UPDATE: A Freedom of Information Request has revealed that the cost for speakers for New Trier’s All-School Seminar Day are almost $28,000, with $15,000 alone going to Colson Whitehead.

Much virtual ink has been spilled, money wasted, and fallacious arguments spewed by supporters of the bias inarguably present in the sessions offered on New Trier’s All-School Seminar Day titled “Understanding Today’s Struggle for Racial Civil Rights,” which takes place tomorrow Feb. 28.

A closer look at the money spent and diversity ideology promoted—often through fallacious logic—may lead parents to do two things: 1. Keep their children home on “progressive” dogma day. 2. Pursue changes in future seminars with the doggedness and passion (if not the fallacious reasoning) of “progressives.”

Pacific Educational Group lines its pockets with taxpayer money to subsidize Leftist definition of “diversity

On Feb. 19, the North Cook News reported that New Trier has paid almost $90,000 to notorious snake oil salesman Glenn Singleton and his Pacific Educational Group. Here’s a little anecdote about another affluent school district on Chicago’s North Shore that was similarly beguiled by the oily diversity scammer Singleton: District 113 which encompasses Deerfield and Highland Park high schools and which is where I first encountered the ethically-challenged Glenn Singleton. This is my former place of employment and the school from which all four of my children graduated.

Between spring 2007 and spring 2008, District 113, using both federal and district money, spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $83,000 to hire the San Francisco-based Glenn Singleton and representatives from his Pacific Educational Group to come  seven times to teach District 113 employees about their “whiteness.” This figure included Singleton’s fees, travel expenses, per diem, and costs of hiring substitute teachers for all the teachers who were absent from class to attend the all-day indoctrination seminars. The $83,000 included $10,000 for substitute teachers and $20,000 to feed everyone at the Highland Park Country Club where the meetings took place.

I asked then-superintendent George Fornero why we were hiring Singleton and was told it was due to Highland Park High School’s failure to make “adequate yearly progress” under the No Child Left Behind Act. The district had received federal money to help the Hispanic students perform better on standardized tests, and Fornero used it to hire Singleton. Both Singleton and his facilitators explicitly stated that neither he nor his book on which his consultations were based (Courageous Conversations) provide any solutions.

Every time Singleton or his representative came, every administrator, every department chair, two teachers from every department, and area (e.g., multi-media, custodial pool, technology, secretarial pool) from both high schools attended all-day meetings during which they discussed their “whiteness.” This meant that all the participating employees missed seven days of work or classes.

I asked the school board and administration how even in theory does having secretaries, custodians, and teachers miss school to talk about their “whiteness” at the Highland Park Country Club help minority students improve their test scores.

They offered no answer.

At the all-staff, all-faculty meeting to introduce District 113 to his “social justice” theories, Singleton made some surprising statements. He explained that many experts believe the causes for the underperformance of minority students are poverty, language issues, mobility, and lack of family support. He then made the startling claim that none of those factors is the cause. The causes, he claimed, are “institutional racism” and “whiteness.”

He went on to classify audience members into three categories according to their potential responses to his theories: The first group were those who would agree with him immediately. The second group were those who would be on the fence and need to be convinced. And the third group were “those who are gifted at subverting reform.” In other words, those who dare to suggest that limited English skills likely affect test scores are “gifted at subverting reform.” Singleton cunningly attempted to prevent dissent by pre-labeling pejoratively those who disagree with his theories.

Toward the end of the year, Singleton visited classrooms to evaluate the continued need for his services. He also visited the writing center where I had worked for eight years. After school, he met with the administration which included all department chairs to “debrief.” The next day, one department chair told me and two others confirmed that Singleton had called for me to be fired citing as justification the following quotes I had on my wall:

“Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.” (The Supreme Court of the United States, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)

Despite incessant repetition of the word ‘diversity’ in academe, the tragic fact is that the academic world is one of the most intolerant places in America when it comes to diversity of ideas” (Thomas Sowell, African American, Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution).

“One is an individual, not an instance of blood or appearance. The assault on individual identity was essential to the horror and inhumanity of Jim Crow laws, of apartheid, and of the Nuremberg Race Laws. It is no less inhuman when undertaken by ‘diversity educators’” (Alan Kors, Professor of Intellectual History at University of Pennsylvania).

“‘[D]iversity’ — nowadays, the first refuge of intellectually disreputable impulses – [is] the . . . belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary, the idea of categorical representation” (George Will, syndicated columnist).

“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling” (Thomas Sowell).

