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Misty Griffin: Religious Rights Should Not Outweigh Children’s Human Rights

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2023 //
44

Misty Griffin has an important story to tell, based on her dreadful personal experience. Her story is important especially at this moment when so many politicians are repeating the mantra of “parent rights.” Misty reminds us that children too have rights, and not all parents are trustworthy. Misty wrote her story in a book titled Tears of the Silenced: An Amish True Crime Memoir of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Brutal Betrayal, and Ultimate Survival.

I asked her to write her story for you.

She wrote:

In the United States, freedom of religion has the ability to cancel out every single child safety law/regulation on the books. Children across the nation are cloistered into strict religious communities that either have their own private religious schools or homeschool their children. Most of these groups do not believe in reporting child abuse and stress the importance of severe corporal punishment and view sexual abuse as a moral failing rather than a serious crime. Children in such religions/churches/cults are left with no one in their orbit who will help them out of abusive situations. Many of these children suffer greatly on a daily basis and seem forgotten by regular society.

A bit of my story.

My stepdad was a wanted pedophile who fled the Seattle area in the late 70s after a warrant was put out for his arrest for molesting the neighbor’s 2 small daughters. My mom met him in 1986 when I was 4. My sister and I became isolated and cut off from society. We were sexually abused and severely beaten multiple times a day.

When I was 7 years old, we started dressing in long dresses and scarves. When I was 10 years old we were dressing like the Amish. My mom told everyone we were being homeschooled (in reality we just did sporadic math and reading lessons here and there in case anyone from the state wanted to see schoolwork.) When I was 11 we moved to a remote mountain ranch in northern WA. At 18 yrs old, I tried to escape and was taken to a real Amish community. Three and half years later I fled the Amish community after 6 months of sexual abuse by the bishop.

My entire church knew that the bishop was a sexual predator. They had shunned him for six weeks for molesting his daughter a few years before I landed in the community. I reported the bishop to the police because I was suspicious he was molesting the children. The police drug their feet and told me point blank that they had to be careful not to trample on the religious rights of the Amish community. The bishop ended up escaping to Canada with his whole family and went on to molest almost all of the 11 children. Eleven years later he was finally sent to prison after one of his daughters asked a neighbor for help. They had come back to the United States by that time.

Child Rights Act

I had approximately a third-grade education when I came out into the “world.” It’s so sad that stories like mine are allowed to happen, but my story is not the only one, In recent years I have received thousands of emails from people who grew up in strict religions/cults. We must call out this religious aspect of child abuse because no matter how many laws and regulations we put on the books if this issue is not addressed and children are not given rights, children in strict religions and cults will never be reached.

I am not anti-religion; I am a non-denominational Christian, but religion should not allow anyone to bypass child safety measures. If you agree please sign my Child Rights Act Petition and share it on social media. Religious Rights should not outweigh children’s Human Rights.

photo

Misty Griffin

www.mistygriffin.com

mistyegriffin@gmail.com

Pasadena, CA

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Corruption, Cruelty, Discipline, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Injustice, Lies, Parents, Religion

Maurice Cunningham: The Walton Family’s Investment in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2023 //
8

The Network for Public Education has its own blog, where it posts timely articles about the attacks on public schools and ongoing strife over privatization. This is an important article by Maurice Cunningham about the continuing interest of the Walton Family Foundation in Massachusetts. Walton (and other billionaires) tried but failed to win a state referendum to allow unlimited expansion of charter schools in 2016; Maurice Cunningham played an important role by exposing the Dark Money behind the referendum, which was pitched as “saving poor minority kids from failing public schools.” When school boards, civil rights groups, teachers’ unions, parent associations and other friends of public schools saw who was paying the bills, they overwhelmingly defeated the referendum. It would have been quite a coup to plant the flag for privatization in Massachusetts, the birthplace of Horace Mann.

Maurice Cunningham: Banned in Boston (Globe): the Walton Family’s 2021 Political Team

Maurice Cunningham is a retired professor and experienced tracker of dark and murky money in education politics. Periodically he rolls out some of the information that some media outlets never quite get around to publishing.

