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برچسب: Controversial

  • Peter Greene: Why Is it Controversial to Welcome Everyone in a Public School Classroom?


    In this post, Peter Greene continues his coverage of a teacher in West Ada, Idaho, who got into trouble for putting up a poster that showed different colored hands in the air and said “Everyone is Welcome Here.” District leaders said the poster was unwelcome because it violated federal guidelines that banished DEI, and had to be removed. Some didn’t object to the sentiment but objected to the portrayal of nonwhite hands.

    Greene wrote:

    Sarah Inama has put her poster up in a new classroom.

    Inama, you may recall, is the 6th grade world history teacher told by her district bosses at West Ada School District that her “Everyone Is Welcome Here” poster, complete with hands of many human shades, would not be tolerated in the district.  (I’ve been following this here, here, and here). West Ada is the largest district in Idaho, but their treatment of Inama has been spectacularly awful, both from an Awful Display of Racism standpoint, a Grotesque Mistreatment of Staff standpoint, and a Boneheaded PR Management standpoint. 

    Inama went to local news and the story blew up, delivering the shame that West Ada so richly deserved. We know a lot more thanks to some stellar reporting by Carly Flandro and the folks at Idaho Ed News, who FOIAed 1200 emails surrounding this and showcasing the board’s stumbling response. You should read the resulting stories (here and here). 

    The day after Inama was on the Today show, the district issued a memo entitled “Ensuring a Consistent and Supportive Learning Environment.” They decided to go with sports analogies. The Chief Academic Officer is a like a referee who enforces rules “to ensure a fair and level playing field.” And there’s this howler–

    If one player decided to wear a different uniform, use a different-sized ball, or ignore the rules, the game would lose its structure, creating confusion and imbalance.

    Then a report from BoiseDev that the Board of Trustees is considering making every teacher put up an “Everyone is welcome” poster– just without those multi-colored hands. Responding to BoiseDev, a district spokesperson explained:

    Regarding the Everyone is Welcome Here posters, the district determined that while the phrase itself is broadly positive, certain design elements have been associated over time with political entities and initiatives that are now subject to federal restriction.

    Inama told Idaho EdNews, “That’s appeasing not a political view, but a bigoted view that shouldn’t even be considered by a public school district.”

    Inama was told the poster was divisive, that it was “not neutral,” that the problem was not the message, but the hands of v arious skin tones. Teachers shouldn’t have political stuff in the classroom. Inama nails the issue here

    “I really still don’t understand how it’s a political statement,” she said. “I don’t think the classroom is a place for anyone to push a personal agenda or political agenda of any kind, but we are responsible for first making sure that our students are able to learn in our classroom.”

    Some parents and students showed up at school to make chalk drawings in support. And yet many folks within and outside the district saw this as a divisive issue. How could anyone do that? Meet district parent Brittany Bieghler, who was dropping her kids off the day that parents were chalking the “Everyone is welcome here” message on the sidewalks.

    “The ‘Everyone is Welcome’ slogan is one filled with marxism and DEI, there is no need for those statements because anyone with a brain knows that everyone is welcome to attend school, so there is no need to have it posted, written or worn on school grounds,” she wrote. “My family and I relocated here from a state that did not align with our beliefs and we expected it to be different here, but it seems as time goes by, its becoming more like our former state, which is extremely disheartening.”

    “Anyone with a brain” might begin to suspect that everyone is not welcome here under these circumstances. And the school board itself couldn’t decide what to respond, drafting an assortment of emails that tried to show conciliation to those that were defiant and defensive, including one complaining in MAGA-esque tones that Inama was naughty for going to “new media.”

    Imana resigned from her position, and by June the word was out that she was a new hire at Boise Schools. She told Idaho Ed News, 

    I’m so grateful to be able to work within a district that knows the beauty of inclusion and diversity and doesn’t for a second consider it an opinion but embraces it. As an educator, it’s an amazing feeling to know your (district’s) officials, board, and administrators fully uphold the fundamentals of public education and (have) the dignity to proudly support them. I really feel at home knowing we are truly all on the same team … and that’s a team that is rooting on all of our students.

    Damned straight. And just last week, as reported by KTVB news, Inama posted video of herself putting up an “Everyone is welcome here” poster in her new classroom.

