WTW40: The Woke Kindergarten Fallout - School Board Members Gone Wild

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:40 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke, this is episode 40, I'm Thomas Smith, that over there is Lydia Smith.

0:00:48 Lydia: Lydia Smith, I'm here.

0:00:51 Thomas: Hoping Heath hears that. Just, yeah. A little Easter egg for Heath. If he listens.

0:00:53 Lydia: Yeah! Aw, yeah. Heath, if you're listening.

0:00:58 Thomas: I think that noise is like a call and it's like, you know, and then like his brain. It's time for part two of woke kindergarten part. We're we're repeating a grade. Well, kindergarten two held back.

0:01:01 Lydia: Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. We had to go back. Oh, that's good.

0:01:12 Thomas: Yeah. And I can't wait to learn more about this. So let's see any announcements other than, uh, please support the show on patreon.com/wherethereswoke woke and skip the ads that you're probably going to hear like any minute now. You don't want, you don't hear those. Come on.

0:01:13 Lydia: I like that. Yes, please do. We have so much fun over with the patrons. You want to be one of them. That's all I'm going to say.

0:01:27 Thomas: Jeez. Yep. Do it. You're missing out. Everyone's talking about you and how you haven't done it yet. Know, they're talk. Okay. Let's just say there's stock. All right. Thanks to all those who have. And let's get on over to the topic.

0:01:48 Lydia: Think the other element that could have been emphasized more here from the school board's perspective was that little more information about looking at best practices. Really what I saw in looking through the board agendas and their minutes and everything was a lot of, you know, contract for this, contract for that, contract for this, contract for that. And I, I did not see with the exception of their like anti-racism board code of conduct stuff. I did not see anything where it was like, based off of these findings via, you these entities, this is how we're going to tackle this problem as a district. And as such, we will be partnering with the following programs in order to address that. And there is that information out there. There's the West Ed Black Minds Matter recommendations. They have a ton of recommendations that are super cool. I'm happy to share those with listeners.

There is the Learning Learning Policy Institute that specifically talks about the Every Student Succeeds Act and how they can address absenteeism, how they could address suspension rate, how they can adjust inequities that we're seeing across different racial groups. Right. These are things that they are out there. And I wish that the school board, you know, they probably just didn't think that this was going to be covered by the San Francisco Chronicle and all hell

0:02:21 Thomas: Hmm. Mm -hmm. Well, yeah,

0:03:09 Lydia: Would have broken loose, yeah.

0:03:09 Thomas: Again, and it's a fucking school board. I could be on a school board or or some idiot could be like, yeah.

0:03:11 Lydia: Yes. Pin in that, yeah.

0:03:19 Thomas: Like, it's the idea. Again, I like to try to convert these headlines into what it should be, you know, to point out that, like is not a big fucking deal. The headline could be local school board, not amazing. Like, honestly, like, okay, cool. No way.

0:03:25 Lydia: Take it up in the next selection.

0:03:36 Thomas: Yeah. Go run for school board then. Hey, here's another thing. I don't know if this will be part of your coverage. Sorry. Stop me. If it is which States are doing well in school right now and which aren't, which States have the, so you don't have that. Okay. I'll look at that. Who, which states, let's just guess which States are having the biggest drops and Is it going to be the wokest? I don't know. Could be, I don't know. Let's look into it. You adjust often, also population has a lot to do with that. So like there's going to be social economic factors. Yeah. And like still, like the worst test scores are not the wokest states like California, the change in average. So here's one just picking it up. And I don't know if this will, this is just a quick Google, but like a metric of the worst worst outcomes between 2019 and 2022. So basically everywhere has gone down, it looks like. Like every single

0:03:36 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, no. I Yeah. Mississippi, Yeah. Yeah. California.

0:04:23 Lydia: Who's

0:04:23 Thomas: State, test scores have gone down.

0:04:25 Lydia: Gone down the worst, yeah, yeah.

0:04:26 Thomas: Saying New Mexico is one of the worst. I've seen, actually Oregon, that's weird. Oregon's pretty bad. I like in the middle, you know, California's in the middle, which I think is probably impressive given, again, how many people are in California and all the conditions there. Weirdly, Minnesota is really bad. That's interesting. Anyway, the point is you could probably further break it down in ways that would make the comparison make more sense. But this is just yet another thing that's left out, like by omission you're just assuming well all the normal schools are doing a great job, it's like, I don't know, conservative states are shit, they're teaching people, they don't teach people where babies come from, like maybe talk about that, like maybe that's a big issue. Exactly.

0:04:32 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think also, you know, one of the big things there from 2019 to 2022 is the impact of and like, yeah, it's so complicated there.

