Hidden in Plain Sight

More DSUSD CRT Subterfuge

During the last Desert Sands Unified School District (DSUSD) board of education meeting, Kristen Wood and Mike Kent presented agenda item 13.1, the Educator Effectiveness Block Grant. After the presentation, a board member—hard to tell which one since they all wear the virtue signal mask and they do not identify themselves—perhaps it was Wendy Jonathan that praised the presentation duo with really giving us the details of the $5.5 Million 5-year block grant. Except they did not give much details. I am here to correct the district’s omissions. Remember, red text are links to the sauce.

We should start with the grant itself. Go ahead, take a look. There are so many virtue signaling buzzwords there, in acronym form of course, it is hard to know where to begin. Buzzwords like: SEL, Equity, MTSS, PBIS, Restorative Justice, Mindset training. There is also this: Trauma Training (perhaps to use after they scare the crap out of already scared crapless kids with another active shooter drill). The buzzwords are a mush-mouth full of communist indoctrination, you just may not know it yet. You will find out in two years, when this grant goes into full implementation with staff training, but then it will be too late. Make no mistake, failing to disclose the true intent of this grant is a feature not a flaw.

Mike Kent did tell us, for those of us that didn’t know, that MTSS is Multi-Tiered System of Supports. Wow sounds great! Students will be supported in multiple ways! We know everything we need to know now!

No, we do not.

We can learn more if we visit the California Department of Education (CDE) pages though. According to the CDE, MTSS is actually RTI^2 + PBIS.

Feel better now? No? Maybe I can help.

RTI^2 is Response to Instruction and Intervention and PBIS is Positive Behavioral Instruments and Supports. Feel more informed NOW? Probably not, but you may be thinking “well, that doesn’t sound so bad.” I would not disagree with that sentiment at this point, they do make it sound so nice and wholesome. For those familiar with the saying, what exactly is in the details? Right, the Devil. So read that CDE link up there and see if you can spot the Devil.

LEAs are Local Education Agencies, or our school board. California wants to “transform” them and bring in “Systemic changes”. Maybe this grant is a misnomer, perhaps if it read "The fundamental and systemic transformation of your school district” grant, it might be more apt? Take special note of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), I will be talking about that in depth further along in this article.

Read further for information on RTI^2 and you will find… that there is no more information, even the wayback machine shows this link to be dead since November 2019. But there is this:

Well, doesn’t that sound hunky-dory? Details, details, always in the details. California and the linked pbis.org are woefully short on details. But if we visit another PBIS page, we lean that PBIS/MTSS must be in place before a school can really get into the nitty-gritty of “Restorative Justice”—I bet you have heard that term before. We will get to that too. For now, take a look at this description of PBIS. You can also read more at the Council for a Strong America.

Onward.

Number (6) of the block grant is the budget for “Strategies to improve inclusive practices… including, but not limited to, universal design for learning….” Thus establishing UDL as a major goal of the district.

Now that we have determined that both UDL and Restorative Justice is a part of this “Educator Effectiveness” grant, let’s take a closer look to determine if this is really just a case of Communists being Communists, or if they actually want to help your kids.

If you’re worried that I let Restorative Justice fall off the map, don’t worry, I’m going to circle back like Peppermint Paddy at the Brandon Administration’s press briefings.

Consultant Katie Novak is due to make $900,000 from this grant, $300,000 a year for three years. Take note that this is for TWO DAYS of work per year. Great gig if you can get it from DSUSD, eh? I’ve never been a gangster myself, but isn’t this how money laundering works? What next, buy curriculum from the family of US Attorney General Merrick Garland—oh wait, dsusd already does that, it’s called Panarama Education. Perhaps an investment in a Hunter Biden painting?

