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AI-Driven school expanding to major US cities despite union pushback

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An unconventional private school model that replaces traditional classroom lectures with artificial intelligence is gearing up for a massive nationwide expansion this fall, even as critics and powerful teachers unions sound the alarm.

Alpha Schools, which says its students learn twice as fast as those in “standard” schools, is planning to open new campuses in Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, and several California hubs, including Santa Monica, Palo Alto, and the East Bay. The school already operates in Austin, New York, and Miami.

The Alpha model is built on a “two-hour core” subject requirement. Students spend their mornings using adaptive AI software to master academics like math and English before transitioning to an afternoon of “life skills” workshops and project-based learning.

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According to the school, the results are significant:

Despite the high-end branding, the school is facing a wall of skepticism from the education establishment. Researchers warn that the long-term effects of removing human teachers from the primary instructional role are unknown.

“The research on personalized learning and [AI learning] is mixed at best,” Charles Logan, an education researcher at Northwestern’s Center for Responsible Technology, Policy and Public Dialogue, told Block Club Chicago. “I think the Alpha Schools’ approach to adaptive tutoring is like an open experiment [and] is not supported by critical research.”

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The school has already hit regulatory roadblocks. Efforts to secure charter school status—which would allow it to receive public funding—have been rejected in several states. Pennsylvania officials denied the school’s application, stating the model “fails to demonstrate how the tools… would ensure alignment to Pennsylvania academic standards.”

The school’s arrival in Chicago has drawn sharp condemnation from labor leaders who view the model as a threat to traditional public education.

Pankaj Sharma, Secretary-Treasurer of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, slammed the school in a statement to Fox News Digital, linking the model to “the voucher lobby.”

“Exorbitant tuition for a school with a MAGA founder, no teachers, no state accreditation, but an AI platform that surveils children and has a track record of harmful outcomes? No thank you,” Sharma said. “Melania can keep her robots and public dollars should stay in public schools.”

Ebony DeBerry, an elected member of the Chicago Board of Education, expressed similar concerns, telling Block Club Chicago that human teachers are vital for “emotional support” and “problem-solving skills” that technology cannot replicate.

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Alpha founder Mackenzie Price is pushing back against what the school calls a “mainstream media” narrative. In a 2024-2025 year-end reflection, the school addressed the “robot” stigma.

“They paint a picture of robot terminator AI tutors, without substantive human guidance,” the document stated. “But the truth about Alpha is the opposite. Adult humans—we call them teachers, guides and coaches—are the most important part of our schools.”

The school maintains that its “guides” provide the motivational and emotional support students need, while the AI simply handles the data-driven heavy lifting of personalized instruction.

While the Chicago Teachers Union remained silent on the expansion, districts in other expansion zones, such as Conroe Independent School District in Texas, say they are monitoring the model but noted there is currently “limited data” on the success of AI-driven campuses.

The Chicago Teachers Union did not respond to a request for comment.

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Michigan woman arrested for allegedly starving, torturing disabled sister-in-law she locked in basement

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A Michigan woman was arrested and hit with felony charges after she allegedly kept her disabled sister-in-law locked in a basement for two years, where she nearly starved the victim to death and blasted a radio non-stop.

Tasha Beamon, 48, was charged with vulnerable adult abuse and unlawful imprisonment.

The victim managed to escape the basement and broke a neighbor’s window on March 15 as she sought to enter the home, alert police and flee captivity, according to MLive.

The neighbor called 911 and the victim told police that Beamon, the wife of the 58-year-old victim’s late brother, was holding her captive in the Saginaw home’s basement for two years before she found a way to free herself.

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“She told officers she was not fed very often and that she didn’t have any access to water,” Saginaw Police Detective Sgt. Jeff Doud told the outlet.

The victim said Beamon had kept her on an old mattress since March 2024 with a nearby radio constantly blaring.

Police went to Beamon’s house and observed a lock on the basement door, a mattress on the floor and a radio playing loudly. Police also said there was a 5-gallon bucket of urine in the basement.

