Spherical Model: The Critical School Board Races, Part I

School board fights are going on across the nation. What does that mean? It means that people don’t want their children indoctrinated with ideologies at odds with their family’s values. They just want kids to be taught to read, write, do math, and think. They don’t want them inducted involuntarily into some wrong-headed social experiment.

So, we’re having that fight here in my school district in northwest Houston. To be clear, this highly rated school district failed my family over 20 years ago—which led to our decade of homeschooling. The kids are all grown, all graduated from college, and have all gone on to post-graduate education. To the person who commented a warning a while back that homeschooling my children was appalling, because of the way I think, and that I would ruin them for the real world—you’re too late. And you’re also wrong.

What is happening in our schools? Some good things, but way too many unacceptable things.

Langham Creek High School, in Cy-Fair ISD
image from Google Maps

What We’re Fighting

The current big concern is about Critical Race Theory. Let’s define the term so we’re on the same page. Critical Race Theory is an adaptation of Critical Theory, out of Marxism. In the original, it was an attempt to pit social classes against one another, to stir up the lower classes to empower the elites to take rights and property away from the relatively successful: the bourgeoisie, or the kulaks, depending on your language.

But that was a hard sell in America—because we have a great deal of class mobility. Most Americans who start out in a lower economic class do not stay there throughout their lives. They move up and down based on the increase in value they can bring to an employer, or to their entrepreneurial business. They’re not held down by the strata of their birth.

To the Marxists, that meant there needed to be another way: replace class/caste with race, and claim it’s unfair.

That has also been something of a hard sell, because America is based on—not a national heritage or land ownership, like other nations, but on the idea that all people are created equal before the law. This was at a time when every nation on earth thought slavery was just part of life. Some were slaves to others, and that was just their lot in life. America’s founders questioned that status quo, and challenged it. And they would have begun the country with slavery already outlawed if they could have persuaded enough of the populous to this new idea. Instead, it took most of an additional century and a bloody Civil War to get rid of that plague. But they paid the price and did it. And every country in the world that got rid of slavery (and not all have yet) did so because of that idea that all men are created equal.

Unfortunately, there were residuals of that abomination for yet another century, in the form of Jim Crow laws, by the same people who had been slaveholders. (Hint: they were all of the political party that starts with a D.) And so the Marxists—the ones who want to destroy our freedom, prosperity, and civilization—have tried rewriting and reframing our history to tell an entirely different story. That is, America is innately evil. It was founded on the idea of white supremacy, and every law and institution was put into place to support that idea. Therefore, now that we’re so much more enlightened than those evil white men of the past, we should be ashamed of our country, it’s Constitution, it’s institutions; we should destroy them all and start over to create a new Socialist utopia.

A tag-along idea is intersectionality, the idea that, the more victim groups you can claim to belong to, the greater your power ought to be. The “victimized” now get to oppress the “oppressors.” And the “oppressors” are born that way, based on accidents of birth, regardless of behavior or thought. So even our kindergarteners are guilty oppressors who ought to allow themselves to be oppressed by those with greater victim status.

Where teachers go to get indoctrinated in false history.

When you refer to the term Critical Race Theory, you’ll likely be told, “That’s not being taught here. In fact, that’s something that’s only taught in some college classes. Not here.” But the thing is, CRT isn’t a curriculum; it is an ideology, a way of thinking. So it shows up in various places where people who are CRT ideologues have had influence. It’s at all levels. And it is in our school district. It shows up in anti-bullying programs. It shows up in history courses. It shows up in teacher development magazines and programs that show, for example, “how to teach black boys,” as though they must be treated totally differently from other children.

Critical Race Theory is racist while claiming to be against racism. It is unjust while claiming to bring about justice. It is a lie.

Is that what you want our children to be taught about this nation they live in and are part of? I didn’t think so.

What can we do about it? Be aware, of course. Find out what our kids are being taught—check out the texts, ask questions, know the teachers. And let your desires be known. Disapprove loudly when necessary.

That’s the individual school/classroom level. The next level up is the school board.

Who We’re Fighting

So, let me introduce you to one of the school board trustees in Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District. His name is Dr. John Ogletree. He has been in his position since around 2005. He is a pastor. He is very influential. Since the first time I saw him at a candidate forum I saw that he favored educational ideas and practices that I knew didn’t work. Add to that, he seems to me to be arrogant and condescending. Oh, and, by the way, incidentally, he is black.

Dr. John Ogletree, screenshot from here

He has been putting out tweets, a public forum, that some members of our community have been collecting. Some of these may not still be there; he started taking them down when he signed up to run again this year. But here’s a list shared with the Board—and the public—at last week’s school board meeting:

· “Yesterday’s Ku Klux Klan members are today’s police officers.”

· “White Evangelicalism is nothing but slaveholder religion.”

· Six Things That White People Say That Highlight Their Privilege.”

· “Riots are the American way” (in reference to police killings).

· “This country was built on bad theology with White men holding bibles!!!”

· “Wesley Hunt… is a Trump Republican. Don’t be fooled. He may share our ‘hue’ but he doesn’t share our view! I said what I said.” [Wesley Hunt was a candidate for Congressional District 7 in 2020.]

