Actual Joy vs Serena Joy...

...Part II

ICYMI, I provided an update about the Peoria (PUSD) meeting that took place on September 12, 2024, and it was…well, it was Peoria! Have y’all been paying attention? It’s messy!

And it looks like I’m not the only one paying attention to the Dumpster fire that is Peoria (PUSD). Almost immediately after the meeting last Thursday evening, a local Peoria Facebook page lit up from the shit up with Peoria citizens aghast that sitting PUBLIC SCHOOL BOARD members rejected…*checks notes*...their own grant money.

So let’s get back into this mess, why don’t we? The meeting started off with board reports where Board Member Serena Joy Waterford Heather Rooks spoke about the September 11th “walk of honor” and praised first responders. I wonder if she praises the first responders that defended our Capitol on January 6, 2021? 

Probably not, but these people are walking contradictions. They accuse everyone on the planet of being “groomers” and “pedophiles” while they support an adjudicated rapist for president. They claim that people are sexualizing children, but from what I can tell, they’re the ones who are singularly focused on children’s genitals. 

There were a LOT of Commanders’ Wives and Aunts in the audience at this meeting. Some were there to attack an employee of the district. Again. The last time they attacked an employee, it ended up in a lawsuit against the district, so this time, they were more careful about mentioning the staffer by name. 

Of course, the big vote was about the Mental Health Professionals Demonstration (MHPD) Grant. As I mentioned in part one of this Substack, it failed to pass in a 2-2 vote. If you recall, former Board Member Bill Sorensen resigned a few months back, so when there is a tie vote, it doesn’t pass. You may remember he stepped down right after blocking Board Member Melissa Ewing from being in a leadership role. Thanks Bill.

The usual suspects were all there, and of course, the folks who are big mad about politicking on school property were all there wearing their political campaign shirts for the world’s worst school board candidates.

When I started going to these meetings over a year ago, there was a large group of teachers who consistently showed up. Nowadays, there are only a few teachers who come, and I don’t blame them. Hearing a bunch of Serena Joys and evil Aunties, meeting after meeting, disparaging you and your profession is taxing. 

Educators are some of the hardest working people on the planet, so sitting through an hours-long meeting after a grueling workday, where all people do is insult you isn’t fun. I understand why they’ve stopped attending. 

So yeah, the puritanical pAtRiOts were all there to speak against an employee of the district who is creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for marginalized and vulnerable students in her school and to speak against the MHPD grant.

The most infuriating thing about this is that earlier this month, a student shot up his school in Georgia, and the MAGA crowd was quick to cite a lack of mental health supports (but not gun regulation, of course), and submitted the usual “thoughts and prayers” for the victims.

With all due respect, they can take their thoughts and prayers and stick them where the sun don’t shine. 

Our children are experiencing unprecedented levels of anxiety and depression, and public schools have always done their very best to meet their needs with very tight budgets. Public schools often partner with outside providers and government agencies to provide wraparound services they are unable to provide.

When I was on the school board in a small K-8 district in Central Phoenix, we frequently partnered with organizations like Jewish Family Services and TERROS to provide mental healthcare. However, many Christian nationalists believe that anxiety and depression are created by demons, so I guess they support exorcism over mental health professionals? 

Not to brag or anything, but during my tenure on that CenPho school board, we approved a supper program to feed students dealing with food insecurity, we opened a bilingual preschool for families living far below the poverty line, and we opened a family resource center for families in the district. When school boards work collaboratively with each other, the administrative team, and their communities, real magic can happen. 

The day before this meeting, a panel of “experts,” that included Board Member Rooks, provided a training for parents to essentially flood their local school district with public records requests. Remember, Candidate Rooks cost PUSD about $300,000 even before she was elected.

This is all on purpose. Their entire goal since Brown v. Board of Education has been to defund and destroy public education. 

At this point, I could do a play-by-play on the public comments, but I won’t. Partly because of the technical difficulties and the lack of a PUSD YouTube video, but also partly because - and I say this with all due respect - eff giving these people the attention they so desperately crave. Instead, I’ll focus on the folks at the dais. 

I’ll start with the least informed, most emotional member of the board, Heather Rooks. For some reason, she started off her comments by talking about Deer Valley (DVUSD), so I wondered if she remembered what district she is supposed to be serving. She complained about low test scores, and said that it’s like, SUPER EASY to find mental healthcare for children, even though there is a massive shortage of mental healthcare providers for young people in this country. Her suggestion? Just go to a community fair to get mental healthcare. Like, duh. So easy. 

I needed to put on sunglasses at this point to shield my eyes from the White Privilege coming from the dais. 

Board Member Melissa Ewing followed up by referencing the Arizona School Board Association’s (ASBA) recent Law Conference. She brought up the session she attended about the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), and how school culture is vital to a student’s success. She also reminded everyone that in order to receive this very competitive grant, they had to jump through several many hoops. Remember, this grant only went to 28 districts in the entire country. 

Board Member Rooks spoke about a social worker who took a child off of school property without permission, and while we can all agree that shouldn’t happen, it was an isolated incident with one bad actor. This educator voluntarily relinquished her teaching certificate, so case closed.

