Last April, Hamilton Southeastern Schools held their infamous “awareness, advocacy, and allyship” webinar, in which one participant called for talking to fourth graders (and younger!) about anal sex. You can read more about that crazy event here.
In that webinar, another participant also emphasized the importance of avoiding terms like “boys and girls” so as to “rewire” the brains of little children and “set a foundation” for further indoctrination into her ideology with regard to gender. Here is the part I’m talking about:
After this event, in the summer of 2021, I had a meeting with the district leadership. I was curious about the district’s attitude about “binary language,” so I brought it up. HSE’s Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, Nataki Pettigrew, who organized and led the webinar mentioned above, told me this:
In any gender identity or sexual orientation training, one of the best practices that has, you know, evolved in some of that training is to discontinue the use of “boys and girls.” To talk to students—you know, “everyone in the class”—find different ways to have kids line up instead of saying “boys here, girls here” or “blue here and pink here”. So that’s a part of nationwide training when you talk about gender identity and sexual orientation…
In light of this statement, I asked Superintendent Yvonne Stokes whether HSE was encouraging teachers to avoid “binary language” like “boys and girls”.
Dr. Stokes told me that HSE was not encouraging this.
At the time, I was glad to see Dr. Stokes apparently giving me a straight answer here. I was glad that she said she was not pursuing the plan to “rewire” little kids’ brains.
Unfortunately, it now looks like Dr. Stokes was either not telling the truth, she changed her mind, or her staff is not following her orders. A public records request now reveals that the following image was distributed to all staff at Riverside Junior High by Mary Schroeder, one of the building “equity coaches”:
Some of these terms are harmless. But some give me the creeps. I don’t know about you, but I would certainly not permit a teacher—especially a male teacher—to refer to my daughter as “kitten.”
But the one that really bothers me is the recommendation to call children “comrades”:
This is a term commonly associated with communist totalitarianism. It’s literally the term that Party members are expected to use for each other in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. The idea that teachers in Indiana are going to refer to their kids this way is just obviously unacceptable.
Where Did the Graphic Come From?
Ms. Schroeder is a part of the fringe-left-wing Facebook group, HSEqual. The graphic was posted on in this group just a few days before Ms. Schroeder distributed it to all staff:
I count twelve HSE teachers in HSEqual who clicked “like” or “love” on this graphic, as well as an ex-Board Member, and current Board Member Michelle Fullhart who has yet to decide whether she will run for re-election in District 3. I believe these people are a minority in the HSE district, and it’s important to realize that I received a number of complaints from anonymous HSE staff members about this graphic. But, despite being in the minority, the “comrade” crew are determined and emboldened as a result of their current hold on the reins of power in the district. That’s what we need to change.
In the all-staff email to which she attached the graphic, Ms. Schroeder also recommended that staff should ask kids for their preferred pronouns. More rewiring, I guess! And, in another email, she tried to procure rainbow flags and other materials from the local activist group PFlag to distribute to staff. (You may see the pdf of these emails at the end of this post.)
It’s also worth noting that, as of last year, HSE was paying “equity coaches” an extra $1170 for this sort of activity. According to HSE’s website, there are fifty-two of these “equity coaches” district wide and an additional forty administrators count themselves as part of the “district equity team”. That’s at least ninety-two HSE employees devoting paid time to these issues, and in many cases getting extra pay for it.
In summary, then, activist groups like HSEqual and PFlag feed material to the “equity coaches” in the HSE district. The district then pays these folks an extra portion of your tax money to spend time distributing those materials and to engage in left-wing activism directed at your children. In this way, they attempt to undermine the values of vast numbers of parents, who wish they would get back to teaching math, literature, writing, science, history, and other legitimate subjects.
The Solution: Elect a New Board
Here are the four candidates who want to fix these kinds of problems:
District 1: Tiffany Pascoe
District 2: Juanita Albright
District 3: Dawn Lang
District 4: Ben Orr
If you’re not sure which district is yours, have a look at this map.
And if you haven’t already done so, please share this post about these four candidates with everyone you know, and post it everywhere you can on social media.
Here is a pdf of the public records that were returned to me when I sought the email to all staff with the above graphic:
