How’s That New School Board Doing?

This past Monday, May 6, was a monthly school board meeting here in Cy-Fair Independent School District, northwest of Houston. This is the board we worked so hard to flip from all seven moderate-to-liberal board members to six conservative and one liberal; it took two election cycles. At the same time, the previous (liberal) superintendent retired. We were very concerned about the timing—getting the new hire before the new board had a say. But the process allowed for input from the new board, who were all, along with the old board, in favor of our new superintendent.

Business with all the new people has been underway since January, so this is early, but it’s a good time to look at how things are going. There are two areas we’ll look at today: budget and curriculum.

Budget

The biggest issue right now is related to funding. You might call it a crisis—which obviously wasn’t created by this new board and superintendent, but it’s incumbent upon them to fix it. School districts are required by law to balance their budgets. The deadline for setting the next year’s budget is June 30, just a month away as far as school board meetings go, so that’s why this is a big, urgent issue.

from the budget presentation at the May 6 CFISD School Board Meeting,
screenshot from here

I’m trying to grasp the full narrative of the budget shortfall, which is significant. There was grant money because of the pandemic that has been available since 2020, and it runs out with this school year—and is not available for the 2024-2025 school year. That’s a sizable drop in funding. Add to that inflation since Biden took office that skews any budget based on historical expenditures. There has also been a drop in students attending since the pandemic shutdown, which affects school funding, which is based on students in seats. And there is some growth to the district as well, which is in population and could be on the verge of adding a new school; I find this confusing based on the previous sentence. But I’m still processing the details.

For the past couple of months there has been a committee looking for possible budget solutions, which included requesting much input from the community. We’ll get to more detail later, but the controversial solutions have been related to staffing decreases, which, at the suggestion of principals mainly, includes no longer having school librarians on some 50 or 92 campuses.

There will be no layoffs. Let me repeat, the staff decreases being suggested are using attrition and reassignments, not layoffs.

Nevertheless, there’s an army of the usual faces (the enemies of our new board) and their new recruits forming new organizations, on top of old ones, insisting we need librarians in schools. These people are not offering budget solutions, only blame and haranguing rhetoric.

This school board meeting lasted over five hours. (I did not go. I spaced out watching the livestream over the two following days.) Because this is near school year end, there were awards and recognitions that took up nearly the first two hours. Then came the brief board comments (3-5 minutes from each of the seven still takes a chunk of time). Then comes Citizen Participation. One innovation of our new board is to put Citizen Participation near the top of the agenda, rather than at the end, which we believed with the previous board was intended to get people to give up and leave before they could speak. So I’m not complaining about the placement of these public comments. Anyway, that is when people are allowed to speak (by signing up online ahead of time) on any subject without regard to what is on the agenda. Because of the high number, each speaker was limited to one minute.

The public can also comment (again, by signing up ahead of time) on topics related to agenda items. Since the big agenda item was the budget, many people (and some of the same people again) spoke during this segment. Most of these—including a fair number of students reading words fed to them or written for them—talked about the need for librarians and libraries. No solutions were offered.

It was 3 ½ hours into the meeting, after over an hour of public comment against firing librarians (none of which will be fired) that we got to a staff presentation on the budget, followed by a clear and coherent explanation of the situation and the proposals, from our new superintendent, Dr. Doug Killian. If only we’d heard from him first, most of the public complaints would have been moot.

An interesting detail he noted was that, by the time he was speaking, most of the audience had left; they spoke but didn’t want to hear anything else. I’ll get to his presentation in a moment.

CFISD School Board Meeting May 6, 2024. Left is toward the beginning of the meeting; 
right is during Dr. Killian's presentation on the budget. Both are screenshots from here.

One more difference I’ve noticed with this new board is that Citizen Participation is allowed to call out board members by name, and other speakers and community members. That was taboo with the last board, and the legal counsel shut them down immediately just for mentioning a name. I asked our board president about it in an email; he didn’t comment on it being different, but he noted that it’s a free speech issue and something we’re just going to have to tolerate. But it’s definitely uncomfortable. And at some point it may be grounds for a slander lawsuit against those speakers. (They’ve spent a couple of meetings claiming that one of the board members has a “boyfriend”/bodyguard who has roughed up these speakers at various other gatherings. Every word is a lie. Most of the other accusations are ad hominem attacks: we’re all Christian nationalists, racists, homophobes, “wack-a-doos.”)

