October 2023 — Ed Reporter Monthly Email Edition

In the four-plus years since the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) ousted its co-founder Morris Dees in 2019, the organization has, if it were possible, further intensified its attacks on conservative, pro-family and/or Christian groups. It’s the same tactic the SPLC has used for decades and which has proven such a lucrative cash cow. At Dees’ departure, conservative political commentator and social media personality, Mike Cernovich, reportedly quipped: “Hate group founder has been fired by his hate group.”

These days, the SPLC appears to be flailing wildly at every pro-freedom, pro-parent group in the U.S., but it may have overplayed its hand with its recent attempt to destroy the successful national organization Moms for Liberty.

While as Cernovich indicated, many on the right consider the SPLC to be a “hate group” in and of itself, the organization pretends to be the arbiter of this designation. Its “hate map” is a longstanding feature, and the map includes most right-leaning and/or Christian groups of any size or influence.

Moms for Liberty is also included on the SPLC’s 2022 Hate and Extremism Report where it is described as “an extremist hate group,” and accused of being, among other things, “an anti-government organization.” The report claims the Moms advocate “for book bans in school libraries” and for using “their multiple social media platforms to target teachers and school officials, advocate for the abolition of the Department of Education, advance a conspiracy propaganda, and spread hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community.” Evidently, the more successful a parents’ rights group is in defending the rights of parents and protecting children, the more likely it is to be targeted by leftwing zealots such as those of the SPLC.

But perhaps most concerning is the fact that the federal government may be consorting with the SPLC to determine who and what constitutes “hate,” and then using its findings to target individuals and groups with which it disagrees. The Washington Examiner writes that, according to the Heritage Foundation, “SPLC officials have made 11 visits to the Biden White House and potentially coordinated with federal agencies to create what it calls an ‘unhinged mob harassment campaign’” against organizations like Moms for Liberty.

Heritage Foundation files suit

On September 29, the Heritage Foundation’s news outlet, The Daily Signal (dailysignal.com), reported that after repeated requests for records from various federal agencies under the “Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)” were ignored, the Foundation and its Oversight Project Director Mike Howell “sued the FBI, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education.”

The lawsuit is an attempt to obtain information pertinent to the federal government’s potential coordination with the SPLC to target conservative groups in general and the Moms for Liberty in particular. It specifically “seeks the disclosure of records held by the United States government concerning actions that each defendant has or is planning on taking following the Southern Poverty Law Center’s designation of Moms For Liberty as an anti-government extremist group.”

“We know that the radical Southern Poverty Law Center has targeted the patriots at Moms for Liberty …,” Howell told The Daily Signal. “We also know the Biden Administration and their weaponized law enforcement agencies work closely with the [SPLC].”

Referring to the Biden Administration, Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice rhetorically asked The Daily Signal: “Why would they not comply with public records requests? What do they have to hide? We look forward to the truth coming to light.”

As Justice noted: “Exercising our free speech rights to attend public school board meetings that decide how our public schools operate is not ‘extremism.’ It is American. We are very thankful The Heritage Foundation is standing with our moms and fighting to get the public information surrounding the Biden administration’s work with the SPLC.”

For well over three decades, American students at all grade levels have been cheated out of an adequate math education. In 1991, Phyllis Schlafly reported on the dismal math scores from the 1990 NAEP tests. Phyllis wrote: “Fewer than one in seven students in the 4th, 8th and 12th grades can do mathematics at or above their grade level, and more than half are two or more grade levels behind, according to the 1990 NAEP Mathematics Assessment.”

Billions of dollars and multiple math education fads later, the situation has only gotten worse. But whereas the education establishment used to pretend that so-called “fuzzy math” or “new math” would actually result in improved math proficiency, there is scarcely any pretense today on the part of state or federal education departments that schools are actually teaching math and arithmetic. Instead, the emphasis is on diversity, equity, and inclusion, with children learning little more than woke ideology.

