What the establishment candidates agree upon is why I'm voting for Bertrand & Cook in the FHSD School Board Election April 5th!

What the establishment candidates running for FHSD school board are in agreement with each other upon, are why I'm voting for Adam Bertrand & Randy Cook in the Francis Howell School Board elections, on April 5th. If you watch our FHSD School Board Candidate Forum, there were at least three points which the four establishment candidates were of one mind on, and those are themselves reason enough, IMHO, for voting them out of office ASAP:

1. 'We just need to explain things better'
2. 'I'm opposed to banning books'
3. 'We don't teach *that* class in our schools'

Let's take a closer look at those:

1. "We need to explain things better" Well of course they do, because it couldn't possibly be the case that the public actually does understand what FHSD has said and is doing - in everything from cost over runs to promoting divisive policies - no, it simply must be the case that the public is so unable to comprehend their wisdom, that they need things *explained* again and again and again to them until they finally 'get it' and submit to their way of thinking. No thank you.



2. "I'm not for banning books" What an easy, and thoroughly disingenuous thing to say (no school board has the power to ban books). Our school libraries remove hundreds of books every year, and recently through policies such as "decolonizing the stacks", FHSD school libraries have quietly been removing books such as 'The Federalist Papers' from our school libraries, such as with Francis Howell Central HS, whose Book Search portal page shows no copies of it remaining in its library (I didn't find it in other schools that I checked either). Does that mean that 'The Federalist Papers' have been banned?! No... but it does mean that this book, which is fundamental to understanding our nation's form of government, has been 'Weeded Out of the stacks' under the watch of FHSD's current administration, which the establishment FHSD BOE candidates, one of whom has been on the BOE for 12 years, are in support of.
   
   To emphasize that point: Missouri's public schools were created by Article IX of the Missouri Constitution, to ensure the:

   "...diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people..."

   , and FHSD's administration and BOE believes that purpose is better served by the presence of revoltingly crude and pornographic books such as 'Crank', or 'Not all Boys are Blue' and the like which they have been adamant about retaining, over books such as 'The Federalist Papers', which have been quietly removed from school libraries under their oversight and without the knowledge of the public, and they don't want parents or anyone else questioning their judgement or submitting such choices in reading materials to public scrutiny.
   
   That does not reflect the type of judgement that I'm comfortable with overseeing the teaching of students in my community.
   
   
3. "... We don't teach *that* class in our schools..." What this says about what they think of the public, speaks volumes. Would you ever dream of saying that a college student who becomes passionate about a class they studied in college, Logic for instance, would be unlikely or unable to think or teach logically, in any of the classes they later went on to teach? If you're honest and have some grasp of logic yourself, no, you wouldn't. Note that the issue with this statement isn't even about CRT, but about the foolishness of saying that an all encompassing method of thinking and behavior (whether of logic, ethics, or an ideology such as CRT), could not and would not be taught by those who believe in it, without a formal class specifically designed for teaching the entire college level subject to students. The people repeating the statement that 'CRT is a college class only and therefore is not taught in FHSD Curriculum', have either a) not bothered giving the matter any thought for themselves, or b) don't understand what a set of concepts are or how to apply them, or c) they assume that no one in the public does, and so they can get away with misleading them.
   
   Critical Race Theory entered into standard Teachers College courses in 1995, through the deliberate and publicly stated purposes of one of the most popularly assigned course authors of the last several decades, Gloria Ladsen-Billings, who first wrote an influential paper called "Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education", and many others followed her lead as well. If you have any responsible concern for the students of FHSD and your community, you'll look that up before voting. If not... I hope the future is kinder to you, than it will be to the students who're subjected to this divisive ideology in our schools. Hint: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, are concepts derived from CRT, and they are present in, and are influencing, numerous classes and policies in FHSD, and when FHSD tells you that '...equity means things are fair...', as with the other two statements above, that is simply not true.

Vote Adam Bertrand & Randy Cook April 5th!