OK, so now to Dr. Killian’s budget explanation, which starts at 3:30:25 on the video.  

To start with, he tells us, “We're $138 million shy of a balanced budget, and we don't have enough fund balance to be able to make it through next year by just simply not doing anything.” This is quite a crisis to face in your first month on the job. Fortunately, school finance is his specialty. Right away a committee was formed, the Budget Reduction Advisory Committee (BRAC), to come up with both cuts and additional revenue sources. And he went over several of these. Among these are staff reductions. So far the plan covers $58.6 million in deficit reduction.

Here are Dr. Killian’s main points concerning staff cuts, to contradict media and social media claims:

·        No staff are being laid off. The lower numbers of employees will come from attrition, and not filling currently open positions, but restructuring employees to fill those positions. Some positions are being eliminated, and the people in those positions will be given other positions with comparable pay. Preference will be given to keep employees at the same location; when that isn’t possible, they will be offered opportunities at other campuses.

·        The board and superintendent did neither come up with the suggestion of eliminating school librarians nor encourage that. The principals and their staffs determined what their campuses could most easily do without—even though we’d all rather not do without; those principals chose to eliminate librarians.

·        No school libraries will be closed. District librarians will handle book checkout and other librarian duties. (It appears to me that those whose positions were not let go by their principals will be handling multiple schools, rather than only one.)

Dr. Killian gave us some really useful information about the Limited Optional Homestead Exemption (LOHE). As I understand it, this is in addition to the state property tax homestead exemption, and relates to property taxation received by the school district. Not all (in fact, probably not most) school districts offer this tax break. This was passed, locally, back in 1983. There were a lot of expenses we didn’t have back then, such as campus police for safety and security—which, since shooting at Santa Fe and Uvaldi schools here in Texas, everyone agrees is essential. There are rules requiring certain staffing for special education, bilingual education, and more coming from the federal government, which they only partially fund. And inflation has affected that greatly. And there is greater need, as we try to make up for learning losses due to the pandemic shutdown.

from the budget presentation at the CFISD School Board Meeting, May 6, 2024,
screenshot from here

Here's part of that discussion:

This local optional homestead exemption is not a penalty in state aid. We have elected as a school district to reduce our local collections by $63 million, and that's coming to roost. And that is really a local issue. Not every district in the state actually funds a local optional homestead exemption, and that comes right off the top of our local taxes.

So, when you go to the commissioner and say, “Fund the local optional homestead exemption,” you're asking them to give us more money than what they give other people. So I'm doing that politely.

If I’m understanding correctly, Dr. Killian has been aware of an obscure law allowing us to ask for a temporary 50% funding of our LOHE. That is underway. And then, he’s working with legislators, along with other districts that offer the LOHE, to get full funding for the LOHE in the upcoming legislative session. But the temporary relief now looks like a strong possibility.

Near the end of the meeting, one of the board members asked whether this LOHE opportunity had been there in past years but not accessed, and the answer was yes. And that is one of many reasons we are pleased to have him as our new superintendent.

There were other deficit-reducing plans on the table as well. One was to limit bussing to danger zones and areas beyond 1 mile or 2 miles, depending on student grade levels, with an anticipated budget reduction of $4.7 million. While some people tried to fearmonger that they were considering eliminating practically all bussing, that was never the case. Here’s the chart they showed:

from the budget presentation at the CFISD School Board Meeting, May 6, 2024,
screenshot from here

Curriculum

Around 10:30 PM, in a meeting that had begun at 6:00 PM, there was an agenda item related to accepting state-approved curriculum. Board member Dr. Natalie Blasingame proposed an amendment that allowed accepting the curriculum with a list of chapters removed. (Most textbooks are electronic now, accessed on Chromebooks; making certain chapters unavailable is easily doable.) There wasn’t a lot of discussion here. No audience members spoke. But board member Julie Hinaman was in a panic to stop this from happening. She insisted that we hadn’t had time to look at the chapters—even though this item had been postponed from the last meeting for further study, and others clearly used that time to study. Hinaman said we ought to defer to our experts, who approved this curriculum, failing to note that local districts can and ought to make local decisions, and this was one of the very reasons the community enthusiastically flipped the school board. She insisted that we might be failing to meet TEKS—the materials tested on the statewide standardized annual tests. It was clarified that we were allowed to use or create other materials to meet any standards that are missed—and in fact we already do that, because no textbook covers all the TEKS.

