Posted on 10/07/2021 9:51:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
Merrick Garland answered the National School Board Association's plea for broad federal intervention, which only stands to keep parents out of meetings while escalating political warfare.
From Day One, public schooling has been a political and social battleground. From conflicts over whose religion would be taught in Horace Mann’s “common schools,” to the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, to critical race theory, public schooling has forced Americans to fight one another. It is inevitable in a system that requires all, diverse people to fund politically controlled schools.
Last week, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) escalated the combat to the highest level, calling on the federal government to investigate, and quite possibly criminalize, dissent. On Monday U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland let them know they had been heard, announcing plans to create a strategy for the FBI to take on “harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school board members, teachers.”
A small handful of school board members may have some reason to worry about their safety. School board meetings have seen increasing acrimony ranging from public commenters refusing to stop speaking when their allotted time has ended, to protesters shouting at school board witnesses as they have tried to go home, to a school board member throwing a brick through another member’s window. No doubt, some have received letters that have clearly threatened their physical safety.
That said, the NSBA’s plea for broad federal intervention escalates the political warfare far beyond what is justifiable by the sometimes ugly actions we have seen. The association, in calling on President Biden to unleash seemingly every federal weapon outside of the military, greatly exceeds what is reasonable to deal with what has typically been heated rhetoric, less often unruliness, and almost never physical attacks. Indeed, the request threatens to treat outspoken parents and citizens as terrorists.
Think this is an overstatement? Consider the list of agencies NSBA’s letter called on to dive into district brouhahas:
NSBA specifically solicits the expertise and resources of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, and its National Threat Assessment Center regarding the level of risk to public school children, educators, board members, and facilities/campuses. We also request the assistance of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to intervene against threatening letters and cyberbullying attacks that have been transmitted to students, school board members, district administrators, and other educators.
Here are the laws they want brought to bear:
[T]he Gun-Free School Zones Act, the PATRIOT Act in regards to domestic terrorism, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the Violent Interference with Federally Protected Rights statute, the Conspiracy Against Rights statute, an Executive Order to enforce all applicable federal laws for the protection of students and public school district personnel, and any related measure.
Several of the examples of supposedly outrageous behavior the NSBA cites highlight how far from clearly threatening the behavior is that the group wants to quash.
.@HawleyMO: If this [Garland memo] isn't a deliberate attempt to chill parents from showing up at school board meetings… I don't know what is.
…You're using the FBI to intervene in school board meetings. pic.twitter.com/RT1f1mrwBL
— Abigail Marone (@abigailmarone) October 5, 2021
Cyberbullying – really, any non-physical bullying – can be very difficult to distinguish from legally protected speech. For instance, does repeatedly saying you are “coming after” a politician bully him or her, or engage in political accountability: a threat to remove them from office? NSBA’s request, and possibly the Justice Department’s upcoming strategy, would open such core, political speech to federal investigation and punishment.
Or consider the “School Board Watchlist” kept by conservative Turning Point USA. NSBA inveighs against it for “spreading misinformation,” and implies that the watchlist concept itself is a threat that needs federal surveillance. But the watchlist makes no apparent threat other than political, highlighting school boards that have taken actions TPUSA dislikes and listing board members. It also does not appear to include any information that is not already publicly available.
Another incident included in the recitation of danger was the response of audience members to school board testimony in favor of mask mandates by a student whose grandmother died of COVID-19. NSBA itself writes that the student was only “mocked,” but nonetheless included it in a list of “threats and acts of violence … affecting our nation’s democracy at the very foundational levels.” Mockery (which the video suggests was actually little more than a few seconds of guffaws and grumbling) is not criminal behavior.
The NSBA’s call for federal force, rather than being a last-ditch effort to combat an onslaught of violence, is a threat to basic liberty, even as some people have incontestably broken civility, and a smaller handful may have engaged in serious threats. But incivility is not criminality, and local law enforcement – not the FBI or U.S. Secret Service – exists to deal with local disturbances of the peace and threatening behavior.
Alas, turning disagreement into bitter warfare is not an aberration, but an inevitable outcome of public schooling. Single, government-run districts and schools force people with diverse backgrounds and beliefs into zero-sum political combat to determine whose children will get what their families think they need, and whose will not. Public schooling forces neighbor to battle neighbor, with nothing less than their children’s minds at stake.
The solution is to embrace the foundational American value: liberty. Instead of requiring people to fund government institutions, let money follow children to schools or other educational arrangements their families choose. Instead of forcing a war of all against all, let those who want critical race theory select schools that teach it, others pick schools that do not. Let those who want schools with mask mandates choose them, others select schools where parents decide if their children wear masks. Let people peacefully coexist.
The NSBA, unfortunately, opposes school choice programs such as vouchers and scholarship tax credits, which threaten public schools’ monopoly on your wallets and kids. But now, not only will they not let you leave, they also seem bent on chilling your speech. The Biden administration appears committed to the same.
