IN: Barring Teachers From School Boards

On the national level, it really has become death by a thousand tiny cuts for the teaching profession. This proposed amendment in Indiana is by no means the most egregious, but it is just an unnecessary swipe at teachers and school employees.

HB 1130 is mostly about making sure that school boards get a full hammering from the public-- each public member in attendance must be given at least three minutes to speak, while adding restrictions for non-physical meetings--but Senator Jeff Raatz has decided to add another wrinkle.

A section of Indiana law says that an employee of a school district cannot serve on the school board for that district, which is a sensible and common rule. Raatz proposes to add just a few words to that

Where the law now ends with "may not be a member of the governing board of the school corporation," Raatz proposes to add the words "or any other school corporation."

So no teacher (or any other school employee) could serve on any school board anywhere in the state. The reasoning behind this is... well, I don't know. School district employees might know too much about how school districts work? The voters can't be trusted to make the right choice? Teacher board members will be too sympathetic to teachers and their damned unions? Or just one more legislative opportunity to give public schools and the people who work there a big slap in the face.

ICYMI: Goodbye, Rose Edition (2/26)

 My wife's grandmother passed away last week, a ripe and well-aged 90 years old. She was a feisty old broad in the best sense of the word. Salty, sassy and a constant reminder to live your damn life. Her memory will be a blessing.

And now for this week's reading.

Jargon may have turned parents against social and emotional learning

Javeria Salman at Hechinger with a theory about why there's such a disconnect between what people want and the SEL that delivers it.

Who is writing the model bills against CRT?

Jan Resseger traces the roots of the many, many nearly identical gag bills being floated coast to coast

Choosing to end Public Education

Thomas Ultican takes a look inside the new anthology of essays about public education

I Got a Voucher Only to Find No Private School Wanted My Son

If you have not yet checked out the website Public Voices for Public Schools, here's a good post to start with, reminding us that school choice is too often school's choice.

Except nothing breaks itself

When your body is telling you you're carrying too much stress, listen. From Eduhonesty.

Freedom's Just Another Word

Nancy Flanagan looks at how poor "freedom" has been put through the mill.

What’s It Like to Be the Target of A Book Banning Effort? School Librarian Martha Hickson Tells Her Story.

I was a little late coming across this gem, but here's a tale from the front lines of the current book banning debates.

Alabama educators oppose bill that would ban "divisive" concepts from classroom

The Alabama version of this stuff, advertised as a "compromise"

Supreme Court case could open door to religious charter schools

We've looked at this before, but it deserves to be revisited regularly. Matt Barnum, the Chalkbeat reporter we most appreciate here at the Institute, takes a look at what's at stake and what some of the outcomes could be. 

Parenting while teaching: How the classroom stress is coming home with educators

Megan Megansky reporting in Harrsiburg, PA, covers one of the less-covered aspects of the pandemess--teachers who are also parents. Several great quotes, but I'll give you this one

“We really have to get to a point where people in charge stop telling us to take care of ourselves and instead take some of this off of our plates," middle school band director Shanna Danielson said.

Recalls Rebuffed

Sarah Darer Littman with the story of how to fight an attack on board members.

Thank you sir, may I have another?

TC Weber has a good look at the various shenanigans involved in Tennessee Governor Lee's plan to change up how schools are funded (or not).

More students attend Colorado charter schools, but access still isn't equal.

One more story (this time from Erica Meltzer at Chalkbeat) to remind us that the big secret for charter success remains carefully curating your student body. 

Every once in a while I write something and feel as if I've nailed an important point, and then nobody much looks at it. That happened this week, when I pointed out the evidence that some choicers really aren't choicers at all, and they're saying the quiet part pretty loudly these days. Here's the piece.

Tax Credit Scholarships and Education Savings Accounts: A Primer

Tax credit scholarships and education savings accounts often travel together and end up as two sides of the same policy. It's easy to get them kind of confused (here at the Institute we might have suffered from that confusion ourselves on occasion). But here's a quick, simple explainer to help you figure out what particular policy is being pushed in your state.

Education Savings Accounts

ESAs are school vouchers on steroids; call them super-vouchers or neo-vouchers. Where a school voucher is basically a ticket good for admission (or partial admission) to the school of your choice (if they'll accept you), an ESA can be spent on a wide variety of educational services. 