The materials in question are related to some controversial topics. KHOU did a story on it, listing for us the chapters to be removed (these were on the big screen in the room, but hard to get as a screenshot, so thanks to KHOU for the list): 

Biology course textbook (Texas, Miller & Levine Experience Biology by Savvas Learning Company)

·        Investigation 13: The challenge of diseases (includes discussion about vaccinations)

·        Investigation 16: human impact on the biosphere

Environmental Science: Sustaining Your World, Texas Edition

·        Chapters 5: Species Interactions, Ecological Succession, and Population Control

·        Chapter 7: Saving Species & Ecosystem Services

Earth Systems, Texas Edition

·        Chapters 2: Earth Systems & Cycles

·        Chapter 6: Mineral & Energy Resources

·        Chapter 21: Climate & Climate Change

Principles of Education & Training course – Teaching

·        Chapter 7: School & Society

·        Chapter 12: Teaching Diverse Learners

·        Chapter 15: Technology for Instruction

·        Chapter 18: The Challenges of Teaching

Health Science Theories textbook – DHO Health Science

·        Chapter 8: Human Growth & Development

·        Chapter 10: Cultural Diversity

There’s a hue and cry coming from the opposition that this is a “diverse” district, and the board is required to listen to them as parents, and not just those Christian extremists who give them campaign money. (Ha! If only I’d had money and not just time to donate to them!) But school board elections matter, and even more parents have spoken in a way that counts. If there are topics a “pro-diverse” parent feels their child is missing, they are free to supplement. What these actual extremists don’t get to do is indoctrinate all the kids, regardless of their parents’ will, and then say those parents can just un-indoctrinate their kids after the fact.

Board member Julie Hinaman, the only holdover from the previous board, was outmatched. She has, since the meeting, gone to social media to cry foul. She should have been informed ahead of time, she says. She fails to remember in social media, even though she mentioned it at the meeting, that the issue was postponed since the last meeting so the board could study the curriculum before accepting it, which others clearly did. Now she wants it two ways at once: there isn’t time to see which chapters and what content is being left out, so we should just accept the experts and approve their original recommendation.

She could have asked more specifics about the chapters to be deleted. Board member Justin Ray, in an effort to allay any fears or any sense that things were being hidden, asked Dr. Blasingame for some clarification on materials being left out. Dr. Blasingame mentioned a biology extension chapter related to vaccines was not necessary for TEKS. And then she covered some earth systems that included depopulation, and an agenda out of the UN, and a perspective that humans are bad. Ray agreed that those were controversial topics. Board member Todd LeCompte agreed that he wouldn’t want anything about depopulation to be taught.

In other words, there’s some indoctrination going on, which is exactly what we voted in this board to prevent. And we thank them for this first, important step.

Hinaman didn’t ask for those details. I think she didn’t, because the more open and detailed the board is about the indoctrination, the more parents agree with them—despite what the loud cohort screams. She claims that Dr. Blasingame stated the revisions were a result of a board subcommittee—but review of the video shows no such statement. She only said these materials were brought up as concerning across the state and within the district. Hinaman accused the board of vetting Dr. Blasingame’s proposed amendment, because it was available on the screen; in other words, Dr. Blasingame was prepared enough to hand out copies of her proposal to board members and had sent an electronic copy to the secretary handling the large screen, as would be expected for an amendment of this type in a typical public meeting. Somehow, to Hinaman, that is backroom dealing. Hinaman, in her online screed, says,

“Last year, it was library books. Last month, it was librarians. This week, it was Science. What next? Social studies? History? Ethics?”

screenshot from Julie Hinaman's social media,
I accessed it here, in a private group that may not be accessible

How terrible of us to not willingly submit to the indoctrination! Who do we think we are?

Note that Hinaman has an influential position on TASB (Texas Association of School Boards). People from around the state are calling for legislation to disallow association with TASB, because of the woke indoctrination problem. Association can be curtailed at the school district level; I hope Cy-Fair ISD makes that happen.

You can assume that the loud cohort will scream again, at the next board meeting, and the one after that…. Tolerating their tantrums is going to be one of the costs of standing up to them in order to stop allowing them to indoctrinate our kids.

So, they will go on saying anyone in favor of school choice is trying to defund public schools and destroy them. And they will go on saying anyone who wants porn removed from school libraries is a pearl-clutching book banner. And they will go on lying about school librarians being fired, and will claim removing indoctrination from textbooks is censorship—or whatever the next thing is that comes up.

