Race and Richland 2

What is being taught about race in Richland 2? 

Check out this article by Dennis Prager. The title is What American Schools Should Teach About Race, Racism, and Slavery

Do you know what The 1619 Project is? Dennis Prager summarizes it as "that the United States was founded to preserve and protect slavery".

Have you looked at the book White Fragility? Don't waste your time buying it. I started reading it and quickly abandoned it. If you want to save your money and waste some time, the Richland Library system has both the e-book and audiobook. (Let me guess why...)

Is the District still buying and indoctrinating teachers with Gloria Boutte's "Culturally Relevant Pedagogy" training? I'm still laughing over former-Trustee James Shadd's defense of young, black men in classrooms who tend to "speak loudly". All I could think of at that board meeting was how a white teacher was supposed to respond, when some young, black man stood up in a classroom and spoke "loudly" and disrespectfully. At that meeting James Manning finally came to the rescue of white teachers before the discussion ended.

I don't care if the students (or teachers) are black, white, brown, yellow, red. There should be one expected decorum in the classroom. Period.

If you have any information that The 1619 Project is being taught in the classrooms of Richland 2, please let me know.

How long must I wait?

 At the October 13th school board, my emailed communication was read to the board. I wrote:

Members of the board,

I request a response from the District to my two questions.

To what extent is The 1619 Project being introduced, taught or discussed in any classrooms in the Richland 2 School District?

If it is not yet in the Richland 2 School District, will the School Board be consulted before it is taught?

I look forward to your response.

Today is November 21, 2020. I am guessing that I shall not be receiving a reply from the Richland 2 Board or the superintendent.

The Board may or may not be listening, when the question is asked. Their eyes may be open; their ears are in working order but may be tuned in elsewhere. And some of their minds? It's anyone's guess.

Here is why you will never receive an answer to any question asked of the board.

1. The Board does not discuss any comments or answer any questions at a board meeting.

2. The Board does not formally ask or direct the superintendent to respond to any comment or question from the audience.

3. The superintendent will not take it upon himself to answer any question or respond to a comment. He'll excuse his lack of response by saying that the board never told him to respond.

Where does this leave the member of the audience or of the public?

You can write directly to the superintendent; or

You can file a FOIA Request with the District. For information and the email address of the FOIA Officer, go to the District's website and search for "FOIA".

I recently did submit a FOIA Request to the FOIA Officer. My email was undeliverable. When I forwarded my returned email to R2 Public Affairs, I was informed that the FOIA Officer's name had changed. A few days later the name and email address were correctly shown on the District's website.

Then I suggested a better email address would be "FOIAOfficer@Richland2.org" 

Let's hope that the District preserved all of the emails sent to and from the previous email address. A better step would have been an auto-forwarding of the first email, with advice to the sender that the email address had changed.