Retired educators attempting to slander the system that has evolved into one of the best in Maryland demonstrates strident ignorance

EDITORIAL OPINION:

In regards to the silly allegations that the St. Mary’s School system is any way at all “racist”: at one time, the system was indeed racist and operated separate and unequal systems of education, one for white students and one for blacks. Following court orders, the public schools made serious efforts to provide an equal opportunity for students, staff, and teachers. Janice Walthour and her sister Elfreda Mathis are living proof of that progress as both retired from high-salaried administrative positions with the public schools. Many leaders of the NAACP such as Ted Newkirk were responsible for the progress that moved the public schools forward, as were many white educators and political leaders. For Walthour and Roderick Lewis to present to the public that St. Mary’s Public Schools are systemically racist is pure baloney. Believing that is true is libelous to the work and accomplishments of school board members, various county commissioners, and educators over the years. Walthour’s efforts appear to be an effort to appear to be relevant and to take advantage of a chance to divide and sow discontent.

The worst thing that could happen to Democrats’ power is for racism to be non-existent Thus they need CRT. Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.

STEPS THAT THE ST. MARY’S COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION HAS BEEN TAKING TO INSTITUTE CRITICAL RACE THEORY INTO THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

EQUITY vs. EQUALITY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS:
The 2022 St. Mary’s County
Board of Education Elections

February 22, 2022, is the deadline to file as a candidate in the 2022 elections. Two members of the St. Mary’s County Board of Education – Karin Bailey and Rita Weaver – were both elected in 2014, whose current terms expire in 2022. So the question becomes whether they should be reelected.
School board elections are politically “nonpartisan,” but that is facetious. In 2020 a candidate, who was defeated, was a member of the local Democratic Central Committee. The teachers’ unions are politically biased in favor of Democrats.
The central issue in the 2022 school board election is whether school children are academically educated or politically indoctrinated.

Has Social Studies been replaced with “social justice” and the Marxist ideology of diversity, equity, and inclusion? Has the textbook for American History become “The 1619 Project”? Is the Civics curriculum the 2020 Democratic Party Platform?

The St. Mary’s County Public Schools (SMCPS) is actively engaged in indoctrination. For example, School Site Equity Diversity Achievement Leaders are “located at every school to support the school-wide and system implementation of education equity, multicultural education, diversity and inclusion awareness, appreciations, and celebrations.”
Teachers are inculcated through Equity Diversity Professional Development Staff Presentations “focused on educational equity, to include cultural responsiveness, culturally relevant teaching, implicit and explicit bias, and disability awareness to deliver culturally proficient instruction.”
Culturally Relevant Teaching – a euphemism for Critical Race Theory – “empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes.”

Of course, Bailey and Weaver can argue that they are only acting in compliance with the Code of Maryland Regulations 13A.01.06. However, it did not require them to attend the February 2-4, 2020 National School Boards Association Equity Symposium & Advocacy Institute in Washington, DC. It did not require them to agree to the board’s December 21, 2020, “Educational Equity” regulation, which, under the guise of equity, organizes systemic racism in the public schools.

Bailey and Weaver are supportive of equity instead of equality.

The goal of education is to teach children how to learn – the skills necessary to acquire knowledge, such as the ability to read and write, and the critical/cognitive thinking skills to make reasoned judgments. Instead, the SMCPS are teaching children political correctness, woke conformity, and color-conscious racism. Children in the SMCPS should be considered at risk.

In the 2022 election, any candidate endorsed by the teachers’ unions should be defeated.

Likewise, any candidate supportive of equity instead of education should be rejected. The time has come in 2022 to impose term limits on the school board, beginning with Bailey and Weaver and the remaining three in 2024.

Critical Race Theory Has a Racism Problem
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: From the idea that white people are congenitally disabled by virtue of being born white to the bigotry of low expectations.

The action plan adopted by the St. Mary’s School Board to ram Marxist Theology down the throats of staff and students

HOW TO TEACH CHILDREN TO HATE THEMSELVES FOR BEING WHITE & TOOLS TO AVOID ACTUAL LEARNING IN FAVOR OF CREATING SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS

Marxist Theology Comes to St. Mary’s Schools

The purpose of this regulation is to provide specific expectations for implementing the policy on Educational Equity to ensure that all students, regardless of their individual characteristics, have equitable access to and benefit from highquality instruction as well as social and emotional resources and support. The Superintendent of Schools must ensure that the staff develops appropriate guidelines for applying an equity lens to programs, procedures, practices, decisionmaking, resources, and actions impacting our students; the following guidelines shall:

1. Provide a culturally responsive, relevant curriculum, pedagogy, and instructional materials inclusive of perspectives of all cultures and ethnicities, including individuals with disabilities and marginalized peoples in the current curriculum. (IFC¹; IJ-R² IGA³)
2. Provide professional development and training focused on educational equity, to include cultural responsiveness, culturally relevant teaching (CRT), implicit and explicit bias, and disability awareness for all school and departmental staff to build the capacity to understand and deliver culturally proficient instruction.
3. Implement, manage, and maintain a system, department, and school-wide equity lens protocol to increase access to opportunities for early learning programs, academies, and pathways to strengthen readiness for postsecondary success for marginalized students.
4. Recruit, employ, promote, support, and retain a diverse workforce of effective credentialed educators and support staff to provide access to and reflect the student population’s racial, cultural, and individual characteristics. (GCC-R⁵)
5. Allocate resources and supports to achieve educational equity and ensure access to technology, extracurricular opportunities, facilities, equipment, materials, and supplies required to eliminate the achievement and opportunity gaps among all student groups. (IEA⁶)
6. Provide translated resources and documents in languages representing the student population and the school community to ensure equitable access to information for all families. (KBD⁷)
7. Utilize accountability measures, analyze disproportionate data trends, conduct a gap analysis to address any emergent inequitable educational outcomes and identify equitable solutions, enhance learning, and eliminate achievement and opportunity gaps for all students. ( IA⁸; IE⁹)
8. Coordinate prevention and intervention programs, provide services and resources for marginalized students through an equity lens; to support schools, students, and parents by addressing the cognitive, behavioral, social-emotional, safety, and alternative education needs to maximize student achievement and promote a safe and healthy environment for all students. (JLC-R¹⁰).
9. Leverage community partnership strengths to increase students’ equitable opportunities that positively influence the school climate and culture. ( KCA¹¹; KM¹²; KC¹³) Within the context of these guidelines, the following definitions apply:
10. Cultural Responsiveness – the ability to learn from and relate respectfully with people of your own culture as well as those from other cultures (National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt)
11. Culturally Relevant Teaching (CRT) – Pedagogy empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes. (Gloria Ladson-Billings)
12. Educational Equity – Every student has access and support to the opportunities, resources, and educational rigor they need throughout their educational career to maximize academic success and social/emotional wellbeing and to view each student’s individual characteristics as valuable. (COMAR 13A.01.06)
13. Equity Lens – The impact on all marginalized student groups addressed when considering any program, practice, decision, or action, with a strategic focus on marginalized student groups identifying and eliminating potential barriers. (COMAR 13A.01.06)
14. Explicit Bias – Attitudes, beliefs, and actions that are on a conscious level and enacted with harmful intent. (COMAR 13A.01.06)
15. Implicit Bias – Attitudes and stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions. These biases, which encompass both favorable and unfavorable assessments, may be activated involuntarily and without an individual’s awareness or intentional control. (COMAR 13A.01.06)
16. Inclusion – Process by which a school ensures that all individuals are engaged participants in the learning environment and community. All students, families, and staff members feel valued, respected, appreciated, and involved. Individuals see their unique identities reflected in all facets of education, including staffing, curriculum, instruction, and activities. (COMAR 13A.01.06)
17. Individual Characteristics – characteristics of each student, which include but are not limited to: ability (cognitive, social/emotional and physical); ethnicity; family structure; gender identity and expression; language; national origin; nationality; race; religion; sexual orientation; and socio-economic status. (COMAR 13A.01.06)

1. Marginalized Groups – Groups and communities that experience discrimination and exclusion (social, political, and economic) because of unequal power relationships across economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions. (National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health 2020) Citations – Policies & Regulations
2. MULTICULTURALISM
3. INSTRUCTIONAL RESOURCES AND MATERIALS USE
4. CURRICULUM AND COURSES OF STUDY
5. STAFF DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
6. PROFESSIONAL STAFF RECRUITING, VACANCIES & HIRING
7. ASSURANCE OF COMPARABLE SERVICES: TITLE I
8. COMMUNICATIONS WITH PARENTS
9. INSTRUCTIONAL GOALS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES
10. ORGANIZATION OF INSTRUCTION
11. STUDENT WELLNESS
12. SCHOOL/COMMUNITY RELATIONS GOALS
13. RELATIONS WITH COMMUNITY AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS
14. COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT IN EDUCATION

WHO KNEW? All this time St. Mary’s School Board Member Mary Washington has been serving in a systemically racist school system and never said a word about it!

Mary was the first chairman of the first elected board of education in 1996 and has served as a member countinously since then..

Collectively, Mary has served on boards responsible for: building two new schools, hiring three public school superintendents, approving 18 public school budgets, refurbishing and expanding 10 existing schools, and graduating thousands of college-ready students.

Mary has gained valuable education experience from being:  a  Board of Education member for 19 years, school and church volunteer,  former Sunday School Director,  spouse of a retired military officer and government contractor for 38 years, and a world traveler.

