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Feb. 27, 2024 - Where There's Woke - Thomas Smith
40:21
WTW40: The Woke Kindergarten Fallout - School Board Members Gone Wild
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Time Text
What's so scary about the woke mob?
How often you just don't see them coming.
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress Green Eminem will now wear sneakers.
Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 40.
I'm Thomas Smith.
That over there is Lydia Smith.
Whoop whoop!
Lydia Smith.
I'm here.
Just hoping he hears that.
Yeah!
Aw, yeah.
A little Easter egg for Heath.
Hi, Heath, if you're listening.
I think that noise is like a call, and it's like, you know, like his brain.
It's time for part two of Woke Kindergarten.
Yeah.
We're repeating a grade.
Woke Kindergarten 2, held back.
Oh, that's good.
Yeah.
And I can't wait to learn more about this.
So let's see any announcements other than, please support the show on patreon.com and skip the ads that you're probably going to hear like any minute now.
You don't want, you don't want to hear those.
Come on.
We have so much fun over with the patrons.
You want to be one of them.
That's all I'm going to say.
You're missing out.
Everyone's talking about you and how you haven't done it yet.
You know, there's there's talk.
OK, let's just say there's talk.
All right.
Thanks to all those who have.
And let's get on over to the topic.
I think the other element that could have been emphasized more here from the school board's perspective was a little more information about looking at best practices.
So really what I saw in looking through the board agendas and their minutes and everything was a lot of, you know, contract for this, contract for that, contract for this, contract for that.
I did not see, with the exception of their anti-racism board policy code of conduct stuff, I did not see anything where it was like, based off of these findings via these entities, this is how we are going to tackle this problem as a district.
And as such, we will be partnering with the following programs.
in order to address that.
And there is that information out there.
There's the West Ed Black Minds Matter recommendations that they have a ton of recommendations that are super cool.
I'm happy to share those with listeners.
There's the Learning Policy Institute that specifically talks about the Every Student Succeeds Act and how they can address absent Yeah.
how they can address suspension rate, how they can address inequities that we're seeing across different racial groups, right?
These are things that they are out there and I wish that the school board, you know, they probably just didn't think that this was going to be covered by the San Francisco Chronicle and all hell would have broken loose.
And it's a fucking school board.
Yeah.
I could be on a school board.
Yes.
Or some idiot could be asking.
Can and that.
Yeah.
Again, I like to try to convert these headlines into what it should be, you know, to point out that this is not a big fucking deal.
The headline could be local school board not amazing.
Like, honestly, like, okay, cool.
No way.
Pick it up in the next election.
Yeah, go run for school board then.
Yeah.
Hey, here's another thing.
I don't know if this will be part of your coverage.
Sorry, stop me if it is.
Which states are doing well in school right now and which aren't?
Yeah, I don't know.
So you don't have that?
Okay, I'll look at that.
Which states, let's just guess, which states are having the biggest drops?
Mississippi.
Yeah.
Is it going to be the wokest?
I don't know.
Could be?
I don't know.
Let's look into it.
If you adjust often, also population has a lot to do with that.
So like there's going to be socioeconomic factors.
Yeah.
But still like the worst test scores are not the wokest states.
Like California, The change in average, so here's one just picking it up, and I don't know if this'll, this is just a quick Google, but like a metric of the worst outcomes between 2019 and 2022, because basically everywhere has gone down, it looks like, like every single state test scores have gone down.
Who's gone down the worst, yeah.
I'm seeing New Mexico is one of the worst.
I'm seeing, actually Oregon, that's weird.
Oregon's pretty bad.
California's like in the middle.
Yeah.
California is in the middle, which I think is probably impressive given how many people are in California and all the conditions there.
Weirdly, Minnesota is really bad.
That's interesting.
But anyway, the point is you could probably further break it down in ways that would make the comparison make more sense.
But this is just yet another thing that's left out.
Like by omission, you're just assuming, well, all the normal schools are doing a great job.
It's like, I don't know, conservative states are shit.
They're teaching people.
They don't teach people where babies come from.