Singleton also boasted in the meeting that he had gotten employees in other school districts fired. Two weeks later, I was demoted.

After spending thousands of dollars on Singleton’s doctrinaire and racist theories, Fornero, perhaps unintentionally, acknowledged precisely what District 113 got for their time and money in a 2009 letter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan:

Dear Honorable Duncan,

. . .

As was the case in the spring of 2008, our non-English speaking students were once again asked to demonstrate their academic abilities by taking the ACT and the WorkKey assessments in English. And once again, despite taking the test seriously and despite working for hours longer than other students to complete it, when these students receive their results next fall, they will all fail [emphasis added].

One would think that an admission like that would be the nail in the coffin of divisive, intellectually vacuous, ideologically-driven expenditures. But the public should never underestimate the fervor of true proselytes driven by political motives. They will continue to abuse their access to public money until community members publicly and vigorously oppose them.

Fallacious arguments of seminar defenders

Getting to the gist of the concerns of critics of Tuesday’s seminar is made challenging by the pervasive use  of fallacious arguments by “progressives” to obscure the critics’ arguments. Here’s a quick look at some of the fallacies New Trier “progressives” use:

1.)  Traitorous critic fallacy (an ad hominem fallacy):  Criticizing or dismissing an opponent’s argument by attributing it to some unfavored group rather than responding to the substance of the argument.

The use of this fallacy was on full and unabashed display by New Trier father Paul Traynor when he appeared recently on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight  ( a must watch segment for a lesson in fallacious reasoning) and dismissed the arguments of New Trier parents by suggesting these parents are somehow connected to Breitbart and IFI.  Traynor twice claimed IFI is a “hate group registered with the Southern Poverty Law Center” clearly suggesting that IFI is, in reality, a hate group. In addition, Traynor complained that “IFI—this hate group—has gone after me personally.”  What did IFI do to warrant his fear? I critiqued his public comments that he voluntarily provided to the Chicago Tribune. Instead of responding to the substance of the seminar critics’ arguments, Traynor attacked two organizations that have written about the controversy.

2.)  Abusive fallacy (ad hominem): Verbally abusing one’s opponents rather than responding to their arguments.

For example, seminar supporters have repeatedly called seminar critics “racists.” In addition, on Chicago Tonight, Traynor criticized the suggestion that Colonel Allen West or Sheriff David Clarke could be  invited to represent conservative ideas and criticized Dennis Prager as a member of the “alt right.” (Apparently, Traynor views invited “queer Latinx” speaker Monica Trinidad as a moderate—Trinidad who once “tweeted a picture of mounted police officers with the comment ‘Get them animals off those horses.’”)

3.)  Straw man fallacy:  Refuting an argument never made by one’s opponents.

So, when seminar supporters say things like “Racism exists,” “New Trier kids are sheltered,” “Colson Whitehead and Andrew Aydin [two of the invited speakers—both liberal Democrats] have won national book awards,” “Students may express dissenting views,” “New Trier is a great school,” “The seminar was carefully constructed,” or “Parents were included,” they are not responding to the central argument made by critics who justifiably see the seminar sessions as biased. All of these claims made by seminar supporters are true (well, most of them) but irrelevant to the arguments of seminar critics.

4.)  Appeal to popularity (argumentum ad populum, appeal to common belief, bandwagon fallacy): Expressing the idea that because a belief is popular or widely held it must be true.

Both seminar supporters and superintendent Linda Yonke employed this fallacy saying that most community members support the seminar as currently constituted. Whether or not such a claim is true is irrelevant.

Maybe, just maybe New Trier community members can wade through the flurry of fallacies to get seminar supporters to answer the only relevant question: Do you believe the sessions are relatively balanced between conservative and “progressive” views on race-related topics. If so, can you point to the resources used and speakers invited that represent conservative perspectives.

Please support the work & ministry
of Illinois Family Institute!

The week before the Illinois Senate was scheduled to vote on a bill to legalize same-sex “marriage,” student members of the Straight and Gay Alliance (SAGA) at Deerfield High School sent this email to every staff and faculty member:

Dear Faculty and Staff,

This Valentines Day, the United States [sic] Senate will be voting on whether or not to pass legislation that would make same-sex marriage legal in Illinois. No matter which way the vote ends up going, it is safe to say that this will be a historic day in the LGBT movement. Your students in DHS’s Straight and Gay Alliance would like to invite you to a school-wide event in which all supporters of marriage and civil equality for LGBT people wear purple apparel; a color that symbolizes allies and togetherness in the movement. It doesn’t matter if it’s a purple bowtie, necklace, skirt, or SAGA t-shirt (we will be selling more if you’re interested in purchasing one). For those of you who are either required to wear a certain color or you don’t have any purple clothes then please feel free to come up to a SAGA student in either entrance of the school tomorrow to get a purple ribbon you can wear as a bracelet. Any of your support is greatly appreciated.

