School Board Elections Coming: Parents Demand Academic Excellence - Granite Grok

School Board Elections Coming: Parents Demand Academic Excellence

parents protest mask mandate

As a parental rights advocate focused on literacy and excellence in our public schools for two decades, I’ve watched the decline in public education. But I’ve also advocated for initiatives that would reverse this trend.

Thankfully, I’ve never seen so much action by parents to take back their schools, and demand that they go back to focusing on academic achievement. This new movement may finally be the ticket that refocuses public education on academic achievement.

  1. Recently we’ve seen fads brought into the public schools that harm the education your children are receiving.
  2. Competency-Based Education (dumbed down workforce training)
  3. Social and Emotional Learning (turns your school into a mental health clinic to gather mental health data on your children)
  4. MTSS/MTSS-B Multi-tiered system of support (one-size fits all behavior program pushed on all schools by the feds)
  5. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (Critical Race Theory designed to blame and shame children and divide them by race)
  6. Personalized Learning (Push for students to learn on the computer to profit the Ed Tech industry)
  7. Common Core/Next Generation Science Standards (Dumbed down academic standards)
  8. Pushing political bias in the classroom along with a focus on gender/sexual orientation. (Dumbs down the classroom and pushes agendas that take more time away from learning the academic content)

Parents are fighting back. Not because they don’t believe mental health is important, they do. Not because they don’t appreciate diversity, they do. Not because they don’t want their children competent in the core subjects, they do. Parents discovered that all of the fads that pushed public ed away from a quality traditional liberal arts education, brought their schools additional problems. Schools struggle with proficiency in the core academic subjects, expanding that important task has resulted in poor quality public schools.

They know that if their kids are well educated, they will have a chance in the future. They know that when schools try to become labor managers, mental health centers, race baiters, or a means to profit the ed tech industry, their children will suffer.

Watch this parent in TX explain how the schools have moved away from academics and how that is the problem:

Lynn Davenport could have given the same speech at some of our New Hampshire Schools because many of our public schools are in the same situation.

SAU16 has moved so far away from the mission of educating children, that parents there have organized for change. They are putting forth recommendations for new school board members, putting up signs all over town, and finding a lot of parents are joining them in their efforts. Why? Because they don’t need the school to parent their children, they need the school to educate their children –and they are failing.

Exeter School Board Meeting

 

They’ve done the homework. They know how school rankings have dropped. They watched their children suffer during remote learning to profit the ed-tech industry, and they want better.

 

Schools more interested in sexual orientation than education proficiency

 

One of those astute parents explained it all here. Peter Lessels has been speaking out at school board meetings, and to anyone who will listen to him. He’s passionate and knows what it takes to bring about a positive change in SAU16. Peter and the others are exactly what is needed to drive excellence in public education.

On a larger scale, SaveSau16 was also set up by local parents to drive excellence in the school district. They’ve even put out a voter guide.

​SAU16 parents are showing everyone else how to get it done. While many parents simply walk away and enroll their children in a private school or home-school their kids, these parents have committed to changing the current focus back to one that is a key to public school success.

I will keep preaching the ways to save our public schools. It takes a commitment to academic excellence, parental rights, a safe and joyful school environment, and a focus on children. When administrators and board members shut the students out of the school, ignored the horrific emotional impact it had on some of the kids, ignored the science and forced more measures that parents should have decided, you know their focus is not on the well-being of children.

March 8th residents will be asked to go to the polls. They will have to decide if they want to continue down this path of failed policies and leadership. Or they can decide that they want board members who will challenge the status quo. It’s not easy, I know that, but if you stay focused, you can take your public schools back.

It all starts with leadership. Finding a leader who doesn’t follow the national trends and fads but instead, fights off the status quo that wants to call the shots. That’s not easy, in fact it’s near impossible to find leaders like that. But if you make it clear what you expect, these Superintendents work for the school board. They can either step up or move along.

Bravo to all of the parents who have had enough. Who are fed up with the status quo failing their children. Stay the course. Never give up. It’s taken 20 years for me to finally witness this movement. It’s inspiring to watch, and be part of it.

“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”― Frederick Douglass. Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement. #BlackHistoryMonth #Revolutionary #Hero

 

>