Local Opinion: Schools are for teaching

Recently, we have seen recurring themes in several opinion pieces in the Star, written about the Catalina Foothills School District, in support of the “Thrive4CFSD” campaign for school board. As a friend of, and volunteer for, each of the “Back to Basics” candidates, I feel obliged to respond.

One has to do with the group, Purple for Parents, who have endorsed the “BTB” (Back to Basics) candidates (Grace Jasin, William Morgan and Bart Pemberton). This, the Thrive candidates claim, makes the BTB platform a “thinly veiled political agenda that aims to change the educational values that have been the foundation of CFSD’s success for years.”

This contains two misrepresentations. First, none of the BTB candidates had ever heard of Purple for Parents, and have not sought any endorsements from them or anyone. School boards are to be non-partisan, and the BTB candidates have avoided political associations.

Second, the educational values of CFSD have already changed. To be blunt, CFSD was academically trending downward for at least two years before COVID-19, according to Arizona Department of Education statistics. There doesn’t seem to be any urgency in the school district to correct this problem, which we feel has been a disservice to the students.

My wife and I moved into the Catalina Foothills 30 years ago, specifically to be in this school district. Today we would not have that reason. When U.S. News and World Report gives our graduating students a college readiness score of 48 out of 100, there’s an elephant in the room. The position of Jasin, Morgan, and Pemberton is simply that, when the school district concentrated on academics, it excelled. Now that it is concerned with social and emotional issues, the school district is failing the students, their parents, and the community at large — hence the platform, “Back to Basics.”

Another theme is regarding guns. The Back-to-Basics team of Jasin, Morgan and Pemberton are not advocating to “bring guns into the schools.” That is comparable to saying that having sky marshals on airplanes is advocating bringing guns on planes. The BTB candidates have only asked that, if armed police officers are a good idea at school board meetings and a School Resource Officer is a good idea at the high school, why isn’t it a good idea to have them protect all our kids? Our Back-to-Basics candidates think this problem has not been adequately addressed.

Then there is the charge that the BTB candidates want to restrict the education of students “regarding human growth and development,” a preposterous assertion. One of the BTB candidates, Dr. Jasin, is a practicing psychologist, who makes her living dealing with mental health issues. The question is not whether children should have access to psychiatric care. The issue is: Is it an appropriate school function; or is this, more suitably, a parental function?

The counseling portion of the high school’s website, for instance, links to a website in which minors are encouraged to enter chat rooms to discuss sexual matters. It offers a “quick escape” feature to hide the activity from parents.

Further, there is the question of whether the vast majority of our children, who are not suffering from gender dysphoria, need to be constantly exposed to, and encouraged to participate in, baffling gender identity and fluidity issues. Maybe children in this age group have enough to worry about without this layer of confusion.

Finally, the Thrive candidates and their supporters have asserted that the BTB candidates have injected politics into the campaign by accusing them of advocating guns, being anti-parent, anti-student, anti-educator, anti-student mental health, anti-military, anti-open enrollment, and anti-public education. Besides the fact that each of these accusations is demonstrably false, it is they who have staked a political position.

On the other hand, the BTB team of Jasin, Morgan and Pemberton have simply said that CFSD is losing its academic standing by focusing too much on social and ideological issues. I am supporting Jasin, Morgan and Pemberton because I agree.

For more information, visit BTB.School.