Controlled Programming

 

By Gretchen Garrity

Tuesday night (March 19, 2024) there was a Nixa School Board Candidate Forum. It was hosted by the Nixa Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) and the Nixa Teachers Association (NTA). Held in the Media Center, the forum was well attended.

The sponsors had selected questions and given them to the candidates ahead of the forum. Therefore, the candidates' answers were about as vanilla as they could get. They were canned. They were rehearsed. I'm not blaming the candidates. Who wouldn't want to be spared inconvenient questions, or questions that one had no answer for? Who would want to be confronted by an upset parent or voter?

The forum was what is called controlled programming. You, the voter, have no voice (unless you managed to get a submitted question chosen and even then you couldn't talk). If you arrived at the meeting early enough to meet and shake hands with the candidates, you might have been able to ask them a question. Or, if you lingered afterwards you might have gotten a question in. 

But the formal process of a citizen squaring off in public with a declared candidate, a citizen positioned as an equal able to query and expect answers from the person who is asking for their vote, was missing.

In general, these forums are how the System checks off boxes. Public meeting? Check. Candidate forum? Check. Voter information? Check. Public duty? Check. 

It's all for show.

How much is really learned about the candidates? Having sat through a couple of these types of events, the candidates pretty much said the same things as at the other times. The forum last night was recorded. Whether it was live-streamed or will be released online I don't know. If it was live-streamed or released, I would've saved the time and energy of being a mere spectator needed to fill the audience.

I had questions. They weren't the questions in the prearranged forum. They were tough questions I wanted to ask two of the candidates. 

A question for current school board president/candidate Josh Roberts: "You mentioned that the school district is currently consulting with a psychologist to decide whether to provide an on-campus psychologist to teachers. Can you tell me what has changed in the last decade or so that would warrant teachers needing a psychologist on campus?"

A question for school board candidate Megan Deal: "Can you give your opinion of trauma-based education?" And a followup, "Would you agree that parents should be provided an opt-out form if they decide they don't want their children participating in any type of data collection via surveys, questionnaires or evaluations that refers to their child's feelings or beliefs or attitudes, especially those relating to sexual behavior, orientation, or gender identity?"

Civic participation in the election process is so important that events like the PTO/NTA forum ultimately prove unhelpful. What has happened to debates, and open forums, where voters can get a real idea of the candidates' suitability for public office? To preempt questions from the citizens and give candidates the questions ahead of time is a disservice to the community when there is no other avenues for public discourse.

We are being controlled by a managerial class of government workers and their associates who may not even be aware that the processes they implement are not in the spirit or letter of a free exchange of ideas. Citizens deserve to be able to interview the candidates in order to determine which one best deserves their vote.

I would ask the Nixa PTO and NTA to change their format during the next election and allow a period of time for the citizens to actually participate in the forum. Allow questions that might bring up uncomfortable subjects such as Social Emotional Learning and Diversity Equity and Inclusion, and how those agenda--implemented from both the federal and state level in our local schools--are causing behavioral issues in students.

Instead of calling for more social workers and psychologists and more government programs, perhaps a truly open forum would allow citizens to engage on a level that would actually bring both enlightenment and change to our school boards and ultimately benefit the students and staff.

I'm inserting this video of an interview of Abigail Shrier, author of Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up, to give you an idea of how important ideas are not being shared with our candidates, or others in the audience. It's fascinating, and our community needs to know that there is a very different narrative to the one we are exposed to by the System, which is always and only a call for more programs and more staff:

One last point. We the People of Christian County is the only group I know of (please tell me if you know of others), that had local school board candidates come to speak...and take unvetted questions from the citizens. I would say a couple of the candidates were probably sweating by the time they got out of there, but they came and took questions. Thanks to Josh Roberts and Megan Deal of Nixa, and to Jason Shaffer in Ozark and Edmund Unger in Sparta. And a big thanks to We the People of Christian County.

Moses the "Superintendent"

 

Detail of a 19th-century wood engraving by Frederick Richard Pickersgill

David Rice does a great job of exposing the worldview of Nixa School Board candidate Megan Deal, who recently spoke at a local meeting. It is vitally important to understand where candidates are coming from.

They can say many right things, they can be Christians, they can be articulate and pleasant. But if their basic understanding of the world is not in line with your values as a voter, you have a decision to make.

In order to really get at their true opinions, you have to spend time digging. Rice does that. He's showing the reader what the press will not--the truth.

From his article:

"[Megan Deal] spoke alongside other school board candidates and she talked about the emotional and mental health needs of the students who are being overlooked by the system. In other words, she claimed she was looking for the marginalized children in schools. 