Each state with ESAs has a list of Things You Can Spend The Money On, usually including tuition, hardware and software, books, tests, even transportation. Rather than a ticket to a school, an ESA is a debit card loaded with money that can be spent on educational services. The ESA is typically managed by some third party company responsible for accepting parent applications and dispersing the money.

That third-party company is an important feature, because it means the government is not directly handing parents money to spend on things like, say, private religious schooling. It's a piece of financial juggling familiar to every underage teen who gave an older sibling money to buy them some beer.

The money that funds the ESA most typically comes from the state, which hands over the money that they would have given to the student's home public school. 

But an ESA can also be funded through other sources.

Tax Credit Scholarships

If ESAs are about giving parents choices, TCSs are about giving wealthy taxpayers a chance to duck taxes and fund their favorite private school. TCS typically have a cap, because every dollar given into this program is a tax dollar (or part of a tax dollar, depending on how much credit is given) that the state doesn't get to collect. Corporations or wealthy fund the program instead of paying taxes, so the state will put a limit on just how much tax liability they will allow contributors to duck.

The tax credit money is given to a third party company, which once again gives the state deniability--they didn't funnel the tax dollars to private religious schools because they never actually had the tax dollars in their own government hands. 

Those Third Party Groups

You can see where ESAs and TCSs could meet--right there in the middle. Set up your TSC program to fund your ESA program, and the whole thing can take wings. 

But that's not what often happens. For ESAs, states seem to prefer just one or two large groups managing all the program money. But with TSCs, you may see a plethora of scholarship groups (Pennsylvania has over 200), many of which are attached to one particular school, or one particular "brand" (say, Catholic schools). With a TSC, contributors can often be pretty specific in offering "scholarships" to specific schools or types of schools. 

Cost to taxpayers

Both types of program take from the state's use of taxpayer money to support public education. An ESA typically redirects tax dollars intended for public schools into private hands. Fans of TCS like to argue that it doesn't take any state money, but it blows a hole in state revenue by letting corporations or wealthy individuals pay into the program instead of the state treasury. If the TSC program has a $50 million cap, that represents $50 million in tax dollars that the state will not get, and that has to be made up somehow, either through tax increases or service cuts.

Accountability

Accountability remains an issue for both programs. Some ESA programs don't even require annual audits. Arizona notably found that $700,000 in ESA money had been spent on beauty supplies and clothing. Some have mechanisms for investigating fraud--but only if somebody reports it. Meanwhile, TSC programs like Pennsylvania's EITC program may have no accountability or oversight at all. Where did the money go? What was it spent on? Were the education flavored businesses required to follow any particular rules? You may never know the answers to any of these questions (okay, the answer to the third one is probably "no").

That's the basic basics. Both programs can come under a variety of different names, often trying to work in "freedom" and "scholarship," because "voucher" and "tax dodge" are not very popular with the general public. 

PA: District Settles BLM Lawsuit For 45K

Here's a story from Pennsylvania showing that you don't even need to have a state gag law to cause expense and headaches for a school district. It also has plenty to say about what is motivating some of the protestors.

Maureen and Christopher Brophy filed a lawsuit in June of 2021 on behalf of their son and daughter, two students in the East Penn School District (Emmaus, Lehigh Valley). This lawsuit is epic-- they sued the district and five district employees (admins and teachers) in both individual and official capacities. The lawsuit charged "severe and pervasive harassment" along with violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, violations of Constitutional rights under the 1st and 14th Amendments, plus violations of the Rehabilitation Act of 1974 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

The reasoning for the Title VI violation was that federal courts have said that it covers religious discrimination when the harassment is based on "shared ancestry or ethnic characteristic" rather than religious practices. You'll want to remember that one. 

The "statement of facts" portion of the complaint takes up almost 100 paragraphs, but we'll try to catch the highlights.

