Campus leftists can't handle April Fool's Day satire | CHCCS showing bondage gear to elementary schoolers | Bilingual education: benefitting Americans, or stymieing English learners?
No. 170 — Mar. 29-Apr. 4, 2026
Harnett County Schools is drawing the ire of some parents and activists for cutting back on dual language immersion, citing the fact that its “shifted heavily towards native speakers” of Spanish.
ICYMI: The latest article in our series celebrating the 250th anniversary of North Carolina touches on the colonial history of the area, including the namesakes of Johnston, Granville, Orange, Chatham, and Bute.
The primary student newspaper at UNC-Chapel Hill has apologized after its April Fool’s Day satire struck a nerve with the radical leftists in the student body and alumni.
The House Majority Leader is once again alleging violations of the Parents’ Bill of Rights by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, citing books available to elementary schoolers ranging from promoting LGBTQ activism and agenda to depictions of homosexuals in BDSM gear.
Harnett Schools dual language immersion: for immigrants or for Americans?
‘No decisions about us without us!’ Students protest proposed changes in HCS’s dual language immersion program - Daily Record
Harnett County School Board Stands Firm for Students, Taxpayers, and Common Sense - Barbecue Sentinel
Keep Dual Language Immersion Programs in Harnett County Public Schools - Change.org Petition
Do bilingual Spanish immersion programs in our schools serve the interests of English-speaking American students, or are they being used to delay the necessity of learning our language by Spanish-speaking school-aged immigrants and children of immigrants?
An official of the Harnett County Schools cited the latter to the board of education in explaining why the county’s dual language immersion program was being cut back.
“The original thought there on dual immersion was some language acquisition for English speakers, but it has shifted heavily towards native speakers being in that program,” said Assistant Superintendent for Auxiliary Services Chris Pearson at a March 2 board meeting.
At the following March 30 board meeting, Pearson shared an example of how the current system is failing to produce acceptable results, citing the fact that 21 out of 23 English-learners in kindergarten at Coats Elementary were in the dual language program, yet less than 5% of English-learners at the school were testing as proficient in the 3rd grade.
The decision to reduce the program to only two elementary schools has met both resistance from parents, who have complained about the short notice, as well as from dual language activists such as the National Association of Bilingual Education, which has endorsed a petition to reverse the change which has garnered several hundred signatures.
However, reviewing the NABE website suggests that the disproportionate use of the Spanish immersion program by Hispanic immigrants may be more of a feature than a bug, with the NABE website citing “educational equity” and “global citizens” in its mission, as well as linking to resources geared towards helping illegal aliens evade immigration enforcement while making use of taxpayer funded educational resources.
Although the demographic change induced by post-1965 immigration policy may have been slower to reach Harnett, migration has skyrocketed the population of Hispanics in the county in recent decades, growing from 5,336 (5.86%) in 2000 to 18,899 (14.15%) in 2020.
The population of “English Learner Students” in the district has concurrently increased by ~200 per year, according to the number of ELS test-takers reported in the NC Department of Public Instruction accountability data sets:
The same data shows the vast disparity in performance between English Learner Students and their English-proficient peers, with the latter being up to 3.5x more likely to achieve the standard of “Grade Level Proficiency” in the twelve public school districts in the Triangle Trumpet’s beat:
ICYMI: Long Carolina, a Forgotten Earl, and the Regulation
A brief history of the colonial counties of the Triangle
I can see by my analytics that not many of y’all took a look at the latest article in the Celebrating the 250th series, but I think you might find yourself at least mildly interested in the history anecdotes contained therein if you give it a chance:
Long Carolina, a Forgotten Earl, and the Regulation
Counties have a long history in our state, predating even the “North” in North Carolina.
April Fool’s Day satire gets “cancelled” at UNC
Statement from the editor on The Daily Tar Heel’s satire edition - Daily Tar Heel
UNC student newspaper’s April Fools’ satire sparks outrage on campus - N&O
It felt ‘mean’: April Fools’ Day joke backfires on UNC’s Daily Tar Heel - CBS17
UNC-Chapel Hill’s reliably left-leaning primary student newspaper the Daily Tar Heel has apologized for the “insensitive” publication of satire touching too close to home on its audiences’ sacred cows, including immigration enforcement, DEI, and Israel.
These satirical articles included “Trump orders ALE in Chapel Hill to be replaced with ICE agents” and “The new plan for the Dean Dome — a two-stadium solution,” which have been taken down from the DTH website after social media posts were made criticizing the publication, accruing tens of thousands of likes: “You cannot take a real, active, politically charged issue that is affecting people’s safety and turn it into a campus-wide ‘prank’ and hide behind ‘it’s satire.’”
“Scenarios like a ‘two-stadium solution’ and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at He’s Not Here were not written to be mockeries of real-life horrors, but to shed light on them,” explained DTH Editor-in-Chief Alli Pardue in an apology statement. “The pieces were written to call attention to the senseless events occurring today, like sending ICE agents to replace TSA agents at airports nationwide — abhorrent real-life news events.”
What is perhaps the most ironic part of the situation is that the DTH’s satirical articles for the holiday included “The Daily Tar Heel rebrands — now The Daily Woke Heel,” playing off the paper’s left-wing reputation with jokes about DEI consultants and over-sensitivity, only for the publication to fall prey to the power of those same tropes from an audience incapable of accepting the self-deprecating humor of satire directed at their pet causes.
Meanwhile, an article making humor out of the fact that UNC has discriminated (and continues to discriminate) against white students is still up: “UNC brings back DEI — for whites.”
Follow-up
CHCCS called back before legislators over LGBTQ books for elementary schoolers
Superintendent Rodney Trice and Library Media Director Al McArthur of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools have been called before the House Oversight Committee of the North Carolina General Assembly on April 24 to answer for over a hundred illegal books in elementary school libraries across the district, according to letters shared by committee chair and House Majority Leader Brenden Jones (R-Columbus, Robeson).
Jones has provided examples of the 155 books his staff has identified as being in violation of the Parents’ Bill of Rights, providing examples of books available for CHCCS elementary schoolers, ranging from promoting various LGBTQ concepts to depictions of homosexuals depicted wearing BDSM accoutrements:
“Grandpa’s Pride” - encouraging children to engage in intergenerational LGBTQ activism, which includes images of surgically mutilated transgenders and homosexual men in bondage gear
“Call Me Max” - about a teacher acquiescing to a student’s demand to be referred to by her nom-de-trans, refers to identifying babies by their gender as a “mistake”
“’Twas the Night Before Pride” - sanitized history glorifying LGBTQ movement, encourages involving children and even infants in LGBTQ activism
“My Maddy” - eroding the gender binary and the essence of motherhood by promoting the concepts of transgender, nonbinary, and “gender diverse”
“Molly and the Twin Towers: A 9/11 Survival Story” - inserting the LGBTQ and feminist agenda into a retelling of America’s most notorious terrorist attacks with a homosexual airline pilot
Previous coverage:
Orange County school boards still defying Parents’ Bill of Rights (No. 147 — Oct. 25, 2025)
House Oversight Committee investigates Chapel Hill–Carrboro City Schools (No. 148 — Nov. 1, 2025)
Evidence of “wokeness” highlighted ahead of oversight hearing into Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (No. 152 — Nov. 29, 2025)
CHCCS superintendent backtracks on defying legislature in hearing (No. 154 — Dec. 13, 2025)