Tennessee School Officials Remove Piece of Art Trump Statue of Librty
The February. 21 Williamson County, Tennessee, school board meeting opened with far less commotion than the raucous gatherings that came before it: Gone were the hecklers, sign wavers, screamers and air pokers who made headlines around the globe for threatening doctors and nurses who spoke out in favor last summer of reinstating a mask mandate for young children.
Placards were banned and attendees were warned at the start non to employ vulgar language, single out board members or otherwise disrupt the proceedings lest they be hauled off by deputies.
At outcome this dank February night was another target of the right: "Wit & Wisdom", the school district's Grand-5 English Language Arts curriculum.
Conservative parent group Moms for Liberty, which spent 1,200 hours dissecting its contents last year, called for the removal of 31 books, including those about Cherry-red Bridges and Dr. Martin Luther Male monarch, Jr., arguing the texts about the civil rights icons were besides "dark" and "disturbing" for young readers.
In response, the 41,500-student commune, located some 30 minutes south of Nashville, formed a commission of parents, educators and community members to evaluate the material. Its findings, released in January, were a major accident to the blustery parent group and its vocal supporters.
Just ane book, Walk Two Moons, a Newbery Medal-winner well-nigh a 13-year-old Native American girl who lost her mother, was recommended for removal: Committee members said it was likewise emotionally fraught for young students. Half dozen other texts would be slightly modified or taught differently.
More than seventy people attended the Mon night meeting: Roughly 2-thirds of those who addressed the board came out in favor of keeping Wit & Wisdom, including 17-year-old Franklin High Schoolhouse inferior Mira Scannapieco.
"From an early age, I was introduced to real globe concepts including those surrounding diverseness, mental wellness, human being rights, science and politics," she said, barely taking a breath to stay within her allotted time. "Learning about these topics in schoolhouse gave me a broader perspective, likewise as the power to formulate my own views and opinions. Sheltering today's youth from these important issues doesn't make them disappear."
In the end, after a lengthy discussion, the board voted viii to 2, with two members absent-minded, in favor of keeping the curriculum.
Proverb their concerns were not beingness taken seriously, many Moms for Freedom members boycotted the meeting. Most notably absent from the disquisitional moment of reckoning was their chapter president, Robin Steenman.
Robin Steenman, president of Moms for Liberty Williamson Canton, Tennessee, has received national attending for advancing bourgeois causes in schools involving race, gender and COVID protocols. (Moms for Liberty)
"A lot of people accept written it off every bit non particularly worth their time considering nosotros go and we speak before a board and we let them know our concerns — some parents really accept poured their hearts out, some parents have but spoken in a common sense way — and it'south just a brick wall," she told The 74 hours earlier.
Steenman has three young children, none of whom are enrolled in district schools: She kept her eldest from attending kindergarten in the Williamson Canton system because of the mask mandate. The little girl attends private school. Her younger blood brother is in preschool. Steenman's youngest is just 17 months old.
Whether the Wit & Wisdom defeat was a temporary setback or a sign that Moms for Freedom's calendar has failed to gain real traction in Williamson County will before long be tried on a larger stage: the upcoming schoolhouse board election.
Some 20 candidates are vying for half-dozen seats on the 12-member lath. Parent groups of all stripes are decorated vetting the contenders and deciding who amidst the 10 Republicans, two Democrats and eight independents to support.
The crowded field faces a May chief and August general election, but the battle for control of the school board is bigger than the race itself.
In a county that is solidly Republican with a strong Evangelical Christian base, it will exist a test of whether the region'south conservatism aligns with Moms for Liberty's values — or veers abroad from it. In that sense, it's emblematic of similar showdowns existence waged across the state where schools have go the flashpoint for larger ideological and political ability struggles.
Jennifer Cortez, co-founder of One WillCo, a nonpartisan charity formed in 2019 to push button for racial and indigenous equity in the Williamson Canton Schools, believes Steenman has made a miscalculation. The canton is conservative, merely not radically so, she said.
Jennifer Cortez, co-founder of One WillCo, believes her organization's messages of disinterestedness and inclusion are more appealing to local parents than the agenda of conservative groups. (Jo Napolitano)
"We've been here before Moms for Liberty and will be hither after Moms for Freedom," she said. "One of the things Williamson County has going for it is that nosotros are smart. That works in favor of my cause."
Next option: elect someone else
Moms for Freedom Williamson Canton, a tax-exempt nonprofit that can engage in a certain level of political activity, grew at an phenomenal pace, with three,200 members to date.