Like, maybe talk about that.
Like, maybe that's a big issue.
Yeah.
And I think also, you know, one of the big things there from 2019 to 2022 is the impact of COVID and like, yeah, it's so complicated there.
What's the most relevant comparison for what we're talking about?
Is it like 2022 to 2023?
Yes.
So one of the other things that was mentioned in Virginia Fox's rant on the House floor was that a teacher was removed because he was against the program.
Just picturing Handmaid's Tale where there's like they have to acknowledge like, oh, there's been another hanging.
Yeah.
One of the teachers spoke out against woke kindergarten, and you know how we, a school board that decided to pay them some money, some free federal money, you know how we deal with those traitors.
So this teacher's name is Tiger Craven Neely.
Nice.
And he spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle.
He agreed to be interviewed for their article.
And there was another teacher that was interviewed but declined to share their name because they did not want to be retaliated against.
They had concerns about that.
And they were speaking out about that they didn't understand the program, essentially.
They didn't understand why they were there, what they were doing.
And he, from his perspective, he would ask questions and then made to feel like he couldn't ask questions because he was a white man.
He's a gay man, describes himself as moderate.
So that's interesting.
Yeah.
But after the article came out, from what I can tell, there was a staff meeting that happened later and there was an issue with another staff member and himself.
I saw reports that the other staff member got in his face saying he was a danger and they were concerned about their safety kind of thing.
Oh man, I can't wait to adjust my true headline to, Interpersonal conflict at school somewhere.
Yeah.
Wow.
Headline news, everybody.
I think that's what it is.
Yeah, it's always what it is.
There's some grudge and then someone takes advantage of it to get a spotlight in a way that or not, you know, or or maybe the the conservative people took advantage of that dispute either way.
Like it's it's always that kind of nonsense.
Yeah, so it's being framed everywhere that it is retaliation, unequivocally retaliation, because he spoke the truth kind of thing.
And his initial interviews after being suspended, the language seemed a little couched.
And then I saw one that was more recent where it feels like he's kind of upping the dramatics a little bit.
So I'm keeping an eye on the Fires website to see if... Are they all over it?
Not yet, but I'm wondering if they will be.
He has sued a previous school district before.
Oh, really?
For what?
I found this.
Someone commented on Reddit and did not respond to my request when I said, can you tell me more?
They left me hanging, so I did a lot of digging elsewhere.
I eventually found it.
He had sued a previous district because they did not want him mentioning his husband in his classes.
So, very, like, fair suit, and they ended up settling it, and, you know, but he is not afraid of lawsuits.
He also has a—I found his real name, first of all, because it's not Tiger Craven Neely.
First, I was like, is this guy even, like, a credential teacher?
Let me find out what's going on here.
Couldn't find Tiger Craven Neely anywhere, but I found his name eventually, and— Bob.
And I found his divorce proceedings from like 2009.
Yeah, I found a lot of stuff.
And then a small claims court case.
So anyway, and a petition to change his name to Tiger.
And I don't think it went through because that's not what his teacher license is under.
But anyway, I think this is someone who is not afraid of getting involved in the legal system if he feels like he wants to be involved in the legal system.
So as I said, I'll keep an eye on the Fires website and see if there's something coming up there and maybe that'll be fun for the future.
That's what's going on with that teacher that Virginia Fox says was, you know, run out of town essentially.
So bottom line that for me, what do we actually know about what this is?
Do we have any real idea?
We know that there was some sort of Disciplinary?
Not even disciplinary.
It was essentially they are looking into what happened between him and this other staff member.
And as of that point in time, he is, you know, on administrative leave.
So he is on administrative leave?
Yeah.
Okay.
He still is?
As far as I've seen, he has not been brought back to campus at this point.
When did this happen?
Pretty recently.
I think that was like one of the most recent ones.
This thing has been going for a couple of years, right?
This program?
Yeah, it's been going for a couple years.
San Francisco Chronicle article came out February 3rd.
I think he was suspended the following week.
Interesting.
So not a good look.
But again, it is involving another staff member and we don't have a lot of details.
