Beaufort County needs more effective leadership from our School Board and Superintendent | Eastern North Carolina Now

Some of our readers may be interested in the following article that appeared in The Blaze.comThere has been a similar brouhaha over the same issues here in Beaufort County and particularly in the last school board election.  Thankfully our school board has not hired “consultants” to lead discussion groups as this article says has been done in the Temecula Valley Unified School District in California.  Below is The Blaze’s article:

A newly elected majority-conservative school board in California recently approved a resolution to hire an anti-critical race theory consultant.

On March 13, in a 3-2 decision, Temecula Valley Unified School District voted to allocate $15,000 to anti-CRT initiatives, including hiring a consultant to hold "discussion groups" at an after-school board workshop.

The discussions would cover the history of critical race theory and the board's December resolution to ban CRT. The district, which enrolls approximately 28,000 students, plans to host six two-hour sessions.

Christopher Arend, former school board president of Paso Robles Joint Unified School District, was hired by the district to host the discussion groups and serve on the workshop's six-member panel, which will be held at James L. Day Middle School. All of these panelists are reportedly against teaching CRT in classrooms.

While Arend was president at Paso Robles, the district passed a resolution in 2021 banning CRT. He has also written a manuscript for a new book entitled "Critical Race Theory Scam."

TVUSD governing board members Dr. Joseph Wayne Komrosky, Jennifer Wiersma, and Danny Gonzalez voted to approve the resolution, while Allison Barclay and Steven Schwartz voted against it.

Schwartz accused Arend of not having the proper qualifications to teach critical race theory.

"He's not an expert, he's not an expert on CRT. Because he's an attorney and he's studied it does not give him the degree in history or ethnic studies or anything that is related to critical race theory," Schwartz said, citing that Arend does not have teaching credentials.

When asked to clarify his "expertise" regarding the education code, Arend stated, "This has been a subject I have been interested in for a very long time. It kind of goes hand in hand with studying the law. When you study the law, you study one of the main principles of equal protection under the law."

In response, Schwartz argued that the funds should go towards other district expenses, including high school field trips and graduation expenses.

"I don't think we need to spend 15,000 on a gentleman who thinks CRT is a disgustingly racist ideology," Schwartz stated.

Wiersma defended the board's decision to hire Arend and claimed that the district had spent "thousands" of taxpayer dollars to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion training.

"My point is that I kind of went through our track record of what we've done for training. Things that are important to us. They come from a variety of fields, and so, this is not out of the ordinary," Wiersma said.

"I think as important as this discussion is on global, state, and national levels, it is important to have somebody that comes to the table and can advocate but also pull in people for the discussions from that point I would hope there would be some talk about where the resolution might need to go with the workshop, which is entirely different. You're going to have five different experts that don't vote the same, they don't look the same, and they don't have the same background," Wiersma added.

During a recent school board meeting, one of the district's teachers blasted Arend for allegedly previously agreeing to teach CRT for gas money, according to an audio clip played by the teacher.

"He said he'd do it for gas money. That $15,000 is a lot of gas money. In my opinion, hiring Christopher Arend or really any of the CRT panels should be a no-go. CRT is a non-issue at TVSD and for the record, I resent the time, money, and resources being spent on this non-issue. We should be focused on our students and our educational programs at TVSD," she said.

Another speaker claimed that the school board's resolution might violate state law.

"The state has content standards and frameworks. The state of California made our curriculum. Teachers must teach that," she said. "So we have to make sure this CRT resolution you passed doesn't prevent the teachers from doing the job they must do. We must teach about racism in our society."

The district did not reply to a request for comment, Fox News Digital reported.

Editor’s Commentary

We have just two points to make, the first about the focus of The Blaze article and the second about the contrast between how this California school board is handling the issue compared to the way Beaufort County handled it, thus far.

