Hypocrites. Another fundamentalist ideological right anti-LGBTQIA group caught harboring some members who engage in same-sex relationships while decrying them vehemently. Hugs
Religion News Service reports:
A former vice president of the American Family Association, a Mississippi-based conservative group that promotes “the biblical ethic of decency in American society,” has sued the religious-right group, accusing leaders of firing him after he reported alleged sexual harassment and financial irregularities.
In a complaint filed Tuesday (Sept. 5), Robert Chambers [photo], former vice president of policy and legislative affairs for AFA from 2015 to 2022, alleges that another staffer, Ron Cook, made repeated sexual advances toward him, beginning in January of 2022.
Those advances allegedly included grabbing hold of Chambers’ face and ear and making comments about masturbation, according to the complaint. “I see you’re really good with that wrist action,” the complaint alleges that Cook told Chambers. “You’d really like me to take you and get a hold of you.”
Read the full article. Chambers says that he was fired for reporting the harassment. The firing reportedly came after the daughter of AFA president Tim Wildmon allegedly told others that she’d had a dream in which Chambers kissed her infant child on the lips and that she was afraid to have her children around him.
As a reminder, the AFA is arguably the nation’s largest and most powerful anti-LGBTQ hate group with tens of millions in annual revenue. The AFA is the parent organization of One Million Moms. In the 2016 video below, the alleged victim blames criticism of anti-LGBTQ laws on Satan.
Chambers last appeared on JMG in 2021 when he joined the attack on RNC chair Ronna McDaniel for a proposed partnership with the Log Cabin Republicans.
A former VP at the AFA say another male staffer groped him and sexually harassed him. He alleges that leaders of the group, which promotes "biblical morality" looked the other way then fired him when he complainedhttps://t.co/YuIHVIZ0fS
Four hundred years ago she’d have had a successful career in the Jacobean witch trial industry pointing her fingers at innocent people and screeching “Witch!!!!”
I, for one, am shocked — SHOCKED!! — that one of the nation’s most virulently homophobic organizations is a seething HOTBED of repressed and handsy homothexuals!
So Wildmon’s daughter has a dream about this dude kissing her child and he gets fired. Meanwhile Josh Duggar was fingering his sisters over the course of multiple years and had a phone chock full of kid porn and he’s a superstar.
It’s like the Land that Time Forgot. He’s talking about Satan as a real entity, an actor in everyday affairs. This is pure creepy. No one talks like that. It’s juvenile, from the mouth of a simpleton. I have no idea what the hell this is all about, I just switched on that clip above and fell through the rift in the space -time continuum.
That was my impression, as well. They talk about satan as if it’s a thing everyone accepts as real and true, and not a figment of bronze age (or earlier), illiterate shepherds who had to have something to explain why bad things happen in the world. It’s inconceivable to them that anyone would not have the same view.
Thanks to Ali for the link. This continuing assault on education by the right is an attack on democracy itself. The right doesn’t want a thinking public, they want obedient followers and soldiers who will do as told by the rulers. Notice the funding for these right wing sites comes from the ultrarich right that wants either a theocracy or a fascist dictatorship. With them in charge, of course. If you go to the link you will see several more stories of the right ring billionaires pushing the hard right idology. Hugs
PragerU is not accredited but has become a key tool in pushing false claims to youngsters – and raked in $200m from 2018 to 2022
Dennis Prager, the conservative talkshow host and founder of the Prager University Foundation, which is not an accredited education organization. Characters in PragerU’s videos downplay the horrors of slavery and make false claims about the climate crisis. Composite: Guardian Photo Composite/Getty Images/PragerU
A rightwing media outlet promoting climate-crisis denialism and other “anti-woke” staples to young students and adults via social media has become a fundraising Goliath, raking in close to $200m from 2018 to 2022 with big checks from top conservative donors, tax records reveal.
Founded in 2009 by the conservative talkshow host Dennis Prager, the eponymous Prager University Foundation is not an accredited education organization. But via online media its PragerU Kids division has become a key tool in spreading false claims to young people with short videos aimed at undercutting widely accepted science that climate crisis disasters are accelerating due, largely, to fossil-fuel usage.
PragerU’s influence in pushing false narratives about climate change and other far-right shibboleths such as airbrushing the brutal reality of American slavery gained ground when the Florida board of education in July gave the green light to using its videos and other materials in classrooms, a move that PragerU is trying to capitalize on in Texas and other states. On Tuesday, Oklahoma’s school system also approved the use of PragerU’s materials.
But some of PragerU’s expansion plans ran into trouble in August, when it was condemned by Texas education officials for announcing prematurely that Texas schools had approved the usage of its advocacy materials, generating new scrutiny and criticism of PragerU’s operations.
Prager’s website trumpets its mission and its niche in the conservative ecosystem.
“PragerU is the world’s leading conservative non-profit, focused on changing minds through the creative use of digital media.”
That sweeping mission has been fueled by big conservative money and slick marketing, and has led to PragerU’s rising influence on the right.
Among PragerU’s leading financiers are the oil and gas fracking billionaire brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who have ponied up at least $8m over the past decade, according to Texas financial records.
Other top conservative donors to PragerU, which styles itself as alternative to the “dominant leftwing ideology in culture, media and education”, include the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the National Christian Charitable Foundation and the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation.
Tax records also reveal that PragerU has flourished financially in recent years as the Prager University Foundation raised $196m from 2018 through 2022. That growth is underscored by revenues rising from $17.9m in 2018 to $65.1m in 2022.
Prager’s chief executive, Marissa Streit, whose biography on LinkedIn says she once served in Israeli military intelligence, boasts on its website: “PragerU is redefining how people think about media and education. We produce edutainment – an intersection of education and entertainment. Our content is essential to shaping culture and preserving American ideals.”
Streit’s vision of “edutainment” seems to be reflected in PragerU cartoons and videos, including one about Christopher Columbus and the discovery of America, in which Columbus tries to downplay the horrors of slavery.
“Slavery is as old as time, and has taken place in every corner of the world, even amongst the people I just left. Being taken as a slave is better than being killed,” the cartoon Columbus said. “I don’t see the problem.”
Other PragerU videos about the climate crisis make various false claims: they depict solar and wind power as environmentally dangerous, liken environmental activists to Nazis and claim recent record-breaking heat is just part of the natural weather cycle.
But the edutainment being peddled by PragerU has drawn widespread criticism from academic experts and watchdog groups, who fault its videos and teaching materials for children on the climate crisis, slavery and other issues as erroneous, and unworthy of state approval for classroom usage.
Betsy DeVos and her husband, Dick DeVos Jr, in Washington in 2017. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images ——————————————————- “Prager University is not a university,” said Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor of the history of science and the co-author of Merchants of Doubt. “By their own self-description, they are an advocacy group promoting conservative viewpoints on various political, economic and sociological topics.
“It is completely inappropriate for any state to grant them any influence, much less authority. over educational matters.
“For an American state government to authorize misleading, false and overtly biased materials for use in classrooms really crosses the Rubicon. It’s a new and alarming low.”
Other academics express related concerns.
“PragerU may be able to take advantage of overworked teachers in the classroom who are under time crunches to prepare climate-change lessons for their students, and therefore might turn to these inaccurate videos,” said Max Boykoff, an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado.
Boykoff added that boosting public funding of education could help “keep such unsafe and menacing weapons out of the classroom”.
PragerU did not respond to a Guardian request to talk to Streit or Prager.
Critics notwithstanding, Prager, speaking at a Moms for Liberty conference in Philadelphia this summer, was blunt about PragerU’s goals, boasting that “we bring doctrines to children”, adding: “What is the bad of our indoctrination?”
Similarly, in a PragerU promotional video, Prager said: “We are in the mind-changing business, and few groups can say that.”
PragerU annual reports tout its success in spreading conservative doctrines to young people and adults. According to its most recent annual report, PragerU “edutainment” videos scored more than 1.2bn views in 2022 and over 7bn since its launch in 2009.
Until recently, PragerU content and its fight against what it labels the “woke agenda” depended mainly on Facebook and YouTube, but that is poised to expand with PragerU’s access to Florida classrooms, and other states potentially opening their classrooms too.
To keep growing its audience and operations, PragerU’s website showcases several ambitious fundraising programs. In September, PragerU is hosting a “founders’ retreat” in Nashville that seems geared to wooing more checks from major donors who give at least $100,000 a year.
The event is slated to be “an exclusive three-day experience with our innermost circle of supporters”, and will feature Dennis Prager, the conservative Daily Wire’s editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro, and other Daily Wire “personalities”. The event is “open to Donor Club members at the founders level (total annual giving of $100k or more)”.
Like PragerU, the Daily Wire has benefited mightily from billionaire and evangelical preacher Farris Wilks, who gave it $4.7m in 2015 to launch its operations. Wilks remains a co-owner.
PragerU’s fundraising and marketing success in spreading its climate crisis denialism and other misinformation is alarming watchdog groups.
“Prager U plays a significant role spreading well-packaged propaganda about numerous issues, including attacks on efforts to mitigate climate change, through promoting the disinformation peddled by notorious climate-change deniers, and more,” said Lisa Graves, executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North Research. “ It has always targeted younger adults, but in recent years it has added a massive program targeting children with its slick and deceptive videos.”
Other environmental advocates raised broader concerns.
“The danger of the Prager climate misinformation is how quickly it can spread in this era where a lot of people, including children, are being trained not to trust media sources or scientists,” said Kert Davies, who leads investigations at the Center for Climate Integrity. “That it would be in schools as curriculum is even scarier.
“The Prager YouTube library on climate change features a who’s who of career climate deniers and discredited contrarians. These folks will never admit they are wrong, and never change their minds no matter the weight of scientific evidence.”
Davies added: “Prager climate disinformation is dangerously out of step with reality. It is being disseminated just as the global consensus on the climate crisis grows stronger, as extreme weather events seemingly try to outdo each other.”
More broadly, Oreskes sees the spread of PragerU advocacy materials into Florida classrooms and possibly other states as harmful to educational values.
She said: “Every student has a basic right to an education that, as much as possible, is truthful, and, as much as humanly possible, objective. This is the opposite.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I was hoping you would consider taking the step of supporting the Guardian’s journalism.
From Elon Musk to Rupert Murdoch, a small number of billionaire owners have a powerful hold on so much of the information that reaches the public about what’s happening in the world. The Guardian is different. We have no billionaire owner or shareholders to consider. Our journalism is produced to serve the public interest – not profit motives.