Mary volunteered in the St. Mary County Public School System for eight years before her election to the Board of Education and continues to do so.  For three years, Mary was a substitute teacher at Green Holly Elementary School for grades pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, special education, LAP, resource specialist, and media center.

While living in Baumholder, Germany for four years, Mary worked as an administrative assistant to the principal of a Department of Defense School.  That experience increased her knowledge of the day-to-day operations of public schools.

Charges that St. Mary’s County is racist made by St. Mary’s College Admissions Counselor Roderick Lewis show his lack of knowledge of the history of St. Mary’s County. Parents of St. Mary’s College of Maryland prospective students might want to question the value of advice from Lewis.

I serve as the admission counselor responsible for the recruitment of students in Charles County, Prince George’s County (Maryland), Baltimore County, and Baltimore City. I also serve as the counselor for Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

History Lesson for Roderick Lewis: First black elected Sheriff in Maryland was embraced by the overwhelmingly ‘racist’ white population of St. Mary’s County.

Roderick Lewis was born in 1995, a full seventeen years after Sheriff Joseph Lee Somerville Sr. was elected in the 1978 General Election by an overwhelming margin of 8,074 votes to 1,991 for Republican Raymond Hazel. In that election and all others up until 1994, winning the Democratic Primary was tantamount to an election in St. Mary’s County. Somerville was the first black deputy in St. Mary’s County hired by Sheriff Ben Burroughs in 1966. Sheriff George Sanger appointed Somerville to the rank of Lieutenant. Sanger’s suicide resulted in Maryland Governor Marvin Mandel appointing Somerville as Sheriff in 1977. In the Democratic primary in 1978, Sheriff Somerville bested former Maryland Trooper Murray Jackson, retired trooper Hank Underwood and Tennison’s Grocery owner Sterling Tennison. With his general election victory in 1978, Somerville became the first elected black Sheriff in Maryland. The approximate black population of St. Mary’s County in 1978 was less than twenty percent, proving that the assertion by Roderick Lewis, based on his discussions with people he claimed who have lived in the county all their lives, that St. Mary’s County school system is “systemically racist” is not based in reality or actual history.

Even Jews Won Elections in “Racist” St. Mary’s County

In the 1978 General Election, Sheriff Somerville won every election district in the county, while Jewish businessman Larry Millison won the election to his second term unopposed, and Jewish lawyer Neal Myerberg beat the incumbent States Attorney George Sparling in the primary election of the Democratic Party.  Myerberg’s supporters joined with Somerville in the General Election effort.

John Lancaster won two terms as County Commissioner running county-wide without a ‘special carved-out district for black voters’ in Lexington Park as advocated by leftist Brian Crosby.

In 1986 John Lancaster, a black former extension agent with the University of Maryland, won election to his first of two terms as county commissioner. His attempt to win a third term in 1994 ended in defeat in the Democratic Primary when he lost to white liberal Democrat Mary Ann Chasen who in turn lost the General Election to Republican Frances Eagan.

St. Mary’s is so racist that it has elected a black woman to the school board for six terms.

St. Mary’s County NAACP Public Comment to the St. Mary’s County Board of Education 12-16-20, Representative: Dr. Janice Walthour, Education Committee Chair

Good Morning Members of the Board and Dr. Smith: I am Janice Talbert Walthour, chair of the St. Mary’s County NAACP’s Education Committee.
These are trying times for us all. And we know that the priority is managing COVID and getting students back in school. On a daily basis, we see first-hand that equity is front and center in the pandemic in all facets of our community. However, we believe that equity in education is the driving force that should be used to dismantle racism and address the disparities that are negatively impacting the progress and self-actualization of all of our citizens. It can propel our students to become everything that one is capable of becoming.

I have come to speak to equity in education and to thank the Board, Dr. Smith, and staff for the opportunities to work collaboratively with the NAACP and the community through our participation in the equity policy development and implementation. In our county and across the nation we have heard diverse voices loudly and clearly calling for equity and social justice. NAACP branches across the nation have been called to action to move from protest to policy. Now more than ever it is crucial that we continue to work together with you as our elected representatives and policymakers to address problems and find solutions through policy input, development, and implementation.
We know that you are responsible for involving the community in the life of the school system. And in Board Policies the Section on Board Governance and Operations policy BDF, states that Citizens’ Advisory committees will be appointed by the Board on a standing or ad hoc basis when there is a definite function to be performed. Currently, we are meeting with Dr. Smith and staff and discussing standing up a Citizens Advisory Committee for Equity in Education. All in our meeting are very receptive to establishing this committee. We have discussed several options and are planning to continue our meetings.
After another positive and very collaborative meeting yesterday, Dr. Smith and Board members, I looked at policy BDF in Board Docs, and see that the process for this has been established under the title of Advisory Committees to the Board. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Therefore, we are requesting that the Board appoint a Citizens’ Advisory Committee for Equity in Education that would function in accordance with the requirements and accountability measures that pertain to Equity in Education policies and regulations at the local and state levels. Policy BDF spells out the make-up of advisory committees and all the pertinent information and structure needed for committee organization and governance. Mrs. Bailey and Board members please provide us with a response to this request and let us know how we can get on the Board’s agenda to discuss this formal request of the Board and to assist with input for committee development per policy BDF.