We all love us some Market Basket so imagine if the Walton family of Arkansas (d/b/a WalMart) bankrolled a takeover of our local grocer! News coverage would be constant—the Globe, the two NPR radio stations, local TV descending on shoppers to ask about their favorite possum pie recipes (it’s an Arkansas delicacy).  But the Waltons spend millions to privatize Massachusetts public schools and what do we get for coverage? Bupkis.

So read on if you dare, you’ll see this information nowhere else, the super-secret 2021 WALTON POLITICAL TEAM!

What is the 2021 Walton political team? It is America’s wealthiest family underwriting fronts that seek to influence government to achieve the policy goal of school privatization. As political scientists Kristin A. Goss and Jeffrey M. Berry teach us philanthropies sometimes act as interest groups. This political spending constitutes, as Robert Reich has written in Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing and How It Can Do Better, a little recognized and unaccountable form of oligarchic power.

The National Parents Union is one of his favorite groups to track, and he’s adding another to the mix.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! Because I’ve been leaving Educators for Excellence out of these equations. E4E is a billionaire funded “teacher” house operation intended to undermine real democratic unions. Diane Ravitch explains E4E here: “It is funded by the reactionary anti-union Walton Family Foundation, the Rightwing William E. Simon Foundation, the anti-union Bodman Foundation, and the Arnold Foundation, which wants to eliminate pensions.” From 2017-2021 E4E took in $5,495,000 from the Waltons, some of which probably found its way to Boston.

As to that asterisk in 2020 the Waltons sent $400,000 to Massachusetts Parents United to establish National Parents Union, installing MPU  president Keri Rodrigues as co-founder (the other co-founder mysteriously disappeared, to be replaced as treasurer my Rodrigues’s husband). In 2021 the Waltons duked NPU another $1,200,000.

I did a search for “Walton Family Foundation” from 2017-present in the Boston Globe archives and found only five references[1] for Walton Family Foundation. None covered Massachusetts WFF’s political largess but for one letter to the editor (in response to a letter from NPU/MPU/Walton agent Keri Rodrigues) and a snippet from AP. Except . . .

For a 2021 op-ed by free-lance journalist Amy Crawford titled Do-it-yourself education is on the rise. Crawford offers a big plug for Rodrigues and wrote that WFF “channeled $700,000 into direct grants (to NPU) for technology, training, and supplies for homeschooling families, cooperatives, and learning pods, in which families pool resources to hire a private teacher.” But what I think Crawford meant was the $700,000 invested in NPU by the Vela Fund, a joint venture of the Waltons and Charles Koch. Both the Waltons and Koch seek the privatization of public schools.

The post is filled with detail and specifics of particular interest to folks who follow education in Massachusetts.

Bottom line: The Waltons spend millions to influence education policy in Massachusetts and the Globe not only keeps its readers in the dark about that but promotes DFER and Rodrigues/National Parents Union/Massachusetts Parents United as authentic voices of Democrats and parents.

Read the full post here. 

You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/maurice-cunningham-banned-in-boston-globe-the-walton-familys-2021-political-team/

———-

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corruption, Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, Hoax, Massachusetts, Parents, Privatization, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Unions

Peter Greene: Idaho Rejects Voucher Expansion

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2023 //
6

The Idaho legislature turned down a voucher expansion that would have subsidized the tuition of rich kids. Behind the voucher defeat was a passionate network of parents determined to keep public dollars in public schools.

Peter Greene reports:

Last year, Idaho’s legislature passed a limited school voucher bill; this year school voucher supporters raised a more expansive proposal that was just defeated by Republicans.

Last year’s Empowering Parents Grant Program used $50 million of American Rescue Plan recovery money to give education vouchers to families. It limited the education savings account (ESA) vouchers to students who were already enrolled in public schools and whose families had an income equal to or less than 250% of the free or reduced lunch cut-off.

That program was established on a modest scale. This year voucher supporters proposed a larger, more universal form.

Senate Bill 1038 included no income limits and no requirements for previously attending public school. In other words, a wealthy family who had always enrolled their children in private school or home school would get $6,000 of taxpayer money, and that money would be pulled from the funding for schools that the students had never attended in the first place; the school’s funding would be reduced, but their operating costs would not.

Like most of the current boilerplate ESA bills, it not only failed to provide for oversight for those funds, but actively barred the state from exercising any oversight or authority over the education providers.

