Here’s a challenge for all the negative-Nancy’s here: don’t down-vote a post without commenting a challenge, rebuttal or argument for at least one point spoken in the down-voted comment.

I know many read and react purely as an emotional hobby, but if you can muster it, try to engage; it really is the only solution to our disagreements.

Ick, what a propagandist video. It may make you feel good–or angry–but it’s not going to help you manage the school issues, because it is full of lies, such as that CRT is being taught to our children (it is not).

Do you have a child in a Clark County school? If so, do you know their teachers, the Principle, other staff? Nobody involved in any school my son has attended would claim those people have any agenda other than being the best educators they can be for our kids.

Sure, there are political pushes this way or that–religious nuts wanting to curtail critical thinking and biology, if not teach their views directly, the alt-left wanting to teach adult themes to our youngest–but that’s how “community” works. You don’t get “your” way, and when the community at large refuses to agree with you, it doesn’t diminish your primacy as a parent to your child, it merely means your opinion does not outweigh everybody else’s.

Take the masks. What a trivial thing to do to save lives. Nearly everybody agreed, but a handful of people who are used to getting their way were told by radical right politicians to turn it into a political issue–ignoring all mores of community and neighborliness–and then a [fake] constitutional one, and on, and on.

It’s almost like we have spies with no soul who’ve infiltrated our communities and just want to break things, ruin our cohesiveness, and make us nothing more than weak and disparate individuals.

As with masks, people are free to stay out of public places.
Vaccines, free to not hold a job that requires it.
Schools, free to take your child out of public school.
Communities, free to move somewhere where your opinion alone matters.

But… I, like almost everybody else, would rather none of these; we would rather we come together as a community and make good choices, and appropriate sacrifices to further our collective interests.

More off topic comments. Whose children are they? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=litOHblfPaA

No one has been harmed more over the last 2 years. https://rumble.com/vxg6ww-the-missing-perspective-politics-on-the-backs-of-our-children.html

Oh and, nice to chat with someone else who’s read Nietzche.

I have deep roots here, and more family than I know. My Gr. Gr. Grandfather founded Amboy.

There is a loud antisocial crowd now since Trump, but I can tell you it is a minority. I have family who’ve fallen into that group, but I know this is not who they are, it is a pathogen as surely as COVID is.

I have the view my Gr. Aunt, a life-long school teacher in Clark County and Grand-daughter of Amboy’s founder had: one of pride, community, and although she was not religious and nor am I, what amounts to ‘traditional’ Christian values of helping neighbors, being unafraid to give when others couldn’t, and bending my own interests for the greater good.

Those values came from the hard times of Pioneer life in Clark County, which nobody lives today. I fear our internet, easy water, power and heat and the rest has made some of us vulnerable to propaganda such as is peddled by FOX.

I blame nobody.

That’s the rub. The letter claims that “school governments have a vested interest in the system as a whole, parents have a vested interest in the children.” That is patently, and demonstrably, false. If it read “school governments have a vested interest in ALL children, parents have an interest in their children”, then we hit a little closer to the truth. Teaching history as it happened informs all students, leaving out the parts we don’t like undermines every student. Teaching the reality that racism is real, and effects people in our county today, teaches all students what the real world is and what it can hope to be. Pretending that Critical Race Theory is taught anywhere in Clark County to score political points makes us all dumber. Scott Hooper, you have the patience of Job. To be the voice of reason amongst the echo chamber here is both impressive and commendable. Just know that you have allies here, even if some of us have to remain largely quiet to avoid becoming the monster Nietzche warned us about. I know you get it, the CRT/ivermectin/stop the steal crowd can look it up. Keep fighting the good fight.

But what this is missing–what they always seem to miss–is that a vast majority of parents supported reasonable and appropriate safety measures during the pandemic, because after our children, the entire community around us are very much our concern.

I too have complaints about our schools. I hate the sort of unhealthy lunches they serve, for e.g. But it isn’t the school’s job to satisfy me or align with my personal views, but rather to look out for the entire student body and staff.

I have always seen our schools as the center of our communities, the place where our young come together to get educated, get to know each other, and affirm our values. My family has been in North [Clark] County for a long while, and I remind my Son that when times are tough, such as during COVID, we stick together and look out for each other. I told him how my Great Grandmother hosted refuges from the 1902 fire in her house and yard and on her porch just outside Amboy. She didn’t lament the burden of feeding so many people, she just did what was right.

That’s how I see our school boards; time after time they were accosted–as I’m sure you know–by people who did not want to be part of the solution, who felt they were special and did not need to join the community at large. That made me very sad, and I worry what lessons their children will have learned. It seems the party purported to favor family values only values their own family.