0:05:11 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, the most relevant comparison for what we're talking about is it like 2022 to 2023? Okay.

0:05:19 Lydia: Yeah. One of the other things that was mentioned in Virginia Fox's rant on the House floor was that a teacher was, you removed because he was against the program. So

0:05:19 Thomas: Oh, picturing Handmaid's Tale where there's like they have to acknowledge like, oh, there's been another hanging. Yeah, one of the teachers spoke out against will kindergarten and, you know, how we a school board that decided to pay them some money, some free federal money, you know, we deal with those traitors.

0:05:35 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, so this teacher's name is Tiger Crave Neely, and he spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle. He agreed to be interviewed for their article. And there was another teacher that was interviewed but declined to share their name because they did not want to be retaliated against. They had concerns about that. And they were speaking out about what they didn't understand the program, essentially. They didn't understand why they were there, what they were doing. And he from from his perspective, he would ask questions and then made to feel like he couldn't ask questions because he was a white man.

0:05:53 Thomas: Nice. Okay.

0:06:26 Lydia: Is a gay man and himself as moderate. That's interesting. But after the article came out, what I can tell, there was a staff meeting that happened later and there was an issue with another staff member and himself. I saw reports that the other staff member got in his face saying he was a danger and they were concerned about, their you safety kind of thing.

0:06:26 Thomas: Okay. Oh.

0:06:51 Thomas: Man. I can't wait to my true headline to interpersonal conflict at school somewhere. Wow. Headline news, everybody.

0:06:52 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what it is, but obviously,

0:07:01 Thomas: Yeah, it's always what it is. There's some grudge and then someone takes advantage of it to get a spotlight in a way or not, you know, or maybe the conservative people took advantage of that dispute either way. Like it's, it'S always that kind of nonsense.

0:07:02 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. So I, um, it's being framed everywhere that it is retaliation, unequivocally retaliation, because he spoke, you truth kind of thing, um, he, initial interviews after being suspended, um, language seemed a little couched. And then I saw one that was more recent where it feels like he's kind of upping the dramatics a little bit. So I'm keeping an eye on the Fires website to see if not

0:07:26 Thomas: Wow. Okay. Oh, are they all over it? Or no? Not yet. Okay?

0:07:45 Lydia: Yet, but I'm wondering if they will be. He has sued a previous school district before.

0:07:50 Thomas: Oh, really? For what?

0:07:52 Lydia: This. Someone commented on Reddit and did not respond to my request when I said, can you tell me more? They left me hanging. So I did a lot of digging elsewhere. I eventually found it. He had sued a previous district because they did not want him mentioning his husband in his classes. So very like fair suit. And they ended up settling it. You know, but he is not afraid of lawsuits. He also has a I found his real name, first of all, because it's not Tiger Craven Neely. First, I was like, is this guy even like a credential teacher? Let me find out what's going on here. Couldn't find Tiger Craven Neely anywhere. But I found his name eventually. And and I found his divorce proceedings from 2009.

0:08:09 Thomas: Okay, yeah.

0:08:22 Thomas: No Okay... nice.

0:08:37 Lydia: Yeah, I found a lot of stuff. And then a small claims court case. So anyway, I and a petition to change his name time to Tiger. And I don't think it went through because that's not what his teacher license is under. But anyway, I think this is someone who is not afraid of getting involved in the legal system if he feels like he wants to be involved in the legal system. So as I said, I'll keep an eye on the FIRE's website and see if there's something coming up there. And maybe that'll be fun for the future. But what's going on with that teacher that Virginia Fox says was, you know, run out of town, essentially.

0:08:57 Thomas: Sure.

0:09:10 Thomas: Bottom line that for me, I talked, we actually know about what this is? Do we have any real idea

0:09:15 Lydia: Know that there was some sort of not even disciplinary. It was essentially they are looking into what happened between him and this other staff member. And as that point in time, he is, you know, on administrative leave.

0:09:19 Thomas: Disciplinary Okay.

0:09:33 Thomas: He is down administratively. Okay. He still is, hmm.

0:09:34 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, far as I've have seen. He has not been brought back to campus at this point.

0:09:39 Thomas: When Did this happen again?

0:09:42 Lydia: I think that was like one of the most recent ones. It was like, yeah, it's been going for a couple years. San Francisco Chronicle article came out February 3rd. I think he was suspended the following week, So not a good look. But again, it is involving another staff member and we don't have a lot of details, the school obviously will not comment on it.

0:09:43 Thomas: Because Yeah, this This Thing Has been going for a couple years, right? This program, interesting.