There was a huge price tag involved. While the bill’s sponsors estimated a $45 million price tag for the first year, other estimates suggested that the programwould quickly balloon to over $360 million. That expansion would match the experience of other states like New Hampshire, where the predicted cost of the program quickly grew by 5,800%.

As Senator C, Scott Grow (R-Eagle) put it, “I have absolutely no clue what the dollar amount on this is.”

It’s a huge amount of taxpayer money to be taken out of the public school system and distributed without oversight or accountability, and while conservative lawmakers in some states have not balked at that issue, some Idaho GOP members were not having it. Reported the Idaho Statesman:

“It’s actually against my conservative, Republican perspective to hand this money out with no accountability that these precious tax dollars are being used wisely,” said Sen. Dave Lent, R-Idaho Falls…

Three more voucher bills also failed.

Two GOP representatives, Greg Lanting and Lorei McCann, explained their no votes:

McCann and Lanting both said for every email supporting ESA legislation, they receive five opposing it. Lanting represents the same district as Clow.Rep. Mark Sauter, R-Sandpoint, said voting for the legislation would be equivalent to voting against his constituency.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Idaho, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Vouchers

DeFascist War on Drag Queens Frightens the Performing Arts in Florida

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2023 //
53

Ron DeSantis has taken national leadership in his effort to stamp out drag queens. I have never been to a drag queen brunch or a drag queen library story hour, but they seem to be popular in some places, especially in Florida. And DeSantis won’t have it! Apparently, parents bring their children to these events, but they don’t have the “parental right” to do it in DeSantisland.

Floridians in the performing arts are worried that DeSantis will send his morality police to close them down next, if they stage a play like “Mrs. Doubtfire.” As it happens, a drag musical called “Kinky Boots” recently opened in Orlando; it was a huge hit on Broadway. Will DeSantis close it down? Will he assign undercover agents to make sure that no parents bring children with them?

Amanda Rosa writes in the Miami Herald:

Before there was “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and drag brunch in Wynwood, there was Shakespeare.

Women were not allowed to perform on stage in England until 1660, which meant that men in wigs and dresses would depict female characters in Shakespeare’s most iconic plays.

In modern theater, a strong tradition of drag on stage remains, from Edna Turnblad in “Hairspray” to Mrs. Trunchbull in “Matilda” to Angel in “Rent.”

Drag, particularly in the presence of children, is the latest target in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ onslaught against what he calls “woke ideology.”

As the state government reprimands businesses and venues that have hosted drag shows where children were present, South Florida performance arts groups have watched with unease.

Conservative politicians’ increasingly inflammatory rhetoric and legislation targeting the LGBTQ community may have a chilling effect. Members of South Florida’s theater scene question what the implications may be for performances that include LGBTQ characters, actors in drag or themes that the state government may find offensive.

Drag artists wonder if venues that have hosted their shows in the past may now view them as a liability. And some worry that theater may be the next battleground in DeSantis’ culture war….

The Herald reached out to several performing arts groups and venues for this report. One theater organization, which has LGBTQ cast members, declined to speak on the record out of fear of retaliation.

Meltzer said that some in the local theater scene have reservations about sharing their concerns with the press, himself included. “People are scared,” Meltzer said. “And that shows you everything that you need to know about what’s really going on…

Whether DeSantis likes it or not, drag has cemented itself into mainstream pop culture. And touring productions that feature drag are coming to South Florida. Pop icon Madonna, a vocal LGBTQ ally, is bringing her world tour to the Miami-Dade Arena with special guest, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” winner and comedian Bob the Drag Queen. Madonna recently announced the addition of more tour dates, including a stop in Tennessee to protest the state’s “drag ban” law. The arena declined to comment for this story.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/performing-arts/article273794115.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Art, Censorship, DeSantis, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Gender, Parents

Tennessee: GOP Threatens to Expel 3 Democratic Legislators Who Joined Anti-Gun Protest

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2023 //
17

The statehouse in Nashville, Tennessee, was surrounded by parents and students demonstrating in favor of gun control and against the GOP-controlled legislature’s protection of guns. The protest follows the murder of three children and three staff members at the Coventry School in Nashville.

Three Democratic members of the legislature joined the protest, chanting with the protestors.

The GOP leadership threatened to expel the Democrats. The speaker of the House absurdly claimed that the three Democrats were encouraging an insurrection.

