On the heels of the announcement that Nancy Allen moved to Gettysburg and would be resigning from the Frederick County Board of Education, our local Republican party decided to engage in some high theatrics:
Let’s talk about what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot!
Let’s say we lived in a dark timeline in which Michael Hough was the CE, and let’s just speculate for just half a second that Dean Rose decided that he couldn’t maintain two residences in Maryland and Pennsylvania and decided to throw in the towel? What would Hough do? What would this local Republican party do? We don’t need to think too long on that one! Y’all make our heads spin!
However, that isn’t even the main point. Allen decided she couldn’t or wouldn’t serve out the rest of her term. When she did this she knew (or should have known) the process for selecting her own replacement. Let’s take a look at what the law says, and be sure to see who sponsored it because what a treat!
Nowhere do we see that the new candidate needs to match the philosophy of the old. And how would that happen anyway? If anyone thought that was a necessity then the law would have been written to allow the board of education member to appoint their successor. But no one thought that idea made any sense!
We took some time to peruse the letters of intent for the over 50 people who applied for the vacancy:
Most of the candidates wrote about their dedication to education, their qualifications, and their community service experience. Unless some magic rubric exists to weed out those who wouldn’t be akin to Nancy Allen, we can’t imagine how their half-baked idea would even work!
The reality is the County Executive is only obligated to appoint (along with the County Council’s approval) the most qualified individual to fill out the last year of Allen’s term. As it is a non partisan race, there is no reason to only interview people who align themselves with the Republican party. And considering how those who align themselves with the Republican party have been behaving on that board this past year, why would anyone want that?
Even though each day seems like an eternity lately, next year will be here before we know it!
And now for the bad news…..
Apologies all around!
Heather Fletcher is running again. If you forgot who this now twice failed candidate is, don’t worry we’ll remind you. First let’s hand her the microphone to see how y’all like her:
This post will also serve as your reminder that all of us like-minded people need to vote for the SAME number of candidates as there are openings on the board. Just look at all we’ve had to put up with because of Black and Brennan so far! #learnfromthepast!
As we sat around the Round Table at Yokel Headquarters late last week, your Lady Yokels could hardly believe that 10 years had lapsed since we began this endeavor. In celebration of this milestone anniversary we will like to take you on a stroll down memory lane.
Not sure that everyone does, so we are going to retell it!
10 years ago, after reading this LTE, https://www.fredericknewspost.com/places/local/frederick_county/frederick/blaine-young-work-together-or-nothing-will-get-accomplished/article_b1616559-e265-5a0d-9fbc-fe09bfdbe811.html, from our anti-muse, Blaine Young, a group of what became known as the Lady Yokels met in our favorite coffee spot, Dublin Roasters. After we appropriately insulted both Blaine Young and his very poor analysis of why he lost, we decided that we needed to shine the spotlight not only on Blaine, but also on his buddies, Kirby Delauter, Billy Shreve, and Tony Chmelik. At first, we discussed writing a book, but nixed that idea fairly quickly as we knew keeping an eye on these people was going to be a very fluid situation. By the end of that first meeting we decided to embark upon a blog to educate people on what is not often at the top of their to-do list, the inner workings of their local government. (Don’t worry, we’ve also kept an eye on Blaine so every time he tries to slither back into politics we are there to remind everyone of his arrests and bad behavior!)
For the next four years we religiously watched every county council meeting. More often than not, we created a drinking game to accompany such meetings in order to spice things up a bit. Here’s an example:
We sincerely hope that we didn’t hurt anyone’s livers as these games were only meant for fun. Over the first four years we made sure that everyone had a front seat to just how crazy things were with those three on the council. Here’s a curated sampling from our archives:
While there are so many artifacts from this part of Yokel history, this is still hands down our favorite:
Backstory: Kirby wanted to prove that the Citizens for Quality of Life PAC was corrupt, but you will notice that nothing comes out of the PAC and somehow Jessica ended up with everything!