“Usually, somebody was there. She didn’t believe anyone was home at the time, so she was able to force a door open and escape,” Doud said.

Emergency responders transported the woman to a hospital, where she was treated for severe malnourishment. Hospital staff told police the woman would likely die if she were discharged.

The neighbor told ABC 12 that he was shocked to find the victim suddenly in his living room with a metal pipe “almost as big as she is.”

“I don’t even know how she had the power to even break the window,” the man said. “I thought she was like 78. She was tall, skin and bones.”

“She asks me to call the cops at first, which was weird. But that was the first thing she said to me: Call the cops,” he added.

WISCONSIN COUPLE ALLEGEDLY STARVED SIX CHILDREN FOR YEARS, FORCING THEM TO EAT MOLD, BUGS AND DOG FOOD

Beamon later admitted to police that she kept the woman in her house without allowing her to leave. She also made 40 calls to the hospital where  her sister-in-law was staying.

Investigators suspect that Beamon was keeping the woman captive to collect her disability payments, Doud said.

Beamon was arrested on April 2 and booked into the Saginaw County Jail on $100,000 bond, the amount ordered after prosecutors described her as a danger to the public.

She will appear for a preliminary examination on April 20. 

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Trump’s last-minute delay: Why he was never going to obliterate Iran in the first place

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I’ve been telling anyone who would listen – yes. I can get rather tiresome – that President Donald Trump would not bomb Iran back to the Stone Ages.

Even after he said he would destroy Iran’s civilization and it would never recover, I knew that he would never go through with it. That was the last thing he wanted to do.

So I was confident he would find some kind of last-minute off-ramp.

And, of course, he didn’t want to be seen as backing off his increasingly dire threats.

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I got the White House email at 6:32 Tuesday night. There it was, another delay, after a series of earlier delays. He would give the Iranians two more weeks.

I started posting like crazy, beating television by a couple of minutes, and newspapers by more. But that’s just because my phone happened to be right there. If I’d gone to the fridge for a moment, I would have come back to my laptop and discovered that the world had changed. 

I knew in my gut, having covered Trump for 35 years, that he did not want to go down in history as the man who wiped out an ancient civilization. His heart was never in that. It was bluster as a negotiating tactic. 

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Still, he had boxed himself into a corner. Former allies in conservative media were denouncing him. “This is a brazen pre-admission of genocide against the Iranian people, which would obviously be a war crime. Madness,” Piers Morgan declared..

Some Republican lawmakers said he had gone too far. Even the U.S. Catholic Bishops said “the threat of destroying a whole civilization and the intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure cannot be morally justified.” 

No American president had ever uttered such words.

So I figured the only card that Trump had left to play was delay. And that’s precisely what he did. At the request of Pakistan, which has been the intermediary in the so-called talks, the president agreed to a pause in the hostilities.    

That is, according to the statement I received, “subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives…”

It’s a shaky cease-fire, to be sure, with Iran launching missiles at Israel minutes  after it was announced, and Israel saying its ground invasion of Lebanon, after rocket fire from Iranian proxy Hezbollah, isn’t covered.

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By yesterday, in fact, as The AP confirmed, Iran’s state media said it had closed  Hormuz again, citing the Israeli attacks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a posting that the Trump administration “must choose between a ceasefire or continued war via Israel, and “it cannot have both.”

We learned from New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan that Bibi Netanyahu talked Trump into the war by saying it would be quick and topple the regime. Gen. Dan Caine, the Joint Chiefs chairman, called that “farcical.” Marco Rubio said it was BS. JD Vance was against the war.

And that’s a fascinating sidebar. Trump has been insulting Haberman, who published a biography of him in 2022, for no apparent reason. Yet he granted an hourlong Oval Office interview for their forthcoming book, “Regime Change,” from which the Times piece was excerpted.

As for the president’s current stance, well, he isn’t being held back by murky details. He told Sky News this was a “complete victory,” not just in military terms but “in every other sense as well.”