And we avoid the trap that befalls much US media – the tendency, born of a desire to please all sides, to engage in false equivalence in the name of neutrality. While fairness guides everything we do, we know there is a right and a wrong position in the fight against racism and for reproductive justice. When we report on issues like the climate crisis, we’re not afraid to name who is responsible. And as a global news organization, we’re able to provide a fresh, outsider perspective on US politics – one so often missing from the insular American media bubble.
Around the world, readers can access the Guardian’s paywall-free journalism because of our unique reader-supported model. That’s because of people like you. Our readers keep us independent, beholden to no outside influence and accessible to everyone – whether they can afford to pay for news, or not.
If you can, please consider supporting us just once from $1, or better yet, support us every month with a little more – and you can cancel any time. Thank you.
Notice the threats and intimidation. Also notice the overwhelming presence of the fundamentalist religious right. This again is making sure that there is no positive representation of the LGBTQIA in schools or the public square. Why should kids be taught tolerance and acceptance of the very people these bigots hate? Why should LGBTQIA kids see positive role models and representations of themselves, see acceptance of themselves from the adults in charge of their daily lives? And why should the tolerant and accepting of the LGBTQIA parents be allowed a say because a minority of violent loud haters demand kids be taught to hate, target, and bully LGBTQIA kids. Why should those same LGBTQIA kids be allowed to feel good about themselves rather than deeply ashamed of who they are as the anti-LGBTQIA haters demand? I am sick of this minority take over. Lucky for my sanity there has started to be a large amount of push back in Florida and around the country, with teachers, Libraries, and towns fighting back and refusing to bow down to the threats unless they remove all LGBTQIA representation from public and society. Hugs
Following a prolonged debate, the Miami-Dade County Public School Board has voted against officially recognizing October as LGBTQ History Month within the district. The contentious decision, passed by a 5-3 vote, comes in the wake of the controversial “Don’t Say Gay” law that was signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis last year.
The debate over Initiative H-11, which sought to acknowledge October as LGBTQ History Month within Miami-Dade County Public Schools, drew a large crowd of concerned citizens to the board’s weekly meeting. Emotions ran high as over 100 people signed up for the public comment section as they expressed both support and opposition to the proposal.
A few people spoke about the presence of the Proud Boys at the meeting as an intimidation factor. Some of those who spoke agreed with the Parental Rights in Education law, labeled by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, who said the designation felt like indoctrination.
Myra Jordan, a parent, said, “Leave my kids alone. You understand that? You want freedom? Have freedom at home.” Last year, a majority of the board also voted against against the designation.
I encourage you to watch both video reports below.
The gangs all here — we have Proud Boys, Moms for Liberty, book banners and all the usual suspect far-right extremists outside the Miami school board @MDCPS right now campaigning against LGBTQ History Month.
First up, we have we have book Miami banner, Proud Boys supporter and Elders of Zion poster Daily Salinas. She claimed she’s not part of M4L but her posting for selfies begs to differ.
The M4L caucus is one stand by! Maylin Villalonga (white shirt back to camera), Eulalia Jimenez (arrow), QAnon flat earther Isabella Rodriguez #RedPillBabe (jean jacket), book banner Daily Salinas (glasses) and realtor Lourdes Galban. 3/ pic.twitter.com/eWVCbN1YUt
Also spotted outside the school board is Palm Beach, FL lawyer Cory Strolla who operates as Strolla Law.
Last year he attended the Hialeah Proud Boys rally in support of white supremacist Rubio canvasser Christopher Monzon. Yikes! 6/ pic.twitter.com/FMjkJ9VFVv
Among the seven Proud Boys who showed up, most of whom had to be imported from hours away, is president & discount rack Liver King “Miami Lex” and his flag boy wearing the sun glasses. 7/ pic.twitter.com/n7zSrIjAGP
Next up for the Proud Boys we have Micheal Anderson aka “Wolf Blitzkrieg” of Jacksonville, FL, believed to be a current or former DOD employee working at FRCSE, Fleet Readiness Center Southeast.
Would you trust this pro-insurrection extremist handling military secrets? 8/ pic.twitter.com/dKusWxzTWT
Mr. Buckeyes mask Proud Boy is one we’ve seen before in front of the school board but he really doesn’t need it because we already have his full face here. 9/ pic.twitter.com/SBjCuCp45T
We said “we will soon learn who she is” and just like that we did.
Looks like Miami Moms for Liberty hasn’t recruited a new member after all. Instead they brought Catalina Stubbe, director of M4L Hispanic outreach staffer, former Miss World Colombia + washed up actress. 11/ https://t.co/mcCrjhyPWFpic.twitter.com/5fZvdWtv4E
And there’s still more people to name at the Miami school board @MDCPS opposing LGBTQ History Month!
Once again, let’s meet Herbert Silver, an 80+ year old geriatric Proud Boy who is now using a walker. He’s long been a fixture at their rallies, events and socials. 15/ pic.twitter.com/nXZHATmEQH
Next up at the Miami school board against LGBTQ History Month we have a gem of a video about a looming “communist takeover” & dangerous “Fa-del regime.” 😂
Meet QAnon conspiracy blogger running Patriots Perspective & Miami Commission District 2 candidate Christi Tasker. 17/ pic.twitter.com/gv9jDilfr3
And once again, let’s say hello to far-right activist Maylin Villalonga.
A failed candidate for Hialeah city council, she’s known for doing a podcast interview with Lourdes Galban inside the personal studio of Enrique Tarrio with him as the producer (2nd pic, bottom right) 21/ pic.twitter.com/wM2MoMaZvs
In light of the post earlier about the presidential libraries, I think this is a taste of what fascism in America would look like: If you step out of line, it won’t be uniformed officers banging on your door at midnight, but paramilitary thugs harassing and attacking you and a flood of anonymous death threats that the police won’t bother investigating.
Prominent members of Moms for Liberty have close ties to the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, QAnon and white Christian nationalists. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio once boasted that Moms for Liberty is “the gestapo with vaginas.”
I’m afraid I’m going there with US friends in February. They are New Englanders against fascism as much as I am. I will piss off as many fascists as I can, be as liberal and European as I can and tell as many Republicans to go fuck themselves as I can.
They all have guns, no license or permit required to carry now. You can assume that any christofascist you piss off has a gun in their waistband and is likely to turn red, pull it out and gun you and yours down in cold blood.
Well last time there I was threatened by a gang of marching right wingers, who came on the scene after the Pride Parade. I had yelled at them to go fuck themselves. that seemed to have annoyed them. But yes, this time I will be more careful; it is a scary place, I saw that.
Back into the closet we go. Exactly where they want us. I for one will not tolerate it. Granted I don’t reside in Floriduh and will never step foot in that state for the rest of my natural life, but I’ve fought too hard to just let these fanatics win the battle. And it is a battle. Between right and wrong and this is just wrong on so many levels. We cannot cower. That’s exactly what they want. No, we have to persevere. Keep spreading love, not hate and keep working on making this society one where all can live freely.
While your point is taken, it is not the totality of Floridians. We should not simply run away, but instead continue to be visible, and vocal and vigilant.
People on here have seem to forgotten that Anita Bryant successfully petitioned the Miami Dade schools against gay teachers. This is just more of the same. Where are the pie throwing machines?
One of its former directors, Bridget Ziegler, is married to the chairman of the Florida Republican Party. DeSantis recently appointed Ziegler to a commission overseeing Disney’s Orlando theme parks amid a battle between the Florida governor and Disney over the state’s law banning classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation.
Moms For Liberty is not the grassroots organization they claim to be.
Seriously more attempts to push fundamentalist Christian ideas, moral values, and hates on every public school kid. The program was developed by a person with degrees in politics but none in education, in a Christian college that the right wants to make the model for all PUBLIC schools. A person who describes himself as a fox in the hen house. Florida is doing this. This is entirely driven to push a false narrative of a Christian nation founded by religious figures who disliked slavery among some of the lies. It is about putting religion and the greatness of the US as a priority rather than facts. Remember this is being driven by a minority with the goal of forcing their world view on the majority and to allow that fundamentalist religious minority to rule over the secular majority. Plus look at the money spent, that is pure corruption, a big money giveaway to a religious person pushing a fundamentalist religious agenda. Hugs
Last Monday, the Pennridge School Board, located outside of Philadelphia, imposed a new social studies curriculum that will require teachers to incorporate lessons from the 1776 Curriculum, a controversial K-12 course of study developed by Hillsdale College, a private Christian institution that promotes right-wing ideologies.
The curriculum was developed in part by Jordan Adams, an educational consultant with no experience developing curricula for public schools. Adams launched his company, Vermilion Education, in March 2023. The Pennridge School Board hired Adams in April, paying $125 per hour for his services. The contract includes no limit on the number of hours, no specific deliverables, and no termination date.
Adams holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Hillsdale College and a master’s in humanities from another private conservative school, the University of Dallas. He does not hold any degrees in education. After graduating, Adams returned to Hillsdale College as an employee, where he promoted the 1776 Curriculum. On July 1, in a private presentation to Moms for Liberty, a far-right organization that pushes for changes in educational policy, Adams described himself as a “fox..in the henhouse.” He bragged that “the right people are freaking out” about his contract with Pennridge Schools. As of a few months ago, Adams had no other public school clients.
Although Adams does not have the qualifications to write curriculum, it was revealed during a Pennridge School Board meeting on August 21 that Adams independently wrote aspects of the new social studies curricula.
Adams’ proposed curriculum faced opposition from several members of the Pennridge School Board and the district’s own academic experts. Jenna Vitale, the K-12 social studies supervisor, cited concerns in a recent school board meeting about the “age-appropriateness of the elementary curriculum [developed by Adams], highlighting… the lack of the appropriate history background for incoming fourth and fifth graders and the elimination of 19th century U.S. history from the secondary social studies curriculum.” Vitale also cited concerns about Adams’ proposal to shift the third-grade curriculum from a focus on Native Americans to “Colonial America.”
The 1776 Curriculum, created in response to the New York Times’ 1619 project, claims that it is an accurate and unbiased curriculum that “seeks to tell the entire grand narrative of the American story.” Hillsdale’s curriculum, however, includes inaccuracies and skewed interpretations of America’s history.
For example, the Hillsdale curriculum repeatedly suggests that America’s Founding Fathers had deep reservations about slavery. The ninth grade Pennridge curriculum will require a Hillsdale lesson that encourages students to “[c]onsider also that even among the southern founders who supported slavery or held slaves, several leading founders expressed regret and fear of divine retribution for slavery in America, such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.” The curriculum states that, “Some freed their slaves as well, such as George Washington.” The same wording is also included in the required Hillsdale lesson for fourth graders.
