Washoe County School Board (WCSD) Up for Election
BBME supports candidates whose issues align with our organization's mission of fighting for parental rights, exemplary education and fair representation within Nevada's Washoe County School District. We believe that no child should ever be put down to raise up another, adults' political opinions and personal beliefs have no place in schools, that we must get back to focusing on teaching the basics: Math, English, Social Studies, and Science and that Parents' voices in their child's education should not be silenced.
The School Board’s main function is to ensure the best possible education experience for all students. We would argue based off our extensive research that the current Board is failing us. See our School Board Report Card.
We can assure you, the only way the School Board will ensure a rigorous educational experience for all students is for voters to show up to the polls and vote across the board for the Challengers. Our current incumbents must go.
We endorse Colleen Westlake For District B, Melanie Sutton For District C, and Graeme Reid For District F because they support and align with the values BBME, parents, teachers and the community hold dear. Adults' political opinions and personal beliefs have no place in schools; teach the basics: Math, English, Social Studies, and Science. Parents' voices in their child's education should not be silenced.
For more in depth understanding into our decision, please go to BattleBornMe.org - WCSD School Board Elections and BattleBornMe - School Board Report Card. Additionally, we did a deep dive into WCSD's current focus of equity over education.
Here is a recent look at the School Board actions harming our students.
Ignoring Parent’s Rights
Click Here to Listen, Trustee, Nicolet questioned why a contract between the WCSD and Paper Education Company, an online software company, had language that the WCSD can act as the parent and agree to students’ private data collection. Ms. Sullivan, WCSD Director of Procurement and Contracts, answered that this was a standard language that has been drafted by the Office of General Counsel and used with all contracts dealing with software and online tools. Incumbent Trustees running for election Minetto, Mayberry, and Rodriguez did not object.
Hiding a student’s gender identity from their own parent/guardian. See WCSD’s very own Administrative Regulation 5161, which allows school staff to decide if a student’s asserted gender identity is genuinely held and then forbids them from telling the parents. It allows a student without parental knowledge to change his/her gender identity in their school record. Also, entry into bathrooms and locker rooms as well as playing non-NIAA sports are based on gender identity. This regulation has been in force since 2015!! Could this have something to do with transgender suicide rates being so high? How does it help young students to be isolated from their parents by the school when they are dealing with life-changing decisions? Wow looking at the data seems that could be the case. Washoe County Suicide Death Statistics | LiveStories suicide rates in WCSD have spiked since 2015. So the government does not seem to be doing a good job stepping into the role of parent.
According to Board Policy 5450, WCSD can release a student from class to confer with authorized District employees and anyone approved by the principal or designee, or as required by state law. The WCSD Equity and Diversity Department said they were not in violation of BP 5450 when against parental consent a 12-year-old girl was removed from her class to attend a black-only club called Queens in the Making. Where they claimed to be empowering young black girls by telling them police officers will often target them. The Parents have filed a Civil Rights claim.
Pushing Equity Over Education = Substandard Education
A review of School Board meetings show millions going to equity-focused companies, software, laptops, charging tables, and more, over funding smaller class sizes where teachers could more effectively help all children get the individualized attention they need. Trustees Minettto, Mayberry, and Rodriguez voted for variances from laws requiring lower teacher-to-student ratios. See the April 26, 2022 WCSD Board Meeting-26-2022.
Overseeing a $1 billion budget and over $121 million in federal Covid relief money, they failed to prioritize hiring bus drivers to drive students to school and teachers to teach them once they are in school.
They have failed to comply with state and federal law regarding special education students, so now WCSD is being sued. (Nothing new). Teachers have in the past and are again pleading with the Trustees to help them obtain more resources to help these students.
The Incumbents up for re-election, despite parent/guardian and the community's concerns, continue to require cultural competency training teacher training vs multicultural training as mandated by legislation. The cultural competency training includes lessons like one entitled, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack:" “I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.
WCSD’s Equity and Diversity Department’s website contains thousands of links to Outside Resources Promoting Topics Like “Whiteness, Social Justice, and Anti-Racist Curriculum”. Including lesson plans, podcasts, websites, lists of books, and posters. Everything that a teacher needs to create a social justice focused lesson plan.
Currently, WCSD has over 9,000 English Language Learners (ELL) with 90 different languages in a school district of approx 64,000. The Nevada State Education Association (NSEA /teachers union) expects our classrooms will have 1 in 4 ELs by the year 2025. The School District has been focusing on race-based social-emotional learning for more than a decade and we can see that it is not working for any students. Look at Nevada’s Report Card where data shows WCSD is graduating 85.11% of students with a math proficiency rate of 27.7% and an English rate of 48%. That is what equity does. Almost all will graduate, but no one learns anything.