The trouble started in September of 2020 when the plaintiffs (the son and daughter) were introduced to the book White Fragility in courses they were taking. Mrs. Brophy emailed the principal of an elementary school (it's not clear why, because the son and daughter were 15 and 16 at the time) and the Humanities Supervisor to explain her "non-acceptance" of the book, as well as the discussion of white privilege and Black Lives Matter. She also wanted to complain about Facebook posts from a teacher at the elementary school that she viewed as "anti-Christian, anti-Conservative, and therefore, offensive, derogatory and discriminating against Plaintiff's religious beliefs."

The Humanities Director responded in four days, saying the objected-to items were not part of the school's core curriculum. She didn't address the Facebook posts. Mrs. Brophy fired back more complaints about the teacher's posts, with attachments. The superintendent replied that teachers have First Amendment rights and she wasn't going to do anything about the posts. 

Mrs. Brophy gave that issue one more try, then moved on to complaints about a video of police brutality and the Breonna Taylor case shown in an art class. Also, more complaints about systemic racism, white privilege, Black Lives Matter, and other unacceptable topics. And now they offered an explanation:

Plaintiff Parents explained that these topics are anti-Christian and therefore, discriminate directly against their religion.

How, you may ask, are white privilege and Black Lives Matter anti-Christian? The complaint goes on to explain:

Christians and Catholics are a majority white religion, self-identifying white Catholics comprising 60% of the followers. This religion is heavily tied to Italy, whose population is 80% Catholic and home to the Vatican.

So white privilege and Black Lives Matter and all the rest are anti-Christian, because Christians are white.

And if you're think "That can't be right," well, it isn't. According to PEW, roughly 50% of the world's Christian population is located in South America and Africa. They're right about the 6 in 10 Catholics being white--if they talk about the US. Globally, not so much. Maybe the Brophy's are just that uninformedly racist as to imagine that Christianity is a white religion. Or maybe their lawyers told them that this argument would let them throw a Title IV violation in there. 

Also, in case you're wondering, East Penn's student body is about 80% white. 

By mid-October, the Brophys had opted their children out of all these topics that they found "anti-Christian and anti-Conservative." At this point, they allege that the school started discriminating against the two students, "withholding crucial educational benefits on account of their disabilities." Both children had IEPs, with the son having health issues including hypersomnolence (excessive daytime sleepiness), Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Amplified Musculoskeletal Pain Syndrome. His IEP included an exemption from masking.

Now, that fall East Penn was distance learning, but the son needed reduced screen time because of his vision impairment, so the school was supposed to print out some of his work to do. Plaintiff Parents allege the school did not do so, nor did they provide a "reasonable alternative," and the Brophys claim it was because of "religious discrimination." This is one of several points where I feel we're missing some information. We know the Brophys had email--did they not have a printer? 

The IEP also called for home tutoring, but there was no tutor available for AP Physics. And the AP teacher, also named in the lawsuit, would not do instruction with an unmasked student. Parents sent a letter to the school saying it's in his IEP, and if she "is not comfortable with that, then she should not be teaching any students in person whatsoever."

So by the end of October, Mrs. Brophy is filing an Educator Misconduct complaint with the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Office for Civil Rights. Let me recap--because the teacher in the fall of 2020 would not work one on one with an unmasked student, Mom turned that teacher in to the state. 

Reading the complaint, one gets the impression that these parents are not trying very hard to build a partnership with the school. 

The school offered some alternatives for the AP Physics--take it next year or take a college-level course. Mrs. Brophy rejected those. The school offered a zoom class with the AP Physics teacher and another non-physics teacher in the room with the son. Also not okay. Mrs. Brophy told the district to stick the teacher in a big room with some filtration and an N95 mask. 

By January of 2021, the whole mess had moved to Facilitated Resolution Between the Parties. First meeting set for February 3. After receiving a document from the district that they didn't agree with, the parents chose not to attend. After the son was absent five days, the school sent a letter, noting that such a series of unexcused absences is a summary offense. "Harassment," say the parents.

In February, the school district (which has not always covered itself with glory in this tale) finally denied the Brophy's request for exemption from all race stuff. At the same time, the district told the Brophy's that they were banned from communicating with their children's teachers. The Brophy's replied to reiterate that they "are simply seeking religious exemption from the topics that are anti-Christian and anti-Conservative." Is Conservatism a religion?