A required Hillsdale lesson for Pennridge School District third graders covers the “history of slavery in world history.” The lesson encourages teachers to downplay the prevalence of slavery in America, instead emphasizing slavery in other parts of the world. “Overall, of the nearly 11 million Africans who survived being brought to the Western Hemisphere, around 3 percent, or about 350,000, were brought to the North American continent, with the rest of all Africans taken to other colonies in the Caribbean and South America,” the lesson states.
The 1776 Curriculum has garnered criticism from academic experts. “What [Hillsdale has] done is they’ve simply left stuff out in an attempt to shape a vision of patriotism,” James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, told NBC News. “What they also are trying to do is replace an approach to teaching that teaches students how to think with an approach that teaches the students what to think.”
During a meeting earlier this month, Pennridge School Board member Jonathan Russell asked why the Hillsdale curriculum was listed as “required” for teachers when the proposed inclusion of Hillsdale lessons was originally pitched as an additional resource. Vitale said that Adams told her other board members “asked him to say that it was required.”
By a 5-4 vote, the Pennridge School Board voted to impose the new ninth grade curriculum this year. The vote occurred on the first day of school, giving the teachers little to no time to prepare lessons based on the new guidelines. Vitale stated that she was “very nervous” about teachers not having enough time to prepare lessons based on the new curriculum. (The School Board voted to implement the new first through fifth grade curriculum beginning in the fall of 2024).
Hillsdale’s revisionist history
The 1776 Curriculum spends considerable time on the meaning behind the statement in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” A lesson now required for Pennridge School District ninth graders instructs teachers to pose the question of whether “women and slaves were included in this understanding of equality.” At the time, women did not have the right to vote, had limited property rights, and married women could not earn their own income. Nevertheless, the Hillsdale lesson argues that “the Founders meant that men and women share equally in human dignity and in possession of natural rights or freedoms that are simply part of being human.”
The lesson claims that, despite the limitation on women’s rights, “[w]hat was unique to America was the right to vote at all and then the relatively rapid rate at which the right to vote was expanded to” women. This statement, however, is misleading. According to Pew Research Center, in 1893, New Zealand granted women the right to vote, and “[a]t least 19 other countries also did so prior to the U.S. passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.” The 1776 Curriculum also creates justifications for not granting women the right to vote, insinuating that it was logical to only give the franchise to men, as they are the ones who “would be called to give their lives up for their country” and “had a high personal stake in what the country did regarding various policies, including going to war.”
For fifth grade, the new curriculum includes a Hillsdale lesson on the Civil War that argues that many Southerners believed the Civil War was about “states’ rights” rather than “preserv[ing] the institution of slavery.” The required Hillsdale lesson states that “[t]he majority of Southerners were not slaveholders and while fighting for their states would preserve slavery, many common Southerners fought for the argument of states’ rights rather than to preserve the institution of slavery.”
Again a fundamentalist religious group think only their beliefs are correct and they need to force that belief on everyone no matter what. No matter the religion other people might have, these people feel the right to force their god on your children. Regardless of your desire to raise your child in a manner that is open and accepting of the differences in others, these people demand the right to teach your child to be a closed-minded bigot. It is scary how these people reject democracy and co-existing but instead think that religious freedom gives them the right to oppress others, require the entire PUBLIC school system be run like their church following their church doctrines. One thing in the article that makes no sense to me. A teacher said she couldn’t be a christian and use a childs prefered pronouns. Why? I read the bible, I went to church a few years. No where did god say you shall not use him instead of her, you shall not call Billy she if he asks you do, you shall not cally Sally they or them. The bible never demanded you call Sally she / her and Billy he / him. These people are creating a biblical comand, a biblical sin where none was and ifgnoring the real shalls and shall nots. Hugs
From fights over LGBT rights to prayer at school board meetings, Chino Valley public schools have become ground zero for the culture wars.
Kate Briquelet
Senior Reporter
Decca Muldowney
Reporter-Researcher
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
Outside the California State Capitol last month, a fitness trainer turned school board president fired up the crowd at a parental rights rally, telling them they were all fighters in “a spiritual battle” for their kids and must answer the call from God.
Sonja Shaw, who was elected to the Chino Valley Unified School District board of education last November with an assist from a local megachurch and its Christian nationalist pastor, didn’t equivocate in naming the enemy: state Democratic officials who are challenging her right-leaning policies—and drafting laws that hinder book bans and protect teachers from harassment.
“Today we stand here and declare in his almighty name that it’s only a matter of time before we take your seats and we be a God-fearing example to the nation, how God is using California to lead the way,” Shaw crowed, adding, “We already know who has won this battle. You will be removed in Jesus’s name! You, Satan, are losing.”
Now Shaw is in the national spotlight in wake of her Chino school board passing codes that ban pride flags in classrooms and force educators to inform parents if their children identify as transgender—the first such policy to be passed in the state.
This summer, Shaw’s school board meetings, about 35 miles east of Los Angeles, became chaotic spectacles, ones that attracted the Proud Boys and other right-wing extremists and pitted them against students and parents protesting what they’re calling anti-LGBTQ practices that endanger children. When California superintendent of schools Tony Thurmond appeared at the July meeting in opposition, Shaw unceremoniously silenced him.
Weeks after state Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a civil rights probe into Shaw’s “gender disclosure” policy, his office sued the school board. Bonta said the policy violates the California constitution and state law, and would cause LGBTQ+ students, “mental, emotional, psychological and potential physical harm,” according to a press release.
Other right-leaning school boards across the state have followed Chino Valley Unified’s lead. Shortly before filing suit against the Chino board, Bonta issued statements denouncing the Anderson Union High School District, Temecula Valley Unified and Murrieta Valley Unified school boards’ decisions to pursue “copycat” anti-trans policies.
Sonja Shaw listens to speakers in front of the state Capitol on bills related to LGBTQ school curriculum in Sacramento.
Wally Skalij/Los Angles Times
“These students are currently under threat of being outed to their parents against their will, and many fear that the District’s policy will force them to make a choice: either ‘walk back’ their constitutionally and statutorily protected rights to gender identity and gender expression, or face the risk of emotional, physical, and psychological harm,” Bonta said.
To concerned observers in Chino, Shaw’s tack is not unlike what’s happening at school boards across the country, with brawls over curriculum, social emotional learning, and the banning of books that focus on race and LGBTQ issues. Extremist groups like Moms for Liberty have spawned a mainstream narrative that public schools are “indoctrinating” children with “woke” ideology and into believing they’re a different gender.
But in Chino Valley, the school board’s new direction appears to be spurred on by a man behind the curtain: Shaw’s megachurch pastor Jack Hibbs.
Indeed, three of the board’s five members belong to his church, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills.
At the Sacramento rally, Hibbs boasted of his congregation’s work in electing Shaw. Calling her a “true modern-day Deborah,” Hibbs said the soccer mom “heeded the call to run for the school board” and that “when churches get involved and get informed, people vote.”
God, Hibbs said, installed Shaw into her position.
“Get on your knees every night,” Shaw told the crowd. “All day I talk to him. People probably think I’m crazy, but I’m really just talking to God all day.” After reciting a Bible verse, she added, “I have looked demons straight in the eye and with God’s authority rebuked them back to hell where they belong.
“You can do that too, trust me.”
Residents have long raised alarms about the school board’s religious bent. And Pastor Hibbs and members of his megachurch congregation appear to be more involved than ever in Chino’s public schools.
Last week, in an interview with right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk, Hibbs said that he brought the policy language to the school board after Republican state Assemblyman Bill Essayli’s “parental notification” legislation died without a hearing.
“He came back thinking he was defeated,” Hibbs said. “What we did is that we read his bill and we took the verbiage from that bill and then introduced it to our unified school district school board and they voted and adopted the verbiage.
“Guess what happened?” Hibbs continued. “We found out something, Charlie, that the most powerful politics is local…”
Hibbs then turned to Bonta’s lawsuit against the board, saying, “We’re going to take that on, we’re going to make sure that this goes to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
The pastor, who hasn’t returned messages left by The Daily Beast, wasn’t shy about his fight on the school board’s behalf.
Before he signed off, Hibbs told Kirk that children are “groomed” into trans ideology in the classroom and that schools want to “castrate your children” and “mutilate them.”
Ahead of the parental notification vote in July, Hibbs also urged people to flock to the fiery board meeting. “We’re asking people to show up by the thousands,” he said in a video announcement on the church’s Facebook page. “Please make it a priority.”
A supporter of Chino Valley school board’s policy to require schools to ‘out’ students to parents if they ask to be identified by a gender not listed on their birth certificate.
David McNew/Getty Images
Meanwhile, Calvary Chapel has boasted on social media of collecting tens of thousands of ballots for state and local candidates endorsed by Hibbs. The church’s ballot collection, a practice it’s engaged in for years, is conducted with help from Hibbs’ political organization Real Impact.
A teacher in another district—who alleges she was fired for refusing to follow her school’s gender identity protocols—heeded Hibbs’ call. “I could no longer be both a Christian and a public school teacher,” she said at the board meeting. “Then I remembered what Pastor Jack Hibbs taught me, that the word of God says… that being a coward is a sin.”
Still, Shaw claims that neither she nor the school board follow Hibbs’ orders. “Absolutely not. No one has a direct line to Pastor Jack Hibbs. Pastor Jack has never said, ‘Hey, guys, I want you to bring this policy forward.’ Never ever did he do any of that,” she told The Daily Beast. She added, however, that she couldn’t speak on Hibbs’ involvement with the board of education prior to her election.
The mother of two daughters—a freshman and junior in high school—Shaw was a Bible study leader at another church before joining Hibbs’ Calvary Chapel Chino Hills about two years ago.
Last September, Shaw told the San Bernardino Sun that she wasn’t running for election on the behalf of the 10,000-member Calvary Chapel. “They keep calling me ‘the church’s choice.’ I’ve never met Pastor Jack (Hibbs). I’ve never been brought up on stage,” she said.
One month later, however, Hibbs introduced her at the pulpit, telling his Sunday service that “she’s truly going up against the machine” before leading a prayer for her victory. Shaw bowed her head as Hibbs lifted a hand in the air and declared, “She has decided, Lord, to take on the woke-ism that is attacking our children.”
“I think Chino Valley is a cautionary tale.”