The members of SAGA are excited to see the future changes in our own community due to this legislation. We can honestly say that there is no one who we trust more to support and guide the ensuing generations through this exhilerating (sic) and challenging time than the Deerfield High School faculty and staff. Thank you for all of your generosity and support.

Happy Valentines Day,

Your students in SAGA (emphasis added)

Many teachers did wear purple in support of this controversial and divisive legislative proposal.  I suspect the school did not notify parents and other taxpayers of this organized political event involving district employees during school.

What should deeply trouble taxpayers is that District 113’s School Board policy permits district employees to participate in political activity “relating to the support or opposition of any executive, legislative, or administrative action.” And why is that troubling? Besides the obvious truth that only “progressive” teachers will promote their political beliefs at school, this policy appears to be inconsistent with case law regarding the rights of teachers to engage in speech—including symbolic speech—while on the job.

When I first learned of this employee political action, I spoke with an attorney who told me the following: 

School officials who wear something purple on Thursday would be engaging in expressive conduct while performing official duty. The school club email to the entire faculty has identified what wearing purple expresses. 

A 2006 SC case, Garcetti v. Ceballos, held that “when public employees speak while performing their official duties, (i.e., “job duty speech”), this speech is not protected by the First Amendment and can be the basis for discipline or discharge.”

http://www.psea.org/general.aspx?id=3868

This position is confirmed in a 2008 article by Dr. Martha McCarthy, the Chancellor’s Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University:

The general legal principle is that public school personnel cannot proselytize the captive student audience.

In…Weingarten v. Board of Education, a federal district court upheld the school district’s ban on employees wearing political buttons at school….The New York court ruled that students might view the political buttons as representing the school if worn by employees. This ruling is consistent with other decisions in which state and federal courts recently have upheld bans on teachers wearing buttons to promote political candidates or to criticize the United States and its involvement in Iraq and Panama.…

Controversies over political expression extend beyond distributing materials and wearing buttons. The Seventh Circuit in 2007 held that a probationary teacher’s expression of her opposition to the war in Iraq during a current events discussion with her students was not constitutionally protected. Also, a New York federal district court held that in an election year, a school district could require a teacher to remove the incumbent president’s picture from her classroom or to post the opposing candidate’s picture to ensure balance.

…While public educators have an absolute right to their political, religious, and other beliefs, they do not have a right to impose those beliefs on students. Thus, restrictions on public employees’ political activities in the classroom will likely be upheld if legally challenged. (emphasis added)

Prior to the day of the SAGA-sponsored political event, I asked Superintendent George Fornero if teachers would be permitted to wear purple on the day of the controversial legislative vote. He didn’t respond, so I sent this email to Fornero and the District 113 Board of Education:

Am I correct that staff and faculty may express their political views on legislative issues? Do teachers have permission to wear, for example, arm bands, bracelets, t-shirts, spats, or purple as part of an organized effort to express support for (or against) proposed legislation?

Since school board policy expressly permits district employees to participate in political activity “relating to the support or opposition of any executive, legislative, or administrative action,” and since district employees were permitted to wear purple in a public and organized political effort to express support for the legalization of same-sex marriage, would district employees be permitted to wear another color in a public and organized political effort to express support for the legalization of recreational drug use or gambling?

I would also like to know how the school board policy cited above squares with case law which consistently holds that teachers do not have a constitutionally protected right to engage in political activity while on the job.

As of this writing, I have received no response from any school board member and this response from Fornero:

I am writing to follow up on your inquiry with regard to the color of clothing worn by staff and faculty. Clothing color is a matter of personal choice, and may or may not be a reflection of person’s support for any particular public policy issue. I have no idea whether staff wore purple two weeks ago and, if they did, why they did so….The School District does not restrict the color of clothing that staff may wear on any particular day, although there are days when staff may be encouraged to wear school colors. There were no restrictions, no directives and no administrative communication to staff with regard to the color of clothing they could choose to wear on Valentine’s Day.…

The issues relating to the first amendment rights of public employees, and the rights of governmental entities to place limits on that speech in the workplace are complex and, as the article you quoted makes clear, regularly being interpreted and reinterpreted by the courts. The policy that is posted on the website is the Board’s current policy, which would govern these matters in our District. We would evaluate any actual situation based on the facts that related to that particular situation…

I have no further information to share.

