73 Comments

Thank you for shining a light on the situation. I am definitely not through advocating for our marginalized students... I will have much more levity as a member of the public to effect positive change for our marginalized students. You'll hear more in the coming times. :-)

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

The things you were put through are inexcusable, Dr. Lee.

Best of luck to you going forward.

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En espérant qu'ils n'utilisent pas votre démission contre vous pour vous faire taire. Je vous souhaite de trouver des alliés pour porter la voix des minorités.

Sorry for the French I have a headache and have trouble translating anything more complicated than my previous comment.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023

Translation:

"Hopefully they don't use your resignation against you to shut you up. I hope you find allies to carry the voice of minorities"

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This was just posted to my local Facebook group.

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.daneundivided.com%2Fpost%2Fgrooming-kids-at-the-waunakee-public-library%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR34F2mvHoSMQfW8M6caNep7Fmhhlhe8mSkfuVtg5i_XcinrxtJ0eWXrRKc&h=AT2ozyCvkB9O4MeV8KhjD-yQaemgFlWVnJAo3JpMf77iKCfrDmBQxpM__oyWCDZZ8_MWKx5MIZQTNjvnaud6cNkRJaRRCwTYnzajqKFbFHd6kW8OMwhSKYXXCw1r7h0&s=1

I reported it to moderators and the moderator pmed me to tell me to contact him and not to report things. He then asked me what rules I thought the post violated. Then he argued with me that I should put my thoughts in the comments. Which I specifically said that it is not an effective way to debate this issue. But also I didn’t want to end up a target. I told him this sort of rhetoric has caused violence against librarians and defunding and eventual closure of public libraries in other places. He just wanted to “protect free speech” and kept telling me I should warn others about this. I told him it was his job as moderator to do the warnings and not give libel and violent rhetoric a platform. He tried thanking me for my service and I told him that if he wanted to thank me to be better.

At any rate, this is what I’m living. Plus another big snowstorm has hit the area.

I do not blame her for stepping down, though it is a travesty. No one wants to be the target of these villains.

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And of course the comments are turned off on that piece of crap, homophobic screed.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

I noticed that as well. Was it just me, or did anyone else hear the sound of a clucking chicken?

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Yes, it's always "free speech" to allow violent rhetoric. And it's not libel unless it's directed at a specific person, so you just want to censor anyone you don't agree with. You're just being too sensitive. "It's only words. And if you "silence" them, then someone will "silence" you."

The free speech absolutists don't understand what hate speech is, and dogmatically stick their fingers in their ears when anyone tries to explain it to them. They continue to assert that hate-speech is just speech you don't like.

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Freezepeach absolutists consistently fail to understand the Tolerance Paradox. Whether that's because they're just that shit-stupid, or because they don't imagine they'll ever find themselves on the leopards' face-munching menu, I couldn't begin to guess.

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The mod even said that if I needed a safe space I could leave the group. I said my town should be a safe space for all people that I shouldn’t tolerate fascists. Anyway he’s being an idiot and thinks it’s “fair play”.

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See, he does his work, he put you, an uppity woman, to her place 🙄

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Hmm. Maybe we should start our own group, Val. We can't be the only ones, and bingo's more fun with more players.

(In all seriousness, I'm sorry this mod's been chasing parked cars. Have a hug from me.)

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The funny thing is the fascists got upset that this group was too left wing and created their own mirror group for the town. So there is an even further right wing group out there. Shudder.

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Wrong person, I don't even have a fb account 😁

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They always bring up Jewish Lawyers and the KKK, as though the fact those lawyers were willing to work against their own best interests for the principle is somehow an argument that a free speech standard that allows violent rhetoric against people for existing is somehow the only correct standard for a free society, despite the evidence to the contrary.

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So he thinks the job of a moderator is not to moderate anything, because "free speech." I'd love to hear what he thinks a moderator's job actually is.. If it is to do nothing, why did he see any point to becoming a moderator at all?

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He certainly made it clear I did the right thing by reporting it through Facebook rather than reaching out to him directly.

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"I am hopeful that my resignation will allow the Board Majority to stop focusing on the bogeyman they have made of me..."

