Jonathan Russell: Hubris is not a leadership virtue
The five-person Democrat majority on the Pennridge School Board is poised to make a significant policy change this month, which would allow school instructional time to be used to administer third-party surveys from outside organizations.
From Planned Parenthood to CHOP’s Gender and Sexuality Development Clinic, as long as the administration deems a survey supportive of “social and emotional development,” the changes to Policy 235.1 would permit such surveys to be administered to Pennridge students of all ages. This policy change is so extreme that it is not even recommended by the Pennsylvania School Board Association, and yet the five-person Democratic board majority is pushing it through.
Moreover, this new policy is set to be passed without parent, student, or teacher support. In particular, no parents have come forward demanding that they want these surveys. No students have requested this change, and no teachers have lamented that they wish they had less instructional time with students to proctor tests for outside organizations.
Despite none of the Board’s constituency asking for this new policy, the five-person Democratic majority is bent on moving forward, believing that they know best — more than the teachers, more than the students, and more than the parents they are supposed to serve. Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, hubris is not a leadership virtue.
And while the Board has publicly claimed that anyone can easily opt-out of these surveys, the Board has chosen the most difficult path to do so. Specifically, if a parent wishes to see what is being asked of his or her child, the request must be “in writing and submitted to the building principal” in advance. Moreover, instead of allowing an opt-in option for these outside surveys, the Democratic majority has demanded that parents actively choose to opt out, believing that permission to “mine” our children’s personal data while at school is implied.
Finally, as it now appears that the Pennridge School Board will be requesting a tax increase for the first time in nine years, why would the Board pass a policy that removes human resources during the school day from the District’s primary purpose of educating the community’s children? How can the five-person Democratic majority use district personnel for non-district activities, while telling the residents of Pennridge that they need more of our money to adequately teach our children?
The proposed changes to Policy 235.1 are extreme. The language of the policy is too broad and is poorly drafted. Third-party surveys are not part of the school district’s central mission. Parental permission for children to take third-party surveys should be obtained not implied, and survey questions should be made available to all parents in advance, regardless of whether a request is made in writing. The Pennridge School Board should reject this ill-advised new policy.
Jonathan Russell, is a Pennridge resident, father of four, and a Republican candidate for the Pennridge School Board
Incredibly poor judgement but it is to be expected from a collection of ideologs whose slavish adherence to theory triumphs over education and student well-being. This is a prime example why control of the educational process should be removed from the public domain and returned to parental control. Time to let parents decide by whom and how their children should be educated. Time to eliminate all education bureaucrats from the process of education. To paraphrase a comment attributed to a French Minister of War during WWI: “Education is much too serious a business to be entrusted to educators.”
There is so much wrong with this policy. It starts with the fact that there is an agenda behind it that aims to indoctrinate in a way that is not remotely transparent. Schools and international organizations have been pushing any policies they want by using the label “social and emotional learning.”
Something that began as an understandable effort to educate broadly about principles such as understanding and regulating your emotions, along with more targeted counseling for students having troubles, quickly morphed into a way to sneak in political influences.
Moreover, it’s also a massive invasion of privacy AND a way to mine your children for invaluable data. Our children are not lab rats to be subjected to psychological interventions and to generate data for profit.
The best remedy for this issue would be electing commonsense Republicans to the Pennridge School Board.
You are 100% right but unfortunately this is easier said than done in some districts. It’s hard to understand how parents can possibly enable their children to participate in these indoctrinations.
Can parents write a letter opting their children out of ALL SURVEYS? They SHOULD.
Unfortunately, concerned Pennridge parents who had elected a Republican majority in November of 2021 in response to an attempt to add DEI/CRT/LGBTQ curricula to the already existing SEL curriculum did not seem to understand that they needed to repeat the process in November of 2023.
Souderton parents managed to protect their Republican majority despite the onslaught of propaganda and campaign contributions from outside their school district, but Pennridge parents succumbed to the efforts of the PSEA and the professional leftist agitators.
Off-year elections tend to favor the most aggrieved, motivated, and organized. Democrats therefore had a natural advantage when school board elections rolled around in 2023.
They were horrified in 2021 when so many school boards flipped. So they–with the willing participation of the media–devoted two full years to trashing and generally undermining the Republican school boards that had taken over. They turned normally eyes-glaze-over boring public meetings into farcical spectacles with their customary agitprop, and they succeeded in vilifying well-meaning parents who had run for school board only to protect their children from radical leftist propaganda.
As a result, many school boards like Pennridge flipped back in 2023. And parents and children have been worse off as a result. Those parents who could just abandoned the public schools and searched for better educational settings.
I have experience teaching in a public school (28 years), subbing and volunteering in a Christian school (5-1/2 years), and rehearsing every week with a choir of homeschooled students (3 years). Although I continue to volunteer in the public school in which I once taught, if I were a parent, I’m not sure I would entrust the education of my children to a public school.
Frankly, I have seen the most impressive results from homeschooling. I know it is an immense commitment, but the benefits are enormous.