The school obviously will not comment on it.
Yeah, you know what I'm pretty sure it's not?
I'm pretty sure it's not because he spoke against woke kindergarten.
Just that.
And again, leave the room open for maybe there's some administrator who's a piece of shit and they did a bad thing by suspending him.
I don't know.
Yeah.
What's the... Could be.
And then he'll have the opportunity to sue and will be made whole hopefully through that if that's what happened.
Local superintendent makes bad disciplinary decision.
Yeah.
Wow.
So speaking of superintendents, what do you think about getting into the school board itself?
So not only was there a huge hubbub about Woke Kindergarten, the program itself, the elementary school, their test scores falling, and then this teacher being suspended, things erupted at the school board, but not in the way you would expect.
I watched several of these school board meetings, four plus hours long.
Time we're never getting back, but that's OK.
Yeah, but I would watch I'd watch it on like multiple speed, you know, like one, seven, five, because I'm not crazy like you.
I can't do it.
I can't process it.
The school board is the entity that approved the contract, signed the contract, allowed the funding to go forward in this way.
And in the lead up to the article coming out in the San Francisco Chronicle, there was a board meeting essentially the week before.
Where board members were aware, I believe, of this article coming out based off of the conversation that the superintendent had with the author of the article, the journalist, and a particular member of the school board was not pleased.
About a pretty brand new school board member.
He was not part of the group when they were signing these contracts, and he had some questions for a staff member who was there to speak about the budget and how things were being spent.
What's your name, ma'am?
Sandra Escobedo, sir.
You're not Dr. Sandra Escobedo, right?
No, I'm not a doctor.
Okay, I didn't think so.
Okay, some of what you said today is alarming to me.
Some of these parents here, they should take a rope and string you up.
I think there's something with you.
Absolutely not.
I'm going to read a letter.
Let me ask you a question.
Sorry, point of order.
No, I'm just getting your attention.
I'm not sure.
No, that is not how you get anyone's attention.
Okay, listen for me.
Listen for me.
I've got two questions.
Trustee Ramos, one second, please.
I have the floor.
Audience, please.
We are not going to say things like that in this meeting.
Please.
Yeah, you're right.
Thank you.
I apologize.
I apologize.
Thank you.
I have two questions for you before I read something.
What is your understanding of woke kindergarten and abolitionist teaching?
Could you answer that, please?
I know that we have a contract around Woke Kindergarten at one of our sites.
I am not clear on everything that that entails in terms of what the activities are being put in place at that particular site.
But I do know that there is a contract at one of our sites.
And the contract includes offering the staff professional development that builds their capacity for culturally and linguistically responsive instruction.
It supports the staff in supporting children with literacy, engaging content, And rigorous instruction.
So shocking.
I was really impressed that everyone kind of jumped in.
I did try to walk it back.
Yeah, I do really appreciate whoever the other board member was.
I was like, no, we're not doing that.
Not doing that.
Sorry.
Yeah.
But this is not the first time he's spoken in an inflammatory, horrible way.
No way.
Yeah.
Previous remarks include things like, if you're homosexual or gay or something, that's your lifestyle.
Our kids are being groomed.
And when this came out, that this is how he decided to tackle his grievances with the Woke Kindergarten program, the statement that he gave was that he acknowledged that he offended the community, but said that the district offended him by spending $250,000 on the Woke Kindergarten program.
Yeah, but like, was it this lady's decision?
Sounds like she doesn't even know about it.
Her answer is like, oh, I think I know, but like, she's not a board member.
I know.
What?
It's grandstanding, you know, it's just a jerk and taking it out on a woman who is there in her capacity as an employee of the district.
Yeah, who is she exactly?
I think she's in budgets.
I think she just oversees the budget for Hayward Unified.
Yeah, does he think she makes all those decisions unilaterally?
Yeah, I know.
What an asshole.
Okay, jeez.
So, as a result of this, the school board had a closed session that he was not invited to.
They drafted a resolution.
I know you're allowed to have a, like, meeting without one of the members.
When they're going to pursue consequences for behavior, violating board policies, you know, just kind of the harassing environment that he demonstrated towards an employee for the school district.
So essentially the resolution is to censure and sanction him and that his conduct caused a hostile work environment for the staff.
And that they would be the district would be hiring an outside independent investigator to look into this.
But part of this resolution would be to remove him from his committee appointment sort of thing.
Obviously, they cannot remove him from office.
They say, obviously, maybe they could.
No, it's by, you know, will of the voter or whatever.
But he would no longer be permitted to meet individually with or question members of the district staff except the superintendent.
He would not be permitted into their workspace areas.
Including school sites and the district office.
And those things, you know, could be reevaluated after the investigation was over.
But what I sent you is the board meeting that happened, the next board meeting that happened after this.
And this was February 14th.
After he said the thing, they drafted a resolution and here they are presenting the resolution for vote.
And so they had what we're not going to show here is a lot of people called in and said, how horrified they were by his comments.
Testifying, essentially?
Yep.
Public comment, right, for this.
And there was someone, another member of the board that did not feel safe coming in person and called in via Zoom to join.
But there is a board member named Ken Rodden that speaks here.
And I think he does a really great job of talking about the impact that this had.
So knowing that we were going to be commenting on this this evening, I wrote my comments down because I want to get it right.
So bear with me if I'm reading, okay?
I want to say that the board meeting of January 24th, 2024 was not a board meeting I will remember fondly.
I watched as one of our finest employees and longtime staff members, Sandra Escobedo, came under verbal assault during what was supposed to have been just routine questioning and answer-seeking period followed by Uh, following a presentation by Ms.
Escobedo to the board.
I observed in horror as Trustee Ramos proceeded to first ask Ms.
Escobedo whether or not she had her doctorate, and when she replied that she did not, Mr. Ramos misogynistically replied, I didn't think so.
As though that were not inappropriate enough, he went on to say that there are people in this room who want to string you up.
I could not believe it was happening, and it happened so fast and seemingly out of nowhere.
I was completely caught off guard and I didn't react as quickly as I wish I had.
I think all of us were simply shell-shocked.
Well, all except for the one awesome person who was like, no.
Yeah.
To Ms.
Escobedo, I would like to say how amazing I think she was in her graciousness to continue on in her presentation, in dignity and professionalism.
There is no way that she or anybody should have to go through the verbal assaults like that.
Hostile language and disrespectful behavior are not the values we hold as a board and as an organization, and they just simply have no place in our public discourse.
I was embarrassed and ashamed.
The safety of our employees is of absolute paramount importance.
So really, really moving words from board member Rodden.
Yeah, I mean, I would have liked some acknowledgement of the woman who I think was another board member.
Yeah, I think it's the woman in the middle there.
If you're going to say, we were all taking... Nobody reacted.
Well, OK, there was one.
I feel like she did a good job.
Yeah.
But how do you think Ramos is going to respond to this resolution that's on the table for a vote?
Okay, if I were him, and I would never be him, so if I were plopped into his brain, and that would fucking suck, but I'd be like, alright, I would say, hey, apologies, I totally, you can hear I took it back right away, that was totally inappropriate, sincerest apologies, won't happen again, did not mean to do that, you can hear I just wanted to make a rhetorical point, I won't do that again, I just messed up.
Uh, that's not what he did.
No?
Okay.
Let's swing on over to him and let him speak for himself.
All right, first of all, you guys are hypocrites.
You allow him to call you the N-word.
What?
I don't know what that's about.
And then you let him get away with it.
And then what happens is the reason we're in this mess of woke kindergarten is because you guys voted it in.
You guys are the ones that created this problem.
The general public doesn't know it.
That's why I was upset.
I found out, I got, I know all the bodies up there.
I got all this information.
And cause you guys and the superintendent, he could have fixed it.
But he let it go because he wanted to cover tracks, everybody.
But this whole district, the whole district is dishonest.
I'm just going to read you this and I'll be quiet because it's ridiculous.
Number one, Woe Kindergarten, $250,000 was spent on what?
And the scores were so low.
So who got some money out of this?
Because somebody did.
The other point is, first of all, Mr. Beasley and Mr. Ryman, they said on one of their articles that their parents knew about this.
I talked to several parents from Glassbrook, which they don't know anything about it.
You guys are screwing with the Latino community.
And what's going to happen is this, I'm just going to let them know more and more because you guys allowed this program in here so they could, and you let them loose on some Spanish speaking kids, on Latinos, because you don't care.
And you talk about racism.
You guys are the racist.
The program tells you it's to disrupt whiteness.
The people who you hired, they don't like white people.
They don't like white teachers, white parents, white children.
It's not what I'm saying.
It's in the literature.
It's right here.
Go look it up yourself.
You hired a bunch of racist socialists.
And why did you do this?
I don't know.
And the scores went down.
You guys haven't helped the community?
Yeah, eventually they kind of try to redirect him and they're like, your comments are supposed to be about the resolution in front of you and not going off about the program again.
Yeah.
My reply would be, even if all that were true, why did that lady who you directed this comment to deserve it?
Yeah.
She had nothing to do with it.
Exactly.
Not even your own bullshit right now is having to do with her.
So, OK.
I mean, here's the thing.
Are there any legitimate points there?
There might be.
I don't know.
Have you looked into it?
I mean, it could be.
I suggested before that, like, grift is an issue.
Yeah, there could be kickbacks.
I don't know.
Is there any proof of that?
Nothing that I've seen, no.
And I think that's a legitimate concern.
And maybe something will come up when they have the independent investigation.
And it has nothing to do with wokeness at all.
This happens all the time.
And I think we would all be equally against kickbacks.
You know, that could happen with these, some of these contract things, you know, especially with government money that feels like it's like, Oh, that's just kind of free money.
Okay.
I have a friend who I can help get a contract and they'll do a kickback.
Yeah.
I, we would all be against that in all cases.
There's absolutely no possibility at all that that only happens when it's a woke thing.
Like there's just no way.
Yep.
So the resolution to censure and sanction board member Ramos was approved.
Yay!
So yeah, so he's been removed from his committee assignments and again is not allowed on school sites, is not allowed in district offices, and can only speak to the superintendent in terms of the district staff.
And there will be an investigation looking into what occurred here and any other evidence of wrongdoing, I guess.
And then we'll see what happens If there are additional measures they can take or if it really can only be tackled at the polls.
But that's not the end of the story here.
As part of this fallout, the district decided to terminate the contract for Woke Kindergarten.
Who voted on that?
Is that the same school board?
Same school board.
Yeah.
So they decided to terminate the contract and the superintendent issued a statement.
This is February 16th when they decided to.
That's only two days after this.
Two days after this, yeah.
And they said that the reason why they decided to cancel the contract, they were in the third year of a three-year contract that was slated to end in June anyway.
The work was substantially done.
Recently, we became aware of statements by the Woke Kindergarten founder, both on the Woke Kindergarten website and on social media platforms.
Although we respect freedom of speech and the right for individuals to hold a variety of political views, The social media and other public statements of the vendor do not align with the values of the district and those of many of our community members.
I think there's a big concern with Israel-Palestine and the comments that the founder made regarding that.
What did they say?
So the statements from Kai Gross says, I believe the United States has no right to exist.
I believe every settler colony who has committed genocide against native peoples, against indigenous people, has no right to exist.
Y'all the demons.
Y'all are the villains.
We've been trying to end y'all, get free of y'all.
I believe in a free Palestine from the river to the sea.
Mmm.
But I thought the woke were into that, and the same woke who's doing the, like, signed this contract would be the wokest who, like, it's whatever.
It sounds like, I wonder why they voted on this to begin with.
Like, it doesn't sound like this school board is super woke or anything.
Yeah, I don't totally know.
You haven't gone over the minutes of that meeting?
Yeah.
Well, there's a lot that's, you know, closed door that I can't get access to.
But yeah, it's been interesting.
It's been an interesting journey to kind of watch this unfold.