Fornero’s obfuscatory response is the kind of response that gives politicians and bureaucrats a bad name. He had no idea whether employees wore purple on the day of the same-sex “marriage” vote? Really?

And why would he even mention Valentine’s Day? I didn’t ask whether the administration issued any directives regarding what to wear on Valentine’s Day. My question was whether the administration issued any directives regarding faculty engaging in expressive acts–including wearing particular colors–in support of a political cause.

Further, Fornero apparently expected me to believe that dozens of district employees just happened to wear purple on the day that SAGA members requested they wear purple in support of a controversial public policy issue. If I didn’t already know that he struggles with honesty, I might feel insulted by his apparent presumption that I am either stupid or gullible.

And is Fornero suggesting that the administration will “evaluate” each situation to determine which political issues teachers can express support for or opposition to?

As a District 113 community member, I am entitled to straightforward answers to the straightforward questions I asked.

Is this what we want in our public schools? Do we want teachers to promote their political views while on the government dime? Do we want teachers to exploit their access to our children to try to shape their moral and political beliefs? How do conservative students feel when the teachers who assign their grades have announced their political views on this, perhaps the most controversial topic in the country? And what would administrations and school boards think if an equal number of teachers wore paraphernalia in support of retaining sexual complementarity in the legal definition of marriage? Dueling t-shirts, what a great pedagogical concept.

Every taxpayer in every community should ask their administrators and/or members of their school boards if teachers are permitted to express their views on political issues while on the job,  including through symbolic speech like wearing buttons, armbands, bracelets, t-shirts—or the color purple.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email to to Superintendent Fornero, Principal Audris Griffith and the seven members of the District 113’s Board of Education.

You can bet your bottom dollar that if there’s a way to use public money to promote leftwing political or educational theories, District 113 (Highland Park and Deerfield High Schools) will find it.

Superintendent George Fornero and Director of Diversity Andrea Johnson have managed to waste thousands of taxpayer dollars to promote Critical Race Theory/Critical Pedagogy under the guise of “Equity and Excellence.”

Last month District 113 — along with many other school districts around the country — used public money to send district employees to yet another “White Privilege Conference,” this time in Minneapolis.

In an article for the Minnesota Star Tribune, Katherine Kersten, offers this description of the conference:

To find out (what parents and taxpayers can expect), we can peruse the keynote address for the 2009 conference. It was delivered by “social justice educator” Paul Kivel and appeared in the conference journal, “Understanding and Dismantling Privilege.”

Kivel begins with what passes these days as a prayer: “I want to acknowledge the creative spirits in the world that nurture and sustain us and that connect us to each other and to the plant and animal life around us.”

Then he winds up for a fire-and-brimstone sermon. We Americans “are completely dependent on U.S. imperialism and war to sustain our daily lives.”

Our schools, too, are riddled with racial bias. “Our school system has been set up … to perpetuate white supremacy and white privilege.” Poor and minority students “do not drop out — they are pushed out.”

What’s gone wrong? For one thing, Christianity has far too much influence. It “has played a key role in developing and justifying sources of oppression” such as “violence and genocide,” Kivel tells us, and is “the beginning of modern or biological racism.”

But don’t despair, he counsels. We must look beyond our “declining empire” to “exciting progressive developments” in Hugo Chavez’sVenezuela — among them, “land reform and redistribution of wealth, neighborhood committees, recognition of women’s unpaid labor, end of spanking.”

In addition to Kivel, who spoke again this year, here are just a few of the other 2011 speakers whose livelihoods we taxpaying chumps subsidize and whose feckless ideas permeate public school curricula:

Z! Haukeness (yes, that’s actually his name): Haukeness is a “transgender” who admits to looking “pretty masculine” and asserts that he is “gender queer, gender non-conforming.” He explains that he became involved in working for racial justice after having a radical seventh grade teacher who told his class that “All of you are racists and your parents are too.” (Read more HERE.)

Jessica Vasques Torres: According to diversity consultant Jamie Utt, who loved the conference, lesbian Torres asked “Why do we, as queer folks want to join an institution with a 50% failure rate? Shouldn’t our goal be to deconstruct the very destructive, sexist, and heterosexist institution of marriage itself?” (Read more HERE.)

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: According to Utt, Dunbar-Ortiz said that “‘The colonists who came to this country might as well have been wearing Nazi uniforms,'” in that “Their effect was the same on the indigenous people of this land.”

