During a recent press conference, hosted by the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, a heckler began talking loudly to the crowd while one of our local community leaders, Vincent Gonzalez, was speaking. The press conference, which was held at Central High School ahead of the July 27, 2021 JCPS School Board Meeting, focused on our community’s unapologetic support for the teaching of accurate history and the practicing of equity, diversity and inclusion, as well as halting recently proposed legislation that would make doing so illegal. This interruption went on for quite some time, as several individuals from the crowd went over to try to kindly ask the belligerent woman to be respectful, to no avail. My latest blog post, entitled, “Listen to the Black People!,” details the events and dynamics that took place during those tense moments. Thank you for taking a moment to check it out.
After individuals carrying symbols suggesting they were affiliated with neo-Nazi hate groups and insurrectionists stormed the June 29 JCPS Work Session, some of these same folks were spotted at the Oldham County School Board meeting the following Monday night. These bad actors are not the “stakeholders” they pretend to be.
Many of the grassroots organizations and individuals who are closest to the challenges faced in a large urban district like JCPS have been waiting for nearly a year and a half, BEFORE the pandemic and BEFORE the murder of JCPS graduate Breonna Taylor, to have their voices heard. And they’ve waited even longer and more patiently to see the structural racism that’s baked into our systems, student assignment plan and resource distribution, addressed. Yet out of nowhere, these mostly white parents and “concerned stakeholders” show up and start making demands and even threatening our leaders over things like mask mandates? How privileged must one be to think their “right” to expose others to a deadly virus trumps the safety and education of our most vulnerable students? To folks who never bothered to show up constructively to work with district and community leaders to find solutions, and to others who are coming from outside counties and states to disrupt meetings with their misinformed positions, I say, “get in line.”
Other right-wing radicals from the meeting have been spotted taking the lead in organizing around irrational and unnecessary “pro-life” legislation, dangerous constitutional amendment changes, and even demanding reinstatement of a cop who showed up in uniform, driving a patrol car, to protest against women’s legal right to access abortion. We believe these are likely the same “great people” who think Trump won the election and could be disingenuously using the CRT issue to sow discord in order to recruit for their next coup as early as next month. They were seen with the 111%ers who are linked to those in attendance at the JCPS meeting, some of whom bear a “We The People” tattoo, and wear distinctive facial hair, clothing and jewelry. They may also be associated with the Patriot Front hate group that left their signature on murals they recently defaced. They even went so far as to have left their hate group’s calling card on a local Black reporter’s windshield.
A coalition is forming! Join us as we band together to fight the latest attacks on public education and our people as lawmakers nationwide attempt to deny the right of every student to learn an accurate and comprehensive US History. Sign up for our email list to get updates on meetings, strategies and other ways you can support our students, teachers and public schools during this historical time.
Be on the look out for those claiming that “Critical Race Theory” is divisive and teaches hate. These people may be in your child’s school’s parent teacher group, on your Facebook feed, attend the same church, or even be in your own family. If they make this intellectually lazy claim, prod them for details. You will learn that their claims can be easily debunked. They have likely not done any research, but instead are simply repeating divisive and hateful messaging they’ve heard elsewhere, perhaps from people they trust. The originators of this untruth are usually those who want to keep others under their feet. People at the head of an organization, a committee, a parish or a household. Usually, white men.
It’s almost as if they WANT public schools to fail so they can bring in charter schools and profit off our tax dollars while simultaneously denying quality education to those who don’t have the means.
These claims have nothing to do with what Critical Race Theory actually is or what it does. But since CRT is a college-level course, and none of us has the spare time or funds required to master that curriculum just to figure out who to believe, let’s cut to the chase.
What you need to know:
Critical Race Theory is not taught in JCPS, or any public primary or secondary school in Kentucky, for that matter. This is a solution looking for a problem and “much ado about nothing.”
Critical Race Theory is college-level legal coursework curriculum. It’s just that. A theory. It focuses on how race has played a role in disparate outcomes between white and non-white persons in the criminal justice system. That’s it. It doesn’t teach hate. It doesn’t blame white people for slavery. None of that nonsense.