She seems to be focused on her narrowly focused project of finding the students during relaxed times at school (like lunch or transitioning from classroom to classroom). She thinks the board should be there speaking to the students during those periods and learning from the overlooked (marginalized) students.

She also spoke about being like Aaron to Moses, trying to lean on her Christian background for her candidacy. She referenced Exodus 17:12-13, when Aaron and Hur lifted Moses’ arms so that God’s power could still work through him. She described the school board trustees as the Aaron to the Superintendent’s Moses."

Read the whole thing here: Can we Trust Megan Deal to be a Nixa School Board Trustee?

Skewing the Stats

 

"There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics." -- Benjamin Disraeli

By Gretchen Garrity

We the People of Christian County held a candidate forum in Nixa on March 4, 2024, where an oft-repeated statistic was shared with citizens by Nixa School Board President and candidate Josh Roberts. He said, "We’re fiftieth in the nation, fiftieth in teacher pay. It’s embarrassing, but the local community--we pay more than most other communities--so we are doing our part. It needs to come from the state and federal level to increase teacher pay and not from your pocket.” Roberts was wise to read the prevailing winds, since local taxpayers are increasingly fed up with property tax increases for schools.

Currently, total funding for public schools in Missouri looks like this from the Missouri Budget Project:

Click on image for clarity

 As you can see, local property taxes make up a very large percentage of funding for government schools compared to national percentages. Even though, according to the Missouri Constitution, "Art. IX, Sec. 1(a). Free public schools...the general assembly shall establish and maintain free public schools for the gratuitous instruction of all persons in this state within ages not in excess of twenty-one years as prescribed by law."

DEAD LAST?

But we are going to concentrate on the startling statistic that Roberts shared. How can Missouri be so terribly low in salaries for teacher pay? Dead last? As everyone knows, statistics can be manipulated to show just about anything. Before we go on, ask yourself where did this stat originate?

If you go looking for it you will find it widely reported in the press: "Missouri ranks last in nation for average teacher starting salary." The "News" has helped to spread this narrative, which the linked article sources as the NEA, the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the United States. Here is the Missouri NEA's Salary Benchmarks and Rankings. Not light reading at almost 200 pages, and who can trust them?

This very short video (one minute) shares how government schools are funded:

 

According to the Show Me Institute in an article titled "Breaking: The Actual Starting Teacher Salary According to DESE," by James V. Shuls, “The NEA report calculates the average starting salary of Missouri’s more than 500 districts. It counts small, low-paying school districts the same as it counts large, higher-paying school districts.

If the Middle Grove School District, which according to the Missouri State Teachers Association is the only district to start teachers at the state minimum of $25,000 and has just 35 students, were to hire one teacher, and the Parkway School District, with more than 17,000 students, were to hire 20 teachers at the starting salary of $44,250, the NEA report would count each district once and say the average starting salary was just $34,625. In reality, the average of those 21 new teachers would be $43,333. This is a difference of more than $8,700.”

“The NEA reports Missouri’s starting salary as $33,234. But what is Missouri’s actual average starting teacher salary?

According to data I have obtained from DESE, the average regular term salary for a first-year teacher in Missouri was $38,367.33 in 2022. This figure was provided directly by DESE after my request. The increase of more than $5,000 would move Missouri up to 37th on the NEA report.”

Do read the whole thing (not long).

There are numerous sites with statistics that rank Missouri anywhere from the bottom to somewhere in the middle of the pack of fifty states:

Education Data Initiative

USA Facts

Congressional Research Service

Missouri School Rankings

Study (teacher salaries by state)

Zip Recruiter (Teacher salaries in Missouri. This is fascinating since this site has no educational agenda)

Zip Recruiter (Teacher salaries by state. Here Missouri ranks 21)

Lastly, as you look at the statistics from the different organizations, you will see that often the differences in salary are only a few hundred dollars from state to state.

As long as we allow the narrative to be about dollars alone as the major comparative, taxpayers will keep taking the hit through manipulation by both the news and school districts. 

What about academic scores? What about cost of living? What about each community's differing needs and wants?

In an article titled "Follow the Money" by Susan Pendergrass, the question is asked, "Do you ever wonder where more than $250,000 spent on a classroom of 20 students goes? So did we—so we built a website to help answer this question."

The website is excellent and helps citizens to understand more about the labyrinth of school spending in Missouri.

Meet the Candidates!

