When we talk about why families really left D65, no one wants to admit that the equity curriculums were at least part of the reason. If they admitted that publicly they could lose their job or be the subject of ridicule.
When one of my children was at the JEH preschool (for 3-5 yr olds) they spent a week learning about what the colors of …
When we talk about why families really left D65, no one wants to admit that the equity curriculums were at least part of the reason. If they admitted that publicly they could lose their job or be the subject of ridicule.
When one of my children was at the JEH preschool (for 3-5 yr olds) they spent a week learning about what the colors of of the pride flag mean, with no mention throughout the school year of our country’s official flag and what it stands for. Teachers read them books about boys who want to be mermaids, and they learned the definition of gay, lesbian, straight, etc. I think this is crossing a line for many parents.
When another one of my children was in 3rd grade, I reviewed the content of what was to be taught during the equity curriculum weeks. BLM week included learning about the song Brown Skin Girl with slides of the lyrics and a picture of a black female with her top open showing cleavage from the top to the bottom of her breasts (I would attach my screenshots of those slides from the D65 website if I could). The lyrics included lines such as “Tonight I might fall in love dependin’ on how you hold me. I’m glad that I’m calmin’ down, can’t let no one come control me. Keep dancin’ and call it love. She fightin’ but fallin’ slowly.” Fine song if you’re an adult but I wouldn’t promote it to children. And there was the logo that says “counselors not cops”. I wonder how that made the children of police officers feel? Again, the district is crossing a line. Let parents handle identity and politics, and let the district focus on academic education instead of trying to shove their agendas down our throats.
I could go on and on about the equity slides I’ve seen on the district 65 website over the past 4 years. I don’t think they’re worth losing federal funding for. We should be promoting a spirit of treating people with respect and dignity simply because they are humans, and not because they are a part of this group or that group. I’m looking for school board candidates who say they are willing to do away with these types of lessons in school and clean up our students’ curriculums. Let’s do what we need to do to keep our federal funding.
There's so much stuff like this, where "equity" was the justification for hiring a friend or someone getting paid to do activist work. This guy we paid $35k to do equity work was a convicted felon for drunk driving too much and the District hired him to offer programs offsite on the weekends!
I think some of that has already gone away - It's not clear to me if they're doing the "equity weeks" this February but it seems like they're not. They've even scaled back some of the crazier affinity group things related to the Beyond Diversity training. I haven't heard about privilege walks for instance since like 2022.
I just think that this is a local issue we can solve on our own (we have elections in a month) and don't need the federal government to come in and smash. We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater here.
When we talk about why families really left D65, no one wants to admit that the equity curriculums were at least part of the reason. If they admitted that publicly they could lose their job or be the subject of ridicule.
When one of my children was at the JEH preschool (for 3-5 yr olds) they spent a week learning about what the colors of of the pride flag mean, with no mention throughout the school year of our country’s official flag and what it stands for. Teachers read them books about boys who want to be mermaids, and they learned the definition of gay, lesbian, straight, etc. I think this is crossing a line for many parents.
When another one of my children was in 3rd grade, I reviewed the content of what was to be taught during the equity curriculum weeks. BLM week included learning about the song Brown Skin Girl with slides of the lyrics and a picture of a black female with her top open showing cleavage from the top to the bottom of her breasts (I would attach my screenshots of those slides from the D65 website if I could). The lyrics included lines such as “Tonight I might fall in love dependin’ on how you hold me. I’m glad that I’m calmin’ down, can’t let no one come control me. Keep dancin’ and call it love. She fightin’ but fallin’ slowly.” Fine song if you’re an adult but I wouldn’t promote it to children. And there was the logo that says “counselors not cops”. I wonder how that made the children of police officers feel? Again, the district is crossing a line. Let parents handle identity and politics, and let the district focus on academic education instead of trying to shove their agendas down our throats.
I could go on and on about the equity slides I’ve seen on the district 65 website over the past 4 years. I don’t think they’re worth losing federal funding for. We should be promoting a spirit of treating people with respect and dignity simply because they are humans, and not because they are a part of this group or that group. I’m looking for school board candidates who say they are willing to do away with these types of lessons in school and clean up our students’ curriculums. Let’s do what we need to do to keep our federal funding.
Yes, I'm not saying the equity stuff was effective or good. I think a lot of it was totally nuts, consider this case:
https://www.foiagras.com/p/district-65-consultant-who-skipped
Read the weird stuff we paid him to do on page 20 of the PDF:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zNnGYJFky1iaJ2mJsv9huf53Pr99JcXo/view
There's so much stuff like this, where "equity" was the justification for hiring a friend or someone getting paid to do activist work. This guy we paid $35k to do equity work was a convicted felon for drunk driving too much and the District hired him to offer programs offsite on the weekends!
I think some of that has already gone away - It's not clear to me if they're doing the "equity weeks" this February but it seems like they're not. They've even scaled back some of the crazier affinity group things related to the Beyond Diversity training. I haven't heard about privilege walks for instance since like 2022.
I just think that this is a local issue we can solve on our own (we have elections in a month) and don't need the federal government to come in and smash. We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater here.