The Anti-JCPS Task Force met for the first time on Monday, July 15, 2024. I call it that because of who the lawmakers, leaders and LRC have chosen to serve on it. It reminds me of the Board of Education that newly elected governor Matt Bevin appointed the minute he got into office by dismantling the current one illegally and unethically and replacing them all, including the commissioner, with people who wanted public education dead. Literally, they were that bad. And in 2019, our own Democratic US Congressman, Morgan McGarvey, played a role in the conspiracy to confirm the worst of them.
Now, not all of the members chosen to serve on the task force are bad, but I can tell you from personal experience, more than half of them cannot be trusted with our tax dollars or our children. That means that no matter how strongly the rest of the task force objects, they will always be in the minority, and our community’s concerns are likely to be disregarded and disrespected. That concerns me greatly.
In case you didn’t have time to watch Monday, here is a recorded video of the meeting, for the archives:
I posted about the War on JCPS prior to the task force committee application deadline and even made a 5-minute video for people to watch to see what was promised and what was still to be delivered, urging a diverse range of people to apply:
In addition, I put my money where my mouth was. I didn’t want to risk taking any seats from parents or teachers, so when I discovered that I qualified for the “business member” slot of the task force, I decided to apply. With a 30+ year business marketing background, large and small, local and national, I would argue that I am as qualified, if not more, than the person they chose. But there is no denying the fact that the already lopsided anti-public education task force did not need another “school choice” advocate, and especially not one who stands to benefit should the GOP agenda to divide and conquer JCPS succeed and the Constitutional Amendment pass in November. I would have added a voice of advocacy for hundreds if not thousands of JCPS stakeholders who have come to me over the past decade when their union or parent organization was nowhere to be found — or worse, actively silencing them. I promised to make my letter of intent public after the task force was announced, so I did that here. LRC refused to release the names of the other applicants, but I did hear from several other applicants who feel that they, too, would have brought a perspective missing from those chosen. This whole charade feels like “taxation without representation,” especially if it turns out the mostly white, male, GOP dominated task force’s decisions wind up usurping the authority of our duly elected school board.
And don’t ignore the fact that one of the unspoken intentions behind this fast-track task-force (say that three times fast) could be to “reset” past events, bury evidence, and make it impossible to hold those responsible accountable, especially as we discover the criminal behavior goes pretty high up, on both sides of the aisle, and ESPECIALLY AS WE HEAD INTO ANOTHER CRITICAL ELECTION FOR OUR COUNTRY AND FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION. Any major restructuring of JCPS would make it practically impossible to determine who should be removed from their positions, which would only allow their nefarious and criminal behaviors to continue unabated. We cannot allow that to happen!
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