You might remember last year’s concern about — and sound defeat of — the MSBA’s proposed policy changes where some amendments to the policies were nothing more than changing “he or she” to “their” in several sentences. That attempt was defeated last year, partly because an easy reason for opposition was that the changes caused the sentences to become grammatically incorrect, matching a singular noun such as “a student” with plural pronouns like “their”. The more impactful result of those proposed changes than an educational institution using poor grammar, though, would be affirming — which is really endorsing — in written policy the District’s agreement with the promotion of the ideas that gender can be more than merely two choices, that it is “non-binary.” I wrote last year (https://www.christinatonsing.com/pronoun-changes-in-school-board-policy/) about the dangers of doing that and cited news articles where large, influential LGBTQ+ organizations explicitly spell out the steps of using schools to normalize that gender confusion to our students.
Those policy revisions are back this year, but this time the grammar usage has been corrected. It is going to take more intestinal fortitude for board members to refuse these changes. If you care about this, won’t you please express your views on it? You may write the Board members or come to the meeting at 7pm on Thursday, 10/24 and share with the Board whether you want the District to officially, formally embrace the position that gender is something unknown, something that might change. (Contact info for board members and details about the board meeting agenda may be found at https://www.ozarktigers.org/school-board)
The MSBA-proposed policies are linked on the board agenda. Some specific examples where this occurs are:
— Last paragraph of policy GBEBC
— Last paragraph of policy GBEBB-2 (and the first paragraph under the section titled “District Records and Reports”)
— Scattered in multiple places throughout Policy JEC-1
— Second paragraph under “Student Searches” of Policy JFG (This policy leaves room for plenty of concerns on its own merits regarding the absence of parental involvement in what might be serious student consequences)
— First paragraph under “Objection” of Policy BCD
— And more
I look forward to seeing many of you at the meeting. Your presence is your voice.