Hibbs has emboldened supporters to fight progressive education bills and prop up Christian candidates. In his sermons, he has tearfully prayed on stage for Donald Trump to win the 2020 election, said COVID-19 vaccines would lead people into accepting “the mark of the beast,” and called “transgenderism” a “sexually perverted cult” and “an anti-God, anti-Christ plan of none other than Satan himself.”
On education, he’s claimed that he and his acolytes are “trying to rescue kids from a system that is sexualizing them,” that kids “come out of school questioning their gender but they don’t even know how to do simple math” and “are being raped by the public school system.”
Hibbs has also taken aim at California’s abortion protections, describing them as “Infanticidal Death Policies,” in a document circulated to his congregation in October 2022, just before Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s re-election.
“If God does not intervene in this upcoming election through His people, which has always been his MO, and, if Newsom has his way, then this will certainly be proof that judgment has begun in California if not the United States,” the document reads. It ends by encouraging followers to return their ballots to the church.
“We should be able to stand against the school board,” Hibbs said in May. “We should be able to stand against some teacher that is molesting your child—if not physically, in their minds.”
In July, Hibbs delivered a skewed history lesson claiming that some founding fathers “inherited” slaves but actually cared for them. “Before you call them rich white guys who were slave owners,” Hibbs preached, “you need to finish the sentence: They were rich white guys who were slave owners who clothed, fed, and in many cases took very good care of their slaves while at the same time juggling two worlds…”
The megachurch has also tried to meddle in Chino Valley public school classes and teachings. Calvary Chapel members once funded textbooks for an elective course in two public high schools on the Bible as history and literature and tried to alter rules for sex education curriculum.
The church also runs a Christian “Released Time” program, where public school students can duck out of class for weekly one-hour Bible lessons held in buses outfitted with tables and chairs. This program had a table at the district’s back-to-school night, and a volunteer in a Calvary Chapel Chino Hills T-shirt handed out candy and Bible coloring books.
Chino Valley Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Norm Enfield, left, and President Sonja Shaw, right, listen to a speaker during a board meeting ahead of the board’s vote to requiring schools to notify parents if their child changes their pronouns.
Will Lester/MediaNews Group/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin via Getty Images
“This is a national movement and it’s intentional,” former school board president Christina Gagnier told The Daily Beast. “I think Chino Valley is a cautionary tale.”
District parent Glory Ciccarelli condemned Hibbs’ words on slavery at the August board meeting, urging Black parents to leave his church and “wake up and realize that what our ancestors went through is slowly getting phased out of the curriculum to the point where our kids will eventually be taught that literal slaveholders were nice guys…”
Ciccarelli told The Daily Beast that her biggest issue with Chino Valley leadership is “the apathy they have for the Black kids in the district,” and that the board needs professional development training relating to race and culture and diversity in hiring.
But she believes that Hibbs’ influence over certain board members could derail any progress in the district. In addition to Shaw, two other school board members—James Na and Andrew Cruz—are also members of Calvary Chapel.
“Cruz and Na are quite literally acolytes of Jack Hibbs at this point,” Ciccarelli said. “In my opinion, everything they say and believe as it relates to the school board is basically something they have heard from him.”
Hibbs, she added, “reminds me of Jim Jones with the way he is so easily able to control so many people at the same time.”
At the July board meeting that attracted far-right extremists like the Proud Boys, some local parents pushed back against the church’s connections to the school board.
“Madam President, board, cabinet, and staff,” quipped one father of a queer child, “I didn’t know I came to church tonight. I thought it was a board meeting.”
So many citizens had signed up to speak, waiting in a line outside in 100-degree weather, that the board cut the public comment period from three minutes to one minute per person.
Lisa Greathouse, a local mom and former school board candidate, defended teachers against claims they were “indoctrinating” and “grooming” kids. “Make no mistake,” Greathouse told the auditorium, “what this board is pushing through now is just the tip of the iceberg. They are taking their cue from their megachurch…”
Outbursts from hecklers interrupted the proceeding, which had a heavy police and security presence. Speakers from out of town and from Calvary Chapel preached about God and the Devil, facing off with parents and students who warned Shaw and her board they would have blood on their hands should the “outing” policy pass.
One moment in particular was so explosive it made headlines: Shaw excoriated Tony Thurmond, California’s state superintendent of schools, who’d asked her to reconsider the policy about notifying parents if their children identified as trans. He said it might run afoul of student privacy laws and jeopardize kids who “may not be in homes where they can be safe.”
“It seriously feels like I’m in some sort of weird dystopia.”
Thurmond wasn’t finished with his remarks, but Shaw cut him off for time like she did anyone else. “Tony Thurmond,” she seethed, “I appreciate you being here, tremendously. But here’s the problem: We’re here because of people like you. You’re in Sacramento proposing things that pervert children!”
After Thurmond tried to continue, Shaw yelled into her mic that she wouldn’t let him “blackmail” or “bully” her district. Video of the scene showed Thurmond exchanging words with a group of cops before walking away.
In a statement, Thurmond told The Daily Beast that a group of concerned students contacted him about Shaw’s proposal, and he rearranged his schedule to be there. “Let’s be clear about these policies—a small group of anti-LGBTQ+ politicians like Ms. Shaw believe they have the right to dictate when and how students and their families talk about their sexual orientation or gender identity,” Thurmond said. “They are trying to turn our public school educators—who are already overworked and underpaid—into the gender police.”
“Choosing when to come out and to whom is a deeply personal decision that LGBTQ+ young people have the right to make for themselves.”
Ashlee Peters, the parent of a child in the district, watched the scene unfold. “As an educator and as a mom, you just sit there and go, ‘I can’t believe this is happening in my community,’” said Peters, who has been a public school teacher for 22 years.
Peters was also in line when far-right activist Bryce Henson, who also goes by Ben Richards, walked around trying to bait people into reacting on camera. “He would come up to you and be like, ‘I just want to talk to you, why can’t we just have a conversation about this?’” It was a sneak preview of the testimony to come.
Inside, people proselytized and spewed hatred, calling LGBTQ people “terrorists” and warning “demons are after our children.” Richards called transgender, Black Lives Matter and Juneteenth flags flying outside his San Diego school district a symbol of “systemic radical leftist indoctrination.” One mother ended her speech with, “As Jason Aldean would say, ‘Well, try that in a small town.’”
Chino Valley School board president Sonja Shaw told the crowd in Sacramento, “We already know who has won this battle. You will be removed in Jesus’s name! You, Satan, are losing.”
Wally Skalij/Los Angles Times
When it was her turn, Peters warned that the “outing” policy would “create a hostile environment” for LGBTQIA+ students and that the board’s “reckless pursuit of personal agendas” could bring about “expensive lawsuits.”
The atmosphere was so tense that security escorted a person out who put hands on someone else, Peters said. “It seriously feels like I’m in some sort of weird dystopia,” Peters told The Daily Beast. “I don’t know how this happened because it does not feel real.”
Peters believes that what’s unfolding in Chino Valley Unified is a wake-up call to monitor school board elections. “I just didn’t think it was going to happen in my community because I live in California,” she said. “I feel relatively safe living in a blue state—that religion wasn’t going to suddenly take over my public school system, and it has.”
Even though the involvement of Hibbs and his megachuch in local public schools has been center stage in Chino Valley this year, it’s a battle that’s been brewing for at least a decade. Back in 2014, the Freedom from Religion Foundation filed a lawsuit on behalf of parents in Chino Valley over prayers and Bible readings at school board meetings, arguing these practices “constituted an establishment of religion in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
The prayers and Bible verses were being led by Calvary Chapel members James Na and Andrew Cruz, who were elected to the school board in 2008 and 2012 respectively.
According to the prayer lawsuit, Na once told spectators of a school board meeting that their “lives begin in the hospital and end in the church, and urged everyone who does not know Jesus Christ to go and find Him.” In 2013, Na sent out a letter to school district “family member[s]” that referred to Hibbs with an excerpt from “Pastor Jack’s Christmas story.”
“The community is going to rise and create a war chest to help you,” Hibbs told the board in 2016 in the midst of the legal battle, though a crowdfunding drive affiliated with the church apparently never delivered. A school board spokesperson previously said that funding was intended to bring the case to the Supreme Court.
“The devil always loses.”
A federal judge ultimately ruled in the parents’ favor, and the board lost its Ninth Circuit appeal, leaving the district with $282,000 in legal bills.
This apparently hasn’t stopped Cruz’s Christian commentary. In April, he went on a rant wherein he said that if he were governor, he’d mandate citizens be trained in firearms and that, “I do love one man, I really love this man, and that is Jesus Christ. It’s in my head.”
Since his election, Cruz has especially ignited parents’ ire and weathered calls to resign as a result of his offensive remarks and chemtrail conspiracy theories. In 2015, Cruz said mothers who don’t vaccinate their kids are wrongfully vilified while “illegal aliens” bring infectious disease to America. In 2018, Cruz infamously said that “it wasn’t Hitler that was bad, it was the people that follow the laws and the agenda” while discussing “parents rights.”
That year, Na and Cruz (and Hibbs) proposed that parents have the ability to opt kids out of sex-ed discussions on gender identity, sexual orientation, and discrimination—and for schools to notify parents when a transgender student uses a locker room or shower. Those measures failed.
Na is also not without controversy. Aside from his religious musings at the board, he’s also been accused of trying to recruit at least one student to Calvary Chapel.
At a June board meeting, a statement was read on behalf of Esther Kim, who was the panel’s student representative in the 2021-2022 school year. “In sophomore year, I met Mr. Na through a personal phone call where his school board role and my school were acknowledged,” Kim said. “During an unrelated conversation, he attempted to persuade me to go to his church.”
Chino Valley Unified School District President Sonja Shaw receives a high five from clerk Andrew Cruz, not pictured, as board member James Na, right, looks on during a board meeting at Don Lugo High School in Chino on Thursday night July 20, 2023.
MediaNews Group/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin via Getty Images
In November 2021, Kim mobilized classmates to oppose Cruz and Na’s attempt to ban trans students from using the bathrooms of their identified gender. Cruz additionally proposed requiring trans students to “have psychological counseling for a minimum of 6 months to ensure” they’re trans and a doctor’s letter showing the student is receiving hormonal therapy.
Kim remembers that Na had compared the fight to protect transgender people to choosing between saving a man and an “endangered species.” “The students came out feeling attacked, downcast,” Kim told The Daily Beast. “They lost hope in their school board.”