Parents and children held signs and shouted chants during a large protest at the Tennessee capitol last week following a deadly school shooting. And while no one was arrested or injured, Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton is comparing the demonstration to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

During the House Floor session on Thursday — days after the Covenant School shooting — Reps. Gloria Johnson, D-Knox, Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, and Justin Jones, D-Nashville, stood up and chanted with protestors in the gallery.

Pearson and other Democrats attempted to acknowledge the large group of protesters during session, but were told to stick to the subject of the bill by Speaker Cameron.

“We listened to them and helped to elevate the issue that they are demanding justice for,” said Pearson.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton said their actions were more than a breach of decorum, comparing it to the January 6th insurrection in remarks to outlets.

“Two of the members; Representative Jones and Representative Johnson, have been very vocal about Jan. 6 and Washington, D.C., about what that was,” said Sexton. “What they did today was equivalent, at least equivalent, maybe worse depending on how you look at it, to doing an insurrection in the State Capitol.”

Sexton warned that there will likely be consequences for the trio.

“It could be removal of committees; it could be censorship; it could be expulsion from the General Assembly. Anywhere in between,” said Sexton.

Leaders in the Democratic caucus are defending their colleagues. Nashville Democrat John Ray Clemmons says he believes Speaker Sexton is exaggerating.

“You show me the broken windows, you show me anyone who went into the speaker’s office and put their chair up on his desk and trashed his office, you show me where a noose was hanging anywhere on the legislative plaza,” said Clemmons, citing damage committed during the Capitol riot, which resulted in five deaths before and after the event.

The three rebellious Democrats were stripped of their committee assignments. Their member badges were deactivated. Their telephones were disconnected.

In a press conference Monday, Jones says Sexton is more focused on politics than addressing last week’s mass shooting.

“We are members, who are standing in the well, telling our speakers and our colleagues that kids should not be murdered in school,” Jones said, “and rather than address that issue, the speaker has spent more time on Twitter this weekend talking about a fake insurrection than he did about the deaths of six people including 9-year-old children.”

It is not yet clear if the lawmakers will face expulsion. Sexton has not commented on whether they will face further discipline.

A tweet:

Three Tennessee Democrats have been stripped of their committee and subcommittee assignments by the Republican dominated legislature for speaking out against gun violence in the wake of the Nashville shooting that killed three children.

Democracy is dead in Tennessee.

@Sethaweitz

Rep. Gloria Johnson, one of the three Democrats, tweeted:

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Civil Rights, Courage, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Guns, Guns in Schools, Nashville, Parents, Republicans, Resistance, Safety, Tennessee

DeSantis Attacks Parental Right to Decide Whether to Bring Their Children to Drag Shows

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2023 //
11

Ron DeSantis is trying to be the Anthony Comstock of the 21st century. Do you know who Comstock was? He was the most notorious crusader against “vice” in the United States of his era or any other era. Comstock was responsible for the destruction of tens of thousands of books that he considered lewd, including marriage manuals. He was responsible for criminalizing the mailing of anything that was lewd or lascivious, anything that would cause abortions, anything that would encourage contraception. The Comstock Law, passed in 1873, may be revived if a Trump judge in Amarillo, Texas, bans the mailing of abortion pills in the next few days or weeks.

Anthony Comstock (March 7, 1844 – September 21, 1915) was an anti-vice activist, United States Postal Inspector, and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), who was dedicated to upholding Christian morality. He opposed obscene literature, abortion, contraception, gambling, prostitution, and patent medicine.

Like Comstock, DeSantis wants to make a national reputation by crusading against lewd books, abortion, and—unknown in Comstock’s day—drag queens. Comstock would have reacted to drag queens just like DeSantis: with horror and revulsion and a passion to criminalize them. Comstock wanted to control people’s personal decisions; so does DeSantis.

In another display of DeSantis’s growing zeal for control of everyone’s life, the state of Florida threatened to take away the liquor license of a major hotel that permitted drag shows where parents brought children with them. DeSantis sent an undercover police unit to watch the show when it opened at the Plaza Live in Orlando to determine whether there were any minors in the audience and whether they were exposed to lewd content; the investigators reported that there were minors, they were accompanied by their parents, and the show didn’t contain any lascivious content. No matter: the state is beginning proceedings to withdraw the establishment’s liquor license, which will likely close it down.