· “White Evangelicals… are complicit in Madness, Divisiveness, and Evil.”

· “If you want to understand white privilege just watch the videos of the insurrection on the US Capital Grounds.”

· “When will the white pulpit be as repulsed by the taking of an innocent Black life as it is by the taking of the life of an unborn fetus.”

This is an ideological person. He believes these things. And he has been influencing our local schools for nigh unto two decades.

Those of you who are just trying to take care of your families and your jobs and don’t have time to pay attention to all these details—this ought to get your attention. You either have to pull your kids out of school, or you need to take steps to correct the schools. And you can start by getting this guy out of his position of influence.

Fortunately, we have good candidates. As of today, there are 32 days until Early Voting, and 47 days until Election Day. So we’ve got to get the word out.

I’ve been joining with a number of other precinct chairs within the district (somewhere around 74 precincts). We’ve been hearing from candidates, talking with them, vetting them, for a couple of months now.

There are three races open this year. All seven of the board members signed a resolution last fall, committing to spending our taxpayer funds on an “equity audit.” If you’re familiar with CRT, then you may know that “equity” doesn’t mean “equality.” They have hijacked that word (they redefine many words) to mean “equal outcomes.” If you look at anything, and the outcome isn’t divided up exactly as the demographics, then the only possible reason must be systemic racism. So, they hired some company to look at the district and find unequal outcomes, and then they would then take advice on programs to implement to change the outcomes. If you have blacks doing less well on math tests, for example, it must be because of systemic racism. So you implement all kinds of “anti-racism,” which means racism against whites or any other successful group. And when the outcomes continue to yield bad math scores, you double down.

So we need all of the school board gone. Three this year, and the other four when their terms are up in two years.

Ogletree has run as a slate with Don Ryan (who has been in since 2000) and Bob Covey (who has been in since 2004). It’s a non-partisan race, but when we know the party, sometimes it tells us something. Ryan and Covey are nominal Republicans. I haven’t always voted against them. But this year it’s time to say no more.

Don Ryan has come to our Tea Party meetings. More than once. Just last month he came to participate in our candidate forum. He assures us there’s no CRT being taught in our district—against testimony from multiple parents. When confronted with Ogletree’s tweets, he says he has worked well with him and considers him a friend, and will continue to support him. The three are running again as a slate, with PAC money behind them. The ROC PAC—not sure of the meaning of the letters. People are speculating things like “really old codgers.” (OK, it's really for their last names: Ryan, Ogletree, and Covey.)

image from campaign materials

Who We’re Fighting With

Ryan (position 6) and Covey (position 7) each have only one Republican opponent. So the decision there is fairly simple. I’ll be voting for Scott Henry for position 6 and Luke Scanlon for position 7.

Scott Henry is a dad with still one child in the district. He’s a businessman and brings that view to the board, which I appreciate. Much of the board’s business is mundane money stuff, but it needs to be done well, by someone with the right values. He’s not, by the way, related to the Superintendent, whose last name is also Henry. (Some of us haven’t been too happy with him either.)

Luke Scanlon is the founder of our local Tea Party, back in I think 2011 when about seven of us met in a room at the BBQ restaurant that lets us meet there for free. After getting us started, he went off to Harvard’s public policy school. When he came back, I think I heard he ran for an office, but not in my area. And I had kind of lost track of him. It was good to catch up. He and his wife had been childless back in the day, but now they have a beautiful 6-year-old girl (he proudly showed me photos on his phone), which is why the interest in the school board position. He has his own business developing people in their businesses and in life goals. And he teaches a college class or two. He was only able to attend one of our candidate forums (conflicts with teaching a college class, mainly, which is ending here in a couple of weeks). But I liked his answers at the one I attended. Unfortunately, it’s not one that was recorded. I saw him and his wife again at last Thursday’s school board meeting.

There have been a number of good candidates for position 5; everyone wants to get rid of Ogletree. Unfortunately, that divides the votes in an election with no runoff. I hope those I’m not supporting this time will consider running in two years. They have a lot to offer.

I, along with a very large majority of the precinct chairs who have worked on this, am supporting Natalie Blasingame for position 5. She definitely has energy and passion about this. She has run before. I’ve voted for her before. Hopefully we have enough community support to get her elected this time.

Dr. Blasingame has been in education for 29 years, at multiple levels. She has three words to signify her campaign: Choice, Voice, and Values.

I’d like to go into more detail on our three choices, especially Dr. Blasingame. But that’s going to require a part II. In the meantime, there are videos of some of our candidate forums:

· From our August 21 Forum for Precinct Chairs

o Opening and Initial Question & Answer Session

o Responses to Republican Platform and Precinct Chair Q&A

· From our August 28 Tea Party Meeting (membership required to view posts in the group)

o Natalie Blasingame

o Don Ryan

o Todd LaCompte

o Grace Horner

o Courtney Spradley

o Scott Henry

Also, I’m aware of a few of the candidate websites:

· Natalie Blasingame www.natalieblasingame.com