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Incredible Story of District 211 School Board Elections

Last Thursday night, District 211—the largest high school district in the state with 12,000 students and five high schools—held a board meeting to discuss Superintendent Daniel Cates’ boneheaded proposal to allow students who “identify” as the opposite sex to have unrestricted access to the locker rooms of opposite-sex peers. Expecting a large crowd, the district moved the meeting to Palatine High School. The Daily Herald reported that 25 speakers were randomly selected, 16 of whom opposed the proposal, which is well over 50 percent.

Several years ago, when the district was first sued by a biological boy who was self-“identifying” as a girl, Cates allowed him to use the girls’ locker room as long as he changed clothes behind a privacy curtain. Cates steadfastly opposed this boy’s request for unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room. That was then, this is now. Now Cates proposes allowing boys and girls who pretend to be the sex they aren’t to have unrestricted access to the locker rooms of their opposite-sex peers. Perhaps Cates is spineless and follows the path of least resistance, which now leads into darkness. Perhaps he has morally devolved as so many school administrators have. Or perhaps his retirement at the end of this school year has freed his authentic inner corrupt self to emerge.

Cates couldn’t do this dirty work alone. It takes a village and at least four board members to indoctrinate children with an incoherent, irrational, and harmful ideology. One of those sorry villagers is the newly elected, morally corrupt, and unpleasant District 211 board member Kim Cavill, who is a sex “educator” when she’s not promoting feckless locker room policies.

If her name rings a bell, it’s because I mentioned her in an article about former District U46 school board member Jeanette Ward, a fearless, wise, and gracious woman who endured egregiously disrespectful treatment from fellow board members Traci O’Neal Ellis, Veronica Noland, and Melissa Owens. In an online post, Cavill referred to Jeanette Ward as the “High Priestess of the Order of Moron.” Oddly, that comment has been scrubbed from the Internet. Maybe she thought such a comment wouldn’t help her get elected to the District 211 board. Sounds a wee bit intolerant and hateful.

The curious story of the April 2019 election of Kim Cavill actually goes back to the even curiouser story of the 2017 school board election. Three well-qualified people who opposed co-ed private spaces for minors were running against three people who supported co-ed private spaces for minors. The three well-qualified challengers were,

Jean Forrest, a Chinese-American woman with an MA in economics who works as an actuary

Katherine Jee Young David, a Korean-American woman with a BS in Business Administration from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Ralph Bonatz who has a degree in electrical engineering and is a global quality control manager for an international corporation

On March 22, 2017, just 13 days before the 2017 election, LaSaia Wade, a 29-year-old “black trans woman” (i.e., a biological man), and Daye Pope, another biological male who passes as a woman, set up a Super PAC called Trans United Fund Illinois. Pope is the organizing director for a 501(c)(3) called Trans United Fund.

Two days later, on March 24, 2017—11 days before the 2017 election—Kim Cavill and her sister Lindsay Christensen set up a Super PAC called Parents and Neighbors for Quality Education (PNQE).

Just days after the founding of Trans United Fund Illinois, donations from some surprising people came pouring in:

  • Matrix Director “Lana” Wachowski, a biological man who pretends to be a woman and lives with his dominatrix wife in Chicago, donated a whopping $10,000.
  • Far left Illinois State Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago) also donated $10,000.
  • Homosexual Clark Pellet, a retired attorney and development chair for the “LGBTQ” Center on Halsted who lives in Chicago, donated $5,000.
  • Executive director of Gender Rights Maryland, Dana Beyer, a man who pretends to be a woman and lives in Chevy Chase, MD donated $1,000.
  • Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) who lives in Brooklyn, NY donated $500.
  • Homosexual Douglas Hattaway, president and CEO of a Washington D.C. strategic communications firm who lives in D.C., donated $500.
  • Architect Kira Kinsman, a biological man formerly known as Kyle Kinsman who lives in Wilkes Barre, PA, donated $250.

The more than $26, 000 in donations for a school board election from donors who don’t live in District 211 then went to—you guessed it—Cavill’s Parents and Neighbors for Quality Education.