After one term in office, Kirby and Billy tried to obtain a higher office, while Tony wanted to stay put. Thankfully enough people paid attention and NONE of that happened! We sent our three amigos out with a departing post:
After saner folks got on the council we kinda checked out on that scene, though we did decide to check back once last summer and boy was there some drama:
Our main, but certainly not our only focus, has been the Frederick County School Board. People often underestimate (though perhaps that sentiment isn’t as true as it was in the past) the damage the wrong people can do on a school board. Just take a look at Colt Black and Jaime Brennan! The person who dragged us into this new focus was none other than Cindy Rose. Thankfully everyone understood how bad she would be, and after four failed attempts, she has finally seemed to have given up. Here’s some highlights of what we had to say about that one:
Hopefully we will be more successful next year in reminding everyone how to do the math with the school board candidates so we don’t get left with the shit show we have right now.
Thank you all for an interesting and fun ten years! Think of your Lady Yokels tonight as we clink our glasses together and hope that we can survive another ten years of politics! We appreciate all of you being a part of this journey.
If you haven’t paid attention to all the budget troubles going on around here..welcome to the terrible party. In the next few weeks the budget for FCPS is going to be voted on, and we need to make sure that our schools get what they need to educate our children. We’ll let a good friend of the Yokel explain it to y’all:
The most important duty of local government is to educate the children living within their borders. If we fail at this it really doesn’t matter how nice our parks, roads or other public services are. At the bottom of this post we are going to list the email addresses for county council members and County Executive Fitzwater so you can email them with your concerns.
Speaking of the important duty of education, one of the most important duties we have as citizens is to vote for competent school board members. That is where a fair number of us failed this time around. We tried to sound the warning about there being too many candidates on our side, but that warning did not reach enough ears and we are now left to deal with the consequences of it all.
Colt Black has decided to use his short time on the board to harass and demean LGBTQ+ students at school board meetings. From the Frederick News Post:
Referring to the part of a districtwide gender identity policy, Policy 443, that instructs teachers and staff members to use a student’s preferred name and pronouns, Black said at a Jan. 8 school board meeting: “Just as much as you have your right to be you, we have our right to be free from you.”
Lots of local folks filed complaints about this outrageous comment from a sitting school board member. Well, today an independent investigator determined that Black did not violate Title IX:
But that doesn’t mean that he’s not an unqualified bigot that shouldn’t be on the board. We’ll tell you right now that the 5 member panel of judges here at the LY have already tried and convicted him in our court of public opinion, and so has a majority of the school board:
We’ll remind y’all again in a couple of years, but we do need to remember how the math works when it comes to school board elections. We cannot pay this high price again.
Several alert readers messaged your Lady Yokels to instruct us to tune in to the board meeting. Colt Black was getting his ass handed to him for his insensitive, and frankly stupid, comments about some students in our schools. We encourage all who didn’t see it, to go back and watch it as soon as it’s posted on their site.
You’ll have to mire through Heather Fletcher telling you in the name of Jesus Christ to get rid of all the porn in the school, and suffer through Tom Neumark mansplaining the budget…but it’s worth it. Because, more importantly, you’ll learn from the kids how we are going to survive this Trump hell for the next four years.
The students who came to speak during public comment made it clear to Mr. Black and the world of the impact of Policy 443. They spoke to how much better school was for both them and their friends as a result of this policy. They made it known that they would not accept any hint of discrimination in their school system.
Then came the board member comments, and we have to say that the students really knew what they were doing when they elected Elijah Steele as their representative. Mr. Steele constructed a defense of his fellow students against people like Colt Black and Jaime Brennan by using student testimony and actual facts to support why this policy matters. He reminded them not to bring their political agenda into the school system! Something they love to accuse others of, but apparently don’t see in themselves.