In May of last year, Kim stood up to Na’s proposed resolution against Assembly Bill 2223, which shields women who have lost or ended pregnancies from prosecution. Calvary Chapel members, including a prayer-reciting Shaw, showed up to the meeting after Hibbs encouraged “a thousand or two” people to support Na’s proposal. Na rationalized this non-education motion, telling the room that “the devil always loses” and abortion would lead to lower enrollment and thus a loss of funding. For his part, Cruz warned of a future where women are paid to have babies, who would be “ripped up” for their organs.
When it was her turn to speak, Kim said Na’s abortion proposal had no place at a school board. “My peers and I have time to time been disappointed by the actions of some of our board members to the point where we’re no longer surprised by these nonsensical resolutions,” she said. Some audience members booed, and then-president Gagnier reminded them that Kim was a student and to be “respectful.”
Na also publicly lashed out at the teen, declaring, “This is a perfect example of why you need to talk to your children. This is an appointment for us to see and hear what happens when you leave them alone with the wrong people.” He then suggested Kim was “brainwashed.”
What’s happening in Chino Valley, Kim says, is just one example of a religious “national movement that has been carefully orchestrated for a very long time.”
“We are finally seeing it surface, first in the form of attacks on marginalized communities, religion in politics, who knows what next,” Kim told The Daily Beast.
At last month’s rally at the state Capitol, Shaw shared that she grew up in a home without much parental involvement. Her mother was a heroin addict who died when she was young. Her father was from another country (Israel, she told The Daily Beast) and worked seven days a week.
Shaw was a frequent commenter at school board meetings during COVID-19 shutdowns, voicing opposition to Critical Race Theory and mask mandates via her group Parent Advocacy of Chino Valley. Sometimes she was hostile to the board, yelling and interrupting proceedings, according to footage. Calling herself “The Parent’s Voice” in campaign materials, she narrowly won election to the board by 317 votes thanks to door-knocking volunteers, Hibbs’ blessing, and a $50,000 donation from Charlie and Sherry Reynoso, who own a hardware company.
Jon Monroe, another newly-elected board member who’s voted in line with Cruz, Na, and Shaw, also received $50,000 from the couple.
In a phone call with The Daily Beast, Reynoso confirmed he is a member of Calvary Chapel but insisted he hadn’t heard about the school board race at church. Instead, he and Monroe coach high school sports together, and he thinks highly of him. “I just wanted to support them,” Reynoso said. “I just like Jon a lot. Jon is a good guy, he’s just a solid human being.”
“These actions show that we’re not worth protecting. They want us dead.”
Shaw says she decided to run for office after a local GOP operative approached her and urged someone in her parents’ group to vie for the open seat.
Her opponent was then-board president Gagnier, a technology lawyer and adjunct professor who has been featured as a legal expert on TV and in print. After Gagnier lost, she co-founded Our Schools USA with a former teacher in the district, Kristi Hirst, to combat misinformation and counter Moms for Liberty (M4L) and their ilk.
Our Schools has spent the last year spotlighting Shaw’s actions pre- and post- election, sharing footage of her yelling at Gagnier and board members; her speeches at political events as school board president; and her apparent collaborations with far-right agitators.
During an April board meeting, Shaw invited a director with Gays Against Groomers—a right-wing group aligned with M4L that calls gender-affirming care for minors “indoctrination” and “mutilation”—to lead the pledge of allegiance. She had also passed a resolution backing Assemblyman Essayli’s bill 1314, which would have required schools to tell parents if their child “is identifying at school as a gender that does not align with [their] sex on their birth certificate.”
When Essayli’s bill failed to get any traction, Shaw proposed a policy of her own. It immediately drew outrage from LGBTQ residents and allies, who said a significant percentage of trans kids feel safe at school but not at home.
Chino High School valedictorian Daniel Mora, who is gay, spoke in opposition.
“I can’t believe this is happening in my community,” said one Chino parent who has been a public school teacher for 22 years.
David McNew/Getty Images
Mora told the Daily Beast that he feels the policy “has nothing to do with parental rights” but “everything to do with outing trans kids because they don’t think people can be trans.” Mora points to the July board meeting, when Cruz called being transgender “a dismantling of our humanity” and “mental illness.” “We are saving children,” Cruz added. “Because we’re losing a lot of them. It is a death culture from the left.”
“I really don’t understand these types of policies,” Mora told us. “The majority of the people who live in Chino do not agree with this. Most people who speak at the meetings in support of these policies are outsiders. They’re outsiders invited by Sonja and the school board.” After Mora spoke at the board in June to oppose Shaw’s flag ban policy, someone yelled, “Your parents should be in jail!” in a moment captured on camera.
Max Ibarra, a transgender student who has fought the board’s anti-trans politics since 2021, told The Daily Beast that they know of several students who wanted to use new names and pronouns this year but will now stay in the closet. Ibarra says they came out last year and so the “outing” provision doesn’t apply to them.
“What they’re doing is dangerous,” Ibarra said of the board. “It’s a direct target on trans kids’ lives in the district, and they don’t care about that.” Shaw, Ibarra says, is pushing “trans panic” and “allows the members of her board to say horrible things.” Instead of stopping Cruz for publicly declaring trans was a “mental illness,” Shaw booted a student who yelled in protest at his comments, Ibarra said.
Speakers at board meetings routinely target the trans movement as an “evil ideology,” Ibarra said, making students feel unsafe. Ibarra makes sure they have a “buddy system” at meetings and someone to escort them back to their car.
Of the current board, Ibarra said, “They can say that they support every student all they want but actions speak louder than words. These actions show that we’re not worth protecting. They want us dead.”
Despite warnings about trans students’ mental health and safety, Shaw and fellow board member Monroe argue their policy ultimately protects kids by involving their parents.
Asked about arguments that some trans kids could face emotional, verbal, or physical abuse from guardians, Monroe said, “Those parents are in the minority.”
A person holds a sign in opposition to a policy that the Chino Valley school board passed in July that requires schools to notify parents if their child comes out as transgender.
David McNew/Getty Images
“The majority of the parents want what’s best for their kid,” he told The Daily Beast. “And so when you’re trying to enact policy, I’m going to go with the side that has the most benefit. That’s where I think the difference is going to be.”
Once a high school baseball coach and resource officer in the district, Monroe said that he expected pushback on the new rule. But he was surprised that local elected officials have declined the board’s invitation to talk in person—and by a flood of hate mail calling him “transphobic” and a “Nazi.”
“From the smallest local politics to the national stage, we’ve lost the ability to sit down and talk to somebody with a different ideology than our own,” Monroe added.
Recently, his secretary purchased tickets for himself and Shaw to attend a local Planned Parenthood event where Thurmond was featured as speaker. But an hour later, he says, their tickets were canceled. “I just find it very odd that I can’t go into an event of somebody that may have some different views than I do,” Monroe said.
“I don’t always think that I’m right,” he added. “As I was telling one couple, I have questions about our policy too. You can’t see the future and what happens.”
Cruz and Na didn’t return messages left by The Daily Beast
Don Bridge, elected in 2020 and the only member voting against Shaw’s handiwork, told us, “The pride flag banning and parental rights notification resolutions by our district is definitely anti-LGBTQ.”
Asked what it’s like to be the lone dissenter, Bridge said in an email: “It’s not that bad because I know I’m doing the right thing in standing up and advocating for ALL students.”
“I am worried because, as I used to teach my government students, the next election is always the most important. That occurs next year, in November 2024 when 3 seats will be up for election,” he wrote, adding that another Shaw ally could result in a “5-0 conservative board,” a future that an opposition group is working to prevent.
Andi Johnston, a school district spokesperson, said that the parental notification policy is aimed at student safety.
“The Parent Notification policy does protect transgender students by requiring staff to notify CPS/law enforcement if the student believes they are in danger or have been abused, injured, or neglected due to their parent or guardian knowing of their preferred gender identity,” Johnston added in a written statement, emphasis hers. “In these circumstances, CVUSD staff will not notify parents or guardians, but rather, wait for the appropriate agencies to complete their investigations regarding the concerns shared by the student.”
She said that while Bonta, Our Schools, and other organizations have called the policy dangerous, the district’s past and current practices “solidify staff’s priority to provide all students with a safe and positive educational experience.”
Sonja Shaw says critics have her wrong. According to her detractors, she’s a Moms for Liberty member or following their playbook, she’s affiliated with the Proud Boys and other extremists, and she’s a transphobic bigot following the agenda of Pastor Jack Hibbs.
In an interview, Shaw said she didn’t know much about M4L or the Proud Boys. “Some people have no intention other than trying to find something to make you look bad, right? That’s what I learned about the media,” she said. While she signed M4L’s candidate pledge, she says she’s not a member or otherwise involved with the group. Shaw has also claimed she didn’t know what the GOP was until she ran for office, and that her fight transcends party politics.
“If you actually look at my background, it’s not to come in and throw policies around,” Shaw told The Daily Beast. “It’s because there’s actually meaning to these things.”
Still, her targets are California Democrats and she calls Bonta, Thurmond and Newsom “a political cartel”; her policies lean decidedly Republican; and she’s a repeat guest on Fox News and the One America News Network.
A man wears an evangelical t-shirt and holds a banner in support of a policy that the Chino Valley school board is meeting to vote on which would require school staff to “out” students to their parents.
David McNew/Getty Images
After Bonta sued the district, Shaw called the legal action “another ploy to stop all the districts around California from adopting a common sense legal policy.” She told The Daily Beast, “Parents have a constitutional right in the upbringing of their children. Period. Bring it.”
Shaw is in the middle of a media tour of sorts, as she speaks at state hearings and political events. On Aug. 14, she spoke at a press conference co-organized by Freedom Angels, which is helmed by gun-toting anti-vaxxer survivalist moms. The rally targeted California bills that would limit book bans and make threatening or harassing a school employee a misdemeanor. (One intention behind the latter bill is to protect teachers from extremists.)
In mid-September, she is scheduled to speak at the Pray Vote Stand Summit in Washington, DC, organized by the Family Research Council, an evangelical nonprofit designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. This lineup also includes Hibbs, former president Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former vice president Mike Pence, and other boldfaced conservative names. The director of Hibbs’ Real Impact will lead a breakout session on how “individuals and churches can engage in ‘ballot harvesting.’”
Bonta and Thurmond have previously issued warning letters to the district when Na and Cruz proposed anti-trans policies. Shaw seems to welcome her place in their crosshairs.