It's a local affiliate of a national organization that boasts nearly 80,000 members across 34 states: Based out of Florida, it recently announced that one of its own was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to the country Board of Education, pending Senate confirmation. She'll likely be seated.
The national grouping has strong far right ties: Members accept regularly appeared on Steve Bannon'due south podcast discussing the nation's current culture wars and what they see as the unchecked power of teachers unions. Bannon, chief strategist in the Trump White House until August 2017, is a leader amid the alt-right.
He said last twelvemonth school boards were ripe for takeover by conservative mothers, calling the battle "trench warfare" in an early March "State of war Room" podcast with Moms for Freedom co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice.
The national arrangement has had some success in this arena: 56 candidates it endorsed joined school boards nationwide in fall 2021, Descovich told The 74, adding she's thrilled to support leadership that understands parents' "inherent right to directly the upbringing, educational activity and medical care of their children."
Steenman is maybe the national group'south most high-profile chapter leader. She too is a darling of correct-wing media while often beingness lambasted by the left on Twitter.
Dear Robin Steenman and M4L,
Feel costless to homeschool or leave WCS. We are tired of your antics. Yours truly, The Bulk motion-picture show.twitter.com/yZdNlpXWX1— Instructor mom using her vocalisation (@CandiceColson) January 26, 2022
She chose to become involved with the local school organization after she heard the district was hiring a multifariousness and inclusion consultant, which she said "rots an organization from the inside out" and leads to quotas.
And her affiliate boasts big-name connections: Former U.S. Secretarial assistant of Housing and Urban Evolution Ben Carson headlined a two-twenty-four hours "American Dream Conference," hosted by another, conservative organization, Be the People, in conjunction with Moms for Liberty.
The event, sponsored in part past the local and national Moms for Liberty, drew ire from King's family for the alleged misuse of his name and image, was otherwise a success, with some 400 attendees.
While Steenman's grouping has managed to attract and keep the nation's attending, it hadn't been tested at domicile until the February curriculum vote. The Williamson County affiliate, which prided itself on its size, reach and influence, had spent more than than a yr targeting the English Language Arts curriculum merely to be largely rebuked.
"I was not surprised by the vote because of my by dealings with them," Steenman said. "It was completely as expected."
Earlier, on the day of the vote, sitting on her back porch, wrapped in a cream-colored sweater, arms folded in an effort to stave off the cold, the 43-year-erstwhile Air Forcefulness veteran looked unsettled about what was to come.
Steenman considered the board's decision a missed opportunity to exercise better for children, simply she was already setting her sights on the ballot, a different, perhaps longer-lasting victory.
"We exhausted every civil avenue for alter and when we came up dry… the next option was to elect someone else," she said.
Steenman launched a PAC called Williamson Families tardily terminal year to promote candidates who back up its traditional, conservative, Judeo-Christian values. A March effect for that grouping drew hundreds.
She'due south been interviewing candidates for months, ferreting out those entrants she sees as Republican in name but. Steenman's ideal contender should support individual rights, including "medical freedom," which she said would allow parents to decide whether their children wear masks in school or receive vaccinations.
They should as well piece of work to adjourn "the sexualization calendar in schools," which she said refers to the introduction of sexual concepts at an early age, combined, soon after, with LGBTQ clubs — alongside books that address, explain or support these notions.
Parents, she said, believe a book about seahorses, which notes that males carry and release the offspring, is "a soft intro to gender fluidity." The book and the teacher's manual focus as well much on this fact, she said, noting that a 2019 documentary about a man giving birth to a baby called Seahorses, is more than a coincidence.
The seahorse thing? Yeah it's thing for the Queer theory crowd. They want to force their ideas about gender onto your kids. They know what they're doing. Make no mistake. flick.twitter.com/uplKFr3R1g
— Moms For Liberty Williamson County TN (@Moms4LibertyWC) February 8, 2022
"It's but planting the seed…of mayhap transgenderism," she said. "The parents want the choice and the correct to introduce these things to their child when they are ready. Having those talks, parents feel that's their territory."
She as well disapproves of how certain words are taught, including "injustice," "unequal," "inequality," "protest," "marching" and "segregation." It's not that the words themselves are bad, she told The 74, but that their use in a second grade grammar lesson forces students to "marinate in racism."
In the end, Williamson Families endorsed six schoolhouse lath candidates, including Jamie Lima, who too does not have children in the district. Like Steenman, he pulled his eldest because he didn't want her to start kindergarten wearing a mask.
Asked his main concern about the district one rainy February night, he read off a list of prepared remarks about the Wit & Wisdom curriculum. The offset-time candidate and motorcycle shop owner said he wanted it removed, but did not offer a replacement.
