is the line in the sand? What's, I'm talking about this in political terms because that's where we are, that people like Trump and others ought to have top of mind. Is it 15 weeks or is it even more than that? Yeah, so, you know, again, I'm probably not the general listener to your show. You know, I'm not, I don't consider myself conservative on a lot of issues. But in this case, for me, I mean, Pennsylvania, we have a 24-week allowability for abortion. And I'm comfortable with that as a pro-choice person, I'm comfortable with that. You know, I know that some people feel like it should be at the heartbeat. Some people, you know, have different lines. For me, my personal line is if a baby can be born and live with life support, then, to me, that's where the line is. That's where, then it's a baby. It's not a choice. It is a baby. It's a human being. And again, I know that this is a very hot button issue, but, and again, if the mother's life is at risk, I mean, nobody's ever saying that if the mother's going to die, you let the mother die, you know, to have the child be born. But that's the messaging that the progressives, and particularly Harrison Waltz, want people to believe, and they're, you know, they're unwilling to answer those questions. I mean, killing a baby at, you know, nine months in utero is murder to me. Yeah, absolutely. There's no question about that. I don't sense this is going to be quite the issue it was in 2022, but I do sense it is going to be top in mind for, shall we say, reluctant voters, younger women under 3040 that don't come out all the time or vote by mail or whatever. And it's still there as the one pivot they have in the suburbs. And I agree with you, Don. I think that there are a lot of women who are not willing to do the research because I can tell you that here in the suburbs, if I were to talk to even, you know, democratic moms, and I said, you know, are you okay with abortion in the eighth month? Most of them would say no, but the Democrats messaging, Harris's messaging on this issue has been very good. The message here should be Pennsylvania already has a law on the books that allows abortion up to 24 weeks. Nobody's taking that away. Neither Trump nor Harris, you know, will have anything to do with that unless, you know, they try to do something in Congress. But this is codified in Pennsylvania already. And I don't think that anybody's doing a very good job of explaining where things are in Pennsylvania and why it really shouldn't be that big of an issue for voters, particularly in the South. Where's the best place to find your work, Beth Ann, at Broaden Liberty. Where else? Yes. BroadenLiberty.com. Occasionally I have some pieces in Delaware Valley Journal, but for the most part you can find everything that I write in BroadenLiberty.com. Thanks, Beth Ann. As always, have a nice weekend. Thanks. Take care, Dom. All right. That's Beth Ann Rosica. Hope you enjoyed the podcast this week. Tell other people about it. We'll be back next week with another edition of reading, writing, and reasoning. The seasons may be changing, but the deals at the sharpest rides are unbeatable as ever. Hey, what's going on? It's your girl, Tasha McKia. And I need you to join the sharpest rides for their fall into savings event, where they're offering incredible prices on their massive inventory. That's right. Everything is on sale now. Shot from sleek sedans to rugged SUVs and sporty convertibles. The sharpest rides has the perfect ride to match your fall adventures, plus with their exclusive financing options, getting behind the wheel of your dream car has never been easier. Now go on and shop online at thesharpestrides.com, right from the palm of your hands. Or check other massive inventory in person at the sharpest rides, located 2250 South Sea Home Street in Inglewood. Either way, you will fall into savings. Don't miss out. Head on over to the sharpestrides.com today and explore the deals that make every season better. And tell them that your girl, Tasha McKia sent you the sharpest rides, affordable, sexy, sharp. Hey, NFL fans, you can start the season with a big return on FanDool, America's number one sports book. So when you get a hunch in the middle of the game, you can check out the latest stats, view live play-by-play, and so much more on the same page where you place your bets. You'll get started with $200 in bonus bets guaranteed when you place your first $5 bet. That's fandool.com/sportsfan. Never waste a hunch and make every moment more with FanDool, an official sports book partner of the NFL, must be 21 plus and present in Colorado. First online real money weights are only $10 first deposit required. Bonus issued is now a throwable bonus bet set expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fandool.com, gambling problem, call 1-800-522-4700. Dear Autumn Leaves, you won't be covering roads alone this season. Toyota's lineup of cool, colorful vehicles is ready to ride by your side. Click on fall in a trail tackling Tacoma, or go for the powerful Tundra. Head to toyota.com for more info or visit your local Toyota dealership today. Toyota, let's go places! (upbeat music) You