What about “parental rights”? Do parents no longer have the right to decide whether their minor children are mature enough to see a man dressed in women’s clothes? Will they also be forbidden to take their children to see the films starring Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie” or Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in “Some Like It Hot”?

Does DeSantis know that men traditionally played women’s roles in Shakespeare plays and other live shows when women were not allowed to act in public? What drives his panic about anything gay?

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is seeking to revoke the Hyatt Regency Miami’s liquor license because one of its facilities hosted a Christmas-themed drag queen show in which the state claimed minors were present.

The event — “A Drag Queen Christmas” — was held on Dec. 27 at the James L. Knight Center, a 4,500-seat auditorium affiliated with the hotel that typically hosts concerts, graduation ceremonies and other events.

The December show was hosted by Nina West, a star from the reality show “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” and minors were required to be accompanied by an adult to attend.

In a 17-page administrative complaint, state regulators said the venue’s admission policies allowed minors to attend the event and as a result, they were exposed to performers who were “wearing sexually suggestive clothing and prosthetic female genitalia.”

“The nature of the show’s performances, particularly when conducted in the presence of young children, corrupts the public morals and outrages the sense of public decency,” according to the complaint, filed by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. Sometimes, administrative complaints such as the one filed Tuesday can take more than year to resolve.

The revocation of a license is a severe penalty that is one of several possible sanctions the state could issue for violations. The state filed a nearly identical administrative complaint last August against a Miami restaurant, R House, over drag queen weekend brunch. That case remains open and the bar is still operating and serving liquor.

In December, state regulators were also scrutinizing events across the state, including Fort Lauderdale, over complaints against the same holiday show held at the Hyatt.

The decision to target the Hyatt Regency Miami on Tuesday comes as the DeSantis administration and the Republican-led Legislature intensify the crackdown on drag queen shows that allow minors in the audience.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article273137760.html#storylink=cpy

On the same show in Orlando:

When the historic Plaza Live theater in Orlando hosted an event last December called “A Drag Queen Christmas,” the show drew a full house, noisy street demonstrators — and a small squad of undercover state agents there to document whether children were being exposed to sights that ran afoul of Florida’s decency law.

The Dec. 28 performance featured campy skits like “Screwdolph the Red-Nippled Man Deer” and shimmying, bare-chested men who wouldn’t have been out of place at a Madonna concert. Also a hip thrust or two, similar to what is sometimes indulged in by NFL players after a touchdown. All of it was dutifully recorded by the undercover agents on state-issued iPhones.

But while the agents took photos of three minors at the Orlando drag show — who appeared to be accompanied by adults — they acknowledged that nothing indecent had happened on stage, according to an incident report obtained exclusively by the Miami Herald.

“Besides some of the outfits being provocative (bikinis and short shorts), agents did not witness any lewd acts such as exposure of genital organs,” the brief report stated. “The performers did not have any physical contact while performing to the rhythm of the music with any patrons.”

Still, the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation proceeded to file a complaint against the nonprofit that runs Plaza Live, claiming the venue had illegally exposed children to sexual content. The complaint, issued Feb. 3, seeks to strip the small, nonprofit theater of its liquor license — a serious blow that would likely put it out of business.

It’s all part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ statewide crackdown on drag shows, which could escalate further as legislators draft new laws to tighten restrictions on venues that allow minors into those performances. DeSantis has said he believes “sexualized” drag shows are dangerous for kids.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article273247175.html

The legislature also plans to restrict the pronouns that teachers use, regardless of their parents wishes.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/article273384410.html#storylink=cpy

Republican lawmakers say Florida school employees should not be allowed to call students by pronouns that differ from those given to them at birth — even in cases when a parent is OK with it. The idea is moving forward in proposed legislation that would also require every public K-12 school to have a policy that says it is “false” to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to their assigned sex, which under the law would be defined as an “immutable, or unchanging, biological trait.” It is the latest salvo in the state’s ongoing battle over transgender rights in schools and society at large, as Gov. Ron DeSantis makes cultural issues a cornerstone of an expected presidential bid later this year.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article273384410.html

DeSantis expects to win the Presidency by campaigning as the Biggest Prude in the nation.