He said, besides, he's non seeking long-term involvement in running the district.
"I'm not looking to make a career out of this," he said.
Some other of the men who won Steenman's endorsement, incumbent board fellow member Dan Cash, refused to accept the accolade. Cash, a conservative who has shown back up for Moms for Liberty's causes in the past, did not reply to multiple interview requests. It's not clear if he believes he'll fare better at the polls without Moms for Freedom's backing. Steenman declined to comment.
Still, she hopes by keeping Cash on the board and adding other agreeing members, the district will exist more amenable to her supporters' wishes. Educators might have the training, she said, but parents know all-time.
"Nobody loves that child like we do," she said.
The future of Williamson Canton Schools
Williamson County is slowly diversifying with a small merely growing Black and Hispanic customs. And, similar the residuum of the nation, it's showtime to acknowledge its racialized past: It recently erected a statue of a Black soldier in the Franklin boondocks square meant to honor the 180,000 Black people who joined the Union Ground forces.
The pop new improver — a response to the August 2017 white supremecist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — was placed directly across the street from a monument to Amalgamated soldiers that has stood in front of the county courthouse since 1899.
The fact that residents decided to erect a statue honoring Black Union Regular army soldiers but leave their Amalgamated monument intact may indicate a certain tricky rest: embracing a more than inclusive historical narrative while refusing to tear down the traditionally dominant one.
Sitting less than a mile away at The Factory at Franklin, an upscale shopping, dining and performance venue built inside a former stove mill, Cortez wondered if the move went far enough.
"I recall the statue is significant," she said. "Simply in my mind, as long as the Confederate soldier stands in that square lifted to the heaven and we still have the Confederate flag on our canton seal, we are glorifying the Southward'south attempt to preserve slavery and to suspension the U.S. autonomously. It grieves me."
And then, she said, does Steenman's assail on the school district's curriculum. Cortez, 48 and a freelance writer, moved to Williamson County in 2004. She has four children, ranging in age from seven to 21. 2 already graduated from Williamson County Schools. Her third has autism and was put in a small, private school and her youngest is in the second course.
Though the Moms for Liberty members are song, Cortez and others say they are small in number and that few parents share their convictions: Of the 37 people who filed complaints nearly the Wit & Wisdom curriculum with the reviewing committee, 14 lived inside the schoolhouse arrangement'southward boundaries merely did not have students in the district.
Centrist parents in Williamson County meet Moms for Freedom as an outside entity — not only because some members have no children in the district — simply because the organization itself originated in some other state.
Some worry well-nigh the group's next target and see the upcoming election every bit a place to terminate the much-publicized local chapter in its tracks.
"We already bent over backward for them," said Jeff Bourque, a data analyst with three children in the district. "We don't need to practice this anymore."
The district, he said, is solid, educationally, which is why so many people are attracted to the surface area. Kenneth Chilton, who is running for school board, has a 7th grader in the district. An associate professor of public assistants at Tennessee State University, he said he asked his son about 1 of the books Moms for Freedom flagged. The male child barely remembered it and certainly wasn't upset by its contents.
"It'due south non broken," Chilton said of the commune and curriculum. "It doesn't demand to be stock-still."
Revida Rahman, co-founder of One WillCo, says its members trust teachers to guide their children through circuitous topics, including race, without outside interference.
"You have to have a dissimilar perspective," Rahman said. "Y'all tin can't become to school and larn everything you and your family unit agree with. The earth is bigger than yous and your family."
To that cease, other groups, including a PAC chosen Williamson Strong, are searching for their ain candidates, preparing them for what could be a nasty, partisan brawl in a race that only recently required entrants to declare a political political party.
Led by former Williamson Canton school lath member Anne McGraw, Williamson Potent volition soon announce its own endorsements. McGraw said information technology is searching for public schoolhouse advocates who have a directly, vested involvement in the schoolhouse system and who care almost the success of all students and their teachers.
"The August 4th ballot is going to decide the future of Williamson County public schools," McGraw said. "It's that dramatic. Either our customs shows up to use their vox and their vote to elect public school advocates who aren't interested in partisan politics, or confusing extremists win the seats. We'll merely have ourselves — equally a community who supposedly greatly values our school organisation and our teachers — to blame if the former happens."
Lead art: A newly erected statue of a soldier in Franklin, Tennessee'due south town square, honoring the 180,000 Black people who joined the Matrimony Ground forces. (Jo Napolitano)
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Source: https://www.the74million.org/article/after-losing-high-profile-book-battle-conservative-moms-for-liberty-turns-to-critical-tennessee-school-board-race/
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