Enquiring minds may wonder why Cavill and her sister set up PNQE, since Trans United Fund Illinois was already established. Why the extra step to fund the defeat of conservatives? The answer to that question might be found in mailers and yard signs. State law requires that campaign mailers and yard signs identify the groups that pay for them. Signs must say “Approved by….”

Which sounds better—and by “better” I mean less likely to arouse suspicion: “Approved by Trans United Fund Illinois” or “Approved by Parents and Neighbors for Quality Education”?

Flush with filthy lucre, the Cavill sisters got busy smearing good people with nary a backward glance.

As reported by the “LGBTQ” newspaper Windy City Times, a local mom (Who could that have been?) reached out to Trans United Fund, “a national trans-led advocacy group,” who agreed to help them defeat the three candidates who supported single-sex locker rooms:

Trans United Fund (TUF) and a group of local parents, youth, and allies, worked together to launch the first trans-led, trans-focused independent expenditure in history. TUF assembled a powerful team of thoughtful allies to quickly build and execute a research-informed and strategic plan to help the parents and youth get their message out. TUF supported the parents’ efforts through digital, mail, phone banking and helping to train volunteers to reach their neighbors at the door.

The Windy City Times made clear this campaign was a smear campaign in which good people who believe locker rooms and restrooms should correspond to biological sex were vilified. District 211 community member Tracey Salvatore, spewing venomous lies said this about the good people who were defeated:

We are fed up with this small group of vocal, transphobic people guided by a national hate group [Alliance Defending Freedom] wreaking havoc in our community…. Our District 211 community will not tolerate adults bullying kids or intimidating us for one more day. The ADF-inspired slate of candidates ran with the agenda of inserting a hate-based, national agenda into our schools. They didn’t care that their policy changes would increase bullying and violence against kids…. So we reached out to Trans United Fund and they helped us to get our message out to our neighbors and community members. (emphasis added)

Neither Salvatore nor anyone affiliated with PNQE felt the ethical obligation to provide evidence that the three candidates feared or hated “trans”-identifying students, or that they bullied kids, or that they intimidated community members, or that ADF has a “hate-based agenda,” or that single-sex private spaces for minors increase “bullying and violence.” Why try to provide impossible-to-find evidence when hate-mongering rhetoric does the job.

The belief that biological sex is the source of feelings of modesty and the right to privacy when undressing does not constitute hatred of persons no matter how many times people like Salvatore and Cavill spread their repugnant lies.

I wonder if Salvatore spreads these same ugly and false lies about feminists—including lesbians—who oppose biological males in women’s private spaces. Perhaps Salvatore is unaware of the growing schism in the “LGBT” alliance. Just a week ago, a group of influential supporters of the “LGB rights” movement in the United Kingdom, including Stonewall UK founder Simon Fanshawe, published an open letter in the Sunday Times in which they criticize Stonewall and suggest it’s time for the formation of a new organization that is “committed both to freedom of speech and to fact instead of fantasy.” Here’s an excerpt from that letter that Salvatore, Cavill, and Cates should ponder:

Last October a group of LGB rights supporters asked Stonewall to “commit to fostering an atmosphere of respectful debate rather than demonising as transphobic those who wish to discuss, or dissent from, Stonewall’s transgender policies.” Since then, Stonewall has refused repeated requests to enter into any such dialogue…. We believe it has made mistakes in its approach that undermine women’s sex-based rights and protections. The most worrying aspect of this is that all primary-school children are now challenged to review their ‘gender identity’ and decide that they may be the opposite sex if they do not embrace outdated gender stereotypes.

Does Salvatore demonize teens as hateful transphobes if they don’t want to undress in the presence of male peers? What about female teachers who don’t want to undress in front of male colleagues? Does she accuse them of hate-based bullying?

Almost immediately after the school board election and defeat for all three good candidates, Cavill and her sister deactivated their Super PAC. Malignant Mission Accomplished.