It will be loud and uncomfortable, and often ugly. But I’m proud to say I helped get this board elected, and I’m very pleased to see how very capable our new superintendent is. As a report card at the end of their very first semester, I’d say they’re getting very good marks. (Except for that one; maybe we'll get her voted out in the next election.)

Stand Up, Speak Up

People differ on advice when facing a criminal. Some say, “Let the mugger take your handbag. It’s not worth your life.” Others say “Scream and fight. Bullies are weak and easily scared off.”

Some say, “Don’t fight a rapist and he won’t kill you.” Others say, “Fight with everything you have; if he’s willing to take that from you, he’s willing to kill you, and he’s motivated to, because you can ID him. So you have nothing to lose by fighting and everything to gain.”

Some say, “A burglar is only taking stuff; that’s not worth the death penalty.” Others say, “If he’s willing to come on your property and take your stuff, how do you know that’s all he’s willing to do? He knows you have the right to protect yourself before he risks his life to get your stuff.”

Two approaches. One says, “Submit and be a victim.” The other says, “Fight. You don’t have to be a victim.”

Today’s post is about standing up, refusing to be a victim—against some particular assaults on our freedom and civilization.

A number of stories lately give me hope, because people are standing up. When enough people do that, we start to win, and then those committing the assaults on our freedom and civilization will get scared off—back into the dark corners they crawled out of.

The main type of assault we have examples for today is Critical Race Theory. But the principles apply to the gender agenda, often tied up with CRT because of intersectionality. And it applies to other forms of tyranny as well, which might get a mention at the end.

 

Critical Race Theory Assault Response

Standing Up at School Board meetings—especially when the message gets shared—is having an impact.

Virginia is getting a lot of attention. In this first one, a Fairfax County teacher speaks at a Loudoun County school board meeting.

A teacher speaks against Critical Race Theory
at a Virginia school board meeting.
screenshot from here

·       “Virginia Teacher Eviscerates ‘Woke’ Leftist Critical Race Theory Agenda at School Board Meeting” by David Rufful, Analyzing America, June 10, 2021. 

·       “Teacher Unloads on 'Woke' CRT Agenda During Loudoun County School Board Meeting” by Sister Toldjah for RedState, June 9, 2021. 

Her speech is brief. Here’s the transcript:

I’m a Fairfax County public school teacher, and I’m going to give a message of encouragement to parents and teachers and students who are too afraid to come forward and speak.

Parents, the longer that you wait and you don’t hold your child’s schools accountable gives these guys more time to dictate what’s best for your child’s physical, mental and emotional health. Don’t be afraid to speak out for your kids, because they are voiceless and they rely on you.

You should be afraid of them rooting for socialism by the time they get to middle school.

Teachers, it may seem that our careers have come to a dead end, but I’m here to remind you, we don’t work for the school board. We work to mold the next generation of well-rounded American patriots, so don’t give up because it is up to us.

Students, you are on the front lines of these indoctrination camps. Challenge the staff when you’re presented with a ludicrous statement and do not allow anybody to tell you that you cannot accomplish anything because of your skin color or to hate yourself because of your skin color. Students, it is up to you to be the next generation of victims or victors.

And finally, to the board, this isn’t over and your policies are just as [mic was cut off].

This second one is also in Virginia, Xi Van Fleet, a survivor of Mao’s cultural revolution, giving us warning:

·       “Survivor Of Mao’s China: Critical Race Theory ‘Is Racist,’ China Used ‘Wokeness’ To Install Communism” Daily Wire News, June 11, 2021. 

·       “Woman who survived Mao's purge compares critical race theory in US schools to China's Cultural Revolution in scathing speech” by Paul Sacca for The Blaze, June 10, 2021. 

·       “Virginia mom who survived Maoist China eviscerates school board's critical race theory push” by Michael Ruiz for Fox News, June 10, 2021. 

This additional Virginia story happened a while ago, but there’s new news:

·       “Judge Reinstates VA Teacher Suspended For Refusing To Affirm Trans Identity For Kids, Calls School Response ‘Vindictive’” by Jon Brown for The Daily Wire, June 8, 2021. 

Tanner Cross, an elementary school PE teacher in Loudoun County, was suspended for speaking at a school board meeting at which the board had requested opinions on the subject of pronoun policy for transgender students. But they didn’t like his opinion, so they suspended him. They had additionally restricted him from any school property, taking away any opportunity for further public comment. A judge has called them out as being vindictive.