0:09:58 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. You know what, I'm pretty sure it's not, I'm pretty sure he spoke against, well, kindergarten, just, just, that like And again, leave the room open for, maybe there's some administrator who's a piece of shit and they did a bad thing by suspending him. I don't know, what's What's the, who

0:10:12 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Could be. And then he'll have the opportunity to sue and, you be made whole hopefully through that if that's what happened. Yeah, speaking of superintendents, what do you think about getting into the school board itself? Not only was there a huge hubbub about woke kindergarten, the program itself, the elementary school, their test scores falling, and then this teacher being suspended, things erupted at the school board, but not in the way you would expect.

0:10:22 Thomas: Knows Yeah Again Local Superintendent makes bad disciplinary decision, wow, there's Okay.

0:10:55 Lydia: So watched several of these school board meetings, four plus hours long.

0:11:01 Thomas: It's time we're never getting back, but that's okay, yeah.

0:11:03 Lydia: Yeah, but I would watch, I'd watch it on like multiple speed, you know, and 175, because I'm not crazy like you at 2x. I can't do it. I can't process it. School board is the entity that approved the contract, signed contract allowed the funding to go forward in this way. And in the lead up to the article coming out in the San Francisco Chronicle, there was a board meeting essentially the week before where board members were aware, aware, I believe, of this article coming out based off of the conversation that the superintendent had with the author of the article, the journalist. And a member of the school board was not pleased about a pretty brand new school board member. He was not part of the group when they were signing these contracts. And he had some questions for a staff member who was there to to speak about the budget and how things were being spent.

0:11:11 Thomas: Yeah. Okay.

0:11:57 Clip: Your name, ma'am? You're not Dr. Sandra Escobedo? No, I'm not doctor. Okay. I didn't think so. Okay. Some of what you said today is alarming to me some of these parents here they should take a rope and string you up I think there's something with you absolutely not I'm going to read a letter let me ask you JUST LET ME ASK YOU A QUESTION OKAY UH SORRY POINT OF ORDER NO I'M JUST GETTING YOUR ATTENTION I'M NOT THAT IS NOT HOW YOU GET ANYONE'S ATTENTION OKAY LISTEN FOR A MINUTE LISTENS FOR A MOMENT CAN WE GET UP SORRI I GOT I 'VE GOT TWO QUESTIONS TRUSTEE RAMOS ONE SECOND PLEASE I HAVE THE FLOOR AUDIENCE PLEASES WE ARE NOT GOING TO SAY THINGS LIKE THAT IN THIS WE'RE NOT PLEAING PLEAST YEAH YOU'RE RIGHT THANK YOU AMANDA I APOLOGIZE I 'LL HANDLE IT OKAY I APολOGIZED THANK you so I have two questions for you before I read something what is your understanding of woke kindergarten and abolitionist teaching could you answer that please um I know that we have a contract around woke kindergarten at one of our sites um I am not uh clear on everything that that entails uh in terms of what the activities are being uh put in place at that particular site but I do know that there is a contract at one of our sites and the contract includes offering the staff professional development that builds their capacity for culturally and linguistically responsive instruction it supports the staff in supporting children children with literacy engaging content and rigorous instruction and

0:12:28 Thomas: Like a security Guard Kind Of Guy, wow. Is

0:13:40 Lydia: So shocking. Was really impressed that everyone kind of jumped in.

0:13:43 Thomas: Did Try To Walk It Back. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I do really appreciate that. The other board member was. I was like, no, not doing that.

0:13:45 Lydia: Yeah yeah. Yeah we're not doing that. Nope.

0:13:51 Thomas: Sorry. Yeah.

0:13:52 Lydia: But this is not the first time he's spoken in an horrible way.

0:13:58 Thomas: No way.

0:13:59 Lydia: Yeah. Previous remarks include things like, if you're homosexual or gay or something, that's your lifestyle. Our kids are being groomed. When this came out, that this is how he decided to tackle his grievances with the woke kindergarten program, the statement that he gave was that he acknowledged that he offended the community, but said that the district offended him by spending $250,000 on the woke kindergarten program.

0:14:05 Thomas: Okay. Hmm. Yeah. But like, was it this lady's decision? It sounds like she doesn't even know about like her. Answer is like, oh, I think I know, but like, she's not a board member. Why?

0:14:32 Lydia: No, no, no. She's a staff member. I know. Grandstanding,

0:14:39 Thomas: What an asshole?

0:14:40 Lydia: You know, It's just a jerk and taking it out on a woman who is there in her capacity as of the district.

0:14:40 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Who is she exactly?

0:14:48 Lydia: I think she's in budgets. I think she just oversees the budget for Hayward Unified.

0:14:53 Thomas: Does he think she makes all those decisions unilaterally or something? What an asshole. Okay, geez.