The good news is that this year 18 states have either created new choice programs or expanded existing ones. It is, no doubt, largely a consequence of many Americans’ intense frustrations last year as their public schools refused to open to in-person education. A rough estimate suggests that this leap in choice could increase students enrolled in private schools via choice programs from roughly 600,000 this year to nearly 2.4 million – a four-fold increase.
That said, there are roughly 55 million school-aged Americans, so this is still a relative drop in the bucket. But it is progress, and the NSBA and Biden administration are proving why much more is desperately needed. The absence of freedom threatens us all with endless conflict, and trampling of basic rights.
HOMESCHOOL YOUR CHILD
From the article:
“The solution is to embrace the foundational American value: liberty. Instead of requiring people to fund government institutions, let money follow children to schools or other educational arrangements their families choose. Instead of forcing a war of all against all, let those who want critical race theory select schools that teach it, others pick schools that do not. Let those who want schools with mask mandates choose them, others select schools where parents decide if their children wear masks. Let people peacefully coexist.”
That is pretty naïve thinking, IMO. Unless we have any chances to overcome election fraud in the future, there is no way that school choice will be permitted.
The most important thing that must happen is eliminating Jimmy Carter’s Department of Education.
As a nation we managed to survive all of his horrible policies - except for the DOE which is still destroying our country today
Dear school board members:
If you can’t take the heat, then quit.
I am amazed at how many people in this country fall completely apart when they get yelled at.
When I was a Second Lieutenant, I got yelled at two or three times a day.
I learned to not get yelled at twice for the same mistake.
I think this country could use some more yelling.
I’d love to see some of these tender hearts after The Iceman or No-Slack or Deadeye lit into them.
bkmk
they absolutely MUST listen to every speaker, EVERY ONE, that wants their say.
“That is pretty naïve thinking, IMO. Unless we have any chances to overcome election fraud in the future, there is no way that school choice will be permitted.”
Of late I’ve come to realize that the people that determine a country’s or any organization’s policies are the ACTIVISTS, the community agitators, ie, the ones willing to cause constant pain, suffering and discomfort to the leaders of those organizations until they kowtow to their demands.
The left has been extremely good at using this tactic. They have an army of rabid activists ready to pounce on any politician or CEO if they stray from their agenda.
Our side has none of that, and that is why we’re getting culturally slaughtered.
This rebellion against CRT is the first sign of activism by our side. But the other side controls all the law enforcement apparatus and, as we’re seeing, they are ordering them to come after us.
The question now is do we placidly knuckle under or do we take to the streets and start causing pain and suffering to the powers that be?
“HOMESCHOOL YOUR CHILD”
My parents were probably typical. My father had unrealistic expectations that I would know anything he knew.
Him: “Tie your shoes.”
Me: “I don’t know how.”
Him: “Tie. Your. Shoes.”
Me: “How?”
Him: “Tieyourdamnedshoes, NOW!”
The dynamics between children and their parents is, in my opinion, not set up for education. Also, it’s really hard for a kid to realize that learning the formulae for the hypotenuse is going to come in handy. (I’m 67 and have still never used it.) So, adding the burden of education at the expected levels onto parents who are emotionally and probably intellectually unsuited for it is a recipe for an uneducated child. Also, with both parents working, when are they going to find the time?
My feeling is, we should get back to neighborhood schools with no more than, say a hundred students, that also have the power to permanently expel problem children. Another part is to hand all education decisions to a locally elected board whose children are also in school. Get the government at all levels out of it. If the government wants to set a standard that’s fine. So long as it doesn’t include knowing all 55 of the new genders and their sexual preferences.
I call BS on that.
They are over reacting just trying to make the parents look like the bad guys. They are too used to running roughshod over parents wishes and can’t stand being challenged.
They’re just mini tin pot dictators and if they had a higher political office would be the whitmers, cuomo, and newsomes of the world.
No, your parents were not typical. I never knew any parents who treated their kids like that.
Millions of parents homeschool every year and do a very successful job at it.
Before public school as they stand today were established, parents were the primary educators of children and throughout history have produced some very brilliant people.
Funny how in my suburban district they aren't mailing ballots to all the retired fixed income folks, they have to go to the High School, the ONE location to vote down budgets or elect boards.
Hand them your address and suggest they bring a lawyer and a truckload of cash.
“Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly are all protected.”
“I could use a extra 100M”
Here’s how to solve bitter school board battles without sending in the FBI …Uh, yeah. Merrick Garland is the one you have to convince not to do that, and he listens to nobody with an opposing opinion. He respects the big fist and nothing else, to paraphrase Solzhenitsyn . . .
Yeah right... I think we all know by now that there is NO way any free thinking American can coexist with the left...
With the commies it's "whole hog or nothing." :(
Not at all. Most fathers are kind and understanding. Your father was a dick.
First solution is to not put your kids in the public school system.
Second solution is to change the school board through the election process. Start local and then go for state seats.
And, get those homeschoolers to attend such school board meetings to testify. They still pay taxes, they have a right to attend. At this moment there is still free speech, so they have a right to speak.
Get in their faces. Cause chaos.
Tar&feathers is next.
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