There is no shortage of examples of industries seeing their revenue decline due to poor leadership and failing to keep politics out of their operations. Go Woke, Go Broke.
The most notable example of this can be seen in sports. Clay Travis, the founder of Outkick.com, has reported on this topic multiple times, most notably the dramatic fall in ratings for the NBA and ESPN as they have become more focused on politics than their core business. Travis has published a book on this topic titled Republicans Buy Sneakers Too (which I highly recommend reading).
You may find yourself wondering: what does any of this have to do with public schools? There is no reason to believe that schools are immune to the same forces as other “businesses.”. Bringing polarizing politics into schools creates a culture of poor decision-making and detracts from the imperative function of schools: to educate our youth.
Rochester Community Schools (RCS) is a perfect example of how poor leadership has led to wasteful spending, politics over education, and enrollment reduction.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at RCS
Rochester Community Schools employs Tiffany Goliday as their Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Goliday was named the Interim Director of Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging on August 17, 2020. Then, on April 13, 2021, Chief Human Resource Officer Elizabeth Davis signed a Notice of Adjustment (NOA). That NOA named Goliday the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion effective July 1, 2021. It also gave Goliday a 30.3% raise going from $92,980 to $121,245.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Spending
RCS spent $153,705.52 from August 6, 2019, to May 12, 2021, under the department of DEI. During the time frame of March 1, 2020 to May 12, 2021 $48,072.49 (31.2%) of the $153,705.52 was spent. This time period is when RCS was providing an inequitable form of education to the district’s students via forced remote learning for all students, a hurried virtual campus, and the lack of a cohesive plan to get students back into the building. Note this spending does not include Goliday salary.
RCS spent nearly $50K in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, while now resigned trustee Andrea Walker-Leidy told the community that RCS did not have what it needed to return students to in-person instruction safely. Could this nearly $50,000 not have helped return the students to in-person instruction for the start of the 20-21 school year?
Breakdown of the $48,072.49
The nearly 50K that RCS spent while failing to properly educate the students can be broken down into six categories.
- Consultant: $30,678.83
- Books: $8,643.79
- Guest Speaker: $5,000.00
- Supplies: $2,269.87
- Virtual Conference: $1,380.00
- Virtual Trip: $100.00
Equal Opportunity Schools and Kimberly Thomas
What did RCS pay a consultant $30,678.83 for during a pandemic? The majority of the funds went to Equal Opportunity Schools and Kimberly Thomas for payment for 50% of service fees for Experience Success for the school year 2020-21 and travel expenses/ Note the full year’s cost for the Experience Success for the school year 2020-21 is $60K.
So, what does Equal Opportunity Schools do for the $60K a year? Per their website, their mission statement is “Equal Opportunity Schools’ mission is to ensure that students of color and low-income students have equitable access to America’s most academically intense high school programs and succeed at the highest levels.” To pay a company to ensure that students of color and low-income students are not being denied opportunities raises a few questions and concerns.
Is this not what RCS pays guidance counselors and Goliday herself to accomplish?
Is RCS actively blocking students of color and low-income students from Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) classes? If so, this is a larger issue that it should not take a consultant to figure out.
The 20-21 school year is the second year RCS has paid for this service ($72K for school year 19-20). What tangible progress was made from year one to year two?
Will this be an annual yearly expense in the future?
This is a cost that is hard to justify because RCS employs multiple positions that should be able to meet the needs of the students in the district.
| Category | Description | Amount |
| Consultant For Student Placement | 50% of service fees for Experience Success for school year 2020-21 | $30,000.00 |
| Airfare: Kimberly Thomas – February 2-6, 2020 (Rochester & Ferndale): Alaska Airlines | $158.39 | |
| Car Rental: Kimberly Thomas – February 2-6, 2020 (Rochester & Ferndale): National Car Rental | $125.78 | |
| Hotel: Kimberly Thomas – February 2-6, 2020 (Rochester & Ferndale): Hampton Inn & Suites | $226.19 | |
| Parking: Kimberly Thomas – February 2-6, 2020 (Rochester & Ferndale): Ajax ParkingRUs | $28.09 | |
| Per Diem: Kimberly Thomas – February 2-6, 2020 (Rochester & Ferndale) | $126.00 | |
| Personal Car Mileage: Kimberly Thomas – February 2-6, 2020 (Rochester & Ferndale) | $14.38 | |
| Consultant For Student Placement Total | $30,678.83 |
Books
In reviewing the list of books purchased under the DEI department, it’s hard to miss the woke political agenda. With authors such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, there is no denying that RCS’s DEI is influenced by the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CTR) and is embracing the Antiracist Ideology.
How can there be anything wrong with being an antiracist?