Their most likely reaction will be to cheer her departure and then work 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵 the inclusion and diversity she sought to protect.

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She has a right to take care of herself, but things just got worse for marginalized students. They will no longer have someone who listens to them, even if she was outvoted.

And it's unlikely the voters will improve things. We live in a country dominated by self-centered people who don't pay any attention to policy makers until said policy makers begin to negatively impact their own lives.

I've considered running for local school board seats, but I already have a job, I have no children nor in any training in education, and I lack tact, which is practically necessary for politics.

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Many teachers have to provide their own tacts.... and pencils, paper, chalk, staples, paperclips, etc...... : )

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Right wingers or spoiled christians who throw tantrums at school board meeting don't have tact either.

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So, the bad guys won.

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“The good end happily, the bad end unhappily -- that is what 'fiction' means.” ― Oscar Wilde

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Sometimes it's easier to fight from.the outside than to effect change from the inside. Hopefully that's the situation here.

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This situation makes it all the more imperative that "West Virginia State Board of Education, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)" be required knowledge in all public high schools.

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But that's exactly what these school board members don't want. That would mean kids would know they have the right to be different from their peers, teachers, and parents and that's a big No-No. Just like church, you have to be seen going through the motions. No one cares if you're sincere, just so you visibly conform.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

Loyalty oaths have no place in a constitutional republic.

Just look at what happened to Japanese-Americans during WW2. A loyalty oath (not to mention a hideously wrong executive order) got them shoved into internment camps.

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"If you hate America, then leave." I'm beginning to think Loki was right, people don't really want freedom. It's too much work.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

George Takei, who was in internment camps with his family, was outraged that the country who had imprisoned them unconstitutionally was demanding loyalty to it.

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I should also add that neither German-Americans nor Italian-Americans were interred in camps. Just Japanese-Americans.

So there's a whole racist aspect of these camps for those who were not of European descent.

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Not only imprisoned them, but stole much of their property which they never got back after the war. I do believe there's been some risible compensation recently though.

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If only someone had a well researched and complete podcast about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieCOeqHNPFY&list=PL_SDslBgZTjxSA2haMcQGr2DEa-4gXyiR

Hemant in every school!

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Unfortunately, to make the change, now, it seems the lawyers and school board tempers (and tirades) will be involved, with $$$$ lost to legal bills that could have gone to what the TEACHERS know is needed.

Perhaps the STATE needs to step up and protect the students from meaningless, for forma loyalty oaths AND from wasted funding to feed The Legal System instead of the hungry pupils?

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

OT - This is what DeNazi doesn't want taught in FL, a column by a guy who was born and raised in St. Petersburg

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐑𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐭

https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-unmaking-of-a-racist/

From a similar column he wrote exclusively for the TBT:

https://tinyurl.com/nezyxy5p

Let me offer, as an antidote to this commitment to willful historical ignorance, a single document, one that I used in the opening class of my courses on the History of the Old South and the Civil War and the Era of Reconstruction. It is a single-page manuscript — a broadside — an original antebellum document from the Chapin Library, the rare book and manuscript collection at Williams. It’s printed at the top of this essay. When I handed it out to my students, I did not tell them what it was, but they soon grasped what they were holding in their hands. It is a price list of human beings, offered for sale in August 1860 by a Richmond, Virginia, slave-trading firm.

I don’t think this document needs much explanation. It represents the absolute, abominable essence of the South’s “peculiar institution”: the chattel principle, human beings as property, men, women and children (the latter priced by height) being offered for sale like livestock.

One item in this price list invariably stood out to my students, the first handwritten line in the “market report” added by the slave traders’ clerk at the bottom:

“Good Young Woman & first child $1,300 to $1,450.″

Since under slave law the child took the condition of the mother no matter who the father was, the buyer was purchasing not only this young mother and her firstborn but was also acquiring the promise of her already-demonstrated fertility. Each baby born to her in the future would constitute, at the moment of his or her birth, an addition to the wealth of the master or mistress (to give some idea of what this “wealth” represented, consider this fact: The multiplier to get those 1860 dollars into 2023 dollars is 37).

https://tinyurl.com/nezyxy5p

https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2023/02/09/i-was-born-raised-st-pete-i-grew-up-racist-column/

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Of course not. The Civil War was fought over state's rights and he's a hero still fighting the good fight against the godless federal government run by socialists and groomers.