    (To see the video, open the link.)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoWG95OU6sU

    So the story ends well for Inama, and that’s a great thing. This is the sort of boneheaded administrative foolishness that can drive teachers out of the profession. The unfortunate part of the story is that up the road in West Ada schools, the administration, board and a non-zero number of parents think that challenging racism is bad and saying that students of all races are welcome in school is just one person’s opinion that shouldn’t be expressed openly in a school. Shame on West Ada.



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  • Controversial education issues still alive in GOP platform

    Controversial education issues still alive in GOP platform


    An early arriving audience member sits amidst empty seats with campaign signs for former President Donald Trump at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wis. during the first day of the Republican National Convention on Monday.

    Credit: Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images

    While the assassination attempt on Donald Trump overshadowed discussion of policy issues at the Republican convention in Milwaukee on Monday, the GOP’s platform committee nonetheless adopted a 20-page party platform on Monday in which education features prominently.

    The platform is a reminder that a slew of controversial issues, from how the racial history of the United States is interpreted to complex issues around gender identity, are still very much alive on the political stage.

    The last time the GOP had a platform was in 2016, when Trump first ran for president, and it was a hefty 60 pages long. The current one is stripped down to a third the length reflecting what are core priority issues for the former president. Trump himself was key in shaping it — and his imprint is evident throughout, down to the use of capital letters in odd places.

    As Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-TN, the chair of the platform committee, said yesterday, Trump had “personally reviewed, edited, and approved” the platform.

    Most of the platform consists of issues drawn from the culture wars that have roiled many school districts around the nation in recent years. In a typical pledge, the platform argues that children should be taught “fundamentals like Reading, History, Science and Math, not Leftwing propaganda.” The focus, it says, should be on “knowledge and skills,” not “CRT and gender indoctrination.” 

    Other party positions include:

    • “Defunding” schools that engage in what the platform calls “inappropriate political indoctrination of our children using federal taxpayer dollars.”
    • Supporting schools that “teach America’s Founding Principles and Western Civilization” while promoting “Fair and Patriotic Civics Education.”
    • Championing the “First Amendment Right to Pray and Read the Bible in schools.”
    • “Hardening” schools to protect against gun violence or other physical threats. “Hardening” typically refers to arming teachers, and erecting a range of physical barriers, from door locking systems to surveillance cameras, in lieu of gun regulation measures.
    • Keeping on the front burner the GOP push for “Universal School Choice in every State in America,” the central goal of the first Trump administration and Betsy DeVos, his secretary of education.

    The GOP platform draws ideas from, but does not specifically endorse Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s detailed blueprint for a second Trump term.

    Trump has tried put some distance between himself and Project 2025, but that was mostly because of its extreme positions on abortion — including banning the abortion drug mifepristone — and not because of any major objections to its 44-page education blueprint.

    Some key education items in the platform are recycled from earlier ones, and reiterate promises Trump has made on the campaign trail. That includes vowing to close the U.S. Department of Education and “send it back to the states where it belongs.” This is an idea that Ronald Reagan first proposed in 1985 — and which Republicans have yet to deliver on.

    The platform also endorses ending teacher tenure, and giving educators merit pay increases — in contrast to union-negotiated contracts in which salaries are based principally on years worked, and the number of college course credits and degrees earned.

    But even as the GOP pushes for federal education policies to devolve to state and local levels, the platform makes no reference to the fact that the federal government has relatively little say over what happens in schools. That is much more a function of state and local school board policies.

    What’s more, only about a tenth of state and local education funding comes from Washington, D.C. For that reason alone, it is unclear how much of the GOP platform could actually be implemented.

    Contrary to expectations raised when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made attacks on alleged “woke” education policies related to gender and racial identity a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, education issues have played a relatively small part in the presidential race so far.   

    That’s likely because other issues like inflation, immigration and abortion are now more salient among voters’ concerns. Another factor was that DeSantis’ focus on hot-button education issues proved to be useless in promoting his ultimately unsuccessful campaign.

    So, while education is unlikely to be a major item of discussion at the GOP convention, or even in the remaining months of the presidential race, it’s clear from not only the party platform, but also from Project 2025’s detailed agenda, and Trump’s own recent statements, that numerous education issues that have sparked controversy and conflict are still very much on the GOP agenda.

    And many if not all of them have the potential to be revived in a second Trump term. 

    This is the first of two commentaries on the education platforms of the GOP and the Democratic Party. This week the Democratic Party is expected to release its full education platform that delegates will vote on at its convention in Chicago in August. 

    •••

    Louis Freedberg, a veteran journalist who has written about education in California and nationally for more than three decades, is interim CEO of EdSource.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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