0:14:56 Lydia: Yeah, I know. I know." He, a result of this, obviously school board had a closed session that he was not invited to. They drafted a resolution.

0:15:07 Thomas: Didn't know you were allowed to have a meeting without one of the members.

0:15:10 Lydia: They're going to pursue, not know, consequences for behavior, I board policies, you know, just kind of the harassing environment that he demonstrated towards, an you employee for The school district. And Essentially, the is to censure and sanction him and that his conduct caused a hostile work environment for the staff and that they would be, the district would be hiring an outside independent investigator to look into this. Part of this resolution would be to remove him from his, you committee appointment sort of thing. Obviously, they cannot remove him From office, but it's by, you you know, will of the voter or whatever.

But he longer be permitted to meet individually with or question members of the district staff except the superintendent. Would not be permitted into their workspace areas, including school sites and the district office, and that things, you know could be re -evaluated after the investigation was over. What I sent you is the board meeting that happened, the next board meeting that happened after this. And this was February 14th. He said the thing, they drafted a resolution, and here they are presenting the resolution for vote. So Yep. They had, you what we're not going to show here is a of people called in and said how horrified they were by

0:15:16 Thomas: Okay, yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay.

0:15:48 Thomas: They say obviously. I don't know. Maybe they could.

0:16:32 Thomas: Oh,

0:16:32 Lydia: His comments.

0:16:32 Thomas: Okay. Like testifying essentially.

0:16:34 Lydia: Yep. Public comment, right, for this. And there was someone, another member of the board that did not feel safe coming in person and called in via Zoom to join. There is a board member named Ken Rodden that speaks here, and I think he does a really great job of talking about the impact that this had. So

0:16:34 Thomas: Okay.

0:16:55 Clip: That we were going to be commenting, commenting on this this evening. I, my comments down because I want to get it right, for bear with me if I'm reading, okay. All want say that the board meeting of January 24th, 2024 was not a board meeting I will remember fondly. I watched as one of our finest employees and longtime staff members, Sandra Escobedo, came under verbal assault during what was supposed to have been and just routine questioning and answer seeking period, followed by following a presentation by Ms. Escobedo to the board. Observed in horror as Trustee Ramos proceeded to first ask Ms. Escobedo whether or not she had her doctorate. And when she replied that she did not, Mr. Ramos misogynistically replied, "I didn't think so." Though that were not inappropriate enough, he went on to say that there are people in this room who want to string you up. I could not believe it was happening and it happened so fast and seemingly out of nowhere. I was completely caught off guard and I didn't react as quickly as I wish I had. I think all of us were simply in shell shocked to

0:17:46 Thomas: Said they should string her up well All except for the one awesome person who was like, "No,

0:18:02 Lydia: I

0:18:03 Clip: Ms. Escobedo, I would like to say how amazing I think she was in her graciousness to continue on in her presentation in dignity and professionalism. There is no way that she or anybody should have to go through the verbal assaults like that. Hostile language and disrespectful behavior are not the values we hold as a board and as an organization, and they just simply have no place in our public discourse. I was embarrassed and ashamed. The safety of our employees is of absolute paramount importance."

0:18:36 Lydia: Really, really moving words board member Rodden.

0:18:40 Thomas: I mean, I would have liked some acknowledgement of the woman who I think was another board member who was like, "No, like, if you're gonna say we were all," take, nobody reacted well, okay, there was one, I feel like she did a good job.

0:18:44 Lydia: Yeah, I think it's the woman in the middle there. Yeah? Yeah. But how do you think Ramos is going to respond to this resolution that's on the table for a vote?

0:18:58 Thomas: If I were him, like, I would never be him, so if I ever plopped into his brain, and that would fucking suck, but I'd be like, all right, I would say, "Hey, uh, I totally, I," you can hear I took it back right away, "that was totally inappropriate, sincerest apologies," did, "won't happen again, did not mean to do that," uh, can hear I just wanted to make a rhetorical point, "uh, I won't do that again, I just messed up."

0:19:00 Lydia: Sure. Sure.

0:19:19 Lydia: Ah, that's not what he did.

0:19:19 Thomas: No? No? Okay.

0:19:21 Lydia: Well, swing on over to him and speak for himself.

0:19:25 Clip: Right, first of all, you guys are hypocrites, you allow him to call you the N-word last year, it's not, it's all recorded, and then you let him get away with it, and then what happens is the reason we're in this mess of world kindergarten is because you guys voted it in, you guys are the ones that created this problem that the general public doesn't know it, that's why I was upset, I found out, I got, I know all the bodies up there, I got all this information, and because you and the superintendent, he could have fixed it, but he let it go because he, he wanted to cover tracks, everybody, but this whole district, the whole district is dishonest, I'm just going to read you this and I'll be quiet because it's, it's ridiculous, number one, woke kindergarten, $250,000 was spent on what, and the scores were so low, so who got some money out of this, because somebody did.