In addition, I am speaking in support of the recommendations made in an Open Letter from current and former students to Re-Educate St. Mary’s.

Roderick Lewis, speaking as an individual, and I are here to present a petition in support of the students who have given voice to their concerns about racism and a demand for change. There were numerous signatures on the letter and we have over 1200 signatures on this petition.
Perhaps many would-be candidates for an advisory committee.
We would like to know how you are planning to move forward with the student’s recommendations.
And are asking that ongoing communication be continued with these students and former students to involve them with providing solutions to the issues stated in their letter. Holding a series of meetings with Board representative (s), the Superintendent, and staff to include Donovan Weekley, Harita Iswara, and two to three students and former students involved in writing the open letter would be an avenue to accomplish this. In addition, members of the NAACP education committee would be willing to participate.
We anticipate that in these meetings a plan of action would be developed to address what the BOE and SMCPS are doing to address their concerns. In particular, they discuss, in their view, the lack of a sufficient equity lens in the teaching of history.
In essence, their letter demonstrates that they want to be included and provide input for curriculum and policy decision-making. My written public comments have more ideas for further discussion and consideration. Thank you very much for your time and attention to these matters, and we look forward to
your response.
Additional Comments:
Excerpts for the letter: Students state, “We are not taught and given the chance to discuss and question the true history of colonialism and imperialism, the violence carried out by white people against indigenous populations, cyclical enslavement, and many other issues that are brushed under the rug. Students should be given a chance to look at history’s mistakes, discuss them, question them, and figure out our relationships to them. The excuse has been made that teaching a more diverse and accurate history is not necessary because not enough students would be interested. We have never, in any other circumstance, used “student interest” to determine course requirements in public schools.”
Again, they want to be included and are ready and willing to provide input for curriculum and policy decision-making. Food for thought…for example, the existing Superintendent’s Leadership Advisory Committee could become a standing committee of the Board of Education and serve as the voice of students to advise the BOE in their work. They would be consulted on issues of policy before the Board. And the “Equity in Education” policy, regulations and their implementation could be a central and ongoing focus of this Committee.
Janice T. Walthour
20493 Partin’s Lane
Lexington Park, MD 20653
301—862-2296

NAACP calls for St. Mary’s to hire black educators

School board member Mary M. Washington said there are many challenges in hiring a high number of minority teachers.

“We’re trying to do a better job with the limited resources we have,” Washington said. “It’s not from the lack of trying.”

Recruiting and retaining qualified minority educators are difficult because school systems fight over the minority teaching graduates from Maryland colleges each year, St. Mary’s educators said. For instance, Morgan State University, which is known as a historically black university, is expected to graduate only about two dozen black students interested in teaching this academic year. MORE

It’s Not Enough To Fight Critical Race Theory In Schools. We Must Replace It With Excellence

Retired educators attempting to slander the system that has evolved into one of the best in Maryland demonstrate strident ignorance

EDITORIAL OPINION:

In regards to the silly allegations that the St. Mary’s School system is any way at all “racist”: at one time, the system was indeed racist and operated separate and unequal systems of education, one for white students and one for blacks. Following court orders, the public schools made serious efforts to provide an equal opportunity for students, staff, and teachers. Janice Walthour and her sister Elfreda Mathis are living proof of that progress as both retired from high-salaried administrative positions with the public schools. Many leaders of the NAACP, such as Ted Newkirk, were responsible for the progress that moved the public schools forward, as were many white educators and political leaders. For Walthour and Roderick Lewis to present to the public that St. Mary’s Public Schools are systemically racist is pure baloney. Believing that is true is libelous to the work and accomplishments of school board members, various county commissioners, and educators over the years. Walthour’s efforts appear to be an effort to appear to be relevant and to take advantage of a chance to divide and sow discontent.

Washington Post is condemned for video urging Americans to set up ‘white accountability groups’ and force themselves into ‘a period of deep shame’ over their skin color

• The video is the latest in a series called The New Normal hosted by Nicole Ellis
• It aired on Friday, and suggests white people segregate themselves into groups to discuss how white people have harmed people of color over history
• One expert on the episode, Resmaa Manakem, suggests people take part in these groups for years before they can confront people of color
• Trauma therapist Ilyse Kennedy said she took part in one such group and said it was important for white people to feel ‘a period of deep shame’
• The episode faced backlash, with one saying the suggestions were akin to a ‘pseudoreligious movement’ and constituted ‘neoracism’