School board to have work session and board meeting on its Critical Race Theory

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On April 6, the Anchorage School Board will have its first formal reading of the new anti-racism and instructional equity policies.

This is the Critical Race Theory approach the school board is seeking to adopt, although the proponents are not calling it that.

The board is planning to put in place an overarching policy that will spin off administrative policies supporting the teaching that white people are inherently racist and the current curriculum itself is racist.

“The Board rejects all forms of racism. The Board acknowledges that racism has historically existed in our educational systems and is often compounded by other forms of discrimination including those protective classes referenced in BP 0410, Nondiscrimination,” the policy reads.

It says the work involves, “identifying, challenging, and changing the values, structures, and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism, racial hatred, bias, and the oppression of marginalized groups,” and says the school district will work to end “the predictive value of race on students’ academic success and access to educational opportunities.”

In this approach, supported by the district’s own radical reading list, people are criticized for “thinking white,” and for teaching a curriculum from a Euro-centric perspective. Those promoting Critical Race Theory see the dominance of European literature, history, or math, reflects a curriculum that caters to white students.

As for overhauling the curriculum, “This is done on a cycle that we review, adopt, and we assess curriculum,” said Deena Bishop, the superintendent of schools.

“We’re going to look and the policies that the board passes and then we’ll take a step back and look [at how] we establish our administrative regulations. We’re going to see where are the places where we are meeting this policy that the board passes, and where we are not. And certainly if there are changes that need to be met, we would bring those to our curriculum team … There’s a formal process for curriculum to be able to be taught in school,” Bishop said.

The public would be included in the discussion, Bishop said.

According to the draft policy, the school board and superintendent will identify and redesign any racially inequitable policies and procedures that “limit academic opportunities.”

Instruction should encourage critical thinking on the history of racism in Alaska, America, and around the world and the current structural, explicit, and unconscious biases toward people of different races,” the policy reads, making it nearly certain that this is a promotion of Critical Race Theory.

Two town halls last week held on the topics were well well attended via teleconference on Zoom. The public weighed in on both sides of the aisle.

“As the parent of mixed race kids I find the use of positive racial discrimination and institutionalizing oppressor / victim narratives horrifying,” said one parent. “Instructional Equity Policy or as it is known politically, Critical Race Theory, is an extension of political Critical Theory. What is it doing in our classrooms?”

He continued: “Critical Theory aims to set up permanent group conflict and it is working. How do we know? Because there is more inter-group attacks and divisiveness now than there ever has been. How do we know it is authoritarian and anti-Democratic? Because good and decent people have become too afraid to speak out against it. Have you noticed that the people who bring us the new ‘tolerance and inclusion’ also, strangely, happen to be the same people bullying, intimidating and terrorizing people who don’t agree with them? This is done a number of ways. If not outright physically attacked, the new tolerance and inclusion crowd seek to have people removed from their jobs, online platforms and otherwise discredited and canceled in all aspects of civil life simply for the crime of disagreeing with them. It does not sound inclusive or tolerant.”

His comments were echoed by dozens of others who spoke.

But a few disagreed:

“I am in strong support of this policy. We absolutely have a need for this. Our district is rife with racism –and anti-semitism and anti-muslim sentiment. This is not OK and creates a very unsafe environment for many students,” commented a parent.

Read more at the school district’s web page.

28 COMMENTS

  1. When Alaska parents finally accept the fact our public education factories are child abuse—and find alternatives—the system will correct itself. Until then the unions will make your kid’s education their last priority and the education bureaucracy will dutifully strive for mediocrity.

    GED.com

  2. ASD wants to institute Critical Race Theory. Dena Bishop needs to be fired because she is white and therefore she is a racist and part of the problem. Any white teacher needs to have his or her salary reduced.

  3. Ms. Bishop needs to stop filling the school’s time with misc issues…
    and teach fourth graders to read…at last count 60% cannot…..

    Time to replace Bishop and the teachers who have failed Alaska children…….