The other piece that they said that they decided to terminate the contract is because The controversy and the media attention that it was bringing to the elementary school and, you know, putting potentially kids in that position where their school is being brought up like that.
Who knows what was happening at the school?
We know things like Libs of TikTok are out there and the bomb threats that happened in Oklahoma as a result of grievances that Haya Raychik had.
Over there.
Like, I think they were concerned about the attention and the safety and the well-being of students and staff members and everything.
Okay.
So they terminate the thing based on, I guess, I don't know.
What's your impression of why they terminate it?
Does it sound like it's just a bad publicity thing and they're going to find their reasons?
Or, I mean, the Palestinian river to the sea is another complication that we haven't really talked about.
Yeah.
All I know is I feel like those tweets you just read are completely consistent with what we all should have already known about Kai based on the other materials.
Like, I don't know why that would be a shock.
A typical, you know, progressive person of color.
More than that.
I would say like, like a pretty, when you say abolitionist and someone who's wanting to like get rid of, dismantle these systems, like, Yeah, that's a very leftist thing and I'm not sure why you would authorize the contract to begin with if you, you know, like were you misled or ignorant or are you now just changing your mind because of bad publicity?
Yeah, I'm torn.
I think that they probably are seeing it's bad publicity and they're getting a little tired of it.
I think there is a legitimate concern about the mental health and well-being of staff and students at Glassbrook and in the school district, you know, for the board themselves, the district staff.
They've been through a lot in the space of a month.
And so I think that is probably a big piece of it.
But I also do think that there are some potentially self-serving things here, too.
I think it's a mix of things that it just made the most sense to cut ties and put together a nice little press release that sounds good.
And, you know, without having to admit that potentially they didn't look into it as deeply as you normally would look into vendors or you would expect school districts to be looking into vendors.
Maybe they had less of a, you know, back at the time when they did this.
The political atmosphere meant, you know, maybe they didn't think too deeply about it.
Who knows?
I mean, it's just, it's such a nothing.
It's just so important to compare the reality to what the perceived reality and what the right is attempting to say is reality.
They very much, when you watch these stories and when you hear them talk about it, they want you to believe that the woke are coming for your kindergarten kids and they're going in there and they're teaching them wrong math.
This had nothing to do with changing curriculum, correct?
Correct.
There's nothing to do with that.
Criticize all you want.
Maybe this one vendor, you know, I don't know.
Maybe they did a good job.
Maybe they didn't do a good job.
Yeah.
Maybe this was a bad contract.
Maybe it was a good contract.
Sure.
It's not a sign of a systemic wokeness takeover of the schools.
Like it just isn't.
I know.
To further bolster my point about the legitimization, though, of this and the woke talking points and everything there that we got because the San Francisco Chronicle understandably published this story.
I think that is fair in a lot of ways.
We have a conservative think tank, the Goldwater Institute, is using this story in particular ... to push their Academic Transparency Act model legislation.
This model legislation was drafted with the Manhattan Institute, another conservative think tank that Christopher Ruffo is involved with, and Stanley Kurtz, who is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, whose board includes Judge Robert Bork's widow, Robert P. George, Leonard Leo.
You know, these are like a messy group of people.
Stanley Kurtz in particular was behind the model legislation to remove critical race theory from schools that was used by states like Texas in putting forward their own bills for their state legislatures, and now he's behind the General Education Act model legislation, which is to We spoke about this in a previous episode, to create a general education college built on, you know, Western thinkers, classic Western philosophers and thought and all that.
The classics.
Yeah, that cardinal direction had the best thinking.
Yeah.
So this has so many things for people to go crazy about between the name, between the amount of money, that it's a public school, that it's a school where there's a lot of kids that are very disadvantaged.
have a huge subset of population that needs a lot of help and then no data to then back up if there has been improvements in math and reading, of course, because those have gone down and it wasn't intended to do that.
But it's all it's hitting all of these talking points perfectly that now it's going to be weaponized by the right in these policymaking entities.
And that has very damaging consequences.
Especially because they're the ones who are responsible for a lot of the schools being shitty now.
I'm just Googling.