According to Shaw, before Bonta’s office sued the district, his lawyers subpoenaed her school board emails for words like “woke,” “trans” and “hate” as part of its civil rights inquiry. “You’re making our staff spend hours looking for certain things that aren’t even there,” Shaw told us. “If you actually looked at my emails, I’m called the C-word. I’m called the B-word. My life is threatened, my kids are threatened.” She added, “and that’s ignored?”
Police recently arrested a 52-year-old Berkeley woman for allegedly threatening Shaw, who told media outlets a caller to the district warned they’d murder and “dismember” her.
Shaw routinely shares her hate mail on Instagram but insists that she’s received an outpouring of support, too, including from people in other countries.
“We have an opportunity to show the nation now because they’re all watching us,” Shaw told us. “If we can show that we can come together despite whatever people want to label us, I think just for the success of our children, that can be a really cool and beautiful thing.”
“Can you imagine what we can do together if we actually listen to each other?” she said.
Not everyone feels Shaw’s proclamations of unity are genuine. Citizens have taken to the podium to accuse Shaw of online bullying and having spies snap photos of teachers in schools.
Karen Reyes, one of Don Lugo High School’s intervention counselors, has accused Shaw of fomenting “hysteria” around a proposal to build a private office in her school’s wellness center, a place where students take mental health breaks. In public comments and on social media, Shaw has claimed this room could become a Planned Parenthood clinic. It resulted in the local chamber of commerce canceling a partnership to fundraise for the project.
Reyes told The Daily Beast that Shaw’s fear mongering led to people calling her and other counselors “pedophiles” and “groomers” and demanding they put cameras in the center. “It just feels like manufacturing crises for a larger agenda,” Reyes said.
At the board’s June meeting, another woman held up a poster printed with a photograph of a Don Lugo counselor’s office. The image was taken through a window and showed a rainbow flag and poster that read “What you say in here stays in here,” before listing exceptions such as abuse or self-harm. Someone snapped the photo for Shaw, who circulated it on Instagram. “You abused your power as a school board member to dox a district employee,” the speaker told Shaw, before claiming she was “instigating a community to attack this office and counselor on social media.”
Kelly McClister, another local mom, claimed that some parents “have been subjected to bullying and insults” by board members. She said that she filed a police report in December 2022 because Shaw posted her photo with her children to her social media account “for the purpose, I think, of calling me names.” And that Cruz, instead of responding to her emailed concerns, only replied that she was a “strange bird.”
The Daily Beast obtained a copy of a Chino Police Department report indicating McClister wanted to document the “newly elected CVUSD official” who had been “talking badly about” her on Instagram. McClister told police she worried Shaw’s adherents would appear at her home.
McClister, a lifelong Chino Valley resident, told The Daily Beast that one of the biggest reasons she moved her kids from public to private schools was Calvary Chapel’s “overreach,” especially after one of its “Released Time” volunteers approached her son outside of school.
She says she’s emailed the board over the years expressing concerns about combination classes and other issues, but Na and Cruz “have never responded.” But after Shaw took office, she emailed the board again about what she calls Shaw’s “unprofessional” social media posts with spelling and grammatical errors and shared concerns that an “under-educated” person was board president.
Shaw didn’t reply. Instead she tagged McClister in an Instagram story. “I show people when people call me names, and say bad things about me,” Shaw told us, insisting that she crossed out McClister’s name in her post.
“Because I think it’s important for people to see what we’re dealing with too,” Shaw added. “Because when you have all this hate by people who say that we’re hating, I think it’s ironic, right?”
From Shaw’s perspective, the last iteration of the board didn’t listen to parents, “exited” them from schools with vaccine and mask rules, and enabled an air of secrecy. She said that when she spoke to people on the campaign trail, secrecy was the No. 1 issue.
“You would hear over and over stories where parents would say, ‘I found out for about six months, my child was being bullied, the schools knew, there was a record, but I was never notified.’ You heard stuff about kids wanting to possibly commit suicide … and it was alarming that they found out that the school or the teacher knew and never notified them.”
The opposition from Thurmond and Bonta has only strengthened her resolve.
“We’re not going to back down. We’re not going to step down. Our board majority was voted in for a reason,” Shaw said, “and we’re going to make sure that reason is carried out.”
This is long but serious, I strongly recommend reading this report. I thank Ali for the link. The DeathSantis people assaulted and detained a 15 year old who asked the candidate a question that embarrassed DeathSantis. After that the staff and security targeted the young man at future public events, photographing him and adding ominous captions, security not only followed him but blocked him several times while ordering him not to move for extended periods of time, preventing him from joining friends and family, and after manhandling him refused to let him go to his parents and blocked his mother from getting to him. These are all illegal as they are illegally detaining someone which in some states is kidnapping, they put their hands on him, grabbed his shirt yanking him around which is assault. Then DeathSantis wife told the boy’s mother that the boy was lying when the mother made a complaint, even though the boy’s version was backed up by witnesses and texts from people around him. The DeathSantis team think that they can get away with this because it is a teenager but they will do this to others if they are not punished for this action. However I doubt the boy will file a legal complaint because he wants more access to candidates to ask questions and do interviews, so he has to keep them on good terms.
We all know DeathSantis is an authorities wannabe king. He is a fascist who will not allow anyone to question him. He made his name being a thug to the press and anyone who dared to not agree with him. He wields authority as a club to beat down everyone else to make him superior to everyone in his own view of the world. Think of this man with the control over the levers of power of the presidency? Think how he would weaponize the federal government against anyone who displeases him? He has shown how he would govern the country in how he governs Florida. As I told Ali, this is very scary? Hugs.
The Florida governor’s operation went to extraordinary lengths to intimidate a high school sophomore—all for a question about Donald Trump.
Jake Lahut
Politics Reporter
Charles Krupa/AP
Quinn Mitchell has seen at least 35 presidential candidates in person since 2019, when he first started showing up at New Hampshire primary events to ask them questions.
Not a single one of them had ever treated the now-15-year-old as if he were a threat—until Ron DeSantis came to town.
It all started with a straightforward question. In June, when DeSantis stopped for a town hall event in Hollis, Mitchell raised his hand in the crowd.
“Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power,” the teenager asked the governor, “a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?”
DeSantis dodged the question and said Americans shouldn’t get stuck in the past, but not before remarking—in a somewhat impressed, incredulous tone—on Mitchell’s age. “Are you in high school?” the governor asked.
The moment went viral, with DeSantis’ non-answer encapsulating how even Donald Trump’s lead primary rival could not bring himself to acknowledge the former president’s efforts to undo the 2020 election. CNN even played it during an interview with Chris Christie to tee up a question to the Trump foe.
For Mitchell, however, the exchange kicked off a series of events that deeply rattled him and his family.
Speaking about it for the first time in an interview with The Daily Beast, Mitchell says that he was grabbed and physically intimidated by DeSantis security at two subsequent campaign stops, where the candidate’s staffers also monitored him in a way he perceived as hostile.
The experience, Mitchell said, was “horrifying” and amounted to “intimidation.”
At a Fourth of July parade DeSantis attended, Mitchell was swarmed by security and physically restrained after a brief interaction with the governor—with his private security contractors even demanding Mitchell stay put until they said so.
With his mother alarmed, the situation escalated to such a degree that the candidate’s wife, Casey, spoke directly with her—but to suggest her son was being dishonest about what happened, according to Mitchell.
Then, at an August 19 event—where Mitchell was tailed closely by two security guards—an attendee told The Daily Beast they saw a staffer for DeSantis’ super PAC, Never Back Down, take a photo of the teenager on Snapchat before typing out an ominous caption: “Got our kid.”
Seven other sources corroborated Mitchell’s version of events, either by sharing contemporaneous communications with the family or recounting what they witnessed in person at DeSantis events, including the Fourth of July parade. The teenager and his family say they have yet to receive any kind of apology from DeSantis.
The DeSantis campaign and Never Back Down did not return multiple requests for comment from The Daily Beast.
As astute an observer of the state’s politics as any, Mitchell had a blunt assessment of the fiasco over DeSantis’ treatment of him. “Really stupid,” he said, “in a small state like New Hampshire.”
‘I Just Want to Ask My Question’
As the DeSantis campaign’s summer from hell comes to an end, the governor is not much closer to seriously threatening Trump for the GOP nomination. Amid concerns over his stagnant polling numbers, his fundraising performance, and unsustainable spending, the DeSantis operation has seen substantial turnover, including the ouster of his campaign manager.
Across all of the reboots and turmoil, a consistent thread apparently remained: the DeSantis team’s willingness to go to unusual lengths to prevent a teenage boy from having a chance to follow up with the candidate on his question—and, to hear Mitchell tell it, personally express regret that he made the governor look bad.
More broadly, the teenager’s story distills some key reasons why DeSantis’ presidential bid is struggling: a candidate with clear difficulty making personal connections, a team obsessed with managing every detail on the campaign trail, and a pervasive anxiety over the idea of alienating Trump voters.
Combined together, those factors may ensure DeSantis gets nowhere near the White House in 2024. In New Hampshire, they’ve already pushed a precocious and passionate teenager to consider quitting politics altogether.
“I may be older now and know I can handle this a lot more, but if they had done that to me a few years back, I don’t know if I could have handled that,” Mitchell said. “It’s unfortunate, because I just want to ask my question.”
In the nation’s first primary state, where individual voters can have an outsized impact on the process, Mitchell made himself a staple of the New Hampshire political scene before he was even a teenager.
A self-described political independent who loves history and politics, Mitchell sees it as his “civic duty” to show up to ask questions, especially on behalf of “people who live in other states and the people who want to ask those questions,” who “don’t always get the opportunity.”
Before DeSantis, presidential candidates have not just tolerated the teenager but seemed to genuinely appreciate him. In the 2020 Democratic primary, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) met with Mitchell and later worked his enthusiasm for politics into her stump speech.
More recently, Christie not only gave him a shoutout during the CNN interview—“he goes to every town hall meeting… he asks really tough questions”—but was quoted in a recent USA Today profile of Mitchell. “Quinn, remember me when you are president,” the former New Jersey governor quipped.
‘They’re Watching You’
After his question about Jan. 6 blew up on DeSantis, Mitchell—who was not intending to land a punch on the governor—said he “genuinely felt bad about it.” A few days later, he woke up early for the hour-and-a-half drive to Merrimack, where he intended to personally say as much to DeSantis at the town’s Fourth of July parade.
Once there, the high level of security around the governor’s contingent stood out to Mitchell and other observers. Staffers for the super PAC, Never Back Down, “were nudging the security guys and pointing at me,” Mitchell said. “I actually had a reporter come up and just say, ‘They’re pointing at you and they’re watching you.’”
