The responsibilities of the Laconia School Board are unenviable. Their constituents, at odds with Board decisions, are treated with thinly veiled contempt by some of the Board and their minions. Frustration could be relieved if the Board would act to understand.
On August 17th, about 15-20 anti-CRT protestors picketed their meeting with passing honking cars demonstrating non-ceasing support. Of the 60-70 people inside the meeting, most appeared to be anti-CRT and anti-maskers. The corporeal and zoom-call input went on for an hour with only three minutes per speaker allowed.
One obviously hostile school board member unreasonably demanded that I remove a posted CRT founding fathers’ quote, which he indignantly read out loud, although confused as to its meaning. If typical, this Board is too defensive to try to comprehend CRT.
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It seemed that except for Dawn Johnson, the Board was hostile to any resistance to its decisions and confusion regarding CRT. Even when the Chair was supposedly “proven to have lied” about Laconia teaching CRT, the Board did not respond, adding to everyone’s frustration.
The Board seems to employ proxy speakers who often turn to face the resistance while judging their motives. Included in their fountain of misinformation, dissenters were accused of being allied with the “Proud Boys.”
There were repeated assertions that CRT was not taught, and then CRT principles were described as “training teachers to help the disabled.” One such speaker refused to accept copies of Board-website-posted CRT principles so as not to be confused with actual facts. Non-Laconia residents are denied input, a likely unconstitutional decision.
This assumingly well-intended Board’s plan is to ignore input, be it picketers, honkers, or speakers. I assume they are good folk who don’t understand CRT’s assault upon equality theory, as articulated in the initial Declaration of Independence, again in the 14th Amendment, and yet again the ethos of the Civil Rights Era well-articulated by Dr. King. Likewise, they are blissfully unaware of the research debunking the value and exposing the harm of their encouragement of gender confusion in children.
Their ill-founded “health” effort drives incalculable potential misery to include an industry of sexually mutilating even pubescent children, now appallingly, increasingly, without parental consent. The Board needs to understand that gender dysphoria presents in only 0.01% of the population. Like anorexia, it has a profound “social transmission” feature. Seventy percent disappears if not generated by schools or otherwise.
Likewise, the board seems unacquainted with decades of replicated science debunking CRT’s allied destructive and science-free bizarre belief of “systemic racism” featuring “inherently racist” and “privileged” white citizens who now need to be discriminated against.
The Board’s ignorance of education’s promotion of race and gender essentialism’s damage upon children and communities is unacceptable. Will they ever understand? Perhaps, a review of America’s deplorable educational ranking among other nations could bring them back to their legitimate role in society.
Michael D. Breen, MPA, Ph.D.
Moultonborough, NH