You can do a casual Google and see.
The downturn in test scores was historic across the board.
I don't know what the best basis for comparison will be, but this is a problem.
We lost a lot of good teachers during COVID.
There's it said like one of the things I saw cited like teacher absenteeism.
Yeah, a thankless job where, by the way, there's all this political component to it now.
There's no for no pay.
There's nothing but criticism.
It's a thankless job.
We've lost a lot of good.
There's a ton of reasons why test scores might be going down.
I don't think it's because of the couple seminars that someone put on.
It's just not going to be that.
I'm sorry.
It's not.
Yeah.
And, you know, I mean, this is just, again, from like that state perspective that if you looked at $250,000 over the course of three years, that's pennies for a state like California.
But anyway, that's beside the point.
I think part of my research from this, too, is understanding that absenteeism, suspension rate, those are major, major problems to kids academically being able to achieve what all they could achieve.
And this is a systemic issue, and there is a lot of research that's being done on how to tackle this.
ProPublica had a great article that they did with a company that was created, you know, right after COVID, that they're doing, like, direct intervention.
So some ways that school districts will tackle Absenteeism is they'll partner with companies that do, you know, like text reminders to the parents, reminding them of the importance of school or offering them data on, here's how often your child is absent versus, you know, the average student in the school or the district or whatever.
But there's also a company called Concentric that was doing unannounced home visits for absent students.
So they would basically get a list from the school saying, hey, here are the students that have missed X number of days in the last two weeks or something.
And then they would drop by the house and talk to the parents.
And sometimes the parents didn't even know that their kids weren't showing up to school.
Sometimes the parents knew, but they were dealing with significant family problems that they did not have support to get their kid to school.
You're also looking at situations in which there are no buses or the buses have been severely reduced in places that still have, you know, transportation as part of their offerings.
We don't have that here.
That is not something that's offered in our district.
There are no buses.
So you parents have to drive their kids to school and that can be really, really challenging.
But even in places that do have buses, they have reduced routes because there aren't enough bus drivers.
And so transportation to school is a problem.
If kids can't even get to school and the district isn't doing anything to help them get to school, then what are you supposed to do?
So much of this, again, it just comes down to your fundamental views.
Like there are conservatives and even a lot of liberals, their fundamental view is, well, these people aren't as good at something, or these people over here don't care about school as much, or these people over here don't.
And it's just, I fundamentally come from the background assumption that like, well, people are pretty much the same.
Whatever it is, there's going to be some factor explaining it.
Is it poverty?
Is it, you know, it's not going to be, oh, they just don't care.
You're not going to do a home visit for the students missing everything.
And it's just like, well, because of who they are, they just don't give a shit.
Like they're actually wealthy.
They don't even, you know, like that's not going to be what it is.
Most of the time, there's going to be some socioeconomic explanation for it.
You know, it's just like, why would you not care about that?
Like, why would you not number one focus on that?
And I wanted to bring up, when you started talking about this program, Woke Kindergarten, and again, it sounds like we don't have like all the detail as to what it was.
It sounds like that's not completely available, like in terms of whatever it was, you know, the trainings.
But I think there is every potential for it to be if your problem is you got a lot of Latino students and their absenteeism and you're talking from an abolitionist kind of, you know, like real leftist lens.
I actually could see a lot of potential in the idea that because I do know that we over police Students of color.
And it very quickly becomes, instead of like, hey, how do we get these people the education they need?
It becomes, how do we punish them the most for probably something that's not their fault?
And then that starts them down the line of getting into trouble and police interaction, or potentially, or at least disciplinary interaction, getting suspended, being home more, and then you lose more school.
I could see an intervention being, hey, let's teach the teachers how to deal with that better, how to not over-police, how to not You know, how not look at it in terms of like, there's something wrong with these kids.
And then, you know, I don't know.
That was just like what came to my mind.
Maybe that is what it was.
I don't know.
And maybe that is what helped the absenteeism.
Like that did go down.
So I don't know.
Maybe woke kindergarten was good.
I have no idea.
Yeah.
Not enough information.
