School Board Elections: Still lying

There has been one other common talking point among the anti-Critical Race Theory, anti-sex education, "Get those kids back in school no matter what!" candidates:

I keep seeing references to Oregon having the worst schools; we don't.

Granted, a ranking a 37 is nothing to brag about, but most of the schools below us (except for Nevada) are in the South. Moving to a more racist, sexist, ignorant curriculum seems unlikely to move us up in the rankings.

Also, in the most recent reports, Oregon was among the most improved states. If we are heading in a good direction, how do we know that these candidates won't disrupt that?

Beyond that, it can become a very complex subject. Even if we agree on what counts as a "good" education, there can be a lot of room for disagreement on how to deliver it and how to measure that delivery. Bush himself might not defend "No Child Left Behind" now.

I was very interested in a Twitter thread a while back, expressing that where we are in our knowledge of public education is equivalent to where astronomy was in the time of Ptolemy. It is a relatively recent thing to have public schools where any child can get an education and is expected to have an education.

We don't necessarily know the best way of doing it. That's worth taking some time to think about.

A fairly recent trend was to gear everything toward what will make children grow into good workers, but that ignores how quickly technology changes. Teaching them how to learn, and how to be healthy and how to spot disingenuous rhetoric might be more valuable.

What did you learn in schools? What has retained its value? What do you wish you had learned, but didn't?

Remember, for a long time the lesson of public schools was that Black people weren't worth as much, based on school funding. Then the attempt to correct that sent a lot of white people to private schools and charter schools, or at least neighborhoods at a significant distance from any communities of color. That resulted in a need to fight hard against busing.

There is a reasonable discussion to be had on what "good" schools should be, and how we will know when we have them.

But here should be no surprises that some people will still go hard for racism, or that they get offended when you point that out.

Besides, while some candidates are trying to use coded language and vague answers to avoid admitting it, we know what they want:

• Children should not know anything about sex that their parents don't tell them (technically not possible, regardless of school policy), including knowing how to get help in case of sexual abuse.
• There should be no affirmation or validity for anything but straight, cis, students.
• The students we affirm should also be white.
• But we need these wonderful white kids out of our houses during weekdays, even if it spreads disease.
• We must not have any discussion that leads to understanding the root causes of these ideas.
  

This is not the future that our students deserve.

 

For Beaverton School District, please vote for Susan Greenberg, Karen Pérez-Da Silva, and Sunita Garg, and either LeeAnn Larsen or Ugonna Enyinnaya. (Some voters really resent not having a suitably racist candidate for Zone 5.)

For Hillsboro School District, please vote for Erika Lopez, Mark Watson, Nancy Thomas, and Jaci Spross.

Ballots are due May 18th. There's not much time.