Katie Novak must be something special…shall we take a gander? Rather than read Katie toot her own horn, we should take a look at who she associates with. From the “About Us” page:

Is anyone under the illusion that the Gates Foundation is anything but evil at this point? Then there is Harvard, that gave Jeffrey “I did not kill myself” Epstein office space (while he was a known child sex trafficker) and was host to so many professors that have been arrested for spying for China that I have lost count.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take a closer look at this UDL. A great place to start would be the UDL for Equity course that is on Katie Novak’s website.

This course was developed by the Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer and Hip-Hop rapper, Mirko Chardin. Of course, you have to buy his book to take the course… not grift at all.

Wait just a minute. The CDE page we were at earlier linked UDL to this page at understood.org, so the official State of California definition of UDL is a bit different.

The grading system I had been using for the last two years, and would still be using if the DSUSD hadn’t thrown me out like they should throw out the mask mandate, was very similar to this. Kids could benefit from differentiated instruction and had the opportunities to master the standard. I developed the system on my own and did not have to become a Communist to implement it, nor did I receive nearly a million dollars for doing so. I did face intellectual NON-curiosity from school leaders though. Funny that, maybe my narrative was out of whack? Almost like it is not the act of UDL itself that they want, but all the other crap that they teach with it. Another story for another time.

Let’s get back to Mirko Chardin (who by the way is also a hip hop star that raps about the curriculum being a battlefield—need more lyrics) and his own UDL course, since this is what dsusd teachers and staff will be indoctrinated with. Luckily, Mirko provides us with a syllabus… but first his grading system!

The world has been waiting for an emoji grading system, and it is only going to cost dsusd $900,000 to get one!

On to the syllabus! First up, Module 1 and 2, where we discover for the first time that we are actually learning how to teach “Social Justice”, the differences between “equity” and “equality”, and to connect that with “cultural responsiveness”,

Now, where have we heard those terms before?

Oh! I wonder why this wasn’t in that dsusd presentation to the board that they loved so much…seems like associating the grant with the violent marxist terrorist group that nearly burned down our country in 2020 would be a detail we would like to have!

Module 5 is rather ironic, considering that is exactly what we are doing to this Communist nonsense—exposing the implicit communist bias that is hidden in the curriculum.

Module 7.

There we go, I told you I would circle back to Restorative Justice! Now we have the connection, UDL (Universal Design for Learning) has nothing to do with differentiated instruction, and everything to do with indoctrinating dsusd staff with CRT. Don’t believe me? Howard Zehr is known as the father of the Restorative Justice movement, here is a paper from that institute that is titled “Critical Race Theory and Restorative Justice Education”.

Maybe the board can make up another presentation to show us how CRT is not in the district and will not be in the district, you know, because we just don’t understand things very well.

So, is this all so terrible?

Let’s check in with the Fordham Institute that reviewed a very biased RAND Institute study on the subject of Restorative Justice, written by Max Eden in 2019 titled “Restorative justice isn't working, but that's not what the media is reporting.” Read the entire report, it is well worth your time and details how this “evidence-based” crowd ignores all evidence…which seems to be a trend with anyone that parrots the mainstream media these days, including the dsusd board of education trustees.

Maybe institutes are not enough. Maybe, just maybe, we can find some real-world opinions from those that have already experienced this Communist indoctrination attempt.

First up, and I’m sure many of you will recognize this, Mr. Andrew Pollack from Parkland, Florida. Mr. Pollack’s daughter was murdered by an evil cretin, whose name I will not type, that went through the restorative justice process.

Mr. Pollack goes on to say:

And continues:

Another experience comes from an educator that ended up being a district superintendent. Julia Carlson researched thoroughly and decided that the research was skewed and did not implement restorative justice, but her kids were subjected to it once she left that district. Here are some highlights.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, as it always seems to be these days, and more research is needed. This grant is up for one more public comment session before the board implements it. I encourage all to research more and share with the rest of us—we need to filibuster this at the next meeting by having as many people as possible speaking out against it. Consider developing a presentation and saving it to a flash drive that you can give to the board clerk. Perhaps the board will better understand the problems with Communism if we put it in a presentation.

—Kenny, from the Tavern