Across the state, parents, property owners and taxpayers delivered an important message to progressive school administrators and non-responsive school boards with the only voice they have left -- their pocketbook. Results are still preliminary but 9 of 12 school district tax-bonds are positioned to fail. That's a huge 75 percent fail rate.

Beyond school lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, discussions with parents and taxpayers revealed several reasons for the negative votes. Many parents of school children cited concerns about the relentless integration of progressive ideology and disregard for parental rights, inputs, consultation, notification or requests for any modulation or compromise. It remains to be seen if the state-level establishment under the leadership of Colt Gill will take notice.

Critical Race Theory was often cited, but Social Emotional Learning was mentioned as another progressive fad now being forced on children through public schools. In SEL ideology, the State, via government school systems, usurps parental and familial roles to teach children what “they” consider appropriate value systems, judgement, emotional skills, motivation and other subjective psychological factors determined to be needed. The state school system both defines the problem and delivers ongoing non-solutions -- with billions of taxpayer dollars and no end-point.

District	Amount	Pass?	County
North Bend 13	$22,695,000	No	Coos
Crook County	$66,000,000	No	Crook
South Umpqua 19	$20,900,000	No	Douglas
Roseburg Public Schools	$154,000,000	No	Douglas
Days Creek 15	$4,000,000	No	Douglas
Lebanon Community Schools	$20,000,000	No	Linn
Gervais 1	$31,000,000	No	Marion
Dallas 2	$28,000,000	Yes	Polk
Beaverton 48J	$723,000,000	Yes	Washington
Morrow 1	$138,000,000	No	Morrow
La Grande 1	$4,845,000	Yes	Union
Amity 4J	$29,400,000	No	Yamhill/Polk

Parents will soon begin to hear, “There is a mental health crisis in our children.” with a host of appropriate scary statistics. Of course, this will involve hiring lots of social workers, psychologists, councilors, invasive family, personal and sex questionnaires and lots more of your tax-payer dollars.

Parents also ask and wondered why public schools are so sex-obsessed and why they have become the self-appointed enablers for non-traditional sex preferences and lifestyles – to the point of coaching in some cases. They also do not see a need for Comprehensive Sex Education beginning in kindergarten with continued grooming yearly through high school. Florida just passed measures to prevent this but Oregon has been the national petri dish for progressive inculcation using public schools for years and installed this 13 years ago.

People showed up at school board meetings, town-halls and lit-up social media in rural Lebanon to express concern about placing a no-notice school-based health clinic in the high-school. A free county-run public-health clinic is less than 500 yards from the school. These parents and taxpayers do not want to indoctrinate children and fund a socialized medicine/birth control clinic in their school. The progressive superintendent suggested they were going to put it in anyway and the public could not stop it. This is the same superintendent who wanted $10 million to repair a $1 million pool as part of the $20 million bond proposal. The Lebanon school superintendent is retirement eligible but up for a contract renewal Thursday night. Many parents feel he is out-of-touch and are praying for a better fit for their traditional values community – the superintendent lives in Salem. They are hoping their school board will, maybe just once, stand-up for their traditional values.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

The issue of superintendent hiring and firing is now critically important. In Newberg, Albany, and other school districts, school boards dismissed superintendents who did not comport with community values, undermined school board policies and continually placed progressive ideology above academic instruction. This was an essential last-ditch mechanism for school boards to dismiss non-responsive superintendents and preserve academic and community values.

Oregon’s progressive legislature immediately responded in the February special session driving through the progressive party-line SB 1521 -- the brain child of Senator Michael Dembrow (D-Portland), which was quickly signed into law by outgoing Governor Kate Brown. This bill made it impossible to fire a superintendent for cause – despite what the hiring contract may say. Technically, you can fire the superintendent but it will not take effect until 12 months after the termination date. Many suggest this is what tyranny looks like – thwart the voice of parents, the people and neuter school boards to keep progressive superintendents and the Department of Education ideological agendas moving forward using public schools as the vehicle. Citizens in districts voting down bond measures now have power to engage in their school district. Citizens committees can be developed to oversee and vet every requested or desired project. Demand full project planning documents to evaluate and protect taxpayers on tax bond financing and ensure project sensibilities.

School boards should band together and vote to sequester funds from the school budget to hire their own researchers, lawyers, communication experts and others to support their due diligence on critical matters and not be dependent on what they are provided by Superintendents and state agencies two days before they are supposed to vote on it. Put off any vote until the subject matter review is completed to their satisfaction.

Citizens are slowing having their rights eroded and finances drained by the ever-encroaching, authoritarian leviathan that is government. Whether it is public schools, city council or any of the other 15-20 local taxing agencies, enough will never be enough, and the only power individual citizens have to limit government and get it to respond is the power of NO. On Tuesday, voters for most school tax-bonds cut through the vague proposals, threats and disinformation and used their power of NO. Hopefully, schools will listen and respond – we’ll see.


--Clarke Vesper

Post Date: 2022-05-20 06:14:56

Last Update: 2022-05-19 20:00:02