 

Right to Win Ozarks Will Join In

 

Join us tonight at 7:30 PM Central to discuss the demographic issues facing public schools. https://t.co/cLZY55rBVE

— Missouri Freedom Initiative (@MissouriLibert2) November 18, 2023

Never Give Up, Never Give In

Local Schools are not Locally Governed

 

Over at Ozark Schools Support Team, you will find an analysis of the Missouri School Boards Association's (MSBA) Advocacy Positions for its upcoming annual conference on Nov. 3.

The Delegate Assembly Handbook is a revelation of third-party entity control, including the state and federal governments. The MSBA is a private, non-profit organization, yet it wields immense control over local school districts whose school boards are members of the Association.

The MSBA's advocacy positions push hard for more centralized control of schools. You will read such things as:

"Under Tax Credits on P. 4, the MSBA calls for the capping of "potential reductions of state revenue." They even support suspending "issuance of all tax credits until the statutory funding obligations of the state are met." What do you wanna bet the taxpayer would never see another tax credit implemented?"

And this:

"The MSBA's advocacy positions go on, P. 3. The organization supports giving school districts more options for "raising local revenue, including sales taxes." Yes, they now want a piece of the sales tax pie. I hope local elected officials are aware."

And this:

"In fact, the MSBA thinks school boards should have legal standing when tax abatement programs for residential building projects are considered, to the point that they may "participate in all phases of the process...[and] shall have veto power over their portion of any tax abatement project." 

Go read the shared notes here. You have to read it to believe it.

Using Kids to Sell a Narrative

 

By Gretchen Garrity

Nixa student group pushes "banned" books

In August, education reporter Claudette Riley of the Springfield News-Leader, teased her readers with a tweet from X (formerly Twitter) about some local students who had "reached out" to her.

Met tonight with a group of high school students for an upcoming story. They were articulate, passionate and interesting. So happy they reached out. pic.twitter.com/8LpQLrTCHB

— Claudette Riley (@CRileyNL) August 15, 2023

Back in June 2023, after months of citizen interface with the Nixa School Board about sexually explicit and pornographic books available to students, the school board voted to remove four books from the school library. Later, another book was retained.

Groups like U-Turn in Education, positively featured by Riley in an October 2022 article, have been active in working to prevent the removal of obscene and pornographic books from school and public libraries. In fact, U-Turn is heavily involved in the student group featured in Riley's article.

The teaser tweet finally came to fruition Sept. 27 in an article titled 'It's not their library.' Nixa High School students form group to fight book ban attempts.'

'It's not their library.' Nixa High School students form group to fight future book ban attempts from parents, community members. https://t.co/AK0Dfb2LfY via @springfieldNL @nixaschools @PENamerica #BannedBooksWeek

— Claudette Riley (@CRileyNL) September 27, 2023

 According to the article, a group of little Lord and Lady Fauntleroys has been fighting valiantly against  devilish parents that are attempting to keep literature out of their hearts and minds. The students are described as "calm" and "reasonable" while adults called the school board "names and made ugly comments leveled at students, other adults and high school librarians."

(As an aside, Nixa School Board President Josh Roberts may want to clarify his comments. He is surely not aware of everything that goes on in the school board meetings, since he sits apart from citizens.)

Nixa student group links to Marxist bookstore

This type of accusation is a common tactic of the Left, and has been in play in articles about our local area for months now. In several articles, children are being put on the front lines of the battle for parental rights. It can't be about smut in our schools. It can't be about protecting children or letting parents decide what books their children will be exposed to. It has to be about mean adults taking away a child's right to read.

See here and here and here. Once you see the tactics, you can't unsee it. The latest article in the News-Leader is ramping up the narrative.

 

U-Turn in Education linked from Nixa student group

Thankfully, few citizens are buying what they're selling. And if you want to find out what U-Turn in Education thinks about parent rights, go here to see how they subvert them.

In fact, at least one of the four founding members of the student group, Nixa Students Against Book Restrictions, has parents involved in U-Turn. And U-Turn is linked at the top of the SABR Instagram page. 

For some intelligent commentary about the article, Nick Reed featured it on his show The Nick Reed Podcast on 104.1 KSGF. And for a little humor:

@right2winozarks

♬ Funny - Gold-Tiger

U-Turn in Education

 

From U-Turn in Education's website

By Gretchen Garrity

In an October 19, 2022 article, Springfield News-Leader reporter Claudette Riley featured the parent group U-Turn in Education. Riley described the group as “...created to fight censorship, to ensure students can access a wide range of books in school libraries...”

See the setup there? U-Turn is pro First Amendment and pro students having access to books.

Riley featured a quote from U-Turn’s Elizabeth Dudash-Buskirk: “We’re standing up against fascism...And we stand for freedom of education and experience.”

See that again? U-Turn is against fascism.