BUT! Just like the tRaNs pAnIc story in Loundoun County, VA, they need these isolated incidents to keep their uninformed base frothing at the mouth. Kinda like how one picture of a man carrying a goose transpired to bomb threats at schools and hospitals in Ohio.

President Proudfit was next to comment and complained of “stop-gap measures” saying they need to come to an end. She said that parents and teachers need stability, and because this is a grant it wasn’t stable in her opinion. 

Board Member Ewing asked if perhaps if staff had more time, we could work towards more permanent solutions. President Proudfit asserted that PUSD can’t continue with band-aid solutions, and all I could think is when is more time and more money a bad thing? 

Board Member Rooks must have been feeling left out because she needed everyone to know that she doesn’t like the fact that a requirement of the grant is to try to match the social workers and interns with the racial and ethnic backgrounds of the students they work with. She doesn’t like that despite the fact that nearly every study shows that outcomes improve for students when they work with educators who share their cultural background. It seems she doesn’t like for facts to get in the way of her opinions. 

At this point, Dr. KC Somers, the brand-new superintendent, spoke up. He reminded everyone that this ask is to continue what’s been started with absolutely no increase. This is a no-cost extension. He said this is about the three employees, their interns, and thousands of caseloads of children in the district. He reminded board members that this is about the kids first, and asked if they’d ever heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

This was one of the first things I learned in my education classes, because if children do not have their most basic needs met, they struggle to focus on their academics. This is why we approved all the wraparound services and programming that we did while I was on the board. 

School boards hire their superintendents, but part of their responsibility as board members is to work with them. They don’t need to blindly rubber stamp everything, but they sure as heck shouldn’t be tying his hands and making his job more difficult. 

Board Member Rooks disagreed with Dr. Somers (you know, the guy with over three decades of experience in public education), and she said it’s not PUSD’s job to provide psychotherapy. 

Dr. Somers very quickly corrected her nonsense and said that this support will be sorely missed. He implored the board to approve this no-cost funding extension not only for the students, but for the people who are providing those services. 

As you already know, Secular Fam, the two Serena Joys at the dais voted no, and the funding will be gone on 9.30.2024 - less than two weeks. Three instructors and 1800 caseloads of students *poof* just gone. According to a local news outlet, the interns will be re-partnered with other mental healthcare professionals.

The usual attendees blathered on with their hateful bigotry and sang all their greatest hits, but who cares? This one got to me, Secular Fam, because I have lost students to suicide. I’ve helped kids who were not safe in their homes, and who didn’t even have homes. When children reported these things to me, I could help them some, but when I’ve had students in crisis, those social workers and counselors are invaluable.

They’re an integral part of a child’s team, and for PUSD to just scrap this funding because “it was a stop-gap measure” is so irresponsible and privileged. The employees, families, and students of PUSD deserve so much better than these deeply unserious, entitled women.

Hopefully the voters in PUSD vote for sane, pro-public education candidates. They rejected $275,000 of their own money with this vote.

You may remember that even before she got elected, Heather Rooks cost the district $300,000 in public records requests. She’s being sued by the nonbinary teacher I mentioned earlier because she targeted them by name, and subsequently, there were attacks at their home and someone vandalized their vehicle. Board Member Rooks is also suing the district because she doesn’t know how to read silently, and who knows how much that will cost the PUSD? 

As of right now, Board Member Rooks alone has cost the district nearly a half a million dollars. And with this vote, President Proudfit is costing them over a quarter of a million dollars. How much more will the taxpayers of Peoria have to pay because of their short-sighted, privileged decisions? 

Remember when conservatives used to be fiscally conservative? 

That no longer seems to be the case. I mentioned earlier the Arizona Women of Action “expert panel” titled “PUSD Counselors Transing Kids” and how they basically facilitated an entire “training” on how to overwhelm your district with public records requests. Board Member Rooks was on the panel, along with DVUSD candidate, Tiffany Hawkins, and Higley Unified School District (HUSD) Board Vice President, Anna Van Hoek. 

Interestingly, someone just sent me an article about how an AP English teacher in HUSD is under attack by a parent who is calling her a “groomer” and “indoctrinator,” because of course they did. Thankfully, the community showed up to stand up for her, but I noticed that it appears that HUSD now has an attorney at all their board meetings. The same is true in Scottsdale (SUSD).

Let’s be “conservative” here and assume they’re getting paid $250/hour. Many of SUSD’s meetings go on for hours. These attorneys are sitting in these meetings to keep these deeply unserious board members from doing any more damage. 

When I worked with a similar board member years back, out district’s attorneys’ fees went up 250%. 

We are less than 50 days out from Election Day, 2024, Secular Fam. Three PUSD staffers are out of a job, the district is scrambling to meet the needs of 1800 students under their care. Board members seem hell-bent (and they call ME the Satanist) on bankrupting their district, and community members are bullying educators because of pArEnTaL RiGhTs. 

Do me a favor this week: email your local school board. Did they do something awesome? Let them know! Did they do something short-sighted and dangerous (see above)? Let them know! I think a lot of these folks live in a vacuum of extremism, and maybe they need to be reminded they serve ALL their constituents, and not just the ones who share their radical ideologies. 

You understand the assignment, Secular Fam! And as always, like, subscribe, and share this. Become a member of Secular AZ or upgrade to a paid subscription today!