Here’s part of Cross’s statement:

I love all of my students, but I will never lie to them regardless of the consequences. I’m a teacher, but I serve God first and I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa, because it’s against my religion. It’s lying to a child, it’s abuse to a child, and it’s sinning against our God.

 

Here's one from New York:

·       “New York Mother unleashes on school board: 'You're emotionally abusing our children'” by Thomas McDonald, Independent Chronicle, June 10, 2021.  

Tatiana Ibrahim, the NY mom, told them,

You’re emotionally abusing our children and mentally abusing them. You’re demoralizing them by teaching them communist values. This is still America, ma’am. And as long as I’m standing here on this good ground Earth of God, I will fight. This is not the last of me you will see. I’m retired; I’ve got nothing else better to do.

Tatiana Ibrahim speaks at a Carmel, NY, school board meeting.
screenshot from here

This was an intense 11 minutes. At one point a school board member tried to get her to stop, because this wasn’t a “peaceful discussion.” Ibrahim responded, “No, that's your opinion. See, here we go again. This is peaceful; to me, this is peaceful. I'm not burning, looting, and murdering.” She told them she had proof that their teachers were supporting those types of behaviors, including encouraging murder of police. The board looked nonplussed. But the people there—and the people who have watched the video—are glad to see someone standing up against the misguided authority figures.

 

This one is from Bloomington, Illinois:

·       “Mother unloads on school board over young children being taught about masturbation, anal sex, transgenderism” by Phil Shiver for The Blaze, June 14, 2021.

Becky Swan confronts Illinois school board with text containing
explicit content being presented to young children.
screenshot from here

 

At the school board meeting, Becky Swan mentions that introducing sexualizing topics to young children is grooming behavior. She’s right about that. http://sphericalmodel.blogspot.com/2019/05/its-called-grooming.html  Making children suffer through these uncomfortable topics is a form of sexual harassment. Also true. After listing the explicit content topics being forced upon children at different levels (all inappropriate), Swan held up a book and said that if the content is too sensitive to be brought up at that meeting, it was too sensitive to be taught to young children.

 

Rhode Island mom Nicole Solas stood up to a school board in yet another way, to find out what CRT and gender curriculum was going to be taught to her kindergartener.

·       “Kindergartner's mom files 200 records requests on CRT, gender curriculum to force school district to respond. Board claims she's using intimidation tactics” by Sarah Taylor for The Blaze, June 4, 2021.  

·       “Mom fights anti-White training in daughter’s kindergarten class: ‘They reduce everything down’ to skin color” by Angelica Stabile for Fox News, June 3, 2021. 

Nicole Solas speaks with Tucker Carlson about getting
information on what her kindergartener would be taught.
screenshot from here

What started out as “several” records requests—the method for getting the information that the school district directed her to use—grew to 200 records requests, because she couldn’t get a straight answer from the school district about what they were going to teach her daughter.

The school board felt the heat. They threatened to sue her, accusing her of intimidating them in order to get rid of that heinous curriculum they wanted to use. At a public hearing, they shouted at her and called her racist—just as you’d expect from a bully. But she has stood firm.

Solas uses APRA, the Access to Public Records Act, which is essentially a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request. There’s a good explanation and sample request letter here. 

 

Some good things happened in Colorado. Parents spoke up, and the school board changed their minds:

·       “Colorado Mother Rebukes Critical Race Theory As ‘Nightmare’ That Needs To ‘End Now’” by Chrissy Clark for The Daily Wire, June 2, 2021. 

·       “These Parents Successfully Pressured Their School Board To Ditch Divisive Equity Training” by Georgia Howe for The Daily Wire, June 3, 2021.  This is in Douglas County, Colorado.

 

Here's an example from Florida:

·       “Black Mom Torches Critical Race Theory: It’s ‘Racist,’ It’s ‘Teaching Hate,’ Will Destroy America” Daily Wire News, June 11, 2021. 

Keisha King speaks to Florida State Board of Education.
screenshot from here

Keisha King, a Duval County parent supporting school choice and opposing divisive CRT curriculum, says,

I don’t know about you, but telling my child or any child that they are in a permanent oppressed status in America because they are black is racist, and saying that white people are automatically above me, my children or any child is racist as well.

 

State Actions

By the way, the State of Florida has now banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory.