    Last I heard this definition is not being applied to CRT:

    “The branch of a science or art consisting of its explanatory statements, accepted principles,
    and methods of analysis, as opposed to practice.”

    So let’s stop the time & money-wasting practice….and focus on education…..
    Imagine this if children could read and think critically…….They would discover the world
    on their own. They do not require brain-washing.

    However, we do know when Children cannot read!

  4. “Because good and decent people have become too afraid to speak out against it. Have you noticed that the people who bring us the new ‘tolerance and inclusion’ (DBA AS CRITICAL RACE THEORY) also, strangely, happen to be the same people bullying, intimidating and terrorizing people who don’t agree with them? ”
    Speak out, Anchorage. Call these people out. Our kids’ lives are on the line.

  5. When only 4 out of 10 kids can read here in Alaska by the time they get to middle school…let’s ignore that and make them concentrate on flesh color because that’s gonna solve ignorance! Could grown adults wrong children anymore (rhetorical question of course)?

  6. Can we all just please love our neighbors and get along? Using racism to combat racism is just plain stupid and divisive – this is just one more tool the left wil use to impose communist dictatorship on us.

  7. “Instruction should encourage critical thinking on the history of racism in Alaska, America, and around the world…”
    It will be interesting how this is handled (if at all). We bought Alaska after the 13th Amendment. But there was still slavery by Alaska Natives. It was a very traditional practice.

  8. MQ, if the school is so racist then people should certainly look closely at everyone in charge for at least the last couple of election cycles and run them out of town on a rail. If the world made sense.

  9. Democrats need chaos. I wouldn’t mind seeing their white hatred backfire on them IF only such local indigenous groups such as Sealaska Heritage Institute and AFN put more pressure on local school districts making these Woke white education employments remove white administrators, staff, and teachers sending them and their family’s to the unemployment lines promoting and replacing with SHI PITAAS Native graduates. That’ll teach the woke white administrators and educators a (heartbreaking) lesson about critical race theory.

  10. “I am in strong support of this policy. We absolutely have a need for this. Our district is rife with racism –and anti-semitism and anti-muslim sentiment. This is not OK and creates a very unsafe environment for many students,” commented a parent.

    did this person give even one example of any of these isms that the district is rife with?

  11. CRT is contrived, cooked-up political garbage which has been presented as academic sirloin steak for starved Lefties. CRT is abhorrently divisive and used to further propogandize our current culture of cancelation. The premise for CRT is without foundation, as is so much of late 20th and early 21st century politics. The result is a very bitter, angry, and unhappy population. CRT is destructive at it’s core, and should be denounced and backed-down by academics.

  12. Can you cite your references where Alaska Natives still had slavery? Or is that just another uneducated presumption?

  13. Home school your kids if you can.
    Or a good Christian school that teaches kids right from wrong

  14. JIMBOB: It took me three minutes to find this, so your request for references sounds like you’re the uneducated one here.
    “In planning for an exhibit, I consulted with a number of Tlingit and reported that a section of the exhibit would focus on slavery. One of the community members emphatically stated that we didn’t have slaves, we had “servants.”
    I’ve told my students that we are prone to romanticizing our culture and history, but to understand the reality and complexity of our culture, we need to assess both the positive and negative aspects of our culture. In this instance, the reality is that slavery was a common practice among the Tlingits and all the tribes of the Northwest Coast. Estimates suggest that one-third of the Tlingit population during the mid-1800s were slaves.
    We did not fully understand the full contribution of slaves to the development of our society until Leland Donald’s 1997 study of slavery in the Northwest Coast of North America. His meticulously researched study revealed that slaves were important for their labor and their value in trade. He also found that slavery played a major role in the cultural forms such as potlatches, art production and ritual activities.[1]
    The slavery system in the United States, including the indigenous systems, legally ended with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which abolished slavery in 1865. However, it persisted among the Tlingit until the early 1900s.
    The Tlingit challenged the constitutional amendment in In re Sah Quah[2] arguing in court that as an aboriginal group, they retained internal governing authority exclusive of the laws of the United States. Because slave holding was permitted under Tlingit custom, and because they retained independent sovereignty, the Tlingits contended that federal laws prohibiting slavery did not apply to them.[3]
    Sah Quah was a Haida who reported that the Flathead Indians abducted him as a child after his parents, who were in Washington at the time, were killed. The Flatheads made him a slave and then sold him to the Stikines who in turn sold him to the Chilkats. They in turn sold him to the Yakutats who then sold him to Nah-ki-klan, who was a resident of Sitka. Annahootz, a Sitka clan leader presumably of the Kaagwaantaan clan, testified that a male slave was worth fifty to sixty Hudson Bay blankets while women were worth about half as much. Annahootz reported that they had captured slaves through raids.[4]
    The Alaska Federal District Court rejected the sovereign authority of Tlingit Indians to maintain the practice of slavery and held that the Tlingits, as residents of the United States, were subject to the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
    Rosita Worl

