If tonight’s school board meeting in Litchfield is any indication of where residents stand on Critical Race Theory, the Superintendent is in trouble. Like many Superintendents around the state, Mike Jette failed to understand what he was posting on the district website.
His letter of “unity” included links to various sources that create division, shames you if you have white skin, and is full of discrimination that violates our civil rights. Those resources were later removed. Jette should know we have equal protection under the Civil Rights law and by sharing resources that attempt to violate our rights, it’s not going to unify a community but divide it.
But by his own admission, Jette put together a unity statement and even signed off on it for the school board and other administrators.
In the video below from June, Jette admits that there was some pushback on the resources he included. Of course, there is going to be pushback when you send out a “unity” letter and include resources that are divisive, discriminatory and a violation of our civil rights!
Jette goes on to say he found a resource list but it’s not his job to edit the lists. Well, then who’s job is it? Of course, it’s his job, he signed off on it and signed off for everyone else. Those whose names were included should be upset by this dereliction of duty.
Jette mentions that they were going to provide these resources even if they were offensive. Wait, a unity letter that is offensive? How is that unifying?
From 37:25 to 42:00.
At tonight’s meeting with an overflow crowd in the hallway, one board member, Elizabeth McDonald, did acknowledge that the message of unity wasn’t the problem but the attachments were offensive. Offensive? Try discriminatory and a violation of our civil rights.
Other residents brought up cases of extreme political bias on the part of some of the employees in the district. This is a consequence of a Superintendent who allows this kind of behavior to happen, otherwise, they wouldn’t be so brazen with their remarks.
Parents are fed up. The parents and residents who spoke never demanded that their political views be shoved down everyone’s throats. They were there to say, stop shoving your bias down the throats of everyone else.
In a public school, no one should even know what your political views are. The best teachers will offer differing viewpoints so that students can think critically about an issue. In this case, the culture seems to be one of contempt and disrespect for the residents and parents who do not share the views of some of the very vocal staff. How about some respect? Is this how you unify your community? NO, it’s how you divide it. If this is really about unity, get rid of the political bias that is spewed in a public institution, and get back to the basics: ACADEMICS.
When your focus is on giving students a quality academic education, Mr. Jette will be appreciated and supported by most if not all of the community. Under these conditions, he’s seeing what a divided community looks like – tonight one person even called for his resignation.
If the tone does not change under his leadership, and he doesn’t take a HUGE hint that he needs to go back to making sure kids are learning math and science, they will come after him even harder.
What is also concerning is, Jette seems to have contradicted his statement at that prior board meeting. During tonight’s board meeting he said, “When it was pointed out some of the links contained items that were offensive, we realized we’d made an error. Our error was we had linked to a document of links, and the document of links connected to a whole series of links, the content of which had changed drastically. We immediately took the Message of Unity off our website, so it is no longer there.” But if you watch the video above from the June meeting, he acknowledges the issues people had with the resource list, but then he says that people can just overlook those resources if they are offended.
The New Hampshire Journal also reported the comment from Richard Lascelles who asked, “How did the ‘Message of Unity’ get approved and distributed without a vote or even a discussion in a public meeting,” ……“And if the district is so proud of it, why is it now hidden?”
That’s a good question. How does this happen? The residents elect board members to do their job too. Not hand over their authority entrusted to them by the voters.
The people who spoke tonight want real unity. They want kids to have mutual respect for each other. They know racism is evil and it needs to be addressed if there is an incident, but you don’t unify while presenting materials that divide the community. That’s what Critical Race Theory does, it divides, it does not unify and we saw that play out tonight at the school board meeting.