Afterwards, the adults on the board gave their comments. Colt Black chose to be sarcastic about his critics and then mad about the budget instead of taking any time to reflect on his behavior. Jaime Brennan wants to know why we can’t all just come together after all the hateful things she and Black have said. And Nancy Allen, who wasn’t going to speak and probably shouldn’t have, goes off on a rant about how poorly treated both she and Colt Black have been because of the horrible and hateful things they said! Can’t these people get a break and spew their hate without any repercussions?! Geeze!
Imagine that!
The other board members really stepped up to the plate and stood up for all of the students in our school system. Karen Yoho reminded us of the discussion in 2016 when Policy 443 came about. It was because of students! Mr. Rose threw some Southern shade Colt Black’s way and made it known that he would no longer tolerate any bashing of kids at board meetings. Board members Gallagher and Monier both voiced their support for policies for that protect kids. These are the people that make our board and our school system better.
What Black, Brennan, and Allen need to realize is that they are there for the kids, all of them. They and their followers can put forth all of the hyperbolic “the sky is falling” bullshit they want about what this policy “could” do, but the truth is they are wrong. There has not been a single incident of any of this propaganda happening in FCPS. Since this is an FCPS policy that only applies in FCPS, that is all that matters. If you cannot prove harm, then you don’t have a leg to stand on. What we do see over and over again is student after student testifying to how much this policy has helped them at school. That’s all that matters. Leave these kids alone, leave this policy alone, and let’s move on to more important issues.
Thank you to everyone who reminded your despondent Lady Yokels how we are going to survive this new fresh hell we find ourselves in. These kids and Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde have reminded us how to move on by standing up for what is morally right in this world:
We won’t let these people hurt the ones that we love.
We’ve been through a lot this year Yokels! But like the dumpster above we are going to have to find some way to plant a dumb little smile on our faces and solider on! You may see a pattern with our top five posts this year! Coming it at #5:
5. Let’s Armchair Quarterback Those Primary Election Results:
In this post we had a lot to celebrate, most especially that Dan Cox got knocked out in the primary! Towards the end we had a warning about the school board election results that was not heeded by enough folks!
4. A Yokel Stroll Down Memory Lane! Let’s Check in With That County Council.
In the midst of the summer heat, we decided to go back to our roots and watch a county council meeting. We had pulled away from doing so after Kirby, Billy, and Tony (Maybe we should think twice before voting for people whose names end in Y- except you Jerry!) got sent back home! It wasn’t a pleasant experience, so we haven’t been back. Though recently we’ve been alerted to some of the Frederick City Council meetings and we may have to pay more attention to those as there is an election next year!
And for our number one spot, the man whose letter to editor about his loss to Jan spurred the creation of this blog, occupies our most read post of the year: Blaine Young Can’t Seem to Keep Himself Out of Trouble:
We looked at West Virginia’s case search and his trial date is in 4 days:
Did you notice the theme? We need to do a better job of only supporting and promoting the exact number of candidates as there are open seats on the board of education. Some people are starting to get it:
So unless we want a Board of Education that will support Donald Trump’s agenda of destroying the public education system, we need to be sure everyone understands how these elections work!
We wish all of our readers a peaceful holiday week and as good a 2025 that we can muster through!
Keep repeating, “Everything is fine! Everything is fine!”
Usually we are quicker to the chase when it comes to talking about election results. However, we know that our faithful readers will give us some grace on this one.
There is a lot to celebrate in our fine state and county. After all, we overwhelmingly voted for Harris, Alsobrooks, and Delaney. So, at least in our little enclave of a state and county, we know that it’s not okay with a majority of us that a lying felonious charlatan fascist has control of the presidency. We also have a great mayor who has promised to stand up and protect our immigrant and LGBTQ+ neighbors against the tomfoolery that is sure to come our way:
HOWEVER, we also need to talk about the Board of Education race. We tried to warn y’all about the danger of voting outside the Apple ballot and we are not above this:
Alas! Too many people did not listen and here’s what happened:
Sanity is in control of the board by one vote now! One vote! The lesson that has to be learned here is those of us who want a reasonable school board that isn’t full of book banners, homophobes, and history deniers need to consolidate around the exact number of seats that are open on the board! No more! We’ve had too many examples of this to not understand how it works by now!