Well, you get the gist. I go through all this detail so that we can get a feel for how this whole business just kept dragging on, and there is still more, but I'll skim. Son misses homework assignments and it's hurting his grades. More discrimination, and if you'd just let us talk to his teachers, we'd be on top of this, say the parents. It's all just retaliation for expressing the religious and disability discrimination. More attendance issues as the son "would choose to attend school from home on certain days he was scheduled to be in person." New IEP meeting scheduled in April but parents don't like that so many people at the IEP and "they would be more comfortable" if just the special ed director attended (as experienced IEP parents, surely they know that PA IEP meetings require, by law, a full team). 

There are plenty of unknowns here--for instance, there doesn't seem enough here to explain a ban on communicating with school staff, and one suspects that perhaps the Brophys haven't reported the full extent of their communications with the school. And as always, the public school district cannot breach confidentiality to defend itself. Also, for what it's worth, there's a perfectly fine Lehigh Valley Catholic high school nearby in Allentown.

The suit was taken on by Derek Smith Law Group, a big legal firm that specializes in discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits; their lawyer is Catherine W. Smith, who used to be a sex crimes prosecutor in Philly. The Brophys demanded a jury trial. The district's lawyer doubted the success of the suit, saying “Anybody can file a lawsuit by paying the filing fee. Being successful is something completely different.”.

Well, I guess that depends on how one defines success. The Brophys sued for unspecified damages. What they got, earlier this month, was a settlement of $45,000. The district was represented by its insurance company, and this statement was read at the board meeting:

There was no admission of liability on the part of the school district or its employees and there was no finding of liability on the part of the school district or its employees. The insurance carrier agreed to make the payment to avoid any additional expenses and the uncertainty of litigation.

So it turns out that actual gag laws aren't needed to harass a school district--just some white fragility, religious paranoia, and a good law firm. We live in interesting times.

Classroom Proposals (Don't Be Gay)

Just last week there was another one. You know--one of those heartwarming stories about somebody proposing marriage to a teacher in her classroom. This time it was in Dover, New York. A third grade teacher's boyfriend not only proposed in the classroom, but enlisted the students to help out by holding the proposal signage. 

These crop up regularly; sometimes there's touching video and the whole school is in on it. And then there are really good ones where both halves of the couple are teachers (this one made it all the way to US magazine and ABC News). And here's one that involved a video, a kindergarten class, and a whole school assembly:

I have always had thoughts about these things. For one, a public proposal is only for people who are already 100% certain of the answer. For another, as someone on Marriage #2, I wonder about the weird factor for young students who remember being part of the proposal for a marriage that later crashed and burned. 

But mostly I think this can be part of the general category of Living Your Teacher Life In Public. I think it's generally useful for students to see adults-other-than-their-parents navigating life stuff. As with everything in education, there's the matter of balance; if every Monday class period starts with an account of the weekend's dating, or your every rough day at home turns into a rough day for your students, that's too much. But family photos on the desk, brief mentions of Cool Things That Happened (like the baby walked yesterday)--things that are the classroom equivalent of having students discover that you actually buy groceries at the store--these not only help you relate to students human to human, but also help them see more examples of how normal adult humans cope with life. Put another way, the first step of a relationship is to show up, and you can't show up if your own life is a deep secret. I didn't propose in front of my students, but I told them I was engaged, because if you have any kind of real human relationship with other humans, even a professional relationship, then you share major events that require them to shift their picture of normal you.

(There is a whole other chapter that goes with teaching in a small town, where people will already Know Things and fill in the blanks, so it's in your own best interests to provide accurate information yourself. That also saves you moments like the time I noted a tv actress was attractive and a student said, "Ha ha--what would Mrs. Greene say about that" and another student said, "He's divorced, you dummy.")

These are all the thoughts I used to have when I came across one of these stories. Now I have other thoughts.

Thoughts like, if this we a same-gender couple, in some states the teacher would lose their job and be subject to being sued by parents. If bills like the one proposed in Tennessee were passed, a same-gender couple that was legally married and legally had a child could not even put a family picture on their desk for fear of violating the ban of any materials that “promote, normalize, support, or address lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender issues or lifestyles." 