The bill that has been introduced in Kentucky does not mention Critical Race Theory, but instead lists a dozen concepts public school employees must not discuss with their students.
Failure to comply exposes the school district to thousands of dollars in fines.
Many of the concepts it prohibits teachers from teaching either don’t happen, or are already illegal, including acts of treason. Most of the 12 provisions are unnecessary, redundant and superfluous, clearly to create disinformation and spread fear.
Of the few provisions that actually change the laws on the books, they serve more to protect white feelings than they do to protect Black lives.
The bill’s language and threat of punishment will have a chilling effect on teachers’ ability to provide their students with factual historical information, regardless of context, and denies students their right to a quality public education.
The bill would take authority to supervise employees away from local district leaders and place it in the hands of the Attorney General, currently Daniel Cameron. It eliminates stakeholders’ abilities to hold board members accountable to what is taught and what is prohibited.
The bill would violate free speech, while protecting corruption and structural racism.
This is a waste of resources. This is a lawsuit they are likely to lose. We don’t have money for textbooks, but we have money to fight this in court? Where are our priorities again?
Groups that are supportive of this bill have demonstrated ties to ALEC (The American Legislative Exchange Council), the Koch Brothers, Mitch McConnell, Matt Bevin, and radical right wing organizations, to name a few.
Fearmongerers spreading these concepts have infiltrated many grassroots and social media groups, allowing this misinformation to be spread unchecked. They are running for school boards and other top seats, and in fact, this language has already become law in many other neighboring states and school districts.
Please be outspoken and vigilant when you encounter this messaging. Feel free to tag Dear JCPS on social media if you need backup.
If only lawmakers would spend half the energy looking for ways to help and support our public schools as they do they do figuring out how to tie our hands and punish us, while demanding more with no additional funding, we might actually get somewhere. It’s almost as if they WANT public schools to fail so they can bring in charter schools and profit off our tax dollars while simultaneously denying quality education to those who don’t have the means.
More information will be forthcoming about a coalition that is forming, as well as strategies to support our students, teachers and our public schools. Click here to join our email list.
Here are some additional links you may find helpful:
Now playing on Soundcloud, this week’s episode of Save Our Schools With Dear JCPS is part of our new “Pattern or Practice” Series. This series features historical records from the Audio Archives tab. These podcasts attempt to tell the true stories of what really happened behind the scenes in JCPS as we continue the work to dismantle structural racism in the district.
My name is Gay Adelmann. I am the co-founder and president of Dear JCPS. In March of 2017, JCPS leaders conspired to vote me off the 15th District PTA board after I advocated for Maupin Elementary students and families. Don’t take my word for it, listen to excerpts from two of those meetings on this week’s program. The longer versions of these conversations and more can also be found there, with more being added regularly.
WHY IT MATTERS? These types of patterns and practices continue to harm West Louisville families and schools to this day. Sign our petition here.
Dear JCPS is publishing this piece as part of a series dedicated to identifying patterns or practices of discrimination in JCPS. To sign our petition to encourage the US Department of Justice to investigate JCPS and its outside entities, please click here.
At this moment, JCTA PR’s (Professional Representatives, also known as “building representatives”) are expected to be voting to approve proposed bylaws changes that will make it possible for a handful of their officers to discriminate against members who advocate for minority populations, and even remove them from their elected roles on the organizations’ board.
Think it can’t happen here? It already has.
Recent controversy, including betrayals from endorsed elected officials, a botched political action committee (PAC) election and a challenge to JCTA’s General Election, and other things they’re not telling you, the incumbent JCTA officers have been feeling the heat more than usual. Having personally experienced a similar series of events when I was serving as a Vice President for the 15th District PTA in 2017, I recognized this latest maneuver to modify the bylaws as a means to force out anyone who the establishment leadership disagrees with as something similar that happened to me and several other JCPS moms who stood up for schools in West Louisville. In fact, in March of 2017, the 15th District PTA Board voted to remove me for speaking up for parents and students at Maupin Elementary, a high-poverty, high-minority population school in the district’s highly segregated “West End.” And in 2019, they conducted a closed-door emergency bylaws meeting in order to prevent me from serving, had I been elected when I and five other parents “ran from the floor” to serve on the 15th District PTA Board.