And now we return our story to the school board election of April 2019. Kim Cavill, the person who orchestrated the ugly and deceitful campaign smear of three good people by creating a Super PAC front for a Super PAC financed by “LGBTQ” donors from out of the district, ran for the District 211 board and won. Is she really an emblem of good government and transparency?

If you are not yet convinced of her unfitness for serving on a school board or her unfitness to serve as a role model for children, here are just a smattering of quotes from her sex ed podcasts for children and teens.

From her podcast for tweens and teens on anal sex titled “All About Anal”:

Before trying anal sex, people need to talk about their own and their partner’s boundaries like any other type of sex. It should be preceded by a conversation about what the people participating in sex are consenting to, what they aren’t consenting to, how they’re expecting sex to go, and how they’re going to communicate during sex to make sure everyone’s still on the same page. Anal sex also requires a lot of lube.

From her podcast for “tweens and teens” titled “Let’s Talk About Porn”:

Porn can certainly cause relationship problems but so can a lot of other things. Porn causing relationship problems isn’t inevitable, it depends on the relationship and it depends on how the people in that relationship feel about porn…. [T]he evidence says that if you think porn’s bad, it is, and if you think porn’s fine, then it is.

One thing notable from sexpert Cavill’s podcasts is how studiously she avoids the words boy, girl, man, and woman. Even in her podcast explaining how babies come into existence, she never mentions men and women. Instead, she describes a “grown-up with a penis” and a “grown-up with a vagina.” Huh. I wonder what those are.

There are two lessons to be learned from this incredible story:

1. Local communities no longer control their own school boards and, therefore, their schools.

2. Cultural regressives are targeting the hearts, minds, and bodies of other people’s children—your children—and they’re using your money to do it.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Incredible-Story-of-District-211-School-Board-Elections_AUDIO.mp3



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Jeanette Ward’s Profile in Courage, Grace, and Wisdom

School District U46 (Elgin, Illinois) School Board Member Jeanette Ward offers a profile in courage, grace, and wisdom, while fellow board members Veronica Noland and Melissa Owens offer profiles in hypocrisy and ignorance. Their hypocrisy and ignorance were revealed during a recent school board meeting discussion about proposed changes to the “Student Code of Conduct.”

In 2013, the board voted to add the terms “sexual orientation,” “gender identity” and “gender-related identity or expression” to the section of school board policy on bullying and harassment. Those are the only conditions constituted by subjective, internal feelings and volitional behavior to be specifically identified. Since board policy then concludes with the inclusion of “any other distinguishing characteristic,” there exists no necessity for naming any characteristic, let alone ones constituted by subjective feelings and volitional behavior.

But bad became worse this past Monday night when the board voted to add this language from board policy to the “Student Code of Conduct,” which all parents must sign in order to enroll their children in District U46. Prior to the 5-2 vote, with Phil Costello joining Ward in opposing the change, Ward asked if, under the policy change, students would be guilty of bullying if they refused to use the “pronoun preference for a gender dysphoric student.”

She offered this commonsense and compassionate explanation for her opposition to punishing students for refusal to lie in the service of a science-denying ideology:

I don’t think it helps the student who is struggling with this issue to help them in their denial of reality. And I don’t view that as a form of bullying. I think to join them in what is not real, in the real world, only hurts them.

Hoo boy, the leftist ideologues on the school board did not tolerate well her dissent from their dogma.

The self-righteous Noland huffed:

I have to say something. Using the terms “gender dysphoric” and making the statements that you make hurt the students of this district. They go against what the accepted practices from major major organizations in this country… the American Academy of Pediatrics… I could bring out my list of references from a year and a half ago… but I will strongly strongly condemn your terms that you use and the language that you use in hurting the students of this district. I think it’s an ideology of yours, and it’s a minority in this district and a minority in this country. It goes against our policies that we have voted on. It goes against against so many things. You can continue to use this as a political platform of your own because you have that right, but I will vociferously object to the comments and the terms that you use for our students.

When Noland suggests students are “hurt” by the term “gender dysphoric”—a term which is not a pejorative and is used commonly in the mental health community—what does she mean? Does she mean students who seek to pass as the sex they are not don’t like the term? If so, how does her strong, strong condemnation of and vociferous objection to Ward’s beliefs make students in the district who share those beliefs feel? Might they be hurt by Noland’s words?

