Per your TL;DR summation: yes patents are crazy, unreasonably crazy, and why the landscape's littered with former Little League umps who've quit.
Haha, I really appreciate you actually taking the time to read it and comment - I realize the irony of complaining about rambling emails in the context of the post.
As for the American flag - she was using mostly free/already purchased materials since they didn't have access to their classrooms until a day or two before class started, the district had already told teachers American flags would be arriving later, and my partner typically only spends her own money on primary resources in French. (there has also been a subsequent issue with the superintendent declaring that covering over 25% of the walls is a fire hazard, which means the pride flag is now down because the only wall space they are 'allowed' to use is occupied by white boards and high-frequency-word charts - American flag is still up, of course)
As for the NYT headlines on George Floyd's birthday, yes, there are absolutely a huge amount of other topics she could have chosen to talk about, but letting kids have nonstructured discussions in the target language requires the kids to have some thoughts about the subject, and touch points like George Floyd actually generate conversation.
As far as I understand, there have been multiple FOAA requests (Maine state version of FOI), for which a lawyer was paid to parse exactly what information was needed to collect and distribute, and then there were two subsequent lawsuits after the parents determined what they gathered from the FOAA requests weren't adequate.