As you can hear from the short audiotape I made from that Emergency Board meeting that night, “duty of obedience” was cited as grounds for the motion for my removal. It will be interesting to watch as JCTA looks for ways to target anyone who is disloyal to their organization. The entire recording of the 2017 meeting, as well as follow-up meetings, can be found on our website under the Audio Archives tab. More will continue to be added.
A new section of our website has been created to archive evidence and provide real-life examples of systemic or institutionalized racism within JCPS that have been documented by our group’s organizers.
Some of these patterns include:
Abuse of power. Such as blacklisting, or bullying, to maintain power and “send a message”/terrorize.
Retaliation. Such as causing harm to or making threats against those who report harmful behavior.
Setups. Such as assigning impossible/competing tasks so every possible outcome results in .
Fraud. Manufacturing or tampering with evidence.
Election Tampering. Rigged or heavily influenced elections, whether it be JCTA, PTAs or SBDM’s and other outside groups’ own internal elections, or them putting their thumbs on the scales of justice and politics by influencing everything from school board races and General Assembly elections, to the passage of a tax increase on the 2020 ballot.
Cover ups. Hiding “bad news” or honest mistakes, turning the inconvenient truth into fraud.
Waste of taxpayer dollars. High-priced attorneys and even higher-priced secret settlements are costing taxpayers unknown millions of wasted dollars. Dirty administrators, protected by poorly written laws, continue committing the same offenses. Internal investigations, of course, finds no wrongdoing, so nothing changes. The avoidable pattern repeats. The system’s downward spiral intensifies with each uncorrected punch.
Doubling down. Denied or delayed responses to claims of discrimination, even when we show them they are doing it, they refuse to see or acknowledge the disparities and the role they continue to play.
Where does it end? Many who see it or are victims of it themselves burn out or move out to keep themselves and their families safe and sane. Others clock out in unhealthy or self-destructive ways. Many succumb to it, by way of death, dysfunction, homelessness, bankruptcy, shame, job loss, physical or mental health, incarceration, the legal system, addiction or suicide. But the lucky ones simply get numb to it. They have tried and failed enough times to know that any continued efforts of speaking up against an injustice bring unwanted attention and negative outcomes to them and theirs. They are watching the clock and hoping they can keep their heads down and try to go about their lives and work unnoticed until retirement, even if it is less than what they were promised. This describes every teacher I know who has been doing this job more than 10 years. The rest of us, who refuse to participate in the nonsense, what’s left for us? We have reached the end of the road and the only solutions left seem to be a jury of their peers or pitchforks. And I’m not seeing any indication that the court of law is ready for this conversation. We are seeing how the repeated failure of leadership to address the needs and rights of the people eventually plays out in other countries’ wars right now.
We talk about how our problems are because the kids misbehave with no consequences, well, the worst offenders in JCPS think they are untouchable and they treat the deep Jefferson County taxpayer pockets as their personal legal slush fund.
Some of the specific events where discrimination took place that we’ve documented thus far, include:
Investigation into allegations against Manual Principal Jerry Mayes.
PTA, SBDM and JCTA elections, bylaws and practices favoring JCPS administration, not members/stakeholders.
(2023) Jacob Elementary (White principal finally giving in to requests from Black mother to start the PTA. When it’s time for elections, teachers are recruited to run against Black parents, Black mothers are forced to run against one another)
(2019) Crums Lane Elementary (White principal favored White teachers and forced out engaged Black parents, 15th District PTA participated in fraudulent election, employees violated Redbook policy)
(2019) 15th District PTA Board Elections – (White parent and non-parent leaders pitted Black parents against one another, gave favored candidates preferential treatment, violated their own policies, held controlled and illegal membership meeting to change policies to prevent “from the floor candidates” from being eligible to serve if elected, and so much more, even admitted to committing fraud in future meeting)
(2020) Better Schools Kentucky Botched Election – pitted Black teachers against one another for rare at-large openings instead of nominating them for one of a dozen standing seats controlled by the president, tried to explain away numerous anomalies for their botched election results before finally admitting error, manipulating their bylaws in the favor of their preferred candidate, ruling the previous election invalid so they could hold a new one in a scenario where they could have more control and influence over results, in order to ensure their preferred candidate was the ultimate winner.