Noland cites—again—the American Academy of Pediatrics’ endorsement of “trans”-affirmative experimental protocols without mentioning that all anyone really knows is that a small committee of leftist members of the AAP created this policy, which an even smaller group then voted on. The rest of the thousands of members of the AAP had no input or vote on the policy. In fact, most didn’t know about it until the public learned about it.

Noland believes that Ward’s “ideology” is shared by only a minority in the district and country. To which of Ward’s positions specifically is Noland referring? Does Noland believe most people in the country oppose the use of the term “gender dysphoric”? Does she believe most people in the country want students punished for refusing to use incorrect pronouns? If so, perhaps at the next board meeting, she can provide conclusive, research-based evidence for her claims.

Further, is Noland—who is apparently a true-blue “progressive”—arguing that minority groups should be denied a voice? The hypocrisies just keep piling up. Commitments to tolerance, diversity, and minority voices gone in slavish servitude to the disordered, doctrinaire sexuality ideology of the left.

Perhaps the most laughable of Noland’s statements was her characterization of Ward’s views as an “ideology” that informs a “political platform.” Why are Ward’s views on the science-denying “trans” ideology part of an ideology but Noland’s views are not? Why when Ward expresses her views on the “trans” ideology is she guilty of using school board discussions for a political platform, but when Noland expresses her views on the same subject, she’s not guilty of using board discussions for a political platform? Noland should be asked to answer these questions publicly.

Then board member Melissa Owens made clear the Orwellian, anti-First Amendment—even fascist—nature of this policy (fascism: “A political philosophy characterized by authoritarian views and a strong central government—and no tolerance for opposing opinions; tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control”):

If sitting at a table in a position of power and saying that our students don’t live in reality, if that’s not bullying, I don’t know what bullying is to be quite honest with you.

Well, I would argue that if sitting at a table in a position of power and saying that students must speak lies or risk being disciplined for bullying is not bullying, I don’t know what bullying is—to be quite honest.

Objectively male students who claim to be girls are denying the reality of their sex. Stating that objective truth no more constitutes bullying than does saying that Rachel Dolezal denied reality when she claimed to be African American.

Throughout multiple board meetings in which Jeanette Ward has repeatedly contended for the truth, enduring uncivil and open hostility from arrogant colleagues and community members, Ward has demonstrated courage, grace, wisdom, restraint, and humility. In addition, with grace, she weathers despicable attacks on her school board Facebook page from people like “Sex Positive Parent/Sex Education Teacher” Kim Cavill, who earlier this week called Ward the “High Priestess of the Order of Moron” (nice role model for kids).

Here’s some apolitical truth.

At birth, doctors do not assign or designate “genders” (as redefined by “progressives”). Rather, doctors identify the sex of babies, which is virtually always correct except in the very rare cases of babies born with Disorders of Sexual Development (i.e., intersex disorders, which are wholly irrelevant to discussions of the “trans” ideology). “Gender” (as redefined by “progressives”) denotes the arbitrary socially constructed behaviors, conventions, and expectations associated with maleness or femaleness. It’s beyond silly to claim that at babies’ births, obstetricians assign to them arbitrary socially constructed behaviors, conventions, and expectations. Obstetricians identify the sex of babies, and the sex of humans can never change. Pronouns denote and correspond to biological sex.

No administrator, faculty member, staff member, or student should be compelled by Big Brother to lie by being forced to use incorrect pronouns when referring to someone who masquerades as the sex they are not. Punishing students—or staff—for resisting mandatory speech codes is institutional bullying at its worst. The government has no right to compel speech—let alone deceitful speech. For an arm of the government—which is what schools are—to require employees or students to lie is a frightening exercise of tyrannical power.

Thank you to Jeanette Ward for standing bravely and almost alone for truth in the District U46.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Jeanette-Wards-Profile-in-Courage-Grace-and-Wisdom.mp3


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