·         “Florida bans use of critical race theory, ‘1619Project’ in teaching history” by Jeffrey S. Solochek for the Miami Herald, June 10 (updated June 11), 2021.  

The “1619 Project,” was a badly non-historical rewriting of American history put forth by the New York Times. President Trump banned it in September 2020 and replaced it with the “1776 Unites Curriculum,” and put in place the “1776 Commission.” But Biden switched back toward Critical Race Theory and its Marxist dogma on his first day in office. 

Florida is not the only state banning these ideas. Here are stories about Iowa, Idaho, and Oklahoma:

·       “Iowa Bans Critical Race Theory: Schools Should ‘Promote Learning, Not Discriminatory Indoctrination’” by Tim Pearce for The Daily Wire, June 9, 2021. 

·       “Red States Against Critical Race Theory/Idaho and Oklahoma pass legislation banning state-sanctioned racism in public schools.” by Christopher F. Rufo, May 3, 2021.

This next one covers Florida and others, and lists the following as considering such bans in their legislatures: Michigan, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Arizona, Kentucky, Utah and New Hampshire.

·         “Critical Race Theory Is Banned in These States” by Chris Dutton for Newsweek, June 11, 2021. 

While Texas was on that list, the Texas legislature finished its legislative session May 31^st. Before close of session, it passed HB 3979 requiring that civics teaching must include the moral, political, and educational foundations of America and must not include CRT ideas; the bill has been sent to the Governor for signature. He has until Tuesday, June 15^th, to sign or veto the bill, or else it automatically becomes law.

Even though these states have banned the teaching of CRT, we’ve seen this before, with Common Core. They retitle and put it in anyway. Some of the laws are specific enough to specify what curriculum must include or exclude. But that doesn’t mean local districts won’t use other materials that they might not call curriculum. So parents better be vigilant about holding their local school districts accountable.

By the way, for local friends, we have a Cy-Fair Independent School District board meeting Monday, June 21, at 6:00 PM. Info here. You might want to mention that they sent out CRT materials to teachers just this past month, and we need a solemn promise that such propaganda will have no way into our schools ever again. I wrote about this here. 

Some Outcome Effects

We need to know we’re not alone in our opinions. We have a right to speak them. And things get better when we do.

Here’s an example of what outcome this damaging indoctrination has led to—but the employer isn’t giving the wokes a win:

·       “Employer says he has stopped hiring Ivy League grads: They're too 'woke,' too 'self-important,' or have been trained to stay silent when it matters” by Phil Shiver for The Blaze, June 9, 2021.

In this next story, Matt Walsh offers this opinion: 

Do you want to know why conservatives are losing the culture? Nickelodeon put out two videos in a week of a drag queen pushing gay pride on children and still most conservative parents will allow their children to watch shows on the network. That’s it. That’s why we lose.

Nickelodeon should be bankrupted. They’ve made their agenda clear. They’ve made it plain that they hate us. And if we all stopped giving them our money, they’d collapse. That’s what should happen but it won’t.

I did hear elsewhere today that Nickelodeon’s viewership is 1/3 of what it was 4 years ago. “Since July of 2017, Nickelodeon’s viewership has dropped from 1.3 million average viewers per week to a June of 2021 average of only 372,000.”  It looks like bankruptcy may be looming after all. If that happens, it will be because parents spoke by tuning out.

 

Learn Then Speak

While collecting things for this post, I learned about investigative reporter/filmmaker Christopher Rufo (he wrote the piece about Idaho and Oklahoma above). It was his investigative journalism that led President Trump to ban CRT in the federal government. He has put out some resources.

·       This “Critical Race Theory” explanatory video, which includes CRT history, what’s happening in institutions, and how to fight back. 

·       This Critical Race Theory Briefing Book.  I especially like a section called “Winning the Language War.” This free online “book” also includes links to examples, and info about passing legislation.

·       This 11-part series “Critical Race Theory in Education” in the Articles section of Rufo’s website.  Every example is jaw-dropping. These things shouldn’t be happening.

·         This transcription of Rufo's Atlantic interview on CRT. 

Rufo also wrote these two informative pieces:

·       “Critical Race Theory: What It Is and How to Fight It” for Hillsdale’s Imprimis, from a lecture he gave March 30, 2021. 

·       “Critical Race Theory Would Not Solve Racial Inequality: It Would Deepen It” by Christopher Rufo for the Heritage Foundation, March 23, 2021. 