The answer is in how Kendi explains in How to Be an Antiracist to combat discrimination. Kendi states, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” Yes, Kendi is promoting active discrimination against one race of people for the betterment of another race of people. This is by definition racist, and it is only not considered that by Antiracist because Kendi has given them his own made-up definitions listed below.
RACIST: One who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea.
ANTIRACIST: One who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.
Kendi is correct when he says, “definitions anchor us in principles.”. This is why Antiracist Ideology belongs nowhere near a school. It is based on fabricated definitions that support a political objective.
Two other books that raise red flags are We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina L. Love and Hacking School Discipline: 9 Ways to Create a Culture of Empathy and Responsibility Using Restorative Justice By Nathan Maynard and Brad Weinstein.
We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina L. Love:
“Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex.
To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom—not merely reform—teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.”
Hacking School Discipline: 9 Ways to Create a Culture of Empathy and Responsibility Using Restorative Justice By Nathan Maynard and Brad Weinstein:
“Eliminate old-school punishments and create a community of responsible, productive learners
Are you or your teachers frustrated with carrots and sticks, detention rooms, and suspension–antiquated school discipline practices that simply do not work with the students entering our classrooms today? Our kids have complex needs, and we must empower and embrace them with restorative practices that not only change behaviors but transform students into productive citizens, accountable for their own actions.
Replace traditional school discipline with a proven system, founded on restorative justice
In a book that should become your new blueprint for school discipline, teachers, presenters, and school leaders Nathan Maynard and Brad Weinstein demonstrate how to eliminate punishment and build a culture of responsible students and independent learners. In Hack Learning Series Book 22, you learn to:
- Reduce repeated negative behaviors
- Build student self-regulation and empathy
- Enhance communication and collaboration
- Identify the true cause of negative behaviors
- Use restorative circles to reflect on behaviors and discuss impactful change”
Roles and Responsibilites
Reading the descriptions raise the following questions:
What is the role of the DEI? Where do the roots of this department stop their reach?
Curriculum?
Discipline processes?
Day-to-day operations?
Perhaps a clear understanding and transparency into the focus of this role or department would alleviate this sense of frustration or confusion in the community.
There is a clear lack of Diversity of Ideas:
It is very concerning that there are no books written from a non-woke, non-racist point of view on the topic of race. This hardly feels like a diversity of ideas. Why can white people disregard authors of color that disagree with the woke agenda, which is not considered racist?
Shelby Steele, the author of White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era is a great example of a black man who experienced racism growing up and writes about it, yet his book does not make RCS’s list.
Candace Owens would be another black author that is critical of the woke political agenda. As expected, her book Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation is not on the DEI list.
If there is to be true diversity of ideas if we are going to talk about the writing of authors like Kendi and DiAngelo, should there not also be Steele and Owens? Is it not racist to think all nonwhite people should believe and agree with the ideas of Kendi and DiAngelo or that there might be diversity in their ideas, experiences, and perspectives? The RCS community has seen this type of nondiversity from the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Parent Network. A parent was kicked out of the parent group for having a different point of view.
$55.50 Per Minute
RCS and the DEI team thought to spend $5,000 on a guest speaker for 90 minutes/ The description of the event was, “This keynote will challenge audiences to wake up, stay woke and take action against hatred, bigotry, privilege, supremacy, and oppression.” Again, this is during a time when RCS provided a poor and flawed form of education that negatively impacted low-income students more than their wealthy and working-class schoolmates.
Lasting Impact:
Over the past 18 months, parents have been much more focused on the schools due to COVID-19. There has been a rise in homeschooling over the same time period. Per the census, homeschooling has risen by 5.6% for the 20-21 school year.
Early on, this could be seen as driven by the lack of an in-person option for families and not wanting their students on a screen all day. As time went on, some families did not feel returning was safe, and online did not work for them.
As we approach the start of the 21-22 school year, more parents are pulling their students due to a lack of leadership from the district. Seeing that the education of their student is not the priority. This is evident in where the district is spending its money, and it has been on raises for the Superintendent and his staff, a new Admin building, and finally to push a far-left racist and socialist agenda- all while not having the” resources” to offer all students a quality education.
If this continues, all that will be left at the public school will be those who did not have the means to pull their student. This will result in a drop in per-pupil funding, loss of jobs, etc. This will force the district to move to open enrollment to replace the students they are losing. This all will devalue RCS, which will then devalue the community. Lastly, the low-income students the woke crowd claims to be fighting for will be the ones to suffer the most.
Time is Running Out
So, how about let’s get the woke politics out of RCS. Reduce wasteful spending and fat at the top of the house. Shift funds to the classrooms and increase the pay for the paras so that the district can retain top talent. A strong public school system is the foundation of what makes America great. It is the true answer to the problems we face. Time is running out to course correct and regain the trust that the community has lost in our once strong community schools.
Amazing article! Read it twice. Each sentence is thought provoking, sincere & reasoned. Should be read at next BOE mtg!