Ron DeSantis: our Anthony Comstock.

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Florida, Gender, Hypocrisy, Ignorance, Parents, Stupid

Colorado: Extremists Took Over My School Board and Created Havoc

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2023 //
10

The Network for Public Education posts regular features from the perspective of parents about their public schools. Some stories have a happy theme, some don’t. This post was written by Matt Gawkowski, a parent in Colorado who was very happy with the local public school. Then a slate of extremists took control of the local school board and created disruption. Matt became an activist. He had to.

I Never Thought I’d Become a Public School Activist. Then Extremists Took Over the School Board.

Matt Gawlowski

Like so many school districts across the country right now, rural Woodland Park, Colorado is being torn apart by politics. School board meetings are contentious, students are afraid and teachers are threatening to leave. Our community is fracturing.

It hasn’t always been this way. While Woodland Park is a politically conservative place, the schools have always felt isolated from politics. The political affiliation of parents, teachers and school board members didn’t matter because everyone worked together and took pride in the local schools. I was one such proud parent.

When I was asked to join the School Accountability Committee at my daughter’s school many years ago, I jumped at the chance. As a data nerd, I came away feeling deeply impressed by the school’s fiscal responsibility. When I sat in on a presentation by the superintendent at the time about the district budget, the fiscal conservative side of me was similarly dazzled. This was a school district that had its act together, I recall thinking.

Then in the fall of 2021, a group of four candidates who’d promoted themselves as ‘the conservative choice’ were elected to the school board. They quickly moved to transform the district, starting with the adoption of a sharply adversarial tone. In an email, one board member described teachers and their union as ‘the enemy.’ The founder of our local Christian bible college, an uncredited evangelical school that set up shop here several years ago, bragged about taking over the school board and announced that he’d sent a spy into the district to identify “homosexual books.”

And that was just the start. The new board approved a controversial charter school, one that the previous board had rejected, in part because enrollment in our rural district is declining. The rushed process not only violated open meeting laws but saddled the district with enormous consulting and legal fees. The board also terminated the previous superintendent’s contract, once again at great expense to the district, then chose controversial former school board member Ken Witt to serve as interim. Witt briefly served on the school board in Jefferson County but was recalled by voters after he accused the AP US history course of being insufficiently patriotic.

During a raucous meeting, the board voted to hire Witt over widespread opposition from students, parents, teachers and community members. The last member of the original school board, and the lone voice of reason in meetings, resigned. Students led two walkouts to protest and began showing up at board meetings to voice their opposition. The board blamed a teacher for the students’ actions and put her on administrative leave.

We fear that much worse is still to come. Radical curriculum reform (the board recently adopted the conservative American Birthright civics program, even after the state rejected it as too extreme), merit pay for teachers, and an effort to transform Woodland Park into an all-charter district will likely be on the agenda. Already, dozens of teachers have indicated that they’ll be leaving at the end of the school year. I am not opposed to honest, well-planned efforts to improve our district. But this board’s politically motivated actions have created massive disruption in the schools and the community.

My front row view of the battles taking place in my daughter’s school district has turned me into something I never thought I’d become: an activist. I certainly never thought I’d see the day when I’d be called a “hard left union lap dog wanna be thug,” as one director of the school board recently referred to me. In fact, I’m neutral on unions. A former registered Republican who once purchased a book by Rush Limbaugh I like low taxes, balanced budgets, and limited government. The truth is that I’d much rather just go back to being a dad and an introverted engineer, not the guy who is now an expert on submitting open records requests, and is a prominent voice in a Facebook group of similarly minded parents and community members.

I love our public schools and look at the country they have helped mold with pride. When I saw that the teachers and students in our local schools needed parents like me to speak up when they couldn’t, I had no choice but to step up. I hope that my story will inspire folks in communities where similar battles are raging to do the same.

Matt Gawlowski is a longtime parent in the Woodland Park RE-2 school district in Colorado. When not working as a mechanical engineer, you’ll find him outside trail running, backpacking, or skiing, depending on the season. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @EspressoMatt or at http://supportwpschools.com

Categories Charter Schools, Colorado, Disruption, Extremism, Parent Groups, Parents, Privatization, Religion

Indiana: Parents Are Satisfied with Their Schools

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2023 //
5

Steve Hinnefeld reports on a recent Gallup Poll that shows high patent satisfaction with public schools. Parents are not seeking “choice,” yet the legislature keeps enhancing legislation to create more school choice.

