View the public comments and noteworthy statements from the 9/15/2022 D158 School Board Meeting below.
1:10– Student hands out photographs to each board member of a sex offender who is involved with a D158 counselor, and the student alleges that his own personal information was disclosed via FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to this person, putting he and his friends, minors, at risk.
1:12 – Mother raises concerns about the same sex offender FOIA’ing information and states that he is a sex predator who allegedly raped a 7-year-old, yet he is connected with a social worker from D158. The mother states that D158 has spend $490 fulfilling his FOIA request and turning over information about minor students to this offender.
1:15 – Mother addresses neglect of academics going on D158 schools while the District is “worrying about pronouns and what animal someone feels like being that day. I’m a 911 dispatcher, and I will tell you that if someone calls and says there is a person out in public barking and saying they are a dog… police will respond, as well as paramedics, for a psychiatric eval.
“So, if that is a real-world reaction to someone who wants to act and be a dog for a day, why are you allowing it to happen in your school? You’re telling these children that this is acceptable behavior… If you had a person standing in your front yard howling at the moon and acting like a wolf, are you going to go out there and pet him and tell him he’s a good boy? Stop allowing this nonsense to continue, and stop putting a spotlight on it like it’s something to strive to be!”
She continues, calling the district out on its encouragement of alternate pronoun use, stating “Because the school district wants to draw such attention to it and make it a big deal, it’s becoming a big deal to these kids. You guys are causing this. You are the ones who set the standard for what is important in school — which should be nothing but academics.”
1:19: Three parents read a joint statement from the D158 Parent Union written at our September meeting regarding parents’ concerns.
Part 1: “We depend on the school board for leadership, but what so many of us are seeing is a failure to lead and a willingness to bend to whatever nonsensical fad or whim is being pushed by a specific political agenda.” The statement continues to discuss students dressing as animals and points out that at another local school in a different district, teachers told a student they would not recognize her chosen identity of a parrot, and the student has since stopped acting as one.
The Parent Union emailed Dr. Rowe regarding the pronoun song taught to Conley Elementary students last month, and Dr. Rowe responded that “this was a teacher attempting to create an inclusive environment and make sure all students feel welcomed.”
“So many of our parents are outraged that these concepts of alternate pronouns and genders are not only extremely confusing for young children, but they have no basis in science, and there is no data available yet on whether or not teaching these concepts is beneficial or harmful. You, and we, won’t know for years. So who are you taking your cues from on the furries, the pronouns, and the supposed myriad of genders?”
Part 2: The statement also points out that D158 moved the high school graduation out of a church rented for the event because it wasn’t worth doing if it made even one student uncomfortable. Yet these new ideologies make many students uncomfortable, and they are still being pushed.
A parent reported a 7th grade teacher at Marlowe is exhibiting grooming behaviors to the students, and another teacher offered to give the answers to a work packet to students who aligned with pro-LGBT themes, but students who did not also did not receive the answers.
Part 3: Last summer the D158 Parent Union met with Dr. Rowe regarding the slant toward sexuality, and at that meeting, it was stated that this was “the way society was going.” “Last night at our meeting, one of our parents said ‘no, the school is now deliberately shaping society by promoting these views to young children. Psychologists are calling this a social contagion.” The statement concludes by calling for the the board and district to simply make education the sole focus of our schools.
1:26: Mother speaks about the recent Seesaw incident where children logging into the school-provided Seesaw online tool saw pornography. She felt the district did not give enough detail to parents about what children were exposed to, noting that “inappropriate matter” had made its way onto the platform and not that it was pornography. She again points out that not enough is being done with the school’s internet and electronic systems to shield young children from content they should not see.
She also points out that the Marlowe library has numerous books flagged “LGBT” on the spine of the books, where it will be obvious to other students what material their classmates are reading and that the sticker is “literally calling attention to kids to say ‘pick me, pick me.’ If we genuinely had a child struggling with maybe they are something, maybe they aren’t, now everyone would know – and that’s not confidential. You guys are the ones that said we couldn’t celebrate Autism Awareness [Month] because we ‘didn’t want to out people,’ but now we have these stickers on there outing everybody.”