TX, AZ, and CA Parents Wise up and Rise up Against Critical Race Theory and Mask Mandates

AP Photo/John Minchillo

The Leftist agenda to destroy children through the toxic Critical Race Theory (CRT) curriculum was dealt a significant blow this past weekend.

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Nine months after officials in the affluent Carroll Independent School District introduced a proposal to combat racial and cultural intolerance in schools, voters delivered a resounding victory Saturday to a slate of school board and City Council candidates who opposed the plan.

In an unusually bitter campaign that echoed a growing national divide over how to address issues of race, gender and sexuality in schools, candidates in the city of Southlake were split between two camps: those who supported new diversity and inclusion training requirements for Carroll students and teachers and those backed by a political action committee that was formed last year to defeat the plan.

As conservative radio host, Dana Loesch — who lives within this community — tweeted, the divide was a whole lot less partisan than the media wanted to paint it. From the numbers, the conservative side is where most parents were leaning, whether they made it public or not.

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In the end, the contest was not close. Candidates backed by the conservative Southlake Families PAC, which has raised more than $200,000 since last summer, won every race by about 70 percent to 30 percent, including those for two school board positions, two City Council seats and mayor. More than 9,000 voters cast ballots, three times as many as in similar contests in the past.

Orange County, California is going through a similar battle in their school districts. Sadly, CRT has already been approved, but the actual components of the curriculum are “under review,” and this so-called review is getting push back from concerned parents and members of the community.

Los Alamitos is not the only school district grappling with how to develop ethnic study courses. But its position within a county that is confronting, and a has made the controversy over the curriculum a case study for more conservative parts of the state.

In the nearby Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, school board member Leandra Blades that denounces the state’s curriculum as “left-wing political ideology.” And in Santa Clara County, more than calling their board’s initiative “militant and anti-Western.”

During an April 13 meeting of the Los Alamitos Board of Education, about 15 of 20 speakers voiced opposition to the district’s plan to offer an 11th- and 12th-grade elective course guided by materials in the state’s ethnic studies framework. One attendee held a sign that read “Ethnic studies teaches hate,” while several parents and grandparents said the coursework will segregate students and make them into victims.

But at a board meeting Tuesday night, the tables were turned, and dozens of students and community members voiced support for the course. Natalie Chang, who has two children in the district, said she was motivated to participate after some speakers at previous board meetings transformed the room “into a place full of hate speech.”

“To everyone disseminating misinformation, stoking fear and division, heckling, booing and laughing at students and parents who speak up, please know that your words and your actions are just solidifying how desperately we need ethnic studies and social justice standards,” she said.

The board unanimously approved the elective course in February, but the contents of the class are still under review. In addition, officials are preparing for a May 11 vote on whether to incorporate developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Learning for Justice group into its K-12 framework.

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The fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center is involved should be enough to give any parent pause.

In our Red Beans & Fried Rice podcast last week, my co-host and I had the opportunity to speak with former Huntington Beach City Council candidate Sonya Green. Through her Patriots for Freedom community forum, Sonya was able to organize a 250-strong, multi-cultural group of dissenters in Los Alamitos to protest the critical race theory-heavy curriculum.

“There’s strength in numbers,” she said.

Alongside the battles over the CRT curriculum is the battle over masks. From compromising children’s health, to the evolving science on what age children can actually contract and spread COVID, parents are getting fed up with school districts’ shifting guidelines.

The same week that Carrolton, TX battled over its school board and the CRT curriculum, parents in Vail, AZ said no more to mask mandates.

While the Vail, AZ parents moved to take care of the business that the council was too cowardly to complete, the election was deemed invalid.

The district said local sheriffs advised them to leave because of crowd-control difficulties, however the sheriff’s office said the board decided to leave the meeting on their own, in comments to a local ABC affiliate.

Local parents then held their own meeting and proceeded to “elect” a new school board to rescind the mask mandate. The election itself was illegitimate because school board members must be elected by the public, so the mask mandate is still in effect in the district.

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How many of those parents are going to 1) work to change the election of school board members, and 2) run themselves?

If this pandemic has shown us anything, it is that teachers’ unions, school districts, and school boards have little regard for children, and even less for their parents. All of these reports are a clear indication that parents are waking up to activism and engagement, in order to protect their children and have a say in their education. The community’s focus should be on actual education, not indoctrination.  

 

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