 

Here’s another guide to stopping CRT in schools:

·       “Conservative think tank creates 'A to Z guide' for stopping critical race theory in schools/Former Trump official Russ Vought leads effort to train anti-CRT parents” by Matt Leach for Fox News, June 8, 2021. This includes a free 18-page downloadable booklet by Vought on what CRT is and how to stop it.  

And, because terminology changes whenever a term becomes negative, here is Vought's list of terminology that often accompanies CRT ideas:

·       “List: Critical Race Theory Terms” from the Center for Renewing America, a Russ Vought website. 

 

Additional Stand Taking

What is giving me hope right now is the accumulation of people standing up and speaking up. CRT and the LGBTQ agenda are worth standing up against—even though you get maligned and cancelled. It’s beginning to make a difference.

Here are some other examples of people standing up against the tyranny we’re facing—from CRT and other arenas of tyranny.

·       “Houston Hospital Nurses Stage Walkout Over Vaccine Mandate” by Holly Hansen for The Texan, June 8, 2021. 

·       “117 employees sue Houston Methodist overCOVID-19 vaccine requirement” KHOU-11 News, May 28, 2021. 

·       “Breaking News: Harris County Voter Applied for a Ballot by Mail—29 Years After Her Death” by Colleen Vera for Texas Trash Talk, June 12, 2021. Colleen, a friend of mine, keeps finding these examples. One FOIA request at a time. She has given the state AG’s office quite a lot of work to do. 

·       “‘We Are Going To Expose You’: Vets Crenshaw, Cotton Create Whistleblower Doc To Combat ‘Woke’ Efforts In U.S. Military” by Hank Berrien for The Daily Wire, May 30, 2021. 

·       “Cotton Reveals Military Whistleblower Complaints On Woke Training, Biden’s SecDef Insists, ‘Diversity, Equity And Inclusion Is Important To This Military’” by Hank Berrien for The Daily Wire, June 11, 2021. 

·       Dan Crenshaw has this Whistleblower Form for military to report complaints on Woke Training.  He posted about it on Facebook here. 

·       “How Critical Race Theory is Sabotaging Our Schools” Rep. Dan Crenshaw on his Hold These Truths podcast interviews Dr. Richard Johnson of Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Booker T. Washington Initiative. 

 

Think of information as your ammo. Your voice is your weapon. Use it carefully and wisely. But use it.

Oppression through Education

This is the last of a five-part series of posts on educational concerns. (The other four are here, here, here, and here.) All of this was triggered by discussions a couple of weeks ago about a national curriculum being imposed, called Common Core, and a Texas alternative called CSCOPE.

I am not an expert on these specific curricula. But you can look things up as well as I can. Common Core has this mission statement: 

The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.

Why common standards?

Building on the excellent foundation of standards states have laid, the Common Core State Standards are the first step in providing our young people with a high-quality education. It should be clear to every student, parent, and teacher what the standards of success are in every school.

Then you can click on the specific standards for math and English language arts. But I have this additional question: We’ve had a US Department of Education, a cabinet level organization, since Jimmy Carter implemented it in 1979—so why has it taken more than three decades to take this “first step in providing our young people with a high-quality education”? What have they been trying to do thus far, if they couldn’t even take a first step until now? Just marching in place? Going backward? Gathering data that suddenly now all makes everything possible?

And if we’ve had this US Department of Education failing to do its stated purpose for thirty-three years so far, why should we trust that now, suddenly, without a positive track record, they’ve got the solution to all of our state, local, and individual student education challenges?

If I understand correctly, the US Department receives taxpayer dollars, which filter through various bureaucratic offices, and get sent back to the states—to be used as the federal government dictates. And right now a chunk of that is attached to strings, particularly the requirement that Common Core be used. They have a map showing that all but a few recalcitrant states have succumbed to the bribe.

Texas is one of the recalcitrant ones. Governor Perry stated clearly that we Texans would not take federal dollars with federal strings attached, which would limit our ability to meet our needs here. Go Perry!

But then we learned that, in its place, Texas had adopted something called CSCOPE. Technically, it’s not “curriculum”; it’s called “instructional material,” so the State Board of Education doesn’t have oversight. It’s just a tool to help teachers plan their teaching to match state testing requirements. Innocent enough, right? Turns out, not so innocent.