First, The Blaze offers several quotes from people complaining about how much money is being spent on a “consultant” to the process there…$15,000 to “…anti-CRT initiatives, including hiring a consultant to hold "discussion groups" at an after-school board workshop.”

We studied the TVUSD’s website and we are comfortable that $15K will not break the TVUSD.  The spend a ton of money on central office staff as can be seen at this link.  That $15K is but a drop in the bucket of the TVUSD’s $367,904,000 budget creating a per pupil expenditure of $13,152 per year.

The second and most important thing about this school system is the effort they are making to educate the community about Critical Race Theory.  That is a far different stance than the Beaufort County NC Superintendent and School Board took on this issue.  

Like the California district they appointed a “committee” but Beaufort put only insiders on their committee.  No parent representatives, only educators.  The Superintendents response when he was first presented with some pushback by the Citizens for Better Government Committee and the Beaufort County Conservative Republican Education Committee was to just declare that “we don’t teach CRT in BCS.”  The BCS Board recently amended a Policy by including language that expressly said BCS will teach CRT if it is included in curricula approved by the NC State Department of Public Instruction. When the board approved this policy the Chairman proclaimed it as an anti-CRT policy. The CBGC learned otherwise, and it was confirmed when the Social Studies Curriculum Committee brought forth its recommendation.  They selected an extremely radical leftist woke curriculum called SAVVAS.

The Citizens for Better Government Committee opposed the SAVVAS curriculum.  So did dozens of parents at the next school board meeting.  Before the following board meeting on March 21, 2023 the Superintendent just announced to board members that he was not bringing the social studies curriculum to the board for a vote because he said he “sees no reason to embarrass the Committee members further.” The SAVVAS Social Studies curriculum was not on the agenda.

So let us tell you what we think is going on here.

This is another example of how this Superintendent and the previous School Board (before the November Election and the new members taking office in December) had attempted to implement this curriculum by keeping it hidden and dominated by educators.  Parents have consistently been treated as unwelcome at school board meetings, allowed only three minutes to speak at one meeting per month.

There was only one school board meeting where the proposed curriculum was presented. There was no outreach to parents to help them better understand CRT.  The Superintendent took no significant efforts that we are aware of to help educate the stakeholders in this issue.  Thankfully, some of the new School Board members in Beaufort County were not willing to be a part of the closed culture that has developed in recent years in Beaufort County Schools.  It’s a good thing they were not developing a building program that requires a bond vote to pull it off.

We think it deplorable for the Superintendent to hide behind the committee of teachers that he blames for the issue of the SAVVAS curriculum being presented to the School Board in a presentation that was not factually accurate.  That is unconscionable, in our humble opinion.  What we need is a Superintendent who has the wisdom to LEAD the community and a Board that will represent the will of the parents and taxpayers, not what Big Publishing companies and the NCDPI think is best for our children. The NC General Statutes clearly state the local school boards are responsible for curriculums taught in public schools.

Finally, a point we cannot resist making.  It is this:  We have seen the proposal of a social studies curriculum without any significant reference to how well—or poorly—our students are now learning history, economics, government/civics.  But dare we say it?  Talk to a recent graduate of one of our high schools and see how much history they can tell you about and quiz them on fundamentals of government.  A good place to start is to ask them to tell you what rights are guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, and from where those rights are derived.  If you’re satisfied with that then engage your student in a discussion of federalism.  And if you really have the nerve, ask them why we are supporting Ukraine.  You get our point:  the knowledge of our students about American History, Government and economics is abysmal.  And frankly, we don’t see SAVVAS as doing what’s needed.  And if that embarrasses anyone Dr. Cheeseman, so be it.


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Comments

Qazkzcal said:
( March 28th, 2023 @ 8:44 pm )
 
Thanks, I've been looking for this for a long time
( March 28th, 2023 @ 8:24 am )
 
And as I have warned for about a year now, everyone must ALSO be cognizant of DEI morphing into the hollowed out vacuum of CRT.



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