The Diversity Initiative: South Middleton parents voice concern about influence of diversity initiative on curriculum

Those parents view the JEDI initiative (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) as student indoctrination that not only oversteps parental say in curriculum choices but also pushes an agenda counterproductive to the stated goals of the initiative.

The initiative process started in August after two Boiling Springs High School alumni lobbied the school board to bolster efforts to incorporate greater social justice, equity, diversity and inclusion into the school district climate and culture. The lobbying effort came at a time when social injustice and systemic racism were brought to the forefront across the country with the deaths of Black people at the hands of police officers.

One result of that national debate has been a push by advocates to have school districts reexamine the way they deliver curriculum and instruction.

Concerns are rooted in what parents interpret as early warning signs in initiative meeting minutes posted on the district website and in a book list a teacher recently distributed to sixth-graders at Yellow Breeches Middle School.

Calling themselves South Middleton Parent Advocates, a group of about 100 parents met last week with Superintendent Matthew Strine to voice concerns and vent frustrations over what they saw as a lack of transparency and parental engagement.

As a result of the meeting, district administrators are looking to recalibrate and restructure the JEDI initiative, Strine said. Plans are underway to schedule followup meetings not only with members of the advocacy group but also with parents from diverse backgrounds, if they are willing to come forward.

In a phone interview last week, Strine said he wants to improve the process by drawing on the expertise of parents and other community resources to create an initiative of best practices that benefit all students.

“Our inclusivity efforts are not a curriculum,” he said. “We have and will continue to have inclusivity efforts within our district. We’re just trying to improve upon what we already do.”

The book list

South Middleton Parent Advocates maintains a Facebook page with 342 followers. A March 24 post on the page includes a reference to a book list of recommended fiction written from the perspective of diverse experiences, including people of color, the LGBTQIA community and ethnic, cultural and religious minorities.

Some parents say they were not given the opportunity to opt-out of this list, nor were they given advanced notice to review and research the books on the list prior to its distribution. Much of their focus was on a young adult novel titled “I’ll Give You the Sun” by Jandy Nelson.

While the teacher suggested the novel as an example of the LGBTQIA perspective, parents say the sexually explicit material in that book is inappropriate for sixth-graders. The Facebook post includes excerpts of parental warnings found on both Amazon and the website for Common Sense Media.

Alexandra Oles, a mother of two students in the district, read a passage from the Nelson book during last week’s meeting. She identified herself as a first-generation Colombian American and as a first-generation high school, college and advanced degree graduate. Trained as a social worker, Oles said she has experience in human resources and in promoting diversity and inclusion.

She questioned the value and wisdom of introducing sixth-graders to content like the Nelson book, saying that students at that maturity level are trying to cope with what is happening to them physically and emotionally.

“Traditionally, these are conversations that happen at home or in a health classroom — typically about puberty and body changes,” Oles said. She felt that content like the Nelson book could compel teachers to delve too deeply into the subject and that the result could be the presentation of skewed information.

“It’s about making our children think that if they are not engaged in a sexual experience like the one that I just read, there may be something wrong with them,” Oles said.

She also said the perspective the Nelson book presents may actually work against the initiative's goal of encouraging South Middleton students to accept people who are different from themselves. She said many people in society have the misconception that the LGBTQ community is all about sexuality when it is really about building bonds of family, love and safety, Oles said. “You [the district] are perpetuating that misconception.

“Schools should not be taking on the role of righting wrongs, but rather teaching and preparing our children to live, work and navigate a diverse society,” she added. “Please consider the importance of bringing everybody along in decisions that impact our students. This is a journey, not a sprint. There’s still an opportunity to pivot.”

Library protocols

During the interview last week, Strine responded to parental concerns surrounding the book list. He said the teacher in question provided students with a list of books within the classroom library that mirror what is in the young adult section of the main school library.

That list has been withdrawn and the teacher has been retrained on the practices and protocols specified under school board policy on Library Collection Development, Strine said. He added none of the students affected by the list had checked out the Nelson book from the main school library.

“We have since reviewed the policies that govern books in the library and opt-out options,” Strine said.

Parents also took issue with a form an eighth-grade teacher circulated to students asking for their preferred pronoun on how they want to be referred to in class. Parents interpreted the form as being associated with gender identity.

As with the book list, the pronoun form prompted a review by administrators once they were made aware of parental concerns, Strine said. “We’re making sure all of our materials and efforts are vetted to our policies and guidelines.”

Other members of the advocacy group said they were concerned about the initiative's take on race relations.

Meeting minutes

To date, none of the JEDI Taskforce steering committee meetings have been open to the public. Instead, meeting minutes have been posted on the district website for parents like Tony Lucido to review. He doesn’t like what he’s been reading.

“One thing I personally find most disturbing is that you cannot fight racism by telling people that the most important thing about themselves is their race,” Lucido said during last week’s meeting.

He quoted an excerpt from the minutes where a teacher during a committee meeting was encouraged by others to identify herself as a “privileged white woman teaching in America.”

“I can’t think of a worse way to teach kids to identify people as individuals and not as members of a racial group,” Lucido said. “In my view, that’s a misguided approach if you want to teach kids not to judge others by the color of their skin.”

He said he was concerned that the initiative runs contrary to the teachings of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who asked Americans to judge people individually by the content of their character.

“I can only speak for myself, but I don’t think the reason why people are here tonight is that they’re opposed to racial justice,” Lucido said. “This is a well-intentioned initiative, but everything that you read about equity focuses on what tribe you belong to. That kind of thinking can only lead to division.”

Lucido also questioned the following quote by social justice activist Sonya Renee Taylor that appeared in the minutes: “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack.”

While acknowledging that Taylor is entitled to her own opinion, Lucido thought it was a completely unrealistic and unbalanced view of the United States. “I don’t want the curriculum to tell my children that this is what it means to live in this community,” Lucido said. “There’s a difference between imparting knowledge and imparting ideology. This is ideology and the school does not have the authority to tell students what to believe.”

Strine said last week the Taylor quote was meant to be a prompt introduced during a committee meeting to encourage conversation. Strine was joined in the conference call by school board president Liz Knouse, who said the quote was among the viewpoints that committee members studied during the design and research phases of the JEDI initiative.

“I heard what the parents had to say and what Mr. Lucido had to say,” Strine said. “It has caused us to reflect. We are weighing his words and trying to incorporate that thinking into our efforts to move forward. We want an inclusive environment for all of our students. We don’t want any divisiveness.”

Strine was joined in the parent meeting last week by Alex Smith, district director of student services.

“We’ve heard a lot of comments tonight,” Smith said last week during the meeting with parents. “It’s a testament to the passion of this community. The speakers talked about safety and the belonging of all students — all things that match what our vision statement says about preparing students for a diverse world. As a district, as a community, we can recognize that we’re not perfect. We can always grow. We can always improve.”

Improving school culture begins with self-awareness of what bias people may carry around, Smith said. “It’s not possible to be fully objective so, therefore, you have to have conversations.”