I first learned about CSCOPE last fall, at a local Tea Party meeting. We have several people there who regularly attend our local school district board meetings. And right about then there was an uproar about the way CSCOPE presented sex education, particularly to very young ages. And one of the additional difficulties with CSCOPE is that it’s all online, rather than a textbook that can be reviewed. This is supposed to make it more cost effective, because things can be changed online as needed, without reprinting costs. But it adds additional copyright challenges. The entities creating and selling CSCOPE have approached that problem by refusing parental review and forcing teachers to sign non-disclosure statements. Not even the chair of the State Board of Education was allowed to review the materials.

Just to clarify: parents don’t get to see what’s in it, and teachers aren’t allowed to tell parents what’s in it. A couple of teachers who have gone ahead and talked over concerns with parents (after parents hear some worrisome things that their kids are being taught) have been reprimanded, fired, or forced to leave the teaching profession. (Here is one parent's run-in with CSCOPE curriculum.)

Parents in our district, specifically about the sex education, caused such an uproar that, rather than keep defending the curriculum, the district withdrew CSCOPE as the source of sex education. I don’t think that means all CSCOPE has been discarded in the district, however. And it’s used in about 80% of Texas independent school districts.

I don’t have all the data points, but it appears that the “progressive” indoctrination within CSCOPE, and there is plenty of that, is supported by the same supporters as Common Core. Common Core even sought to purchase CSCOPE at one point. Shadowy figures like George Soros are mentioned as among the funding sources way in the background. Maybe true? I don’t know. I guess I’m paranoid enough about tyrannists that I see it as a possibility.

Texans don’t generally sit still while some foolish “experts” try to walk over us. We stand up. Some of that has begun to happen. My state senator, Senator Dan Patrick, introduced legislation, just before the deadline for filing a couple of weeks ago, a bill to provide oversight for CSCOPE. I think scrapping it would be a better option than tweaking it. Nevertheless, there is now going to be an oversight board. Here’s the press release from the CSCOPE website concerning the agreed upon changes.

Glenn Beck spent a day  talking about CSCOPE on his show (March 7; this article has several videos within, all worth watching) identifying some of the problems. There are many problems, and some of the guests on his show also described it as only a mediocre curriculum, as far as usefulness in teaching students.

What we must not do is get into an argument about whether the curriculum is good or bad, or good enough. Quality is not the primary question.

My curriculum was written on my computer, as I got to it each semester, outlining our plans, and keeping our records. It was good enough. A curriculum does not have to be flawless; it only has to be flexible and customized to each student. No matter how good a standardized curriculum is, it will not meet the needs of kids who are either fast, slow, or different-style learners.

Some of the discussions about these factory-style curricula showed math that the Beck guests all agreed was fuzzy and stupid. My son Political Sphere called me after he saw it and said, “That looks like what we did.” Before we homeschooled, back when the boys were in elementary school (a gifted magnet school), we were working on getting math facts faster. So we played around with a book called Mathemagics: How to Look Like a Genius without Really Trying. One of the tricks in it was helping you do multiplication in your head, doing the tens first and then adding the ones. Second son, Economic Sphere, used to do 2x2 multiplication in his head, as a second grader, faster than I could do it either in my head or with a calculator. We used this book again the summer after his freshman year of college, and he was doing three-digit division in his head about that fast. I’ve later learned that similar approaches work for Asians because of the way their languages say numbers. And in the book Cheaper by the Dozen, the Galbraith kids, back about 90 years ago, were taught similar calculation skills that their dad drilled them on and enjoyed showing off.

The point is, there might be specifics within the curriculum that we might disagree on, as to whether they are good ideas, at least for some students. And there might be stated overall goals, like teaching critical thinking skills, that would be hard to disagree with. So the argument must not be about whether this curriculum is good enough, because that allows the assumption that some hypothetical standardized curriculum would be acceptable.

These curricula must be stopped because there is a serious risk that standardized curricula can be used (and have been) for indoctrination and control—whether they are effective education tools or not.

Father of modern education, Horace Mann, let us know the plan in the 1800s: “What the church has been for medieval man, the public school must become for democratic and rational man. God will be replaced by the concept of the public good.”

His acolyte, John Dewey (yes, the one who created the Dewey decimal system) took Mann’s ideas and made them worse. He took great classic books out of schools, and offered up moral relativism, promoting socialist ideology through so-called scientific education expertise. He’s made so much “progress” that we’re barely still able to assert that a standardized curriculum that promotes socialism and denigrates America is a bad use of our tax dollars.