22/07/2023
During the Old Business portion of the Westwood Regional School District’s public board of education meeting on 7/20/23, trustee Douglas Cusato read a lengthy pre-written statement.
“These are items that I’ve been kind of thinking about for a while, and they’re not going to be the easiest for some of the ‘red shirts’ to digest, so I promise, I apologize ahead of time. But I think it’s really important.
Um… so I want to take a moment to reflect on numerous items that I believe fall into ”old business”, or at least they should, considering they’ve been discussed tonight, or already exist in our schools, including the Diversity, [and] Equity, Inclusion mandate that went in, roughly 2022 [inaudible]; the 2020, I believe it was, Comprehensive Health Curriculum; the flag policy; controversial issues.
I bring this up knowing that our strategic goal planning is coming up, and I think we need to revisit the type of material we include in that goal-setting effort.
To give some context, I believe it’s very true that people who run for seats on Board of Educations for schools primarily do this for a common purpose, and that’s to see change happen or to prevent change from occurring that they envision could be possible. I’m certainly not an exception to that statement. While campaigning, I expressed and maintained concerns relating to our district and the ideologies being funneled into the educational process. During that time, I did imagine that there was a small number, or small list of passionate educators that maintained some strong leftist values. I also assumed these individuals maintained good intention. But like most of the ultra-left progressive movement in society, they lacked wisdom. Today, I will admit something: I was very wrong. I want to sincerely apologize to any staff member, or member of our staff or administration, that I may have discouraged with my past statements.
So, where [inaudible] district, in my opinion, following my seven months now, being on the board? I can make two very honest statements:
First, the free marketplace of thought and ideas in Westwood Regional School District is gone. There’s a one-track learning process in this district where it includes the awakening of our child’s unconscious bias to a woke Marxist ideology.
More specifically, that makes reference to a two-group society: one that’s privileged. The owner of the culture. For example, in a book that’s in our middle school, that culture is commonly listed as a dominant culture. In this book, it calls out, ‘The dominant culture is the group of people in society who hold the most power, and are often, but not always, in the majority. In the U.S. and the U.K., people who are white, middle class, Christian, and cis-gender are the dominant culture. They are in charge of the institutions, and have established behaviors, values, and traditions that are considered acceptable and the norm in our countries.’
And the second is the people who are oppressed, and work, or work for the ideologies and gain no value.
The final goal of this ideology is activism against the ideological holders that I just called out – sorry if that’s a little confusing – [inaudible] the dominant culture.
The activism has no end goal. It’s not based on fact, and it’s entirely designed just to organize and drive this change.
This wasn’t created, or is not included in the Comprehensive Health Curriculum alone. It’s far more encompassing, and includes significant training of our staff, the DEI mandate, books we purchased in the last few years and put in class, and some revolutionist consultants as well.
The COVID pandemic output [of] phrases that are something like, “learning loss” and “mental health crisis” were used as the catalyst to help organize and fund a bunch of these above movements. What I find remarkably interesting about this is none of what I mentioned above directly, or in that case, previously, improves math scores or the ability to read. You didn’t hear me say “math acceleration mandate”, “reading acceleration mandate”. No. Instead, you were told that the DEI and the SEL, and Comprehensive Health Curriculum, improve learning by incorporating a safer environment.
The environment within schools is getting slightly worse, if anything, uh, from what we see in our elementary school. My guess: the thought reform going into schools is driving kids crazy.
Personally, I believe we should get back to discipline and cursive writing, and you’ll be shocked how fast things get better, and less stressful for all, including educators.
We’ll be told things like, “We improved 77%” and “12%”; however, a bright student will sit up here and beg to keep Honors in middle school, providing her with a formal experience to grow personally and academically, and we’ll say, “No.” She will ask questions like, “Where’s my equity?”, like she’s taught in school, but will quickly realize the financial focus of these institutions is not on the high achievers. We have deprioritized high achievers for low performing achievers, at the expense of the academic rigor and grit development for high achievers.
I imagine bridges built on DEI, SEL, [and] gender ideology, probably don’t work very well, to be honest.
In short, as a result of creating learning loss in math and reading, we hyper-focused on social sciences, including critical theories. Last time I checked, and this is [grounded] on a lot of experience, when you want to do something better, you put in more time and effort, not less.
So is our post-COVID education focused on gaining equity back in math and reading? Or grooming the next generation of social injustice warriors?
With that said, I have a few other things I want to mention:
Educational institutions own the production of culture and mindsets for our future generations. You want to see how amazing that culture machine is? Stand up in front of a room and say, ‘Boys have a p***s and girls have a vagina,’ or mention family values. You'll be called an extremist before the end of the weekend.
We just saw the same thing with holding a pro-life stance that’s important to you, personally.
Now think what would have happened ten years ago if you would have made that statement. People would have laughed and said, “Yeah. We know. Thank you.”
That is the power of culture production in educational institutions.
A hilarious note, while this is happening: you can be called an extremist by the person that uses a book published by Hillary Clinton’s daughter, and funded by the Clinton Foundation to awaken your child to sociological issues, like global warming. If you’re shaking your head and you say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with that,’ ask yourself: would you be okay if Donald Trump, Jr., was the author of that book?
Good thing we can reverse a lot of this through reform in schools. Where it came in is where it goes out. It came in with the Comprehensive Health Curriculum, the DEI, consultants, the books. This means it can go out with the Comprehensive Health Curriculum, the DEI, consultants, and books. Thus I urge my fellow board members to think these topics through in detail, prior to our strategic planning efforts. We need to galvanize as a team, for the betterment of children in our district, set an example for our district, our county, and our state. It’s time.
Lastly, regarding personnel leaving, retirements: factually speaking, some educators aren’t going to support the change some of us recognize that is truly needed to move forward. This is normal situation in changing institution. There is a new board, a newer superintendent, and views that are very different than the last several generations of boards and superintendents in this district. Thank you.”
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