The other point is, is first of all, Mr. Beasley and Mr. Reimann, they said on one of their articles that their parents knew about this, I talked to several parents from Glassbrook, which they don't know anything about it. You guys are screwing with the Latino community.

And what's gonna happen is this, I'm just gonna let them know more and more, because you guys allow this program in here so they could, and you let them loose on some Spanish-speaking kids on Latinos because you don't care, and you talk about racism, you guys are the racist, the program tells you it's to disrupt whiteness, the people who you hired, they don't like white people, they don't like white teachers, white parents, white children, it's not what I'm saying, it's in the literature, it's right here, go look it up yourself, you hired a bunch of racist socialists and why did you do this, I don't know, and the scores went down, you guys haven't helped the community now.

0:19:30 Thomas: Let's What? What? You

0:19:30 Lydia: I don't know what that's about. Yeah. Yeah.

0:21:33 Lydia: Eventually, kind you of try to redirect and they're like, your comments are supposed to be about, you resolution in front of you and not going off about the program again.

0:21:38 Thomas: Yeah. You reply would be well, even if all that were true, why did that lady who was, directed you this comment to deserve it. She had nothing to do with it. Not even your own bullshit right now is having to do với her. So, okay. I mean mean, here's the thing. Are there any legitimate points there? There might be.

0:21:47 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah,

0:21:59 Thomas: I don't know.

0:21:59 Lydia: There might be.

0:21:59 Thomas: Have you looked into it? I mean, it could be, I suggested before that like grift is an issue. Yeah, there could be kickbacks. I do not know. Is there any proof of that?

0:21:59 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Nothing that I've seen. No. Think that's a legitimate concern. And maybe something will come up when they have the independent investigation.

0:22:14 Thomas: It has nothing to do with wokeness at all. This happens all the time. And I think we would all be equally against against kickbacks. You know, that could happen with these, some of these contract things, you know, especially with government money that feels like it's like, oh, that's just kind of free money. Okay. I have a friend who I can help get a contract and they'll do a kickback. Yeah. We would all be against that in all cases. There's absolutely no possibility at all that that only happens when it's a woke thing. Like there's, there's just no way.

0:22:16 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. The resolution to censure and sanction board member Ramos was approved. Yeah, so he's been removed from his committee assignments and, again, is not allowed on school sites, is Not allowed in district offices and can only speak to the superintendent in terms of the district staff. And there will be an investigation looking into what occurred here and, you any other evidence of wrongdoing, I guess. Then we'll see, you what happens if there are additional measures they can take or if it really can only be tackled at the polls. That's not the end of the story here. Part of this fallout, district decided to terminate the contract for woke kindergarten.

0:22:49 Thomas: Yay.

0:23:24 Thomas: Voted on that? Is that the same school board where

0:23:26 Lydia: School board. Yeah. So they decided to to the contract and the superintendent issued a statement. This is February 16th when they decided to two days after this. Yeah, and they said that the reason why they decided to cancel the contract, they were in the third year of a three-year contract that was slated to end in June anyway.

0:23:36 Thomas: That's only two days after this. Okay,

0:23:48 Lydia: The work was substantially done. We We became aware of statements by the woke kindergarten founder, both on the woke kindergarten website and on social media platforms. Although we respect freedom of speech and the right for individuals to hold a variety of political views, the social media and other public statements of the vendor do not align with the values of the district and those of many of our community members. I think there's a big concern with Israel-Palestine and the comments that the founder made regarding that and The statements from Kai Gross, "I believe the United States has no right to exist. I believe every settler colony who has committed genocide against native peoples, against indigenous people, has no right to exist. Y y' all the demons, y 'al are the villains we've been trying to end, y' al get free of y' all um, believe in a free Palestine from the river to the sea.

0:23:48 Thomas: Mm -hmm Oh For Fuck What Did they say what? But I thought the woke were into that, and the same name woke who's doing the, like, sign this contract would be the wokest, who, it's whatever. It sounds like, I wonder why they voted on this to begin with. Like, it doesn't sound like this school board is super woke or anything.

0:24:54 Lydia: I, I don't totally, I know.

0:24:56 Thomas: You haven't gone over the minutes of that meeting?