He reports:

  • Indiana parents are happy with their children’s schools. A remarkable 88% said they were satisfied with the quality of their child’s school. Figures were even higher for some groups: 90% for parents of elementary children and 96% in rural areas and small towns.
  • Parents know what schools are teaching and support it: 81% say they know what their children are learning in school, and 78% say they agree with it.
  • Those who disagree with what schools are teaching are a tiny minority of parents. Only 7% don’t approve of what the schools teach, and two-thirds of those admit they don’t know what that is. In other words, “I don’t know what they’re teaching but, whatever it is, I don’t like it.”

Yet a tiny and uninformed minority – much of it unconnected to schools — seems to have the ear of Republicans, who keep pushing legislation to restrict what schools can teach about race, gender, sexuality and other made-up controversies. They’ve also promoted “curriculum transparency” bills, apparently in the idea that schools are keeping parents in the dark.

Categories Censorship, Charter Schools, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Reform, Fake News, Hoax, Indiana, Opinion Polling, Parents, Propaganda

AFT Poll: Voters Want Investment in Public Schools, Don’t Care About Culture War Issues

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2023 //
16

The AFT commissioned a highly reputable polling form to find out how voters think about the big education issues. The poll was conducted after the election last November. Bottom line: Voters want better, well/resourced public schools; few are interested in the Republican agenda of fighting “wokeness,” censoring books, and choice.

New Polling Reveals GOP/McCarthy Schools Agenda Is Unpopular and at Odds with Parents’ Priorities

Latest Data Show Parents, Voters Reject Culture War Agenda, Support Academic Focus and Safe Schools Instead

WASHINGTON—The American Federation of Teachers today released new national polling that shows voters overwhelmingly reject House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s anti-school, culture war agenda. Instead, voters want to see political leaders prioritize what kids need to succeed in school: strong fundamental academic skills and safe and welcoming school environments. 

“The latest education poll tells us loud and clear: Voters, including parents, oppose McCarthy’s agenda to prioritize political fights in schools and instead support real solutions, like getting our kids and teachers what they need to recover and thrive,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. 

“Rather than reacting to MAGA-driven culture wars, voters overwhelmingly say they want lawmakers to get back to basics: to invest in public schools and get educators the resources they need to create safe and welcoming environments, boost academic skills and pave pathways to career, college and beyond.”

According to Geoff Garin, president of Hart Research Associates: “One key weakness of the culture war agenda is that voters and parents reject the idea that teachers today are pushing a ‘woke’ political agenda in the schools. Most have high confidence in teachers. Voters see the ‘culture war’ as a distraction from what’s important and believe that politicians who are pushing these issues are doing so for their own political benefit.”

Polling conducted by Hart Research Associates from Dec. 12-17, 2022, among 1,502 registered voters nationwide, including 558 public school parents, shows that support for and trust in public schools and teachers remains incredibly strong: 

  • 93 percent of respondents said improving public education is an important priority for government officials.
  • 66 percent said the government spends too little on education; 69 percent want to see more spending.
  • By 29 points, voters said their schools teach appropriate content, with an even greater trust in teachers.
  • Voters who prioritized education supported Democrats by 8 points.
  • Top education priorities for voters include providing:
    • students with strong fundamental academic skills; 
    • opportunities for all children to succeed, including through career and technical education and greater mental health supports, as examples; and 
    • a safe and welcoming environment for kids to learn.
  • According to voters, the most serious problems facing schools include:
    • teacher shortages;
    • inadequate funding; 
    • unsafe schools; and 
    • pandemic learning loss. (And, critically, voters and parents are looking forward to find solutions: by 85 percent to 15 percent, they want Congress to focus on improving schools through greater support, rather than through McCarthy’s investigation agenda.)

“COVID was terrible for everyone,” added Weingarten. “Educators and parents took on the challenges of teaching, learning and reconnecting and are now asking elected officials to focus on the building blocks of student success. Instead, legislators in 45 states have proposed hundreds of laws making that harder—laws seeking to ban books from school libraries; restrict what teachers can say about race, racism, LGBTQIA+ issues and American history; and limit the school activities in which transgender students can participate. Voters are saying that not only are these laws bad policy—they’re also bad politics.”