Since 2021, California has been trying to ram through its latest round of Common Core math standards, which according to numerous mathematics professors and scientists, fail to teach “actual mathematics.” Rather, the standards require teachers to insert “environmental and social justice” into math curricula, and ask them to assign students — as math classwork — tasks that “will solve problems that result in social inequalities.”

The California Board of Education gave final approval to the new standards in July 2023, which it claims “structure the teaching” of math around “big ideas that integrate rather than isolate math concepts, allow students to ‘see themselves’ in curriculum and in math-related careers by making math instruction culturally relevant and empowering” and “instill confidence in learners by dispelling myths about who can and cannot learn math.” Many observers wonder who besides the creators of the frameworks were aware of “myths” that pre-determine who can and cannot learn math.

Open letter from STEM professors

In July 2021, more than 1,240 higher education STEM scholars, professors, industry officials, and others signed an open letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom, State Superintendent Tony Thurmond, the State Board of Education, and the Instructional Quality Commission protesting the revised state math curriculum framework.

The letter read in part:

• The proposed framework would, in effect, de-mathematize math. For all the rhetoric in this framework about equity, social justice, environmental care, and culturally appropriate pedagogy, there is no realistic hope for a more fair, just, equal, and well-stewarded society if our schools uproot long-proven, reliable, and highly effective math methods and instead try to build a mathless Brave New World on a foundation of unsound ideology. A real champion of equity and justice would want all California’s children to learn actual math—as in arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus—not an endless river of new pedagogical fads that effectively distort and displace actual math.

The signatories also objected to the fact that the standards “reject ideas of natural gifts and talents,” thereby discouraging the acceleration of “talented mathematics students.” They pointed out that math “is a discipline whose language is universally accessible with good teaching. The claim that math is not accessible is an insult to the millennia of non-Western mathematicians and erases the contributions of cultures around the world to mathematics as we now know it.”

The letter made the salient point that “infusing mathematics with political rhetoric is alien to mathematics as a discipline, and will do lasting damage—including making math dramatically harder for students whose first language is not English. We believe that all students without exception have natural gifts they can use to learn school mathematics, and therefore all students are harmed by refusing to recognize students’ giftedness….”

Finally, the letter asserted that “this proposed framework must be replaced with one that will truly serve equity and justice by living up to the very moral aspirations this framework rejects.”

It’s worth noting that California’s new woke math curriculum is important because, as Fox News reporter William La Jeuness related to newscaster Harris Faulkner: “As the nation’s largest textbook market, when California enacts a new curriculum, other states and publishers tend to follow. The new math standards encourage teachers not to focus on numbers or memorizing tables, but on social awareness — this in a state where only 33 percent or one third of students are proficient in math.”

A vocal opponent

Stanford University Math Professor and director of undergraduate studies in math, Brian Conrad, has perhaps been the most vocal critic of his state’s new math standards and yet he fully expects this flawed framework to spread nationwide. Conrad read the entire 1,000-page teaching framework and is trying to sound the alarm through an op-ed published in The Atlantic on October 2, as well as through various media appearances.

“When I decided to read every word of California’s 1,000-page proposal to transform math education in public schools,” he began, “I learned that even speculative and unproved ideas can end up as official instructional policy.”

On October 6, he was a guest on Fox & Friends, warning that “these alternative math options which are claimed to be pro-equity, are in fact a complete failure…. And yet this has been popping up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s being proposed in Connecticut and other places, and this doesn’t work.”

Conrad said of the framework: “People should stop thinking that this kind of fantasy is going to actually help.” Instead, he urged a return to conventional math, especially in the early grades, which he believes would “give teachers better motivation. The core material still remains the essential foundation.”

California revised its new standards several times over a long period, allegedly trying to address some of the more egregious problems. But Conrad asserts that the fixes didn’t go far enough. “Sometimes, as I pored over the framework, I could scarcely believe what I was reading. The document cited research that hadn’t been peer-reviewed; justified sweeping generalizations by referencing small, tightly focused studies or even unrelated research; and described some papers as reaching nearly the opposite conclusions from what they actually say.”

His primary concern is the lack of access to Algebra I in eighth grade, which he says is the standard means of reaching calculus during high school in preparation “for future STEM careers, economics; those types of college degrees.”