0:24:57 Lydia: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot that's, you know, closed door that I can't get, get access to. Yeah, it's been interesting. It's been an interesting journey to kind of watch this unfold. The other piece that they said that they decided to terminate the contract is because the controversy and the media attention that it was bringing to the elementary school and, you know, putting potentially kids in that position where where their school is being brought up like that. Who knows what was happening at the school? We We know things like Libs of TikTok are out there and the bomb threats that happened in Oklahoma as a result of, you that Haya Raychik had over there. Like, I think they were concerned about the and the safety and the well -being of students and staff members and everything. Things so

0:25:02 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:25:46 Thomas: So they terminate the thing based on, I guess, I don't know. What's your impression of why they terminated it? Does it sound like it's just a bad publicity thing? And, know, you they were going to find their reasons, or I mean, the Palestinian river to the sea is another complication that we haven't really talked about. Out It's, I know, is I feel like that tweets you just read are completely consistent with what we all should have already known about Kai, based on the other materials. Like, I don't know why that would be a shock. Yeah, well, more than that, I would say, like, like a pretty, when you say abolitionist and someone who's wanted to, like, get rid of, dismantle these systems, like that's, yeah, that's a, that's very leftist thing, and I'm not sure why you would authorize the contract to begin with if you, you know, like, were you misled or ignorant, or are you now just changing your mind because of bad publicity, you know? Yeah.

0:26:06 Lydia: I'm torn. I, they probably are seeing it's bad publicity, and they're getting a little tired of it. I think there is a legitimate concern about the mental health and well-being of staff and students at Glassbrook and in the school district, you know, for the board themselves, the district staff. They've been through a lot in the space of a month. And so I think that is probably a big piece of it. But I also do think that there are some potentially self-serving things here, too. I think it's a mix of things that it just made the most sense to cut ties and, you together a nice little press release that sounds good. And, you Know, without having to admit that potentially they didn't look into it as deeply as as, you normally would look into vendors or you would expect school districts to be looking into vendors. Yeah.

0:26:38 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:51 Thomas: Maybe They had less of a, you know, back at the time when they did this, the political atmosphere meant, you know, maybe they didn't think too deeply about it. Who knows? I mean, it's just, it's such a nothing. It's just so important to compare reality to what the perceived reality, and what the, what the right is attempting to say is reality.

0:27:33 Thomas: They Very much, when you watch these stories and when you hear them talk about it, they want you to believe that the woke are coming for your kindergarten kids, and they're going in there and they're teaching them wrong math. This had nothing to do with changing curriculum, curriculum, correct?

0:27:19 Lydia: Mm hmm. Yeah, nope.

0:27:48 Lydia: Correct. Correct.

0:27:49 Thomas: There's nothing to do with that. All you want. Like this one vendor, you know, I don't know, maybe they did a good job. Maybe they didn't do a good Job. Maybe this was a bad contract. Maybe it was a good contract. Sure. It's not a sign of a systemic wokeness takeover of the schools. Like it just isn't.

0:27:56 Lydia: Yeah, I know. Kind bolster my point about the legitimization, though, of this and the woke talking points and everything there that we got because the San Francisco Chronicle understandably published the story. I think that is fair in a lot of ways. We have a conservative think tank. The Goldwater Institute is using this story in particular to push their Academic Transparency Act model legislation. This model legislation was drafted with the Manhattan Institute, another conservative think tank that Christopher Ruffo is involved with, and Stanley Kurtz, who is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, whose board includes Judge Robert Bork's widow, Robert P. George, Leonard Leo. You know, these are like a messy group of people. Stanley Kurtz in particular was behind the model legislation to remove critical race theory from schools that was used by states like Texas in putting forward their own bills for their state legislatures. And now he's behind the General Education Act model legislation, which is to, we spoke about this in a previous episode, to create a general education college built on, you know, Western thinkers, classic Western philosophers and thoughts and all that. That's the classics.

0:28:16 Thomas: Oh God.

0:29:25 Thomas: That cardinal direction had the best thinking, yeah.

0:29:29 Lydia: So this has so many things people to go crazy about, between, you, the name, between the amount of money, that it's a public school, that that it's a school where there's a lot of kids that are very disadvantaged. Like they, a huge subset of population that needs a lot of help, and then no data to then back up if there has been improvements in math and reading, of course, because those have gone down and it wasn't intended to do that. But it's hitting all of these talking points perfectly, that now it's going to be weaponized by the right in these policymaking entities. And that has very damaging consequences.

0:29:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:12 Thomas: Well, because they're the ones who are responsible for a lot of this schools being shitty now yeah like and I'm just googling, you can do a casual Google and see the downturn in test scores was historic across the board, you know, I it's, I don't know what the best basis for comparison will be, but this is a a problem. You know, we lost a lot of good teachers during COVID.

0:30:15 Lydia: The defunding. Yeah.