  15. I am happy to say I was born to a good family with loving parents. We laughed at all colors and ourselves. We have strong relationships with any one with good values and work ethics. We help others when they are down and it doesn’t matter the color or background. no one is a victim unless they allow themselves to be one. Humanity has many opinions but truth is we are all flawed and need to accept each other. Stop pushing your ideals on otherss and just accept the truth.

  16. Only the ignorant, or racist fools and communists, support this theory to be taught. Stand against this now Alaska or become like the other communist states in this country; California, Oregon, Washington, New York.) We need our governor to sign an executive order banning this from being injecting into our education system in the state of Alaska. So if Anchorage wants to be foolish, and begin teaching their children to be race baiting victims and communists, then Alaskans need to pressure the governor to put a stop to it. If not then loose Alaska to communism. What you tolerate you authorize. Remember that!

  17. I’ve been seeing and hearing a lot of ads recently asking me to vote for so-and-so, who has X many years on the school board.

    I will be voting AGAINST every person who admits their membership on the School Board. Because not one of them has spoken up against this heinous theory.

    Except Dave Donley. He stands alone as the voice of reason on the Board. The rest of them need to be fired.

  18. Might be best to let this abomination collapse under its own corruption…
    .
    Eaglexit, home-schooling, and a 1980’s style exodus should facilitate collapse.
    .
    Like a termite-ridden building, Anchorage’s education industry has to be removed and replaced.
    .
    Only then can parents install an organization whose sole purpose is producing classically educated, literate, employable, God fearing, patriotic Americans

  19. Marxism 101 is CRT! They want to brainwash your children and divide them into classes which is not inclusive and in fact is racist teaching! The Nazis did this to Jews and the Communists did the same thing in the old Soviet Union. History repeats itself! Alaska, you must stand up for your children or they will be turned into the lefts zombies to do their bidding. This is meant to turn student against student, children against their parents. They want to divide you and capture your kids mind! This is red flag full alert stuff, you must protect the future generation from these monsters who will in fact contaminate your Child’s mind! They will exclude parents from their child’s education. Either stop them from doing this or remove your kids from the government brainwashing system now! There are great homeschooling alternatives that your child will actually learn something useful. Ring the Governor’s phone off the hook! Tell him to ban CRT from Alaska’s schools like Ron Desantis did in Florida. If Dunleavy won’t stand up for Alaskan’s then he needs to go.

  20. Dr. Dan:
    .
    Why do you think CRT is so popular on college campuses?
    .

    {answer: b/c academicians, especially in the social sciences, are bored out of their minds and they need a new play toy in which to generate $$$, tenure, books, lectures, and shape more unhappiness into society. Students blindly follow them. These professors are non-productive people who have worthless degrees and zero meaning in their lives. Most of my social science professors ended up as alcoholics, in deep therapy, on drugs, or committed suicide}.
    .
    ps. miserable people tend to want to pass their misery on to others.

  21. So teachers are racist and have been teaching kids to be racists. “The Board acknowledges that racism has historically existed in our educational systems” Shut down the schools.

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