He also opposes what he calls the “false promises” of alternative math options in high school that will allegedly “lead to certain great careers, but that as designed, will be dead ends.” He adds that the traditional, or conventional, math curriculum provides the proper foundation for all types of careers, including video game design, AI development, and data science. “The ability to do actual data science rests on math skills that have been taught for eons,” he wrote.

“Data literacy would be a better name for the most widely taught high-school data-science classes,” he continued, “which were developed by UCLA’s statistics department and my own university’s Graduate School of Education…. Many parts of the math curriculum can be illustrated with engaging contemporary data-oriented applications. But much as a music-appreciation course won’t teach you how to play a piano, data literacy is not data science.”

When interviewer Brian Kilmeade observed that “only 23 percent of California eighth graders are proficient in math, and close to zero percent are proficient in places like Baltimore,” Conrad argued that giving teachers “better [conventional] materials” could lead to “better motivation” of students and “a huge improvement in academic achievement.”

In other words, much like children only learn to read with difficulty when deprived of the phonics method of reading instruction, they are unlikely to learn math without traditional math instruction.

Delayed adoption

An article in Education Week earlier this year noted that “subject matter frameworks [in California] are revised roughly every eight years, and are dependent on the legislature directing funding to the revision process.” What this tells concerned parents and critics is that once these flawed new standards are in place, nearly a generation of kids will be lost before they can be revised again.

While Education Week failed to note this, the article did acknowledge that “the last year this process was completed for mathematics was 2014.” It lamented the delays in finalizing the new standards as a result of the pushback, quoting Arun Ramanathan, CEO of the California-based nonprofit Pivot Learning, as saying: “The delays in approving the math standards have reached a national level of concern.”

Ramanathan said that, given the delay, “the state’s list of adopted instructional materials for K-8 math might not be available until the 2024-25 school year,” meaning that students have entered the 2023-2024 school year “learning from math materials that are nearly a decade old.” He added that the delay could spill over into upcoming adoptions, including the framework for English language arts and English language development. “It’s a cascading effect,” he said.

For worried parents, delay may not be such a bad thing in this case. Conrad noted in his op-ed that despite the state’s push for equity-based math, it is actually “shunting away” disadvantaged students from advanced math while portraying such as “progress.” He added that “the STEM fields won’t increase their diversity through math classes that contain very little math.”

His conclusion? The students who are most reliant upon public schools are the most harmed when districts embrace policies based on superficial appeals to equity or false promises about future job opportunities. When only the children of families with resources beyond the public schools are gaining preparation for the lucrative degrees and secure jobs of the future, public education is failing in a primary duty.

For years, reports of radical sex education covertly being taught in public schools as well as the secret transitioning of students in deference to transgender ideology have surfaced, despite the best efforts of education personnel to hide them. In September, Project Veritas posted Part One of a two-part video series on X (formerly Twitter) exposing the hidden curriculum of HiTOPS, a New Jersey-based 501c3 organization that promotes itself as offering traditional health and sex education, and social support for youth.

In the first video, HiTOPS Executive Director Lisa Shelby tells the Project Veritas journalist how HiTOPS educators “get through” to students with their sex ed messaging by using the state’s mandate “for racial justice and inclusivity …” They intentionally use these classes as a means of accessing students because “parents are not able to opt out.” When the interviewer repeats “so parents can’t opt out?” Shelby affirms with a nod and sly laugh: “That’s right. You got it!”

During the interview, the Veritas journalist uncovered what she called “alarming truths” about HiTOPS’ real objectives. Both Shelby and “health educator” Hannah Wiers admitted they “exploit the mandatory Pathways to Racial Literacy class as a hidden channel, a back door to reach children, bypassing the parents’ right to opt out.”

Wiers explained, for example, that when HiTOPS “goes to middle school,” they use the Pathways class, which is “you know, learning a lot about race, ethnicity, and so on…. We come in and we teach for three days in that class and parents are not allowed to opt their children out. That’s I guess, like our real sort of goal — to remove opt-out policies,” she admitted. “Because right now, if we come in as a health class, parents could opt their children out.”

