The landmark online publication MoCo360 recently posted opinion pieces submitted by parents of the Jewish student body. Two of those pieces pertained to the current atrocious conflict between Israel and Hamas. Though I could not follow the narratives completely, it seems that one group of parents wants complete freedom for students to express their views regarding this conflict, while others demand some attenuation of emotions. As the wording in each piece isn’t entirely clear and suffers from missing context, and as there may be some interpersonal jostling between two groups of parents, I may be misinterpreting each letter. That’s irrelevant, because these letter writers are missing a critical point.
It was a short three months ago when US District Judge Deborah Boardman made it quite clear that, citing longstanding precedent, the LBGT opt-out crowd has no say at all in the public school’s curriculum. Though I personally haven’t seen the LGBT class materials to which the plaintiffs object, people tell me that in any other context an adult owning such materials would get arrested for possession of child pornography. Nevertheless, if the school board demands distribution of these materials to children, parents have no standing to object.
The events of October 7 and afterwards affect a lot of residents in this area, and have inflamed a lot of emotions. No matter what a particular parent’s or student’s view is on this tragedy, our school board has the ultimate prerogative to respond, not respond (my preference), or how to respond to those events. If the school board wants to allow dissemination of anti-Semitic or Islamophobic materials, there is no recourse. The school board, “managing” one scandal after another with imperious ineptitude that is exceeded only by its illegitimacy, can do whatever it bloody wants.
The Jewish students, already victims of harassment before October 7, are no doubt feeling ever more threatened. For example, a student at Walter Johnson recently managed to smuggle a loaded gun onto campus, proving that whatever protections are left after Council Member Jawando’s witch hunt against school resource officers cannot keep students safe.
The tension between Jewish and Moslem students in the public schools is nothing compared to the school-to-prison pipeline that our black students face, particularly black boys. In a heartbreaking letter to MoCo360, parent Tiffany Kelly expresses her fears regarding her own son’s future. She quotes a report from the Office of Legislative Oversight (another useless bureaucracy that should be disbanded) demonstrating biased enforcement and punishment against black boys for quite some time.
There is no way MCPS can guarantee an equitable, safe, and success-oriented environment for all its students—some yes, not all. The school board has its own agenda, the teachers’ union a different agenda, the county council a third agenda, and in no case is the students’ welfare a top priority. Even if these three governing bodies were acting in the students’ interest, the continued balkanization of the county’s population and student body will make conflicting demands impossible to meet. You can get a sense of the balkanization by reviewing the cohorts of the county’s Anti-Hate Task Force: African American, Black, Latino, Hispanic, LGBTQ+, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Muslim, and Jewish. Any school official who thinks they can make a school environment safe and satisfactory for all these demographics is either negligent or malicious.
There is a way out: school choice and school vouchers. All parents, regardless of demographic, need to insist that MCPS no longer force students to attend schools that haven’t been safe for quite some time and are becoming less safe with each passing day. Parents must insist on being freed from a dysfunctional, uncaring school system by demanding vouchers so they can send their students to schools of their choice.
If parents were offered school vouchers, chances are about half of them would leave the public schools. This was the outcome in 2022, when about one-half of Indiana families who were allowed school choice indeed left the public schools. That is an indication of how unpopular public schools have become, and why it is heartless to force our children into them.