0:30:34 Thomas: There's, it said like one of the things I saw cited like teacher absenteeism. Yeah. A thankless job where, by the way, there's all of this political component to it now. There is no, for no pay. There's nothing but criticism. It's a thankless Job. We've lost a ton of good. There are a ton of reasons why test scores might be going down. I don't think it's because of the couple seminars that someone put on. It's just not going to be that. I'm sorry. It is not.

0:30:24 Lydia: Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:30:59 Lydia: Yeah. And, you know, I mean, this is just, again, from like that state perspective that, If you looked at $250,000 over the course of three years, that's pennies for a state like California. Anyway, that's beside the point. Think I think part of my research from this, too, is understanding that, you absenteeism, suspension rate, those are major, major problems to kids academically being able to achieve what all they could achieve.

0:31:09 Thomas: Yeah. Mm -hmm.

0:31:24 Lydia: And this is a systemic issue. There And is a lot of research that's being done on how to tackle this. ProPublica had a great article that they did with a that was created right after COVID that they're doing like direct intervention. So some ways that school districts will tackle absenteeism is they'll partner with companies that do, you know, like text reminders to the parents, reminding them of the importance of school or offering them data on here's how often your child is absent versus, you know, the average student in the school or the district or whatever. But there's also a company called Concentric that was doing unannounced home visits for absent students. So they would basically get a list from the school saying, hey, here are the students that have missed X number of days in the last two weeks or something. And then they would drop by the house and talk to the parents.

0:32:19 Thomas: Yeah?

0:32:19 Lydia: And sometimes the parents didn't even know that their kids weren't showing up to school. Sometimes the parents knew, but they were dealing with significant family problems that they did not have support to get their kid to school." Also looking at situations in which there are no buses or the buses have been severely reduced in places that still have, you know, transportation as part of their offerings. We don't have that here. That is not something that's offered in our district. There are no busses. So you parents have to drive their kids to school and that can be really, really challenging. But even in placesthat do have buses, they have reduced routes because there aren't enough bus drivers. And transportation to school is a problem. If kids can't even get to school and district isn't doing anything to help them get to school, then what are you supposed to do?

0:32:22 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah? Yeah. I much of this, again, it just comes down to your fundamental views. Like, there are conservatives and even a of liberals, their fundamental view is, well, these people aren't as good at something, or these people over here don't care care about school as much, or these people over here don't. And it's just, I fundamentally come from the, the background like assumption that like, well, people are pretty much the same, whatever it is, there's going to be some factor explaining it. Is it poverty? Is it, you know, it's not going to Be, oh, they just don't care. You're not going to do a home visit for the students missing everything. And it's, it just like, Well, because of who they are, they just don t give a shit. Like they're actually wealthy. They don't even, you know, like that's not gonna be what it is most of the time. There's gonna be some some socioeconomic explanation for it, you know?

0:33:24 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm.

0:33:52 Thomas: And it's just like, why would you not care about that? Like, why was you not number one focused on that? And I wanted to bring up, I'm, you started talking about this program, woke kindergarten. And again, it sounds like we don't have like all the detail as to what it was, know, you it's sounds like that's not completely available, like in terms of the career, whatever it was. You know, the trainings, but I think there is every potential for it to be, if your problem is you got a lot lot of Latino students and their absenteeism, and you're talking from an abolitionist kind of, you know, like a real leftist lens, I could see a lot of potential in the idea that, because I do know that we over -police students of color.

And it very quickly becomes, instead of like, hey, how do we get these people the education they need? It becomes, how Do we punish them the most for probably something that's not their fault? And then that starts them in the, down the line of getting into trouble and police interaction or potentially, or at least disciplinary interaction, getting suspended, being home more, and then you lose more school. I could see an being, hey, let's teach teach the teachers how to deal with that better. How to

0:34:01 Lydia: Mm hm. Yeah, yeah. Mm -hmm. Yeah

0:34:56 Thomas: Not over police, how to not, you know, how not look at it in terms of like, there's something wrong with these kids.

0:34:56 Lydia: Mm

0:35:04 Thomas: And maybe that is what it was. I don't know. And maybe that is what helped the absenteeism. Like, that did go down. So, I don't know. Maybe, well, kindergarten was good. I have no idea. Not enough information.

0:35:09 Lydia: -hmm, yeah, And then, you know, just to to tie this up, this is one program, one program offered to one elementary school that engaged with other programs within one school district within one of the largest states in the country versus using

0:35:22 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. Yep. Using federal money, by the way, but yeah.

0:35:36 Lydia: Federal money versus what I'd like to dive into in a future episode. Episode, PragerU having statewide collaboration with places like Florida and Oklahoma.

0:35:41 Thomas: Ooh. Oh, my God. Oh, Jesus.