According to Shelby and Wiers, HiTOPS teaches “affirming work, affirming practices … things like that.” Shelby elaborated: “We’ve found that adults by and large, at least those we work with, want to be supportive and helpful of the kids in their life, but feel confused and ignorant. They don’t have the vocabulary; they don’t want to make a mistake. So we start there and our goal is to create safe, open space. People can make mistakes, ask questions.

“So that’s sort of our initial training. And then we have eight different modules that we go through and get more in depth, more and more to the nitty gritty of the tenets of [sexual] orientation in general. So that’s one big program that we have.”

Project Veritas says HiTOPS is accessing students directly during school hours using school-issued computers to discuss sensitive topics such as the pronouns that reflect the gender of the child’s preferred identity, which HiTOPS educators ferret out through observation during the in-person classes. As Wiers explained: “I don’t know if you have been in a school recently, but they’re all digital, which can be nice because then we can send out a Google form basically. And [we say] ‘hey, I’m just checking in. Remind me what name you like to be called. Remind me what pronouns you like to use.’ I don’t know if a four-year-old is gonna know the word ‘pronoun.’ But they know how [to say] ‘I like to be called she/her,’ or ‘I’m a boy;’ things like that.”

At this point the interviewer asks, “so you send this [form] directly to the student, not the parent?” to which Wiers responds: “That’s what we encourage staff to do, yes.” It’s unclear whether the electronic forms are only sent to children who are able to fill them out themselves.

The first video ends with the narrator noting that “education should be transparent” and that it should help kids achieve academically for their future success.

• Our investigation into HiTOPS reveals a significant breach of trust where educators exploit loopholes and technology to advance radical sexual education without parental knowledge or consent. These educators admit their goal is to eliminate a parent’s right to opt their children out of classes they may feel are inappropriate or violate their family’s values.

Some observers note that innocent children are, in this instance, being hit with a double whammy. They are subjected to mandatory “diversity and inclusion” classes and also to radical sexual concepts and ideology in those same classes.

For its part, HiTOPS raged against Project Veritas, predictably calling the organization a “right-wing hate group” and accusing it of “deceptive, unethical practices to spread misinformation.” But the true intentions of HiTOPS personnel are clearly implied in the video, with demonstrative smirks and giggles accompanying their own words. The evidence shows who is actually spreading “misinformation.”

HiTOPS offers sex training for tots

On September 20, Project Veritas released Part Two of its HiTOPS exposé, showing additional video footage of employees describing their efforts “to offer sexual and gender identity trainings to elementary aged children.” HiTOPS’ Director of Education and Administration, Stacy Robustelli, shared that one of her “most rewarding experiences” happened in an elementary school, when “five students ‘came out’ as LGBTQ as a result of HiTOPS’ training of students in grades three, four, and five.”

She confided that “the most critical time for [us] to be there is grades five through eight because you want to catch kids when they’re starting puberty … However, early intervention is key, so we are actually designing a kindergarten through grade two curriculum…. She admitted: “We are intentionally going into younger and younger grades.”

Executive Director Lisa Shelby disclosed that reaching young children is “ideal” because “they are so open and malleable….” Project Veritas points out that this is happening to very young children, often without the awareness or consent of their parents. As Hannah Wiers told the interviewer when asked if kindergarteners could understand gender affirmation: “Oh yes. What we know is that children have a sense of gender identity as young as three years old.”

Wiers continued: “So there’s a difference between ‘we’re figuring out identity at that age, with one-off comments like, ‘I’m gonna be a prince today instead of a princess,’ and [whether] they’re ‘asserting their gender identity.’ If it’s consistent, persistent, insistent; I think those are the three [indicators] … that’s what you’re looking for if you’re thinking about, sort of, helping….”

In other words, if a preschool or kindergarten girl goes through a period of preferring trucks over dolls, or a little boy imagines for a period of time that he’s a princess rather than a prince, HiTOPS’ employees will begin grooming him or her for a lifetime of confusion and potentially, life-altering drugs and surgeries down the road.