If you need something to fight for, and ya’ll the local arena is where you can really make a difference, then make it paying attention to this board! Then, in two years time, make sure that you and everyone you know votes for the SAME people for whatever number of open seats there happens to be.
Let’s give you an example of what we are up against. If you take a look at the education section of Project 2025, you will see one of the proposals is to withhold school meals from schools who don’t fulfill their hateful agenda. Behold:
If this isn’t monstrous, then what is? Withholding food to kids is something dictators do! They also want to empower parents to sue school systems whenever they think any part of the curriculum goes against what the parents deem is against their rights. Can you imagine this? We know that the point of all of this is to undermine and break the public school system, so why are we allowing people onto the board that won’t fight against these policies? Why are we, as a county, not learning from past elections? Why? Why? Why?!!!
It’s time to lie down now.
We’ll all have to hope for the best the next time around. We need to recharge and then to continue fighting the good fight for the sake of our county and our kids. Hopefully, y’all are with us.
We’ve been taking it a bit easy this summer at Yokel headquarters. But now it’s time for us to step back into the fray! Lots of big news going on! First of all, we finally have a chance to have a woman president!
Kamala!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We also want to share with you this meme that pretty much sums up the last few years of American politics:
Imagine having to explain the last 8 years without having lived through it! It’s hard to explain even if you lived through it!
What we want to focus on today is the assault that the American educational system is under AND what that means for us locally. We are going to concentrate on two recent publications in particular.
First on our list is a column that the Frederick News Post ran on July 5th by a member of the Heritage Foundation with the seemingly innocuous title, “America’s teachers are unhappy. Here’s how we can turn that around.” Except there is nothing in this article that would make any teachers we know happy. Case in point:
Imagine Uber or Airbnb for education: An online platform that allows educators to offer their services to as many families as are willing to pay. One teacher could offer Advanced Placement English to hundreds of students at a time, and be compensated based on the popularity of their course, instead of a flat district salary schedule.
That’s what we want to know Mr.Tinkles!
So, teachers would be happier if they had to piecemeal their existence together? And what about healthcare and retirement? Or is that just the radical agenda of those evil teacher unions? Didn’t most people hate online learning for their kids? Here’s another jewel:
It’s no wonder. Teacher preparation programs can be money makers for colleges, but they offer little practical guidance on how to manage a classroom or deliver a lesson.
There’s been a bit of research on this so you can look for yourself, however we will share the conclusions of an analysis of student outcomes comparing Teach for America teachers to traditionally certificated teachers in the Houston School District:
Again we found that uncertified teachers and those with less than standard certification—whether TFA or non-TFA—exert negative effects on student achievement relative to teachers with standard certification.
AND…..
Raymond and colleagues reported that across the four years of their study, TFA teachers had left teaching in Houston by their third year at rates of between 60% and 100%. We found similar attrition rates: Between 57% and 90% of TFA recruits had left teaching in Houston after their second year, and between 72% and 100% of recruits had left after their third year.
No Heritage Foundation word salad on education would be complete without some accusation of indoctrination:
Those who persist are forced to take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt to sit through hours of abstract theorizing and ideological indoctrination — only to walk into class on day 1 of their first year ill-equipped to handle the student who won’t take his seat.
Of course this writer offers up no research to back her claims. So, let’s move onto the next piece we want to focus on, which is the deservedly maligned Project 2025.
That’s a great question!
There’s so much to unpack in that document, so for today we are going to just comment on the “Education Policy” section of this hot mess. First of all can we guess for whom the author of this piece works for?
If you guessed The Heritage Foundation, then…
Because of course she is!
So let’s go and break down some of these suggestions, shall we?
