HSE Superintendent Yvonne Stokes has made some improvements to the situation in the district in response to conversations with concerned parents. I’m happy about that. There is still a long way to go, but it’s great to see that Dr. Stokes will act.
Let’s take a moment to celebrate some positive outcomes.
First, the district Equity and Inclusion page has been redesigned, and much of the objectionable content—including the inappropriate children’s book recommendations that were on the previous version of the site—has been removed. Moreover, that page apparently no longer promotes Critical Race Theory or its tenets (as it used to).
Second, Dr. Stokes responded to my questions about the controversial webinar from last spring in which one participant recommended talking to fourth-graders about anal sex. Dr. Stokes told me that “we are not talking to our kids about anal sex.” (However, she said that school counselors have a legal obligation to hold what children share with them in confidence, so she cannot control what goes on behind closed doors with a school counselor. This is bothersome in my view, but Dr. Stokes says that this is legally beyond her power to control.) In addition, Dr. Stokes said that the district is not recommending that teachers avoid “binary” language like “boys and girls.” Such a policy was favored by a panelist in the discussion at the webinar, but it was apparently not something the district meant to endorse.
Third, in a nod to parental authority, the district now requires parental permission for students at the fifth and sixth grades to join a Gay-Straight Alliance club. It is controversial to start a sexual-orientation-related club for fifth graders: even the people in the “anal sex” webinar seemed to recognize this. But I guess it’s good that they’re asking permission from parents. I’m going to say it’s a small improvement.
That’s some of the good news. We still have a long way to go, but it’s a start, so be encouraged and keep working for change. Thank you to Dr. Stokes for making these improvements. (I encourage you to thank her as well: ystokes@hse.k12.in.us.)
Now for some bad news.
As I’ve stated before, the district continues to spend tens of thousands of dollars on trainings run by people who tolerate and perpetuate racist ideas, including anti-white racial discrimination, comparing whiteness to a virus, and the idea that whiteness is “understood to be evil.” I last discussed this with Dr. Stokes just three weeks ago. Apparently, Jill English at Child Advocates had been unaware of the racist ideas being perpetuated on her own website. Obviously, this is not an acceptable excuse for the director of “interrupting racism” trainings. Here we are, three weeks later, and the offensive content remains unchanged. In spite of this, the trainings are now being held in the district on a monthly basis! Additionally, Ms. English and several of her staff are still listed as facilitators for the Soul Focused Group. On their website, she appears right next to the guy who compared whiteness to a virus. So her claim to ignorance was a sham, and Dr. Stokes did not respond when I pointed this out and asked her how she can continue to accept ignorance as an excuse.
Additionally, it sounds like there is internal pressure and incentive to attend these trainings, and the district is therefore being at best misleading when they say that the trainings are entirely voluntary and being held at the request of HSE staff. The district treats involvement in these trainings as a qualification for becoming an “equity coach,” a position which includes a stipend. And here is a screenshot of an internal email, which I obtained with a public records request, in which an HSE employee talks about the need to develop strategies to increase the percentage of faculty and staff who have attended:
I wonder what the “roadblocked” ideas for “getting more folks to attend” were. I’d hate to be a teacher who was subject to whatever pressure was being applied!
On another topic, the district has rejected my suggestion that they replace the question of preferred pronouns with a different question, namely, “is there anything I should know about how you would like to be addressed?” I thought this question was a good compromise that would help transgender kids without implying support of a controversial view of gender. But Nataki Pettigrew rejected the idea and refuses to answer my email as to why.
Finally, at the last board meeting, Board President Janet Pritchett silenced someone’s grandma, who wanted to speak about inappropriate library books:
The board then left the room, and returned only after suspending further public comment for the rest of the meeting.
The parents were angry because they were being told to be quiet about the pornography (not exaggerating!) and other inappropriate material that is being offered to children in the public library and in HSE school libraries.
I don’t want to post porn on my blog, so here’s one of the tamer examples of an inappropriate book (a book called ttyl by Lauren Myracle) that is currently available to fifth graders at HSE Intermediate:
Note that, aside from being totally inappropriate for fifth graders and anti-Christian, this is illiterate garbage as well.
In any case, the parents and grandparents at the board meeting reasonably felt they had a right to speak to the board about inappropriate material in the libraries. And my view is that they were entirely on topic: the agenda was addressing a re-appointment of a public library board member who served as a board member while this material came into the libraries. The board obviously doesn’t select each of the books that come in, but they certainly can set policies about selection, so this was squarely relevant to the agenda item. But even if I were wrong about that, when a bunch of moms and dads and grandmas come to a board meeting and want to discuss how people under the board’s authority are literally pushing porn on their kids, I think the time has come to hear them out. I would say that this is true even if it weren’t on the agenda at all. But Dr. Stokes and most of the board apparently disagreed: they would not hear these parents, and would not abide their anger. And that made the parents even more angry. This is not acceptable. The board should allow parents to speak on any topic they like, for some specified amount of time at the end of the meeting, just like at Fishers City Council meetings.
Dr. Stokes has been willing to act on some things, and that’s an improvement from the way things were before her arrival. But there is still much work to be done to get the district back to a state of excellence. We have only just begun. So stay strong and courageous, and keep fighting the good fight.