Project Veritas points out:

• It’s essential to understand that groups like HiTOPS aren’t providing typical classroom teachers. They are external organizations, each with its own specific goals and agendas. As they enter a child’s school, it’s important for parents and the community to be informed about the content they provide and the representatives they send to interact with children. What’s deeply concerning is that parents might be unaware of these groups’ presence in their children’s classrooms.

For example, HiTOPS provides a “gender affirming closet” so that LGBT “youth who need clothes that match their identity, but cannot get them”—implying that they may need to sneak the clothes behind their parents’ backs with HiTOPS’ help and blessing—“they can come to our closet; they can pull pieces completely for free.”

HiTOPS Director of Advancement Judy Walker showed Project Veritas one such closet filled with formal wear. “We just did a ‘pop-up event’ with formal wear to get ready for the prom for the kids,” she enthused, adding that they also have “personal items such as [breast] binders and packers; stuff for non-binary and trans kids to be comfortable in their bodies. They can come get stuff … try it on, you know, in an affirming space.”

International CSE

While the HiTOPS example of teaching comprehensive sex education (CSE) is specific to the state of New Jersey, similar intrusions are underway in schools across the U.S. and around the world. An organization called the Protect Child Health Coalition (PCHC), based in Gilbert, AZ just east of Phoenix, works to raise awareness about international efforts to indoctrinate children.

PCHC describes itself as “a network of concerned citizens, parents, professionals, leaders, and organizations representing the fields of law, academia, mental and physical health, politics, religion, government, and more, who believe all children should be protected from harmful materials, especially pornographic, obscene, or erotic materials.” PCHC is nonpartisan and welcomes people of all religious faiths and walks of life, “who have an interest in protecting the health and innocence of children.”

The organization opposes “all efforts to advance autonomous sexual rights for children and believes that children have a right to a childhood free from political, sexual, or other adult agendas.” The group asserts that “parents are the ultimate guardians of their children and that the rights of parents to guide the upbringing of their children and to guide their education in all matters are inalienable.”

PCHC is aligned with Family Watch International (FWI) and a coalition of other like-minded individuals and organizations throughout the world who work to:

• Expose the harmful content of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) programs and materials and the entities behind the CSE movement.
• Stop the indoctrination and sexualization of children of all ages through widespread school- and community-based CSE programs.
• Protect the rights of parents and guardians to decide the optimal sexual health messages for their children.
• Repeal obscenity exemption laws that enable adults to show obscene materials to children in the name of science or education.
• Oppose the lowering of “age of sexual consent” laws.
• Promote child-protection anti-pornography initiatives.
• Equip families, community leaders, and policymakers with the best available research, strategies, and tools to fight harmful policies and curricula.
• Guide families, community leaders, and policymakers to [find] better sex-ed alternatives such as sexual risk avoidance curricula and/or abstinence outside of marriage curricula.

Videos, films, and resources

The PCHC website includes a number of valuable resources for parents and citizens, including a 10-minute video produced by FWI that provides a comprehensive but concise picture of the threats posed by what it calls “the sexual assault against children.” The video is professionally made and packs a lot of information into its short time frame. Interestingly, it brings out the fact that through digital means in the classroom, as the HiTOPS educators mentioned, children can easily be exposed to explicit sexual materials and propaganda unbeknownst to parents.

An expanded 35-minute version of the video is also available through the website, as is information on some of the most widely promoted CSE programs currently in use in schools and online.

Links to informative documentary films can be found on the About Us tab; these documentaries were produced by FWI, and include “The War on Children” and “The International Politics of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.”

The site further offers a library of webinars, one of which describes research that shows CSE is actually a failure and makes the case for abstinence education. Additional webinars provide tools for defending children, fighting CSE and the transgender agenda, and more.

Another key feature of the PCHC website is its Toxic Ten List, or what it calls “the top ten purveyors of the sexual indoctrination of children.” These groups were primary in the placement of CSE programs in the schools. As observers might expect, Planned Parenthood is ranked #1; the Kinsey Institute #2, SIECUS is #3, and most of the remaining organizations will also be familiar to site visitors. A mouse click on the name of each organization opens a new window with more enlightening details.