Unfazed, Mitchell patiently walked along as the candidate crossed from curb to curb, shaking hands with voters; each time he came close to DeSantis, however, the security guards would hold their arms out in front and parry him away.
Finally, Mitchell was able to get within earshot of the governor. When he passed by, he told him, “I’m so sorry that I got you in all that trouble,” and offered him a chance to give a different or more detailed answer to the question.
According to Mitchell, DeSantis nodded in response, at least acknowledging his question, and the two had a quick handshake. That’s when things went south: right after the handshake, Mitchell recalled his shock when he felt a firm tug on his shirt, pulling him away from DeSantis. Suddenly, all he could see were the outstretched arms of security guards and plain clothed aides.
“Usually what they do is they don’t push you or anything, but they put their hands out and kind of body you, so you just don’t move, basically,” Mitchell said, describing a shuffling motion more akin to an offensive line on a football team than a presidential candidate’s security detail.
If that were not startling enough, right after the fracas, a DeSantis security guard cornered Mitchell and ordered him not to move from the spot for another five minutes. In response, he did what almost any 15-year old would do.
He texted his mom.
Toward the end of the parade, Mitchell’s mother reunited with her son and then demanded an explanation from DeSantis for why his security detail was putting their hands on her boy, an interaction that was observed by a Boston Globe reporter on the scene.
What the Globe didn’t catch was the involvement of the second most important person in the DeSantis campaign: Casey, the governor’s wife and arguably his top political adviser.
Instead of diffusing the situation, however, the Florida First Lady suggested to Mitchell’s mother that she was overreacting—and that her son was fibbing.
“Well, I’m a mother, too,” Casey said, according to Mitchell and other witnesses, along with multiple sources who shared contemporaneous communications on the incident with The Daily Beast. “I know what you’re experiencing, and we’re all very afraid for our children—even if they’re exaggerating.”
As for the candidate himself, DeSantis told Mitchell he would “get to the bottom” of the one-sided encounter with security, and even told the teenager to come to his next event.
‘Got Our Kid’
Ahead of their August 19 event, a staffer for Never Back Down reached out to Mitchell. USA Today let the PAC know that a photographer wanted to come photograph Mitchell for the upcoming profile. The staffer just wanted to confirm he would be in attendance.
The teenager obliged. But after walking into the event, held in a firearm factory in Newport, he noticed something odd.
It wasn’t just that he saw a pair of security guards flanking him as he made his way to the far side of the venue. The weird part was that Never Back Down staffers were taking photos of him. It was notable to Mitchell, even before he learned of the ominous caption—“got our kid”—that one staffer was seen attaching to a Snapchat photo.
The governor kept audience questions to a tight 15 minutes, throwing Mitchell a glance but ignoring his outstretched hand, though the teenager now stands over 6 feet tall.
Security kept their defensive posture as Mitchell tried to make his way to stage right—where DeSantis was attempting to chat with voters and take selfies—blocking him from getting toward the group of voters waiting to chat with the candidate.
Even after Mitchell gave up on his months-long pursuit of a follow-up question to DeSantis about his views on Trump and the transfer of power, security prevented him from crossing the room to see a family friend, until they eventually relented.
Since the incidents, Mitchell has not heard from the DeSantis campaign, or the PAC, though he expected to. He could not reach an in-state contact for the governor’s team himself.
“The campaign, they could have called and said, ‘We’re so sorry, this should have never happened, we’ll get to the bottom of it,’” Mitchell said. “Never got a call like that. They never apologized to us for any of it.”
Mitchell often says that it’s a privilege to live in New Hampshire, a state where even a determined teenager can have the power to influence the presidential election in a small way. His dream is to become a political reporter, but he said the DeSantis events almost made him want to hang it up for good.
Whatever happens, Mitchell is likely to keep up his rigorous primary schedule—even if he’s unlikely to try to see DeSantis again anytime soon. But the teenager said if he ran into him “at conventions or a multiple candidate event, I will do my best to press him.”
Still, the political history buff came away with one silver lining after the last DeSantis event.
“I actually got a free hat that day,” Mitchell said, a fine collector’s item, even if it was for the Never Back Down PAC and not the DeSantis campaign proper.
For a 15-year-old who sacrificed more than a few dog days of summer—and more than a few hours of Minecraft—to be treated as a security threat by a major presidential candidate, a free Never Back Down hat selling for nearly $30 online was, he quipped, “probably the only good thing that happened that day.”
There is more election news in the article at the link, but this is the end of the coverage of the campaigns attempt to intimadate, manhandle, and detain a 15 year old boy asking good tough questions of adults. Hugs
A tactical training group is no longer participating in a planned event with the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office after Able Shepherd’s leaders disrupted a PrideFest celebration last weekend. A group of approximately 70 men interrupted DougCo PrideFest’s family-friendly drag show on Saturday. The men, wearing shirts reading “Stand to Protect Children,” stood blocking the view of the performers for roughly 40 minutes until they were escorted out.
Able Shepherd issued a statement to media outlets on Wednesday simultaneously defending the protest’s aims while denying the company was involved. “The media has claimed that Able Shepherd was involved in the event. This is not true,” the company posted on Facebook. 9NEWS obtained an email that appeared to have been distributed by Able Shepherd’s email system, recruiting protesters to interrupt the DougCo PrideFest show.
NEW: The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office says a tactical training group involved with an anti-PrideFest protest will no longer be included in a Sheriff’s Office event this week. #copoliticshttps://t.co/6L9HGp30i2
Able Shepherd denied involvement with the anti-Pride protest but did not respond to 9News’ questions about an email that appeared to come from Able Shepherd’s email system recruiting protesters to show up in opposition to the event’s “perverse agenda.” pic.twitter.com/vhbWZlgVzS
This Saturday’s Douglas County Pride Fest was protested by a number of different groups — Able Shepherd, Patriot Front, the Rocky Mountain Active Club, and the Proud Boys.https://t.co/pKcIDFVAsQpic.twitter.com/Gfa0YiLL0j
— Colorado Times Recorder (@COTimesRecorder) August 30, 2023
Douglas County group Able Shepherd disrupted the planned drag show at Pride by standing in the aisles and revealing shirts that say “stand to protect children” pic.twitter.com/HG213dhHEc
Also in the Able Shepherd protest group was Bill Jake, who gained fame in 2015 for trying to get a baker to make a cake that says "God Hates Gays."https://t.co/fzKFpPLtmf
KHOU 11 Investigates discovered more than half of the cops in the Coffee City Police Department had been suspended, demoted or fired from their previous jobs. https://t.co/ygkpfTUC4W
This is why I firmly believe that liberals need to join the military and police departments. If we want to “win” for good, we need to seize control of the mechanisms that society needs to function. The Nazis realized this a long time ago. They think they can get away with shit like this precisely because they think the cops have their backs.
My spouse and I have had a front row seat to experience how they circle the wagons. The reality that our police will not investigate reported bullet holes in our property is a wake up call. And another wake up call was that no elected official, democrats included actually give a fuck.
Oh, good! They’ll “no longer be included in a Sheriff’s Office event this week.” What a penalty. How about “are disqualified from participating in police action or training”? But of course not.
And there doesn’t seem to be a person of color anywhere in that group. White racist Christian assholes. Fuck, I hate Christians and everything about their fucked up religion.
When police training units are intermingled with domestic terrorists and domestic terrorist organizations, I have to ask: who protects the community from their police when the police hang out and associate with known terrorist affiliations and groups?
The lack of self-awareness should be enough to alert the community that they are not safe from a police organization that Associates itself with known domestic terrorists.
When people say all cops are bad, this is an example.
The ACLU sued on behalf of drag performer Flamy Grant and Blount Pride after District Attorney General Ryan Desmond warned them of possible prosecution in a letter.
GREENEVILLE, Tenn. — U.S. District Court Judge J. Ronnie Greer issued a ruling blocking Blount County District Attorney General Ryan Desmond from enforcing Tennessee’s “Adult Entertainment Act,” at a festival celebrating the Blount County LGBTQ+ community on Saturday.
Greer’s order said Desmond cannot enforce, detain, arrest or seek warrants to enforce the act and cannot interfere with Blount Pride’s festival.
The Adult Entertainment Act makes it unlawful to perform “adult cabaret entertainment,” on public property or in a place where children can see. The Act defines “male or female impersonators” as adult cabaret entertainment, a classification that the ACLU said targets drag performers.
In Shelby County, earlier this summer, District Judge Thomas L. Parker ruled it unconstitutional, saying it violated First Amendment rights, and barred the attorney general there from enforcing it. The District Attorney’s Office appealed that decision, and the Memphis-area lawsuit is going through the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Their ruling would apply across all districts in Tennessee.
“Judge Parker’s 70-page opinion is well-written, scrupulously researched, and highly persuasive,” Judge Greer wrote. “The court, based on the parties’ arguments at this juncture in the proceedings sees no reason to ‘break new ground’ on the constitutional issues.”
District Attorney General Desmond sent a letter to Blount Pride arguing Blount Pride was “marketing itself in a manner which raises concerns that the event may violate certain criminal statutes within the State of Tennessee.” His office would prosecute violations of the Adult Entertainment Act, Desmond wrote.
The ACLU sued Desmond and other law enforcement in Blount County, to prevent enforcement of the law. Desmond’s office released a statement about the injunction, available below.
“My office will abide by the order of Judge Greer. We are a nation of laws and this ruling is controlling over my office and our jurisdiction. As such, we will respect and comply with the order of the Court.”
Judge Greer ordered parties involved in the lawsuit to appear at the James H. Quillen Courthouse in Greeneville, Tenn. on Friday, Sept. 8, 2023, for a preliminary injunction hearing.
Blount Pride previously said the event would go on as planned on Saturday. It starts at 1 p.m. at the Claxton Center in Maryville on Saturday.
A statement from Blount Pride board president Ari Baker is also available below.
“We are relieved that the court has taken action to ensure that law enforcement will not wrongly apply this unconstitutional law. This ruling allows us to fully realize Blount Pride’s goal of creating a safe place for LGBTQ people to connect, celebrate, and share resources. We appreciate the community support and look forward to celebrating with you all on Saturday.”
The point of these vouchers is to take taxpayer money from public schools and promoting private for profit / church schools. It has long been a wet dream of the Christian right. Notice if a public school teacher wants supplies she would have to pay for them or start a go fund me, but this law allows the vouchers to be used for other things than education. The funds were being used at Chritmas time for Xboxes and toys, something that public schools wouldn’t be allowed to do. Hugs
A new list of allowable expenses for the publicly funded program is raising eyebrows.