(2016) Maupin Elementary (SBDM manipulated by district leaders into voting to approve the superintendent’s recommendation AFTER she had already notified the state the decision had been made)
And several other examples of a handful of white leaders misstating facts, changing rules, policies and bylaws to suit the agenda of those in power and favor continued power of their preferred candidates (or no one at all) over BIPOC and their allies.
Fraudulent discontinuation of board-approved programs in West Louisville schools
Academy @ Shawnee Grades K-12 (discontinued before it started)
Academy @ Shawnee middle school magnet (corrupted within two years)
Waldorf-styled program at Maupin Elementary (SBDM told how to vote after state had been notified).
Challenger Center at Shawnee (out-of-date data used to justify outsourcing operations)
Wrongful retaliation against Maupin educators, parents/guardians, students, and their advocates.
Union complicity in targeting whistleblowers and advocates.
Some of the discriminatory practices we’ve documented include:
Failure to oversee and curtail outside organizations’ role in perpetuating systemic racism, despite repeated requests.
Biased and dead-ended internal investigations process.
Shutting out, silencing or derailing voices of grassroots organizations demanding racial equity.
Retaliation against those who blow the whistle on civil rights violations as well as waste, fraud and abuse.
Fraudulent elections including giving an unfair advantage to white or white-favored candidates, declaring fair elections “invalid” so they can run them again more carefully controlled, changing rules if necessary, and declaring winners using secretive, proprietary tools that only they have full access to.
Flat out denial that they are doing anything wrong! Refusal to fix or acknowledge even the most glaring examples. Keep repeating the same harmful behaviors. No wonder things have gotten this bad.
Toxic, bully, racist administrators
Admins who back their direct reports, no matter what, including helping them avoid consequences for behaviors unbecoming of a JCPS employee.
Biased internal investigations, fraud, changing the rules, gaming the system.
Rigged internal elections of support organizations (PTA, SBDM, JCTA, AROS) and undemocratic decision-making.
Shutting down and out engaged parents and employees who bring solutions, good ideas, and raise concerns when necessary.
How can we blame parents when the district refuses to let them in?
Willful incompetence or obliviousness, refusing to acknowledge classic behaviors of organized crime, coverups and racism, therefore nothing ever improves.
Shit rolls downhill, so lowest ranking employees end up taking the brunt of leaders’ poor decision-making, decreasing recruitment and retention of new employees.
How can we expect our children exhibit behaviors when adults in charge refuse to model them?
Other reports of criminal behavior
Denial of due process, refusal to accept grievances
Altering transcripts
Disciplining/suspending students from bus or school without due process or proper record keeping
Election tampering, including changing school district boundaries to affect candidates’ eligibility and plotting and scheming to influence the outcome of the tax increase ballot measure on technicalities, without accountability.
Failing to provide students with disabilities their mandated instructional hours and support services, covering it up, retaliating.
Covering up sex, drugs and human trafficking rings involving minors.
We are working on a list of demands, which includes an outside audit of internal investigations, lawsuits and settlements, as well as an oversight committee that is similar to the one that was created by the legislature for oversight of LMPD. We need an equivalent of an Inspector General and Civilian Oversight Committee for JCPS. We, the people, demand an avenue for checks and balances to protect against abuses like these within our government. Dear JCPS welcomes the opportunity to continue to build and share our understanding of what the community’s vision of that looks like.
This post will be updated. If you have examples of these events occurring in JCPS that you wish to have us consider adding to this list, please email moderator@dearjcps.com or text 502-565-8397.