As HiTOPS educators furtively ply their trade in New Jersey, many parents and the Sussex County Republican Committee are fighting yet another assault on parental rights. The object of their ire is Governor Phil Murphy, who earlier this year championed state guidelines that exempt schools from having to inform parents if a student chooses to change his or her gender identity.

According to Red State of Mind Daily.com, the new rule states: “There is no affirmative duty for any school district personnel to notify a student’s parent or guardian of the student’s gender identity or expression.” The rule prompted concern not only among parents, but also teachers, some of whom believe the state is overstepping its role and “separating parents from children.”

To illustrate the extent of parental outrage, the Sussex County Republican Club commissioned “a powerful political cartoon as a symbol of resistance against Democratic New Jersey Governor [Murphy’s] school guidelines, which have raised concerns about parental rights and the role of the state in influencing children’s education.”

Fox News displayed the cartoon, which shows the governor “tearing a child away from his parents, while demon-looking aides poke him with needles and are seemingly ready to force him into a dress.” The tagline reads: “No Family is Safe from Phil Murphy’s Sex Ed Mandates!” The cartoon is part of a new social media and billboard advertising campaign to be featured in more than 50 locations in northwest New Jersey, according to Shore News Network.

A chief architect of the campaign is parent and Sussex County GOP Chairman Joseph LaBarbera, who believes the latest state government overreach is unconstitutional. A few school districts are also resisting the new rule and refusing to abide by it for the same reason.

In retaliation, the state filed suit against these districts, which include Middletown, Marlboro, and Manalapan-Englishtown. The lawsuit against Marlboro uses the familiar claim that: “Outing these students against their will poses serious mental health risks; threatens physical harm to students, including risking increased suicides; decreases the likelihood students will seek support; and shirks the District’s obligation to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all.” But observers say the real issue is that disregard of the guidelines means less manipulation and control of children by the schools, less freedom to groom them, with the end result that many will naturally outgrow their gender dysphoria.

LaBarbera explains that the cartoon ad is intended to create awareness among parents who may not know about the state’s new guidelines. “We have to shelter our children,” he says. “The public arena is becoming more and more difficult for parents to be able to trust their kids to the schools.” He recommends private schools or homeschooling. “Bite the bullet and spend the money,” he says, “or homeschool. Homeschooling is through the roof; so many people we know are homeschooling their children.”

Brian Mason, a parent of seven who has four children in Middletown schools, applauds the ad campaign. “I believe the Sussex County GOP is doing the right thing with this campaign against the governor’s education mandates,” he told FOX News Digital.

Mason called the governor “desperate to cater to the extreme left wing of his party” and is actually “pushing moderate Democrats away….” He added that the state “has stepped over the line” by suing districts who refuse to go along with keeping parents in the dark.

“Many of these children are elementary and middle schoolers and should not be pushed to make a major decision alone, especially when it comes to something that will have long-lasting consequences for their health,” Mason said. “And teachers shouldn’t be put between parents and their children…. These kids are being socially transitioned, and pushed by people driven by an ideology that’s going to prove detrimental both physically and mentally.”