0:35:53 Lydia: Get into that some other time, but Prager U in public schools is a real thing. I will be investigating it some more to figure out what all is happening there. This right now is perfectly fine for our local journalists to look into.

0:35:54 Thomas: Some other millennium. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Yeah.

0:36:08 Lydia: It is not the firestorm that the right is trying to make it out to be. There are, you legitimate concerns that can be raised and addressed at the local level. This is not The Woke Have Taken Over, Glassbrook Elementary in Hayward, California.

0:36:22 Thomas: All Well, thanks for the research, that's really fascinating, and what do you know, it turned out to be a complete misrepresentation of what was going on. Who would have figured only the crack reporters at Where There's Woke can possibly untangle this web. Now it's so important to fight back, it's ubiquitous, somebody call Bob Costas, tell him it wasn't, it's not really what Bill Maher said. Bill Mahr's full of shit, he always is, oh, show could just be called Bill Maher Fucking Sucks and Is Wrong, that's really? God.

0:36:44 Lydia: Yeah. Honestly, yeah, I think we're due for rebranding. That's what's going to happen.

0:36:56 Thomas: That guy sucks. Just absolutely sucks.

0:36:56 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. We have like these little, you that we'll be following up on from this one, too. Like this is, it's brand new, you know, this controversy. And there's, I think, a lot of stuff that's going to come from it still. So I'll keep my ears to the ground and my head in the budget documents for Hayward Unified. Let's see what else I can find out in the meantime. And you know who's going to find out first about all that stuff? The Patrons.

0:37:05 Thomas: Yeah, that's true.

0:37:23 Thomas: Patrons at patreon.com/wherethereswoke? Yeah, you're right. They will. Because they're amazing. So please join the ranks. And, oh, we have a good one coming up for you. Really good episode coming up. Won't jinx it. You never know what order things will be in. But If it's the one I'm thinking of, is it the one you're thinking of? This is one is the one he's thinking of. It's really, really good. And we'll be out soon because, you know, it's the end of the month. So, you now that we're putting out 400 things. All right.

0:37:27 Lydia: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

0:37:41 Lydia: Boom. Boom. Boom.

0:37:48 Thomas: Well, we got to get on that. So thanks for listening and we'll see you then.

0:38:14 Thomas: Little Easter egg for Heath. He listens.

0:38:15 Lydia: Hi, Heath, if you're listening.

0:38:16 Thomas: I think that noise is like a call and it's like, you know, and then like his brain. Remember, no, you don't remember this, but in, you know. Empire Strikes Back when the guy has thing around his head, you know? What's his name? Toxic. There's too many names I'm forgetting. It doesn't work. I can only forget like one names.

0:38:20 Lydia: Yeah? Yeah.

0:38:33 Lydia: Is this the guy that was CGI'd later that I thought was real? Okay.

0:38:36 Thomas: No.

0:38:40 Lydia: Not that guy.

0:38:40 Thomas: No. That's the guy from the first movie. It's Not it's not Fido, this is just strictly for the outtakes, there's no way, freaking, what's his name, the guy has been dead since 1895.

0:38:42 Lydia: Oh, okay. This is going well.

0:39:01 Thomas: He's probably born in 1895, but he's been dead for at least 50 years, but Lydia thought he starred in Rogue One. You know, Grand

0:39:00 Lydia: 18? We'll say the last time we watched this with the kids.

0:39:12 Thomas: Moff Tarkin.

0:39:13 Lydia: Yeah, the last time we watched this with the kids, I was like, okay, I guess I can kind of see how this is CGI. I guess I was wrong, so many documents. Oh yeah it all makes sense

0:39:20 Thomas: Okay. Look, here's the thing. She's too busy staring at documents and researching, and that makes her eyes not... Oh, that's true. You weren't wearing glasses back then. What if that's what it was? You didn't realize you needed glasses. Holy crap, we've cracked it. We've solved another one here on Where There's Woke. Play the detective music. Music. Okay, anyway, what, what are we doing? Uh, so there's a show, it's

0:39:43 Lydia: Yeah We're Introing episode 40, and

0:39:47 Thomas: Uh, yeah. Yeah, um Oh, it was because of the clarion call of Heath Enright and the guy with the thing on his head, the guy looks like that of like Ron Howard looking guy that works with uh Who's

0:39:50 Lydia: Yeah, yes. Oh Yeah I know who you're talking about, are you thinking of Darth Vader, I'm just kidding?

0:40:01 Thomas: The yeah Yoda, you know, uh, you know, works, works with Lando Calrissian and he, he gets that little beeper on his head. He has that rap head thing.

0:40:17 Lydia: Carl Weathers.

0:40:20 Thomas: No, anyway, none of that is in the show. Um, okay.