In state after state in the November midterms, voters elected pro-public education governors and school board candidates and rejected far-right attacks on teachers and vulnerable LGBTQIA+ students. 

The survey’s confidence interval is ±3.0 percentage points.

Click here for toplines, here for the poll memo and here for the poll slides.

https://www.aft.org/press-release/new-polling-reveals-gopmccarthy-schools-agenda-unpopular-and-odds-parents-priorities

Categories Budget Cuts, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Fake News, Hoax, Parents, Real Education, School Choice, Supporting public schools

Darcie Cimarusti: Beware of Disruptive “Parental Rights” Groups

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2023 //
16

Darcie Cimarusti served on the school board of Highland Park, New Jersey, from 2013 to 2022. She is the communications director of the Network for Public Education. This article appeared in the Bedford Gazette.

She writes:

I have been a local school board member since my daughters, now 11th-graders, were in second-grade. In that time, I have been involved in education policy discussions at the local, state and national levels on issues related to the rights of LGBTQ+ students, standardized testing and the privatization of public education. The rise of the so-called “parental rights” movement in public education has been one of the thorniest, most perplexing issues I have encountered.

There is no doubt that parents play a crucial role in the education of their children. Who would dare argue that they don’t? But in the face of the anti-critical race theory, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-social emotional learning, anti-diversity equity and inclusion juggernaut unleashed by heavily funded, right-leaning astroturf parent groups such as Moms for Liberty, it has become imperative that we have an honest discussion about how much say parents should have in what is (or is not) taught in our public schools.

My district, unlike many, is racially, ethnically and socioeconomically diverse, with 31 languages spoken in the homes of our students. Educating such a diverse student body presents many challenges and requires a nuanced approach to policy and practice that ensures all students have equal opportunities to learn, thrive and grow. While it is easy for school leaders to say they embrace diversity, equity and inclusion, it’s far too challenging to implement policies promoting those principles.

I have spent my time on the school board helping to develop systems that ensure decisions are made collaboratively and with as many voices at the decision-making table as possible. This means making space not only for administrators, teachers, parents and students but also ensuring that historically marginalized groups are represented.

Decisions that affect students should never be based on the whims of those with the most privilege or power and indeed not on who has the loudest voice in the room.

However, the latter has become the hallmark of parental rights activists. They attend meeting after meeting, berating, shouting down and even making death threats against school board members. During the pandemic, battles over masks erupted at podiums at far too many school board meetings across the country and quickly morphed into demands to ban books, censor curriculum and muzzle “woke” teachers that parents accused of “grooming” their children.

In the 2022 midterm elections, parental rights activists were on the ballot in numerous states. With the support and endorsement of Moms for Liberty, they ran campaigns to become school board members in districts in red, blue and purple states. Moms for Liberty operates county chapters that aim to serve as watchdogs “over all 13,000 school districts.” Chapters empower parents to “defend their parental rights” and “identify, recruit & train liberty-minded parents to run for school boards.”

The “anti-woke” agenda espoused by Moms for Liberty endorsed school board candidates who had the greatest successes in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis proudly declared the state being “where woke goes to die.” But in many other parts of the country, parental rights candidates lost their elections, with even conservative political operatives acknowledging that many of their campaigns were “too hyperbolic.”

Chaos has already erupted in several districts where they succeeded and won board majorities, with newly formed, inexperienced boards firing superintendents or forcing them to resign. One board voted to ban the teaching of critical race theory just hours after being sworn in.

After a decade of experience as a school board member, there’s one thing I can say for sure: The majority of parents, teachers and community members do not respond well to instability and disruption in their local public schools. When school boards run amok and rash decisions make headlines, communities work quickly to restore calm. If parental rights school board majorities continue to govern recklessly, they will undoubtedly face a backlash from voters.

Creating and implementing sound school policies and practices that respect and affirm all students requires collaboration. It does not allow for the divisive, polarizing rhetoric and impetuous, rash decision-making that have become the calling cards of the so-called parental rights movement.

Categories Censorship, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Extremism, Fake, Parent Groups, Parents
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