Don't Say Gay laws like those being supported in Kansas and Florida and Tennessee and South Carolina and heaven knows where else since the last time I looked-- these are, for teachers, Don't Be Gay laws. To simply be in the room while being both LGBTQ and normal would qualify as "normalizing" and therefore illegal behavior.

It's important to remember that these kinds of laws are not about having some sort of vague philosophical impact-- they are about requiring LGBTQ teachers and students to keep their lives in a sealed box, requiring them to keep part of themselves hidden and to keep unexpressed parts of the lives that we straights get to blurt out anytime we feel like it. Simple stuff like referring to a partner by a pronoun would have the potential to disrupt your entire career. 

These are dumb, dehumanizing laws that would threaten the lives of students and teachers, and while it's not the worst thing about them, they would also throw a serious obstacle in the way of teachers being able to do their jobs. 

The next time you see a touching story about a teacher classroom marriage proposal, or even just notice a nice family picture on a teacher's desk, ask yourself if you think that should be illegal for certain people. 

Charters Can't Escape Gag Laws

One of the big selling points of charter schools is supposed to be that they can escape and avoid all sorts of bureaucratic meddling and red tape that plague public schools. But it turns out that some conservatives are perfectly happy to extend red tape to charter schools if it's their preferred red tape.

Essence Preparatory was all set to launch in San Antonio, a school with a mission for high quality and culturally sensitive teaching. The school's founder, Akeem Brown, has been a busy guy in local government and community organizations. He mentions starting out as a teacher, though he has no education degree. But further down the line, he became a BES fellow, a group that has a twenty-year history of trying to grow charter school leaders (BES stands for Building Excellent Schools). So Brown's charter pedigree is flawless, and yet, when he was just about to open the doors of Essence Prep (did I mention this is in Texas) he hit a snag. See if you can spot the potential problem. In an interview, Brown explained some of the thinking behind Essence:

Essence Prep competencies and teaching practices will be culturally responsive. Our pedagogy and tailored curriculum is purposely multicultural, and not white-centered.

Our school will connect students to the culture of literacy, which we believe is their birthright and civil right. We will engage students in critical reflection on their lives and racial identities in relation to power and justice. Research has consistently shown that positive racial identity matters for both Black boys and Black girls to be able to achieve academically and have the best shot at success in life.

This wasn't just noise. One parent who spoke to Brown said, "He spoke about empowering people through knowing their race and their lineage." In his application, Brown noted "The opposite of racist isn't 'not racist.' It is antiracist."

The Texas Education Agency approved the charter 11-3. But the next a chief of staff for Rep. Steve Toth reached out to TEA commissioner Mike Morath. Toth spearheaded the Texas gag law (HB 3979) forbidding critical race theory and dictating how racial issues would be taught in Texas, and he wrote an op-ed about Essence Prep. It was never published, but Chalkbeat got their hands on a copy which said in part

Unlike other charter schools who focus solely on academics, Essence Prep’s goal is to promote critical race theory and community activism. Promoting ‘antiracism’ in the classroom would mean teaching that the system of government in Texas, designed to protect economic freedom, is racist. Instead of stopping critical race theory, the Texas Education Agency furthered it.

Well, if you want to teach creationism or religion or bad, racist history in a charter school, that's one thing. But if you're going to bring up the dreaded CRT--well, then. Essence was informed that before they could open, certain "statements, authors, or written works in violation of HB 3979" would have to be scrubbed. The school's mission would also require "additional clarification of the plan for teaching students to be advocates for public policy change" to be clear that it wasn't going to violate the law." And the list continues to cover all the ways that they must clarify how they wouldn't break the gag law.

Brown told Chalkbeat that getting into compliance required three months of work taking away from "prepping and setting the stage" for the new school. That included removing specific references to Ibram X. Kendi and quotes from How To Be An Antiracist. 

So this particular tale shows how the gag laws can be used to ban a particular book or author. They also show that conservative dedication to school choice takes a back seat to enforcing gag laws intended to squelch unapproved discussions of race, and that when push comes to shove, some people's belief in free market dynamic doesn't go quite so far as they like to claim it does. You can have choice--just not that choice. 

John Oliver on Critical Race Theory

 I could not have done this any better myself. I don't really have anjything to add, but I don't want you to miss this.