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The year of #mamabear has produced a stunning amount of first-time, pro-parent candidates for school boards across the nation. We’re still hearing from a lot of these local races, so we can’t quite nail down an exact number of “mama bear” winners, but it is a lot (my own school board race is still being counted and has yet to be certified; stay tuned for an update).
One great #mamabear winner is Julie Hamill. Hamill, a southern California lawyer, found herself distressed over pandemic overreaches and how they affected her children and their schooling, specifically. When a seat opened up on her Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District (PVPUSD) school board, she put her money where her mouth is and ran. She won, but now the real work begins.
All California school board candidates, elects, or anyone interested in becoming a school board member in the future, have the opportunity to attend a school board bootcamp in San Diego run by the California School Board Association (CSBA). The agenda is bonkers and should alarm every public-school parent in the state, but also the nation, considering their own state board associations are tied to the National School Board Association (NSBA). And if that sounds familiar to you, it should. Think “parents are domestic terrorists.”
Hamill noticed one particularly disturbing entry on the agenda. A workshop titled “Governing Through the Noise” offers help with “Leadership Through Governance.”
Okay? It might be a little offensive to classify taxpayer concerns and complaints as “noise,” but that’s not too insane. But wait! There’s more! Let’s move on to the description.
“How do you make thoughtful decisions when everyone is screaming at you? School boards across the state have been hit with more propaganda-induced outcry than ever before, and civility codes are being left in the dust. In this era of literal yelling during public comment, how can leadership navigate with integrity while maintaining community trust? Learn how two school districts are weathering the storm of opinions that blow hard to knock the focus off what is best for student experience.”
I’m sorry, what? Huh? Insert confused Dave Chappelle gif here.
The California School Board Association thinks “literal yelling” is the result of propaganda instead of frightened parents. You know what I do when my kid is in danger? I yell. Loudly. I’ve never screamed louder in my life than when my two-year-old son wrestled away from me momentarily and rushed between parked cars to step into the street with a van barreling down at an absurd speed. He was out of reach, and in the split second I had to react I could only scream, “STOP!” He did, and he’s twenty now. As far as I know he looks both ways before crossing the street. But my reaction was to the danger he was in. Somehow, CSBA counts your “screaming” as “noise” instead of thinking perhaps parents are screaming at their school boards because they can sense their children are in danger.
“…a storm of opinions that blow hard to knock the focus off what is best for the student experience?”
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Forgive my immature expressions right now, but WHAT IN THE ACTUAL HELL? Here is the CSBA framing parents with strong opinions as blow hards, while elevating school boards to the status of being the only ones who care about “student experience.” Are you paying attention? They genuinely believe they care more about student experience than the people who created and raised the students.
Hamill pointed out the infuriating logic on her Twitter feed.
If you were a concerned parent newly elected to a school board, what would you think of an association that describes its training sessions like this? How can we “maintain trust” when we dismiss millions of parents’ valid concerns by calling them a “propaganda-induced outcry”? pic.twitter.com/fNcQAG0Ste
— Julie Hamill (@hamill_law) November 29, 2022
She makes an excellent point. The parent revolution has elected hundreds, if not thousands, of first time board member who are parents of school-aged children. They’re attending conferences like this all over the nation over the next few weeks. What are they to think when opening their agenda and seeing this drivel? Could the CSBA be any more clueless?
In a brief statement to RedState, Hamill questions the effectiveness of parents taking over school boards when everyone is just sent to CSBA indoctrination bootcamps anyway.
I would just like to know how we expect to change public education in California when every district in this state sends their board members to this 3 day boondoggle for “training” by an association and multiple corporations that are deeply entrenched in a broken system.
It will be interesting to see how the swamp monsters react to a significant incoming class of pro-parent candidates. If you are attending one of these bootcamps, I suggest you look at the agenda and then send an email to the CSBA asking them to rescind their incendiary and bigoted language. Let them know – these people aren’t just at the meetings anymore. They’re going to be running the meetings.
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