Later in the article, a subhead says, “Conservative parents, minister voice support for bans.” And a little later another subhead states, “Opponents of book bans say choice shouldn’t be taken from parents, students.” Riley then quotes U-Turn’s Dudash-Buskirk again, “We believe parents have the right to decide what books and what movies and what expressions their children are actually engaging...Unfortunately, what no one has the right to do is to take away that choice to guide our children from every other parents or community member.”

And there you go, parents and Christians support book banning, but U-Turn is for rights and choice.

Inexplicably, another U-Turn member is quoted as saying, “It’s a parent’s right to decide what their children are exposed to...But it’s not some (other) parent’s right to decide what my child is going to be exposed to.” 

That quote just made the case for every concerned parent in America, but I digress.

Further on, the reader is then told that “marginalized” kids are being harmed by the culture war and silenced.

The press amplifies certain voices and suppresses others. Besides the obvious propaganda that censorship and book banning are a conservative thing, and U-Turn members are for freedom and education, the article candy coats what U-Turn in Education is truly advocating for.

Let’s take a turn around U-Turn’s website and see if they are for parent's rights and educational freedom for children.

Their front page boldly states they are "Supporting educational opportunities for all." If you click on their Resources and Videos button it is clear to see that nearly all the videos are about "educating" the reader/listener about so-called censorship and book banning.

What is never stated is that censorship and book banning are not happening (unless one happens to be a conservative on social media). What IS happening is parents rising up to tell schools and libraries that there are some books that kids shouldn't be reading without parental permission. The 20-minute video below details some of the books that groups like U-Turn in Education are advocating to be widely accessible to minors.

U-Turn is so committed to giving children access to "educational opportunities" that they advocate starting a Little Library (like the one below) to provide them.

A Little Library disseminating "educational opportunities"

 

Furthermore, U-Turn provides a Student button with links to the "Brooklyn Public Library that offers unrestricted free library ecards to anybody (not just New York residents) aged 13-21." That means no matter how much parents try to monitor their child's reading materials, U-Turn is there to make sure the kids have access to unrestricted library cards online.

And that's not all, there's a link to a website called the Banned Books Book Club, that features some of the "most important books of our generation." Go here to see the "important" books.

Additionally, U-Turn in Education received the "2023 Intellectual Freedom award by the Missouri Association of School Librarians." To add gravitas to the award we are informed, "Note that MASL was selected as the 2023 chapter of the year by the American Association of School Librarians, largely for their Intellectual Freedom work and support of the right to read.  MASL also received the extremely prestigious 2023 Horace Mann Award from the Missouri NEA (~32,000 members), which is part of the National Educators Association (~ 3,000,000 members)." These groups do like giving out awards to their comrades.

And lastly, U-Turn has published a letter that the Missouri Library Association (MLA) sent to the Nixa School Board in August of 2022. It's quite eye-opening in its advocacy for the "freedom" of minors to read sexually explicit books. Providing smut to kids is always about protecting "marginalized" communities and freedom and such. Really, it just comes down to corrupting the innocence of minors, which is a feature of Marxist agendas.

Just one last thing. Many people scoff at the idea our libraries and schools are Marxist indoctrination centers. But the president of the American Library Association, an avowed Marxist, wrote a whole paper called "Queering the Catalog." It is shot through with Marxist ideology as advanced through Queer Theory. Here James Lindsay defines Queer Theory:

"Queer Theory: Straight people whose “gender identity” and sex match (and those who pass as such) claim access to a special form of property called normalcy (by declaring themselves the normal ones and defining normalcy to mean like themselves). They create an ideology called normativity (e.g., heteronormativity and cisnormativity) to justify this. This allows them to structure society with structural or systemic homophobia and/or transphobia (or, generally, queer-phobia) that advantages the “normal” and exploits, estranges, and disenfranchises “queers” (anyone different, especially gays, lesbians, bisexuals, the gender non-conforming, transgenders, and the mentally ill). People can be made aware of the Queer Theory theory of societal production and become queer-conscious (“proud”) allies operating in solidarity on their behalf. If they seize the means of normative cultural production of society and Man, they will usher in gender, sexual, and sex equity that will eventually ripen into gender, sexual, and sex justice (a kind of social justice) through the inversion of praxis."

In the end, U-Turn in Education is not about protecting parents' rights to determine what books and materials their children see. They aren't about intellectual freedom. U-Turn is about making sure your kids are exposed to any and all books, regardless of your values or your desires as a parent. There's a popular name for that nowadays...

