The good news is that Salem Keizer We Stand Together, a wacko group that sees "wokeness" as the biggest problem in our children's education, failed to get enough signatures to recall three school board members who didn't conform to the group's extreme right-wing agenda.
None of the three Salem-Keizer Public Schools governing board members targeted in a recall effort will be removed since petitioners failed to collect enough signatures before the deadline.
Casity Troutt, vice president of the parent advocacy group Salem-Keizer We Stand Together, filed paperwork on Aug. 25 to recall board Chairwoman Ashley Carson Cottingham, former Chairman Osvaldo Avila and co-Vice Chairwoman Karina Guzmán Ortiz.
Brian Van Bergen in the Marion County Clerk's Office said none of the three proposed recalls was able to collect enough signatures before the deadline.
The bad news is that Salem Keizer We Stand Together (the gr0up doesn't use a hyphen) almost certainly is going to continue to meddle in the education of children in our area, having drunk the Trumpian Kool-Aid fantasy that our nation's schools are a hotbed of Critical Race Theory, LGBTQ grooming, and socialist propaganda.
Back in February of this year I wrote, "Salem Keizer We Stand Together is a wacko school group." Here's how that post ended.
After reading the Statesman Journal story, my initial inclination was to write about how wrong Salem Keizer We Stand Together is on issues involving racial justice, LGBTQ rights, public health/Covid, and such.
But I changed my mind about this after realizing that Salem Keizer We Stand Together isn't interested in bringing reasonable conservative views into discussions of school policies.
To echo the Free Oregon web site, it seems clear to me that Salem Keizer We Stand Together is a group of power thirsty ideologues who care much more about promoting their Trumpist political agenda than in improving local schools.
So don't be fooled into believing that Salem Keizer We Stand Together is a bunch of reasonable conservatives who want to bring some balance to the current progressive leaning of the school board. If that was what they wanted, they'd work harder on winning school board elections.
No, Salem Keizer We Stand Together is very much in the mold of Moms for Liberty, the subject of a fascinating story in the November 7, 2022 issue of The New Yorker, Class Warfare: School boards are being attacked by partisan saboteurs.
That story on The New Yorker web site is titled: The Right-Wing Mothers Fueling the School-Board Wars. It has the apt subtitle: "Moms for Liberty claims that teachers are indoctrinating students with dangerous ideologies. But is the group’s aim protecting kids—or scaring parents?"
Download The Right-Wing Mothers Fuelling the School-Board Wars | The New Yorker
Basically Moms for Liberty made up crap about the English and Language Arts curriculum in a Tennessee school district (Wit & Wisdom) that had been carefully reviewed before being adopted, and was well liked by both teachers and students.
But just as Salem Keizer We Stand Together sees the mirage of Critical Race Theory and woke leftism wherever they cast their Fox News loving eyes, so did Moms for Liberty. Resistance eventually surfaced to the Moms for Liberty agenda, as described in the story.
Moms for Liberty members were portraying Wit & Wisdom as “critical race theory” in disguise. Garrett found this baffling. C.R.T., a complex academic framework that examines the systemic ways in which racism has shaped American society, is explored at the university level or higher. As far as the board knew, Williamson County Schools had never introduced the concept.
...The Antis jeered at speakers who expressed support for Golden or the district’s diversity efforts. They mocked a woman whose daughters had experienced anti-Asian slurs at school. The mom told the board, “I’ve heard people say that teaching these parts of our history is ‘racist’ or ‘traumatic.’ What’s traumatic is Black, Latino, Asian, and L.G.B.T.Q. kids going to schools where they face discrimination and don’t feel safe.”
A local psychologist, Alanna Truss, said, “I’m yet to see a child in my practice who’s been traumatized by our county’s curriculum choices. I have, however, seen many students experiencing trauma due to being discriminated against and bullied within our schools, related to race, religion, gender, and sexuality.”
I invite you to check out the Salem Keizer We Stand Together web site. It's filled with so many lies I had difficulty choosing one to share in this post. I settled on an excerpt from a Daily Caller story that's featured on the home page. Here's how the story starts out. Like I said, lies piled upon lies.
It’s back to school! You bought all the school supplies and new clothes, but what about insulating your children against school indoctrination? Sadly, indoctrination resistance is now part of going back to school so you must stay vigilant and teach your children personal boundaries.
Lesson plans about “social identity,” which may be called Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), Critical Race Theory, cultural competency, or other names, obliterate the personal boundaries of children in order to break down kids emotionally and build them back up as social justice activists.
The process involves forging emotional bonds to influence children to become political proteges of the teachers and peers that emotionally manipulated them. Adopting leftists’ mindsets and behaviors becomes an act of loyalty to a collective identity that is prioritized over individual human value.
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