PragerU Kids is making strides in mainstream education to counterbalance the leftwing ideology so dominant today in schools. PragerU is now an approved vendor and education partner in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and Montana, providing lesson plans and instructional videos for students in grades K-12. The organization is working to achieve similar success in other states as well, a development that has the Left decidedly on edge. For example, TIME sounded panicky in August when it wrote: “In the coming school year, Florida grade school students could be assigned PragerU Kids videos to watch in class or for homework, perhaps alongside longtime classroom aids like Scholastic and Highlights magazines.” Yikes! After all, PragerU content “is grounded in traditional American values that inspire self-reliance, patriotism, and resiliency while teaching foundational knowledge in subjects ranging from civics to financial literacy.” Originally known as Prager University, the founders are radio talk show host and author Dennis Prager, and screenwriter, producer-director, and author Allen Estrin, who in 2009 entertained the notion of “using the internet to spread the ideas that were so important to the creation of America.” By 2015, they had hired a few key people who placed greater emphasis on marketing their educational videos under the title of PragerU, which proved a successful strategy. Following the 2016 election, PragerU’s video primer on the U.S. Electoral College garnered a viral 50 million views. By 2018, the Left was sounding the alarm about the “dangerous” PragerU, but as Estrin and Prager note: “When people hear the truth, they start to wonder about everything they’ve been told.” One of the first conservative organizations to be censored by Google and on YouTube, the organization filed suit against both companies in 2017, charging Soviet-style suppression of free speech. Dennis Prager says recent data shows “90 percent of PragerU viewers say they are learning something new,” and he hopes PragerU Kids will impress young minds with the other side of the story they seldom, if ever, hear.

Attending high school at the mall is now a reality for students in the Forney Independent School District north of Dallas as of September 2023, but will outcomes improve? The Forney, Texas ISD has introduced a new concept in secondary education, billed as “the biggest career and college school in the nation.” The mall school is called “The OC” for “Opportunity Central,” and is a 350,000 square foot, three-story building “designed to bring career training, college access, and community integration into one campus.” About 2,000 students from the two existing FISD high schools are expected to be enrolled in a variety of programs offered by The OC, with transportation provided between schools on district school buses. Dual-credit courses that offer students both high school and college credits through Dallas College and Texas Tech University are already available, but will be expanded at the new career center. The OC claims to be unique in that it is a “part career and college center, multi-purpose complex, student-run business hub, [with] fine arts spaces” and much more. The campus will feature retail and restaurant spaces, a few of which are already open to the public, plus professional services and entrepreneurial offices, an early childhood development center, a future 600-seat theater and a 7,000+ seat arena. The multi-purpose arena will host a variety of special events, trade shows, athletic tournaments and competitions, and future FISD graduation ceremonies. Students will be heavily involved in the day-to-day operations of the more than two dozen businesses that are expected to open eventually in the complex. According to CBS Texas (cbsnews.com), FISD Superintendent Justin Terry says the new facility is different than other career and technology centers. “There’s a theme that runs through every program that we have in The OC and it’s entrepreneurism,” he said. “So we’re hoping that our kids not only learn how to cut hair or learn how to be veterinarians, but that they can run a veterinary hospital.” But some parents wonder if their kids will know how to read and do math, or if anything will be done to improve basic academic skills.

On September 26, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced a lawsuit against the Wentzville School District Board of Education for concealing a transgender bathroom usage policy from parents. The board’s action is in direct conflict with the State of Missouri’s Open Meetings Law (§610.030 RSMo). According to an email update from Bailey’s office: “Parents have the right to know who is in the bathroom with their children. Members of the Wentzville School Board knowingly and purposefully denied parents that right when they shrouded the transgender student bathroom usage policy in secrecy, directly violating the Open Meetings Law.” According to whistleblowers, one Wentzville school board member stated that “quite frankly, it’s not the parents’ business” to know about the bathroom policy, which has not been formally adopted but which was under discussion by the board over the summer, allegedly to explore making accommodations for transgender students who don’t wish to use the restrooms or locker rooms of the sex reflected on their school records. When news of the closed meeting became public, more than forty citizens reacted by filing formal complaints with Bailey’s office. The whistleblowers signed sworn affidavits that when the transgender policy was discussed, they objected, “specifically noting that the discussion should be saved for a public meeting.” But the other board members “continued to discuss the transgender student bathroom use policy for 10-15 minutes,” and admitted that they “could not have this discussion in front of parents or the community.” As Bailey pointed out, “Missouri law makes clear that a policy of this kind is indeed parents’ business,” and that the state’s lawsuit “is sending the message that Missourians do not co-parent with the government. We will enforce Missouri’s open meetings statute to protect parental rights.” The lawsuit and affidavits from the whistleblowers can be accessed at the following hyperlink: MO Attorney-General-Bailey-Sues-Wentzville-School-Board.