Guidelines allow Florida families receiving school vouchers to buy items like theme park visits, paddleboards and TVs with leftover money in their state education accounts. [ AP; Jefferee Woo | Times ]
Theme park passes, 55-inch TVs, and stand-up paddleboards are among the approved items that recipients can buyto use at home.The purchases can be made by parents who home-school their children or send them to private schools,if any voucher money remains after paying tuition and fees.
The items appear in a list of authorized expenses in a 13-page purchasing guide published this summer by Step Up For Students, the scholarship funding organization that manages the bulk of Florida’s vouchers. Many of the items are similar to what was permitted for vouchers to students with disabilities in the past, but now they’re available to anyone who receives an award of about $8,000.
The list quickly raised eyebrows as it circulated.
“If we saw school districts spending money like that, we would be outraged,” said Damaris Allen, executive director of Families for Strong Public Schools, who recently started speaking out publicly on the issue. “We want to be conservative with our tax dollars. We want to be sure it is being used for worthwhile things.”
By comparison, Allen and others noted, teachers who want some of the same items for their classrooms would have to pay out of pocket or turn to other fundraising sources such as GoFundMe because schools won’t pay for them.
Conversations among parents in online discussion groups have sparked added concern.
Participants inquired about the possibility of vouchers paying for tickets for fan fests and conventions. They discussed whether they could get a television and a projector, or just one of those. They shared sample wording to submit for requests to get theme park passes paid for — something that was prohibited a year ago.
“Every child in Florida deserves an enriching, quality education,” said Holly Bullard, chief strategy officer for Florida Policy Institute, which has raised repeated concerns about the potential cost of voucher expansion. “But is it fair to students in our public schools, whose teachers often pay out of their own pockets for classroom supplies, that taxpayer dollars are being spent on Disney passes and big-screen TVs for voucher families?”
Supporters of the expansion don’t consider the program as wasting taxpayer money. They see it as allowing families to customize education according to their children’s interests.
“We need to stop thinking like it’s 1960 — that the only answer is four walls with traditional districts leading the charge,” Jeanne Allen, founder of the national Center for Education Reform, said in an email.
“To engage young people today, we need to do a lot more than just have them show up,” she said. “They expect 21st century approaches to learning and recreational opportunities for their physical and mental well-being.”
Jeanne Allen [ Courtesy of Center for Education Reform ]
In 2021-22, the latest year for which figures were available, families receiving vouchers for students with disabilities spent $1.2 million on televisions. The purchases required pre-authorization, according to Step Up For Students.
They also spent $43,374 on treadmillsat home, which also required pre-authorization; $30,436 on indoor trampolines and $226,584 on game consoles.
In total, the organization reported distributing $51 million for instructional materials that year, with the largest expenses being test preparation ($26.7 million), computers ($8 million) and iPads ($3.4 million). The amounts are expected to grow along with the expansion of the program, which has nearly doubled in size to more than 425,000 students after HB 1 became law on July 1.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signs HB 1, a bill to expand school vouchers across Florida, during a news conference at Christopher Columbus High on March 27 in Miami. [ MATIAS J. OCNER | AP ]
With the new purchasing guide in place, parents who have children with severe medical needs worried that limited resources would go toward items that families should be paying for themselves, while critical services and equipment might become underfunded.
“Taxpayer dollars going to PlayStations when they could go to students with significant needs, that’s fleecing the taxpayer,” said Abby Skipper, a longtime Polk County special education advocate and parent.
Students with special needs have a longer list of eligible expenses that are not available to students with economic opportunity scholarships. Some of thoseitems include digital devices such as game consoles and computers, assistive technology and sensory material, such asspecialized swings and chairs.
Many other authorized expenses — including field trips to places such as museums and theme parks, physical education equipment like kayaks, classroom furnishings and coursework — are common to both types.
A Step Up spokesperson noted that the scholarship pays for the student’s admission only and sets a limit of one per school year up to $299. A Busch Gardens silver annual pass with no blackout dates costs $213. Disney World annual passes start at $399. Florida resident tickets cost $109 per day.
State senators who voted for the program trust parents to make “appropriate and responsible decisions” when using the funds Florida is dedicating to their children’s education, said Katie Betta, spokesperson for the Senate Majority Office.
“The parents we hear from don’t see the scholarship as a windfall or a means to splurge on big screen TVs and video game consoles,” Betta said via email. “To the contrary, the parents we hear from appreciate the opportunity to use any funds left after tuition is paid to cover the cost of books, therapies and other educational expenses that would be covered if the child was in a public school.”
House Speaker Paul Renner agreed with the goal of giving families flexibility, and indicated lawmakers are open to reviewing the program as needed. House members aim to get the most out of public spending, he said, and are “continually improving how we deliver education so that every child can achieve their full potential.”
Doug Tuthill, the president ofStep Up For Students,said the group’s guidelines, written with parent input, have two primary criteria.
“First, we look at the products and services that are available in district and charter schools,” Tuthill said via email. “Second, we look at the unique learning needs of each child.”
Creating a customized education can explain the rationale behind paying for items that some question, he added.
For instance, large-screen televisions might aid students with visual impairments. Paddleboards, one of several items allowed for physical education, can offer balance training for students who have been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.
Step Up previously did not approve theme park passes, but reconsideredafter hearing from parents about the potential benefits, Tuthill said. A student with severe developmental disabilities might better focus when stimulated by the sights and sounds, for example, or a home-school family may incorporate “all the different history and culture lessons available at Disney World,” such as art and music festivals.
Several school district officials from across Florida said if their students take field trips to theme parks, parents or community sponsors cover the cost.
These types of conversations are taking place across the nation as education savings accounts gain popularity, said Derrell Bradford, president of the national education reform group 50Can. From his perspective, the accounts help close the gap for families that have no flexibility in their school choices or enrichment opportunities.
Pages from new guidelines detail how Florida families can spend school voucher money left over after a child’s private school tuition and fees have been paid. Allowable Items, which are supposed to have educational uses, include televisions, kayaks and individual trampolines. [ SEAN KRISTOFF-JONES | Times ]
This new model gives parents money and choices, limiting the centrally managed system, Bradford said. Looking at the ways the money can be spent shouldn’tbe a simple yes or no, Bradford added. The key concern ought to bewhat items will best help children learn, he said.
“The question we need to ask is, do you want to let the paradigm of schooling that we know already be the reference point? Or do you want to let something else emerge?” Bradford said.
Florida has clear purchasing rules, with laws against fraud, said Allen, the Center for Education Reform founder. She argued that the expansion of allowable expenses lets families choose “very different kinds of education environments for their children.”
Some Florida activists raised concerns that the state could run into problems like Arizona faced, when its auditor general found education savings accounts being misspent on unauthorized items. Polk County school board member Lisa Miller, who has used vouchers for her nonverbal son, said Florida’s program was ripe for abuse even when it was more limited. She noted that many funding requests came around the winter holidays for items such as Legos and Xboxes.
“Our public school system would not be able to operate like this,” Miller said.
Florida has greater spending controls in place than Arizona did.
Jenny Clark, a member of the Arizona State Board of Education who also runs a group that helps families navigate voucher uses, said, from her perspective, concerns about the timing and type of purchases focus on the wrong thing.
Jenny Clark [ Jenny Clark | Twitter ]
The “great experiment of education freedom and school choice” will succeed only if states design programs that provide “extreme flexibility” in using the accounts to meet children’s needs in a world where many jobs they’ll hold don’t yet exist, said Clark, a mom of five. She offered 3-D printers as an example, saying schools didn’t have them five years ago, and today they’re commonly considered necessary for some studies.
“We’ve got to do the most innovative things,” Clark said. “And the most innovative things make people uncomfortable.”
Florida state Rep. Allison Tant, D-Tallahassee, said she understands both sides of the argument. She’s also a special education parent advocate, whose son used a McKay Scholarship to support his schooling.
Tant said she’s hearing from some parents that the voucher amount doesn’t approach the tuition cost of many private schools, if seats are available. At the same time, she said, she hears the complaints that if state funding is limited, recipients who home-school or have small tuition expenses should not be using the money for what might seem to be extras.
Rep. Alison Tant [ Florida House of Representatives ]
“It never occurred to me that those kinds of items would be included,” Tant said, noting that when her son wanted to play video games, he bought his own Xbox.
She did not support HB 1, but said she expected the money would go toward expenses with clear educational value.
“We’ve got to have some checks and balances in there,” Tant said. “I think every Floridian, especially those who are struggling financially, is not going to want their tax dollars spent on things that aren’t educationally relevant. I don’t know if they want to send kids to Busch Gardens on a multiday field trip.”
I have always enjoyed Ethel’s videos. I have been watching them since she was a teen. She is passionate, yet she not only well versed in the subject she speaks on, but includes all her resources in the channel notes so anyone can double check what she says if they disagree with her. She has a slight speech impediment but the closed caption is great.
The story of Luna and her rabid anti-trans Christian father is a story I have followed since I heard it when Luna was around 7 or 8, and of the horrible abuse anti-trans fanatics will go too against letting a child be themselves. Despite court orders and against the child’s will he forcibly cut her hair, he refused to even allow girl’s clothing in his home and when she came to his home when he still had court ordered visitation would make her strip in the doorway after it was closed and go to the room assigned to her and put on male clothing. He then would destroy the girl clothing in front of her. Remember, at this point she was only socially transitioning, and he simply wouldn’t allow it. His parental rights were removed because of his refusal to follow court orders and treat Luna as the girl she was. And as is normal for Anti-trans haters he would go on the anti-trans Christian circuit and lie his ass off on everything. For an example he would say his wife only took Luna to one pro-trans mental health doctor when in fact she saw four or five, two were ones he insisted on including a Christian practitioner. They all agreed that Luna identified a girl. But his denial abuse got so bad that the girl and her mother fled the state and moved to California to be safe, a court approved move. But this is a man who would rather lose his child or see them dead than admit they might not be the gender that glancing between their legs at birth was assigned to them. Hugs
[Script & References] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J… [Chapters] 00:00 – Intro & Content Warning 01:28 – Jeff Damon Younger 16:01 – The Ministry of ‘Truth’ Film Festival 18:42 – Jeff Damon Younger Boasts About Turning Luna Into A Refugee 32:48 – Jeff Damon Younger’s Antisemitism [Social Media]
Scottie's Playtime 