Lying Motherfucker.

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States' rights is a concept that really baffles me. In the 18th century, yes, the states were just exactly that--independent little nations, each with a measure of sovereignty. But that was then, this is now. The concept of states as sovereign units has long since outlived any possible usefulness except in the very narrow sense that they are useful as administrative units. The idea that an American citizen can have full rights and legal equality in one part of the country but not another is perfectly loony.

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And yet this remains possibly the only country on the face of the Earth where one may enjoy the incredible sensation of switching one's bodily autonomy on and off just by hopping back and forth over a line- without any need for a passport!

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Beat me to it as I was typing it.

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Notice those in one state who do not want abortion/pro-choice want to ban abortion/pro-choice in another state? That they want to impose their draconian laws concerning women on other states?

Gee, what happened to states rights, pro-forced birthers?

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Tsk, tsk, tsk. How dare you criticize them for blatantly contradicting themselves, as if they were fascist lunatics or something.

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I'm ashamed.

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They always forget the 9th and that little phrase at the end of the 10th, "or to the people"

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Don't know if anyone's heard yet, but 19-year-old white supremacist Payton Gendron, whose Internet-fueled racist rampage killed 10 people in Buffalo, got life without parole.

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Given his history of Confederacy apologia, I suspect that Deathsentence 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯'𝘵 actually mind having that document, or one very like it, taught to schoolchildren... as part of the 𝘏𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘌𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘴 curriculum. (/s...?)

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And he could bring in Marjorie T. Greene to conduct a graduate seminar on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

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Terrible school led by terrible people.

Overall, 33.32% of students do not meet ELA standards and 45.81% do not meet Math standards.

https://caaspp-elpac.ets.org/caaspp/DashViewReportSB?DashViewReportSB?ps=true&lstTestYear=2022&lstTestType=B&lstGroup=1&lstSubGroup=1&lstGrade=13&lstSchoolType=A&lstCounty=34&lstDistrict=73973-000&lstSchool=0000000

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And half the population believes that the bible is "the word of god' and that evolution is "just a theory." Schools in this country just aren't doing their jobs. And the simple, unavoidable fact is that as a nation we just don't take education very seriously.

Consider: Why do we regard national defense as too important a matter to be left to a ragtag bunch of local "militias"? Why is fiscal policy, even things as simple as minting currency, too important to be left to states, cities or private banks? Yet we have virtually no enforceable national education standards, Because of that preposterous shibboleth "local control of education,' we have hundreds of school boards kowtowing to local lunatics, filling students' heads with crackpot superstitions and pseudo-scientific "theories," and as a result dragging the entire nation down. Lewis Carroll was more of a "founding father" to modern America than Jefferson or Madison.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

Those scores are above CA averages, though?

See for yourselves:

https://www.publicschoolreview.com/california/center-joint-unified-school-district/607900-school-district

Shows compared to other CA districts.

I'd say, though, that those scores represent areas for improvement for the School Board Leaders?

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I dare say we're all familiar with the saying “ALL that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing," usually attributed to Edmund Burke. Most of the time, this saying is seen as a call to action, an admonition to get up and do something rather than sit around and hope someone else fixes the problem.

That's all well and good, but I've often wondered what it says about humanity that situations like this happen all too often. When that good person has been forced into inaction through whatever means, or (not the case here) possibly just doesn't know what to do at all. In this case, I have to wonder if the local community has some responsibility here, in view of the persons they've elected to the school board. I will say this reminds me of the importance of local elections; all too often these very local elections just don't receive the same media attention and voter turnout.

In any event, thank you, Dr. Lee, for trying. I know this decision must have been very difficult to make, but I think you've led the horse to the proverbial water. It's up to him to drink now.

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I see no problem with requiring board members to live in the district.