Waziyatawin: Utt learned from Ms. Waziyatawin that “Many people don’t want to hear the truth about what has been done to black, brown, and red people on these lands because it challenge the very system of supremacy on which our lives are built. The United States itself is built upon oppression. That can’t be reformed. The only antidote to a colonial government is to end the colonial government.”

In a speech given in another context, Waziyatawin argues that Minnesota’s celebration of its sesquicentennial was “really a rationalization for pretty horrific crimes” including “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.”

Since I’m a District 113 taxpayer, I emailed the administration with a few questions about district participation in this conference, and demonstrating their usual commitment to transparency, the administration told me I would have to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in order to get my questions answered. I complied.

What I learned is that District 113 applied for a grant through the federal “Title II Teacher and Principal Training and Recruiting Fund” which provides “funds to increase student academic achievement by elevating teacher and principal quality through recruitment, hiring, and retention strategies and to hold local educational agencies and schools accountable for improvements in student academic achievement.”

In the application, Diversity Director Andrea Johnson wrote that the district’s goal was to “work toward eliminating the racial predictability of which students fall into the highest and lowest achievement categories by continuing our Equity and Excellence work.”

In answer to the question on the grant application regarding how the district will evaluate the success of the programs on which they spend federal funds, Johnson wrote: “Through classroom walk-throughs, equity audits, and focus groups, we will assess our progress toward this goal. Additionally, we will administer the Intercultural Development Inventory assessment and collect data on the cultural competency of our staff who have gone through the training.”

Remarkable. The administration received a grant to increase student achievement, and yet there is no evaluation of student achievement whatsoever. Instead, they will test staff on their “cultural competency.” For the uninitiated, that means the district will test staff to determine their ability to regurgitate Critical Race Theory/Critical Pedagogy assumptions.

They will also walk through classrooms, perform equity audits (whatever that means) and have focus groups in which they will “assess” their progress. In the 1970s, I think that was called navel-gazing.

My FOIA revealed that the district received $10,000 for “Equity Staff Development Stipends” and $7,227 for “Equity Conferences” like the “White Privilege Conference.” It also revealed that one of the four district employees who was sent to the White Privilege Conference in Minnesota was the secretary for the Counseling Department, Judy Tentes. Someone needs to explain how — even in theory — having a secretary — who has no instructional responsibilities — attend a White Privilege Conference will improve student academic achievement.

Since District 113 has over the course of a decade spent well over $100,000 of taxpayer money on Critical Race Theory — I mean, “equity and excellence” — isn’t it about time to provide some objective data to prove it has closed the racial achievement gap? The administration doesn’t need to test employees for their “cultural competency.” The administration needs to prove that the money they’ve spent promoting Critical Race Theory and Critical Pedagogy through Peggy McIntosh’s SEED program, Lee Mun Wah’s Stir Fry Seminars, Glenn Singleton’s Courageous Conversations, and the White Privilege Conferences has had a measurable impact on student achievement (I can’t help but wonder what the Hispanic parents of District 113 students would think of the district spending over $100,000 of money that is intended to help their children score better on standardized tests to instead teach staff and faculty that whites, males, and heterosexuals are oppressive and often genocidal).

It should come as no surprise that a district so enamored of Critical Race Theory and Critical Pedagogy that it would annually ship employees all over the country to attend the White Privilege Conference would also have a teacher who presents at it. Deerfield High School English teacher and Critical Race Theory disciple Christine Saxman has been a presenter at the 10th, 11th, and 12th White Privilege Conferences.

To my knowledge, none of Deerfield’s or Highland Park’s many well-educated community members demand any evidence to justify years of expenditures on workshops, conferences, seminars, meetings, and “diversity” consultants. Thousands of dollars of public funds have been swallowed up by efforts to convince district employees that the racial achievement gap is centrally caused by the whiteness of white people. While skipping along the primrose path to “equity and excellence” Nirvana, our Critical Race Theorists stuff their pockets with the hard-earned money of people whom they accuse of being racist, sexist, homophobic oppressors.

One curious phenomenon continually overlooked in District 113 — a district that prides itself on fostering critical thinking, tolerance, diversity, and intellectual rigor — is that not once has the administration offered a professional development opportunity to staff and faculty in which they study the work of scholars who criticize Critical Race Theory, Critical Pedagogy, or the intellectual assumptions of what’s euphemistically called “teaching for social justice.”

“If a million people believe a foolish thing,
it is still a foolish thing.”
~ Anatole France

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