Nixa School Board Vote Results in Book Retention

 

 

School board retains "Unpregnant"

 

 

By Gretchen Garrity

 The issue of inappropriate, sexually explicit and obscene books continues to be at the forefront of local school boards in Missouri. At the July 13, 2023 regular school board meeting in Nixa, the board conducted a re-vote for the book Unpregnant, since it had not received a majority vote of “Remove” at the June 20, 2023 meeting.

The June vote resulted in a split: 3 for removal, 2 for restriction, and 2 for retention. Board rules dictate a clear majority must prevail. However, the July re-vote was more than surprising. Because school board member Linda Daughtery was out of town and unable to attend the regular school board meeting on July 13, 2023, the re-vote to determine a board majority vote for the book consisted of six members voting on the three options.

If Daughtery had been present, the vote would have resulted in Unpregnant being removed from the library by a majority vote of four to three. Jason Massengale changed his vote to “Remove” at the July 13 meeting.

But because of the missing board member and multiple voting options, a majority of the board was again not achieved. The stated goal of having a “Vote to Determine Board Majority” was not served, and the school board ultimately fell back on a review committee’s recommendation, which was to retain the book without restriction.

This happened despite a planned board retreat meeting in June to study the process of reviewing books.

Part of the issue for the school board is the manner of having three options for each book:

1. To Retain without Restrictions

2. To Retain with Parental Permission

3. To Remove

This had a direct result of splitting the vote both times in such a way that a majority vote of 4/7 could not be attained, even though with a vote of 3-2-2 or 3-2-1 as happened at the July 13 meeting, there were more votes to remove or restrict rather than retain. This will be a problem going forward, and may result in school board-appointed committees determining book decisions, rather than elected board members.

The review committee that voted to recommend Unpregnant be retained without restriction includes at least three school district employees: Cheryl Huson, Chelsea Shoemake, Wendee Corya, and a community member, Ashley Johnson. Their vote was 4-0, with one member of the five-member committee not present.

School board president, Joshua Roberts, indicated in a previous news article, that review teams have been ridiculed publicly for their recommendations. Taxpayers, however, have a legal right to know who is making the decisions that affect public school students.

The committee’s report stated in part, “This book in no way promotes or advocates for abortion. The novel manages to take a highly stigmatized topic and bring it into the light, and in the process create a story that is both timely and meaningful. We recommend it be retained without restriction based on its fulfillment of library material selection criteria.”

The report further states the book Unpregnant meets the “Objectives for the Selection of Library Materials” of enriching and supporting the curriculum, as well as meeting ethical standards.

Unpregnant, published by Harper Collins, is a book that came about as a way to make the subject of abortion more comfortable for young people. A review of the book describes it as, “Seventeen-year-old Veronica Clarke never thought she’d want to fail a test—that is, until she finds herself staring at a piece of plastic with two solid pink lines. With a college-bound future now disappearing before her eyes, Veronica considers a decision she never imagined she’d have to make: an abortion. There’s just one catch—the closest place to get one is over nine hundred miles away. With conservative parents, a less-than-optimal boyfriend, and no car, Veronica turns to the only person who won’t judge her: Bailey Butler, a legendary misfit at Jefferson High—and Veronica’s ex-best friend.What could go wrong? Not much, apart from three days of stolen cars, crazed ex-boyfriends, aliens, ferret napping, and the betrayal of a broken friendship that can’t be outrun. Under the starlit skies of the Southwest, Veronica and Bailey discover that sometimes the most important choice is who your friends are.”

Nixa High School

 

 

In a 2020 interview, Unpregnant author Jennie Hendriks said, “Much of the time when abortion has been presented in the media, it’s been focused on the choice—a weighty exploration of whether the person wants to become a parent. And always depicting the decision to have an abortion as fraught and dramatic can lead to feelings of shame. We wanted to write a story where our main character knew exactly what she wanted to do from the very beginning, her only obstacle was how to get there. As writers we never wanted to make light of the decision to get an abortion, but we were more comfortable poking fun at how difficult it is to actually get one...If you are underage, 37 states require parental involvement in the decision to have an abortion. And more laws restricting access are being written seemingly every day. So, to highlight the absurdity of this, we thought, why not write an absurd, boisterous, slightly insane road trip story?”

Nixa parent, Carissa Corson, who submitted a removal request for Unpregnant, spoke about the decision to retain the book without restrictions, “Offering books like "Unpregnant" rob parents of having very important and timely conversations that only parents know when their child is mature enough to have! I believe the board agrees with me and that’s why 5 out of 7 board members either voted to remove or place a parental restriction on this book. Parents, students, taxpayers and our community are feeling that it is unjust to have this book on the shelves of Nixa High School.”

Additional information below.

Video of school board vote on July 13

Nixa School District

Nixa School Board