Obama's birth certificate was about racism. Residency requirements are about accountability and having skin in the game.

Other than that, sounds like that district has serious issues...good luck dealing with the Trumpublicans.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

OT - Two days with two 😲

𝐖𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐕𝐢𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐚 𝐥𝐚𝐰𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 "𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧" 𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦𝐬

https://friendlyatheist.substack.com/p/west-virginia-lawmakers-file-bill

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

Considering the history of ID in the public schools and the dead-horse comments it will generate, it's should really only count as MAYBE 1 1/4 posts for both of them.

But, thanks for the heads up.

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I know it's a bit early for an OT (and I don't usually open with an OT), but Raquel Welch ("One Million Years B.C.", Fantastic Voyage" and so many more) has died at 82.

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She is a real standout in the overall brilliant cast of The Last of Sheila. Like so many talented people, she was underrated and rarely given a role worthy of her talent.

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She also shone onstage in Woman of the Year and Victor/Victoria.

She was also nominated for an Emmy for the TV-movie Right to Die.

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"My resignation is solely to protect my personal health, safety, and well being from personal abuse from toxic individuals and the psychodramas they perform ..."

She could be talking about any church board I have ever dealt with. This echoes my sentiment when I finally retired from the clergy racket.

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founding
Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

Ugh. My beloved California, usually known for being liberal and progressive, is subject to strange space-time anomalies. Its Central Valley seems to be inexplicably adjacent to Mississippi, Arkansas, and Pakistan, and some areas are firmly lodged in 1950, 1850, or 1450.

Half a century ago, I met my wonderful wife there, and we escaped to Los Angeles.

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During the stateside portion of my time in the Air Force, I was stationed in the San Joaquin Valley (Castle Air Force Base in Atwater, between Merced and Modesto).

I swear I'd somehow traveled back in time.

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founding

When you are a newish long-haul truck driver, one who has visited many foreign countries while serving in the Navy, and your first stop the first time you ever enter California, is Barstow....you will undoubtedly be thinking WTF? I thought California was modern.

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Honestly, that is typical around any military base. It’s harder to tell when you’re stationed in the south, as the entire region trends a century or two behind, but the closer you get to post, the further back in time folks tend to be.

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"the closer you get to post, the further back in time folks tend to be."

Our base is one of the strategic missile command centers. Some of the technology still runs on floppy disks. It is also the site of a Civil War era base, so we go waaaaay back.

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Which century ?

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

Well, prolly post-Dec 17, 1903, unless he was in the Women's Auxiliary Balloon Corps. after he claimed his ears went 'pop'?

https://m.facebook.com/blackadderquotes/posts/1096802703992085:0?locale=sw_KE

"WOOOF!!"

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Well the object of the exercise was probably to get rid of her so they succeeded. And now they can revert to their monocultural safe space and not have to face the real world.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

From the link I posted for claims of 'inferior' school scores, https://www.publicschoolreview.com/about-us , this school district does not seem to be that much a mono-culture.

Well, unless you consider Christian to be a possible mono-culture, but religion is not covered in these demographics.

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I wouldn't be surprised if the school board is pretty much a monoculture – but yes I do tend to regard excessive Christianity as one.😇

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

Sorry, that's "... Tabia Lee, Ed.D ...".

That is actually more informative about her 'dog in this fight' if you bother to research who she is and what her area of expertise is.

I'm just surprised that with an electoral razor's-edge win she didn't realize in the actual campaign up to that victory how partisan her entire term would be. It's is almost like she should have realized it would take an entire term, to begin with, to build working relationships and the work some small wins to build on in a subsequent term. You know, make yourself an acknowledged LOCAL expert in an area and leverage that gain in presence and expertise to effect other areas? Maybe work with a coalition, or at least without braid-dead opposition to anything you propose or stand for?

I read the resignation letter, and now there will be nobody to report on Closed sessions or air on-going malfeasance at the next election.

NOW WHAT ..., about the voters who elected her to represent their views?

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They'll have to find someone a little more stubborn. with superhuman emotional strength.

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Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023

Sounds like they need a politician with the right views, but who understands the entire electorate in the area?

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