I understand JCPS legal counsel has issued a “hands off” directive regarding oversight of external organizations.
And hand’s off is fine as long as principals and administrators are told the same thing.
But they’re not, and that’s problematic.
I understand that we are under intense scrutiny from the state. Criticism from the audit revealed that our board may have been overstepping in this regard. And we have an upcoming audit and we don’t want anything that could lead to additional state criticism that could potentially lead to state takeover.
I get that.
However, couldn’t excessive Redbook violations, election tampering, Inappropriate use/handling of funds, etc. also leave us vulnerable?
We’ve heard reports from some members who have been called “uncooperative” or “ineffective” when they refuse to do the administration’s bidding
We’ve heard reports of Nepotism, squatting in positions for decades, election tampering, cycling thru positions from school to district to state and back, sometimes in schools where they don’t have children, again, when there are authentic parents wanting to serve.
These organizations could be changing bylaws to allow them to extend term limits, hold clandestine elections and limit who can vote, while changing rules in order to shut out voices of authentic parents and volunteers.
These external organizations have access to our students and their families. They have access to district resources dedicated to them in terms of staff, office space, materials and production. are assured representatives can serve on committees, and are named in documents that govern the oversight of elections that can impact school policy and hiring.
They are not subject to open records. They could be holding vendor fairs in your schools, charging fees to the vendors and not delivering what is promised. Some could be manipulating external organizations to achieve financial means that are disallowed by school and district activity funds.
And they are holding inaccessible elections that are not democratic. For example, one organization’s state convention is this weekend, if you want to vote for officers, you have to pay a $55 registration fee, take time off work, drive to Lexington, pay another $129 in hotel fees, etc.
Who, I ask, is voting for these officers that are supposed to be representing all of us? Do they represent all of us? Or only some? What about our most vulnerable?
Some of these organizations are not racially reflective of district makeup, some of these organizations are pro charter, or at least not anti privatization.
We would to naive to not consider possibility infiltrators. We are allowing these organizations to use our kids to make money and push an anti public school agenda. These organizations should be focused on kids learning. How do we gauge their effectiveness?
Not every organization is bad. Not every volunteer is an infiltrator. Not every administrator is corrupt. In fact, 99% of them are good. But we’d be naive not to realize that some of them have found ways to exploit the system to their own advantage. To take advantage our our children, especially our most vulnerable populations.
And our board has been elected to represent us, and therefore protect us and our children.
And you have a handout from Redbook that says:
The school or district, with approval of the local board of education, may establish additional guidelines/requirements for the external support/booster organization.
Watch the video of the guest speakers from Tuesday night’s @JCPSKY board of education meeting here.
Speakers at Tuesday night’s JCPS Board meeting included Dear JCPS officers, Tiffany Dunn, Gay Adelmann and others. They addressed the state takeover, putting students first, and the proposed policing of JCPS students. Here is the text from Ms. Dunn’s speech:
My name is Tiffany Dunn. I’m a national board certified ESL teacher at a wonderful school, Lassiter Middle.
At our November 13th faculty meeting we were told by our administration,
“We are operating as if we are already under state control.”
This was said twice for emphasis.
My question to you is, “why?”
JCPS parents, teachers, and stakeholders fought hard and made it clear we had no interest in being controlled by a privatization-minded, predatory state board of education and commissioner. We succeeded, but only to have our district wave the white flag anyway?
What does “operating as if we are already under state control” look like, you ask?
Our professional learning communities have been hijacked. We have district personnel sit in our meeting every single week. Instead of having collegial conversations about student learning, we are being forced to give common assessments. On the same day. No matter where we are in our teaching. And then analyze the contrived data as if it’s legitimate.
We’re also being told we have to do project-based learning – the SAME project as our PLC members. Have any of you looked at the research on PBLs? It’s dismal. John Hattie has it at a .15 effect size – what does this mean? To be considered effective – a strategy should be at least .4. PBL effectiveness even falls behind charter and religious schools, which not surprisingly, weren’t much better.
This type of control is not only attack on teacher autonomy, it’s an attack on student learning.