Trump was on the phone with Fox opinion host Laura Ingraham shortly before she came on the air, and she quoted him as being “cautiously optimistic,” saying: “It sure looks like Iran blinked.”

What, peering through the fog of war, did Trump actually accomplish, other than sending the markets soaring by nearly 3 percent?

On yesterday’s “Fox & Friends,” usually a Trump-friendly show, co-host Lawrence Jones said “we have not reached any of these objectives.”  

Dismantling nuclear facilities (“that has not happened”), ending uranium enrichment (“they are still enriching”), transferring uranium stockpiles out of Iran (“that hasn’t happened”), accepting international inspections (“they are still not willing to do it”), and suspending the ballistic missile program (“they’re still firing them off”). Jones also criticized Iran for proposals that would never be accepted by the U.S. side.

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Fox anchor Harris Faulkner said yesterday, “this is the least ceasefire-like ceasefire I think that anybody might have anticipated.” Fox’s chief foreign correspondent, Trey Yingst, said, “the Iranians don’t appear very serious about this ceasefire agreement.” 

And therein lies the rub. The two countries remain far apart. This business about a strategic framework just papers that over in a devil’s-in-the-details sense. Iran is never going to agree to give up its nuclear program, regardless of any presidential pronouncements or Mission Accomplished banners.

The Iranian pitch, apparently not the one seen by Trump, says the U.S. must leave the region, give Iran sole control of the strait, and recognize its right to nuclear enrichment.

Don’t take my word for it. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters yesterday that Iran’s 10-point plan was “fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely discarded.” 

Look, if this somehow all works out, what most people will remember is that Trump made harsh threats that led to a deal in which the Iranian blockade – “Open the F—in’ Strait, you crazy b——s” – was lifted. In other words, his Madman routine worked against the world’s leading terror state, which has been killing Americans, Arabs and its own people for 47 years. 

But things could always fall apart faster than a speeding drone. It’s the Middle East.

No matter what you think of Trump, his war of choice, his apocalyptic rhetoric or his entire presidency, he’s not crazy. He followed a similar path in his tariff crusade, threatening draconian levies before reaching 11th-hour compromises.  As he himself says, he’s a dealmaker. That’s what he does.

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Most media accounts are portraying Trump as caving in or backing down. That’s fair commentary.

But what really happened is that Trump found a way to avoid doing what he was never actually going to do in the first place.

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South Carolina pastor, wife arrested after alleged sexual, physical abuse of foster children

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A South Carolina pastor and his wife were arrested after a foster child reported being a victim of sexual abuse, according to officials.

Rodney Gibson and Kawiana Young, both 50, were charged with unlawful conduct with a minor, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department said, according to WIS News 10.

Gibson is also facing charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor, unlawful conduct toward a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

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A victim came forward last month to report alleged sexual abuse endured while in foster care at the couple’s home, deputies said, according to the report.

Gibson is accused of sexually assaulting the victim on several occasions, starting at age 15 until they aged out of the foster care system.

Investigators learned that a minor was living with Gibson and Young.

The child told investigators they had been sexually abused by Gibson and physically abused by Young. The minor was then moved to emergency protective custody.

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During an emergency protective custody hearing on March 20, a family court judge ordered the minor to be returned to Gibson and Young’s home.

After investigators conducted subsequent interviews and obtained additional evidence, arrest warrants were obtained. Gibson and Young were arrested on April 1 and the minor was placed back into emergency protective custody.

Gibson and Young were released on bond on April 2.

The South Carolina Department of Social Services said in a statement that Young was a licensed foster parent from June 2021 until June 2025, adding that she fostered six children in her home, but voluntarily relinquished her foster parent license.

The agency said Young failed to mention that Gibson was living at the home, and his name was not on the license. The agency said Young never reported that she was married and said she was not in a relationship.

The agency said it was cooperating in the investigation.

Authorities believe there may be more victims and are asking anyone with information to come forward.

Gibson is a pastor at Pathway 2 Hope Ministries, while Young owns and operates DreamCatcher Child Development Center.

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