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A lot has been said about the attack on parents in the Loudoun County, Virginia School District, but as we have been suggesting, it isn't just in Virginia.
We're now hearing that in another public school district a board member has taken an elementary class on a field trip to a local gay bar.
And yet another school district is requiring every parent who wishes to speak at a school board meeting to state their full name and home street address for the record before they are allowed to speak.
And now we know that one of the signatories on the letter that sparked A/G Garland to instruct the FBI to "look into the parent problem" has been appointed to the National Assessment Board.
Please be informed, not misled.
Child abuse by a school board member?
Florida's Broward County School District board member Sarah Leonardi posted on social media, "I was SO honored to be invited to chaperone @WiltonMonor's field trip to the incredible Rosie's! The students and I had a fun walk over and learned a lot about our community! A huge thank you to @RosiesBnG for hosting this special field trip every year."
Every year?
I was SO honored to be invited to chaperone @WiltonManorsES’s field trip to the incredible Rosie’s! The students and I had a fun walk over and learned a lot about our community! A huge thank you to @RosiesBnG for hosting this special field trip every year! pic.twitter.com/A3rpMbyUJP
— School Board Member Sarah Leonardi (@bcpsleonardi) October 27, 2021
Photos from the event show 18 children who appear to be under the age of 10 wearing masks and matching t-shirts outside Rosie's.
Florida's official tourism marketing company cites sources calling Wilton Manors, "Florida's most famous gayborhood."
This same school board fought Gov. DeSantis' ban on mask mandates in schools because they said they were concerned about the safety of the kids.
Their concern is very selective. And dishonest.
The menu at Rosie's Bar includes items like "The Big Girl Burgers, Rhoda Cowboy, Ivana Hooker, Hellena Bun, Young ranch hand," etc.
Fox News says that it is unclear if the children were offered these menus. But why would a school board choose---out of all the places kids could go on a field trip---a gay bar?
The answer, in my mind, comes rather easily.
This is wrong on so many levels.
The kids posed for a photo with school board member Leonardi in front of Rosie's ---something to help them remember the field trip. They won't need the photo to remember what they were exposed to on that field trip.
And those who took them there know it.
A new way to silence parents.
Last week she announced that "Parents will now be required to state their name and home address before being allowed to speak at Mankato Area Public School Board meetings."
Additionally, she said, "Open forum participants are prohibited from calling out or addressing any individual school board member or school district staff member."
Continuing, she said, "Crowd noise, or any sort of grandstanding during open forum, including applause, talking, hollering, or any outburst will result in the open forum being closed."
"Further," she said, "beginning November 1 school board meeting, open forum participation will be limited to those individuals who wish to speak to an item on the board agenda."
And, she says, she will decide what is "unacceptable" behavior.
How long will these kinds of actions be tolerated by tax-paying parents who profoundly disagree with what these government-run schools are doing with their children?
A war on parents.
Karol Markowicz is a columnist at the New York Post. She also writes for Time, USA Today, The Observer, Heat Street, the Federalist and Daily Beast.
In an op-ed yesterday, she began with: "It's a war on parents and every part of the government is getting involved."
The latest front, she explains, began with the letter from the National School Board Association (NBSA) on Sept. 29. I wrote about it at the time, because in the letter the NBSA compared concerned parents speaking up at school board meetings to "domestic terrorists" and called for the US Department of Justice, Education and Homeland Security, the FBI, including any technical assistance necessary from, and state and local coordination with, its National Security Branch and Counterterrorism Division to step up and help.
They even suggested using the Patriot Act, among others, to silence these parents.
As you know, A/G Garland then issued his own memo noting that his office "will launch a series of additional efforts in the coming days designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.
Garland affirmed under oath this week that he was reacting to the letter from the NBSA.
Corruption.
As it turns out, one of the signatories of the NSBA memo has received a political appointment after the letter was released.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona appointed National School Board Association president Viola Garcia to the National Assessment Governing Board, which develops the tests used to track student achievement across the country.
Markowicz says, "Parents should worry about this. An ideologically-aligned cabal of people in various agencies of the federal government are working to shut them down."
She says, "It's not a conspiracy theory, it's all done very openly. The threat to parents is also very real."
Among other things, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed so much about our broken public school systems.
So many parents are now seeing firsthand just how much of their child's day at school is taken up with indoctrination.
And when they had enough, they were motivated to stand up and speak out.
Their government can now tell them to sit down and shut up.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.