First of all, the overall tone of the article is that local school boards and local control is the best thing this country ever did, and all the problems in education would magically disappear if state and local governments had complete and total control.( We should mention that most other developed countries have a centralized education system) So, we set out to find some examples to refute that notion! Here’s a excerpt of an article from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education:
Daily stories abound of controversies related to school boards. In Clark County, public debates lasted all night over the boards’ deliberations over revamping sex education. Making national news, students chained themselves to the dais amidst the board’s deliberations to eliminate Mexican American Studies in Tucson while one board member was featured on the Daily Show making inaccurate and discriminatory remarks about the program. In Salt Lake City, the only board member of color showed up to the board meeting dressed as “Frito Bandito” (a cartoon character depicting a stereotype of Mexicans as thieves) in response to presumed racial discrimination. School board meeting attendees in South Carolina started singing “Jesus Loves Me” to silence advocates of transgender bathrooms, which translates to a villanization of transgender students. These are just a few of the existing examples.
You can also read stories about some coal mining towns in which the executives of the mines sat on school boards and wouldn’t allow advanced classes into the curriculum, mostly because they needed those students to work in the mines one day. And everyone remembers this, right?!
What a great example of local control of education!
Here’s a real eye-opener from Project 2025:
Safeguarding civil rights. Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.
These people really know how to pull out their dog whistles don’t they? Their suggestions continue along this same route:
The next Administration should abandon this change redefining “sex” to mean “sexual orientation and gender identity” in Title IX immediately across all departments. On its first day in office, the next Administration should signal its intent to enter the rulemaking process to restore the Trump Administration’s Title IX regulation, with the additional insistence that “sex” is properly understood as a fixed biological fact. Official notice-and-comment should be posted immediately. lAt the same time, the political appointees in the Office for Civil Rights should begin a full review of all Title IX investigations that were conducted on the understanding that “sex” referred to gender identity and/or sexual orientation.
Is this idea put forth to make sure Trump can get his followers jobs in the Federal Government? Just asking questions!
Minimize bachelor’s degree requirements. The President should issue an executive order stating that a college degree shall not be required for any federal job unless the requirements of the job specifically demand it.
And of course the main idea here is to destroy the public education system so they and all their buddies can make education into a business that they can profit off of:
Advancing education freedom. Empowering families to choose among a diverse set of education options is key to reform and improved outcomes, and it can be achieved without establishing a new federal program. For example, portability of existing federal education spending to fund families directly or allowing federal tax credits to encourage voluntary contributions to K–12 education savings accounts managed by charitable nonprofits, could significantly advance education choice.
Freedom they call it.
Is that why they can’t seem to hear anything?
So, we know this has been a long post, but we do need to circle back to what this means around these here parts. We have a few candidates (cough, cough-Jaime Brennan and Colt Black!) who have espoused some of these same viewpoints. Jaime Brennan is a member of Moms For Liberty who also has a relationship with the Heritage Foundation. From the Heritage Foundation’s own website:
The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project filed a lawsuit yesterday on behalf of Moms for Liberty against the Biden Administration, demanding the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Federal Bureau of Investigation produce all records concerning the parental rights organization and the Biden Administration’s coordination with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
This lawsuit comes after the agencies refused to comply with the Oversight Project’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the same documents.
Prior to requesting these documents, the SPLC produced a report which listed Moms for Liberty as an “extremist” coalition of “far-right antigovernment parents” who are known for “intimidating and harassing teachers and school officials.” It also claimed that Moms for Liberty is “one of the most recognized names in the anti-student inclusion movement,” citing the group’s opposition to critical race theory.
Therefore we need to be smart about our vote this Fall. We need to consolidate our votes behind 3 candidates in order to make sure that our board doesn’t become overrun by people who want to destroy our schools. It’s just as important as your vote for President! And we don’t want the writer of the LTE that ran in yesterday’s paper to set the tone for our next election!:
We don’t need any more taxes.
Haven’t the politicians heard of not spending when you don’t have the money? I guess not. It doesn’t matter if it’s national or local.
To help with the spending, we need some conservatives on the school board. We need people who won’t cater to the teachers union.