Along with the classroom control, we have become obsessed with MAP testing and student data. We are losing precious class time to assess students. Most appalling is that ESL and ECE students are being denied their reader accommodation on the reading portion of the MAP test.
So, these results aren’t even reliable or legitimate! Next Tuesday, our school is having a reward day for students based on MAP growth. We are losing two more class periods of instruction. Less than 1/3 of our 6th grade students qualified.
I ask you, “Why are we using test data for rewards? What are we trying to accomplish? Shame students into learning? As if they’re trying to do poorly?”
Wayne and his cronies want nothing more than to see us fail – it fits their narrative and it will line their pockets. Following a takeover agenda will only get us one place – taken over. It was and always will be the end goal.
Instead, JCPS needs to align itself with research-based strategies, not data mining. Teachers should be treated as the experts, not babysat by district and school administrators.
Below is the text from Gay Adelmann’s speech:
I sure hope that teacher does not experience any retribution for speaking up for her students tonight.
No teacher should ever experience negative consequences for doing what’s best for their students.
And that includes our teachers who speak out against these threats of privatization and excessive testing and everything that goes along with it.
Dear JCPS,
My name is Gay Adelmann. I am the co-founder of Dear JCPS and Save Our Schools KY.
In May of 2016, I stood up here and told the current board chair he needed to put the interests of our students ahead of the interests of privatizers. He didn’t listen. And he’s gone now.
In August of 2016, Dear JCPS cofounder Erin Korbylo stood here and told Dr. Hargens that we gave her a vote of no confidence because she worried more about what business leaders thought than about doing what was best for students. She’s also gone now.
In fact, the first time I spoke to this board was in 2013. Before Dr. Pruitt was even the commissioner. Only two of you are still here. And here Wayne Lewis comes in from nowhere, telling you how to fix JCPS. And you jump through every hoop he sets for you.
Don’t worry about them. The superintendent reports to this board, this board reports to us – the voters. Our students are your customers. The customer comes first. Not Frankfort, not business and chamber leaders (who probably don’t have kids in our schools), not these disingenuous Alec-funded fake grassroots groups.
Because no matter what you do! It’s a shell game. It’s a moving target. They’re going to find a way to say our schools are failing. So you might as well do what you know is right.
Not only did voters keep out the privatizers out of our district, we pushed back on a state takeover and charter school funding. While we weren’t pleased with the compromise, because we knew it would lead to more of the same, living in fear of being taken over
You’ve gotten a two year stay of execution. Use it.
Spend it doing what’s best for students — especially our most vulnerable. Not jumping thru hoops for unqualified, outsiders with a privatization agenda.
Here’s something I don’t think the community understands.
What may be fine for mainstream students, like many of ours, is not fine for our most vulnerable. ESPECIALLY when you have a district of CHOICE!
I did not realize this until I saw it first hand as a Shawnee parent.
When you have choice and diversity, two things we TREASURE, you cannot allow them to use these qualities against us and destroy our district in the process. Fight back! Help them understand.
When you treat students as data (in the aggregate, the average, the statistic, instead of the wet clay that they are), you learn to manipulate it to give you what you need to make Frankfort happy, instead of giving each student what they need individually to “reach their full potential.”
Our most vulnerable students are the ones who end up being used as pawns to make the data look good for the adults.
We know that these practices are abusive. They’ve told us! Resist doing what you know is harmful. Give exceptions – fight back – for schools with high needs populations. For vulnerable students. Because what works for the mainstream often throws our most vulnerable students under the bus. And we’re losing a generation of kids.
If any elected official has a problem with our district cutting back on this state-mandated abuse, let them say so publicly. So we know who to vote out next time.
Put students first. Not in aggregate. Not the averages. Not data points. Not the mainstream.
All students, especially the most vulnerable.
Support excellent teachers like Ms. Dunn. Allow her to do what she knows to be best for her students, and everything else will follow.
Thank you.
If you have a message you would like to submit to Dear JCPS, please email moderator@dearjcps.com.