Yeah.
And then, you know, just to tie this up, this is one program.
One program offered to one elementary school that engaged with other programs within one school district within one of the largest states in the country.
Using federal money, by the way.
Using federal money versus what I'd like to dive into in a future episode.
PragerU having statewide collaboration with places like Florida and Oklahoma.
We'll get into that some other time.
Some other millennium.
But PragerU in public schools is a real thing.
I will be investigating it some more to figure out what all is happening there.
But this right now is perfectly fine for our local journalists to look into.
It is not the firestorm that the right is trying to make it out to be.
There are legitimate concerns that can be raised and addressed at the local level.
But this is not the woke have taken over Glassbrook Elementary in Hayward, California.
All right.
Well, thanks for the research.
That's really fascinating.
And what do you know?
It turned out to be a complete misrepresentation of what was going on.
Who would have figured?
Only the crack reporters at Where There's Woke can possibly untangle this web.
No, it's so important to fight back because it's ubiquitous.
Somebody call Bob Costas.
Tell him it wasn't, it's not really what Bill Maher said.
Bill Maher's full of shit.
He always is.
This show could just be called Bill Maher fucking sucks and is wrong.
That's really... Honestly, yeah, I think we're due for a rebranding.
That's what's going to happen.
God, that guy sucks.
Just absolutely sucks.
I think we have, like, these little things that we'll be following up on from this one, too.
Like, this is — it's brand new, you know, this controversy.
Yeah, that's true.
And there's, I think, a lot of stuff that's going to come from it still.
So I'll keep my ears to the ground and my head in the budget documents for Hayward Unified and see what else I can find out in the meantime.
And you know who's going to find out first about all that stuff?
The patrons.
The patrons at patreon.com slash where there's woke.
Yeah, you're right.
They will.
They're amazing.
So please join the ranks.
And, oh, we have, we have a good one coming up for you.
Really good episode coming up.
We won't jinx it.
You never know what order things will be in, but if it's the one I'm thinking of, is it the one you're thinking of, hun?
This is the one?
Yeah.
It's the one you're thinking of.
It's really, really good.
And it'll be out soon because you know, it's the end of the month.
So you know that we're putting out 400 things.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Well, we got to get on that.
So thanks for listening and we'll see you then.
Easter egg for Heath.
Hi, Heath, if you're listening.
I think that noise is like a call and it's like, you know, like his brain.
Remember?
No, you don't remember this, but in, uh, you know, uh, Emperor Strikes Back when the guy has the thing around his head, you know, that, uh, what's his name?
Toxin.
There's too many names.
I'm forgetting.
It doesn't work.
I can only forget like the guy that was CGI'd later that I thought was real.
Okay.
Not that guy.
No, that's the guy from the first movie.
Oh, okay.
This is going well.
It's not Fido.
This is just strictly for the outtakes.
There's no way.
Frickin' what's his name?
The guy has been dead since 1895.
1895?
He was probably born in 1895, but he's been dead for at least 50 years.
But Lydia thought he starred in Rogue One, you know.
I will say the last time we watched this with the kids, I was like, okay, I guess I can kind of see how this is CGI.
I guess I was wrong.
Okay.
Look, here's the thing.
She's too busy staring at documents and researching.
So many documents.
And that makes her eyes... Oh, that's true.
You weren't wearing glasses back then.
Oh, yeah.
I wondered if that's what it was.
It all makes sense.
You didn't realize you needed glasses.
Holy crap, we've cracked it.
We've solved another one here on Where There's Woke.
Play the detective music.
Okay, anyway, what are we doing?
So there's a show.
We're introing episode 40.
And yeah.
Oh, it was because of the clarion call of Heath Enright and the guy with the thing on his head.
The guy looks like, they're kind of like Ron Howard looking guy that works with... Oh yeah.
I know who you're talking about.
I'm thinking of Darth Vader.
I'm just kidding.
Yeah, Yoda, you know?
Yeah, he works with Lando Calrissian and he gets that little beeper on his head.
He has that wrapped head thing.
Carl Weathers.
What?
No.
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