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.
We’ve been yelling to y’all for years about paying attention to the Board of Education race. Every time Cindy Rose threw her proverbial hat into the ring, we’ve been there with sirens and horns warning everyone about the danger of bigoted, anti-education people getting on to the board.
This time is no different folks!
Thankfully every time enough people in this fine county heeded the warning and made sure she (and many others like her) didn’t get a seat. Just look at the bullet we dodged:
Just imagine the rants that would take place at BOE meetings over shit like this!
Jamie Brennan and Colt Black are also threats to the education and well-being of children in Frederick County Public Schools. They can try and hide behind the veneer that they are in it to improve reading and math scores or restore the virtual school program, but we all know it isn’t true. A few months back your Lady Yokels attended a few candidate forums and had the displeasure of hearing Colt Black lying to the crowd saying that schools didn’t allow kids to check out books from the library and therefore weren’t reading. (Isn’t this what Cindy and Nancy Allen want since all the library books are full of porn?) Jaime Brennan is a dangerous Moms For Liberty candidate who needs to be avoided at all costs. Here’s a sampling of what some people who pay attention have been posting about her:
Hard pass on this one!
Here’s the dilemma, we have four really good candidates running with only three spots to fill. Therefore, in order to keep Jaime Brennan and/or Colt Black out (because they do have a following amongst our local Trumpers), we need to align behind three, and only three. In our opinion, because we’ve been watching these races closely for the last decade and a half, it needs to be the Apple Ballot candidates.
This is not a criticism of Veronica Lowe or anything she’s said or done. We are sure she would do a very good job, but we need to be real here. Liz Barrett recognized this danger when she didn’t receive the Apple Ballot endorsement and knew she risked letting someone like Cindy Rose in if she didn’t drop out. The Apple Ballot works and it matters to a lot of people. We cannot take the risk of allowing these people to slowly fill up our board. First Nancy Allen gets on, then if we aren’t carefully, Jaime Brennan gets a spot. Then it’s like that mint you put in your garden thinking just a little bit won’t matter and now all you do is pull up sprigs of mint all summer long!
We can’t risk becoming like Carroll County or the whole freaking state of Florida. It’s important that we teach kids the truth about what really happened in our country. It’s really important that we welcome all of our children and their families into our school community. And, it’s really important that we don’t allow people who would work against those goals onto our precious school board.
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.
We are going to try our best to do just that for you today!
On May 14th you have a very important job to do! And that job is pick the most qualified, compassionate, intelligent people to be a part of our BOE. You get to vote for 3 (there’s thankfully many more than 3 to choose from this year) and 6 get to go on to the general election in November. And remember that your lack of party affiliation does not prevent you for voting for these candidates as it is a non partisan election!
We’ve created three categories for you to peruse today. The first category will be our approved candidates. The second will be those that passed the Yokel muster, but didn’t exactly make it to the approved category mostly due to a lack of information or because we felt their stance on the various issues was not well articulated. And finally we have a pile of rejections! Thankfully the approved category vastly outnumbers our rejections this time around.
Your Lady Yokels made our decisions based on a few criteria. First the issues on their websites, in news articles, video interviews, and in-person forums had to match what we thought was important in a candidate. We like to see candidates mention making all students feeling welcome, a support for teachers and paying them what they deserve, a focus on student mental health, inclusion of all kinds of people and events in school libraries and the curriculum, and a commitment to teaching children with scientifically approved methods and not educational fads. If there is any hint of a candidate discriminating against children OR advocating for the removal of accurate history or sexual education, they went immediately into the rejection pile! We know your code words people! They aren’t hard to crack!
Click here to discover how we found all the candidates.
We went in alphabetical order, not by who we liked the most.
Below is our approved list of candidates along with a link to their website so you can see what they have to say for yourself!
Jerry Alexandratos- in our original post we stated we couldn’t find his website, he has since contacted us with a link, and we have since moved him to the approved column!
These 8 would all make great members of the board! It’s so nice to see so many qualified people running this year.
The next set of candidates have a lot of promise, but some of them lacked information about what they would do as school board members. However, we didn’t feel as though they warranted an outright rejection.
Now our tone is going to change folks! The four candidates on this list must be avoided like the plague. We’ll give you some more details with each one for our rejection.
Colt Black, yes the same Colt Black that ran for Congress but now wants to be on the school board. Here’s something on his website that really got to us:
As a parent, you don’t cede your rights to guide and parent your child at the school door. So often times parents are treated as the enemy by teachers and administrators of schools. Spoken down to and disrespected. Enough is enough. It’s past time to ensure parents are respected by teachers and administrators and treated as a partner in their child’s education. Whether you are dealing with a student with special needs and are working to get your student the services they are entitled to or a disciplinary issue which is being taken too far. Or perhaps there is something your student or yourself object to on the basis of religious or philosophical thought which is causing the conscience to be violated and in turn violating your rights, parents need an advocate on the board who will stand up to ensure that every child receives a quality education.
Yeah, we had to read through that a few times as well.
So parents are the enemies of the teachers and administration? And why is that, because the parent doesn’t agree with what is being taught, or their kid misbehaved and actually faced some consequences? And what’s this nonsense about parents being abused?
We’re going to drop this right here for Mr. Black and anyone else who is curious:
2. Jaime Brennan is our Moms For Liberty candidate, she posted a series of videos that explain her position on the issues.
If you are interested in hearing someone bash kids and promote the removal of books from the school libraries (didn’t we already solve this?), go ahead and waste 6 minutes of your life. A friend of the Yokel sent us his rendition of her campaign sign that we think you will enjoy:
This lady tried last time around, and we need to reject her this time around as well. She’s a homeschooling advocate and lists on her website that she’s received the endorsement of an organization called Power 2 Parent, which is just as awful as you can imagine:
UPDATE: In our original post we weren’t able to find a lot of info on Tabitha McLoughlin. After looking at this graphic designer’s nightmare of an attempt at political propaganda we’ve decided to move her to the do not vote for column.
There’s still a few more forums for you to drop in on should you like to hear the candidates for yourself. Check out the League of Women Voters website for more details:
There’s lots to avoid this election season, the orange menace is back, and Dan Cox is trying to get into Congress, but don’t underestimate the importance of these school board elections.
frederick local yokel 