Nothing is wrong with unions if they concern themselves with the employees’ well being only.
Don’t worry about critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion, as they are anti-common sense anyway.
Oh, well. The county doesn’t care about the older people who live here.
Sure wish we saw this before we tuned in this evening!
If you’ve been with us since our inception in 2015, then you are well aware that we made it a habit to religiously watch and report on the county council meetings. (Here’s a sampling if you are newer to our blog). We kept a good eye on Kirby, Billy, and Tony and made everyone aware of how they behaved on that council dais. When 2018 rolled around and all of our “characters” were expelled by the good voters of our fine county, so we took a break from the meetings as things seemed to be going so well.
Your good Lady Yokels have been talking about checking in on the council, kind of a walk down memory lane, to see how things have been going lately. Turns out the answer is:
First some context. The Frederick News Post ran an article and Council member McKay made a social media post about his building moratorium bill. You can read it here because we aren’t going to get into all of the allegations because we don’t know exactly what happened either and you can read all about it in the link. What we will say is that the first fifteen minutes of the meeting was a back and forth between Steve McKay, Brad Young, Kavonte Duckett, and the Chief Administrative Officer about these allegations, which was all an explanation as to why McKay wasn’t voting for the agenda. I mean we don’t have anyone abstaining like Billy used to do, but this was a whole drama onto itself. Must be that drama is now an honored tradition at council meetings! Thanks a lot Billy and Kirby!
Public comment leads us to our next part of the agenda. We are giddy while we wait to see if any of our old friends will grace the microphone. But alas it was not to be! However, the old theme of it mirroring public comment on the show Parks and Rec is still going strong.
Okay, maybe we exaggerate a tad. One man was there to talk about Steve’s bill which was the only thing resembling a comment relevant to the work of the council. Another dude showed up to ask for free farm land and encourage people to come to a rally in Montgomery County to celebrate the release of Julian Assange. And the rest were there to get the county council to issue a cease fire resolution to Israel. One man even admitted that the city already told him that didn’t seem like a local issue! We’ll see what the council thinks about all that, but looks to us that some folks are barking up the wrong tree.
M.C. is on the opposite side of the dais, but it was good to hear her voice again. Same goes for Jerry, as they are the only two remnants of our council of yesteryear. At the beginning of the meeting M.C. makes it a point to tell everyone that she pulled her bill so people wouldn’t worry about any conspiracies there!
Minutes, Budget Amendments, Appointments are all passed without a single nay or abstain! At least that much is going smoothly.
We are going to have two charter amendments to vote on come November’s ballot. Here’s the language thus far if you would like to get a head start:
THE COUNCIL SHALL HOLD A PUBLIC HEARING ON ANY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATION TO THE GENERAL FUND IN EXCESS OF $1,000,000.
2. EXCEPT AS PROVIDED ELSEWHERE IN THIS CHARTER OR PRESCRIBED BY LAW, AFTER A PUBLIC HEARING ON THE MATTER, THE COUNCIL MAY REMOVE THE APPOINTED HEAD OF A DEPARTMENT, AGENCY, OR OFFICE UPON THE AFFIRMATIVE VOTE OF FIVE COUNCIL MEMBERS.
There’s a backyard chicken bill put forth by Mason Carter. Renee Knapp has some amendments in which Mason Carter doesn’t seem to be too found of. The amendments pass, with a nay from Carter and McKay. Which means this bill goes back to public hearing.
We end with public comment with more from the cease fire folks. One man comes in to admonish Steve for not talking to people before he accused them of wrongdoing in the newspaper. When it comes time for council member comments, McKay tells him it’s a two-way street. The rest of the council member comments are pretty tame and appropriate to the meeting.
And then it’s over. And while the meetings are lacking the stupidity and ignorance that Kirby and Billy brought to the table, the tension was still there. As we are no longer loyal viewers, we hope that this is a one off. But maybe we’ll have to tune in on July 16th to double check.
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