My Response to Partisan School Board Races
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I guess one of the benefits of partisan school board races is that right-wing candidates can take their masks off. I just read Jada Langford-Fleming’s email announcement that she will be running for re-election. Her hook is that she is running on the “conservative principles” that have made the Lee County School District what it is today. Well, bless us and save us.
As one of the victims of those conservative principles, here’s what I read in her announcement. If you’re not a conservative, you have no voice in how your child is educated in Lee County Florida. Mrs. Langford-Fleming is making no concessions to the understood principle that she is supposed to represent all parents, students, and staff of Lee County Schools. Instead, she is pandering to the right-wing base and everything that they represent.
Let’s be clear about these conservative principles that she claims to be under attack by “liberal Democrats” who are supposedly targeting her race. The most pressing consequence of Langford-Fleming’s conservatism is the teacher shortage. Teachers are voting on those conservative principles with their feet, either leaving the profession as I did, or bringing their professionalism and expertise elsewhere. The District claims to have this under control, but that means consolidating classes and cancelling sections to reduce the number of teaching positions that need to be filled. Lee County has among the highest class-size ratios in the state. A disconcerting number of these large classes are being taught by out-of-field teachers and long-term subs.
The teachers who remain are demoralized. Many are scared for their jobs because, contrary to Langford-Fleming’s emphasis on Parents as partners, teachers know that parents have the power to ruin their careers. Parents in Lee County aren’t partners. If they happen to share Langford-Fleming’s political agenda, they are bosses. Consequently, many teachers are watering down their lessons to avoid saying the wrong thing. They understand that when Langford-Fleming singles out “teachers who are committed to doing the job well,” she means conservative teachers.
Teachers are well aware of what Mrs. Langford-Fleming’s right-wing agenda entails. Book banning and censorship. Loss of academic freedom. Curtailment of professional creativity. The dehumanization of our LGBTQ+ students. The silencing of minority perspectives. Yet Langford-Fleming insists that this is keeping politics out of the classroom. No. It’s silencing diverse voices of which she does not approve. In other words, indoctrination.
A couple years ago one parent, who happened to be a right-wing activist, complained that I was allowing students to have access to books, and that I was respecting my transgendered students by using their chosen pronouns. In any enlightened culture, these accusations would have been met with…nothing. Of course a teacher is going to let students read books. Of course a teacher is going to be respectful of all his students. That goes without saying.
Not here in Jada Langford-Fleming’s school district based on conservative principles. I was put under district and state investigation, the latter of which is still ongoing. My books were removed from my classroom. In my letter of resignation I wrote, “The teacher that I am and have always aspired to be is incompatible with the current regressive and authoritarian atmosphere that now imbues Florida and Lee County Schools.” This regressivisim and authoritarianism imbues Jada Langford-Fleming’s so-called “conservative principles.”
For my part, I prefer the “chaos” of academic freedom for all teachers and students to the stultifying “order” promised by Langford-Fleming and her political fellowship. That’s how I’ll be voting.
Mr. A's Underground Classroom 