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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem Will Sign Executive Order Banning Critical Race Theory in State’s K-12 Schools

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem Will Sign Executive Order Banning Critical Race Theory in State’s K-12 Schools

“Critical Race Theory has no place in our South Dakota public education.”

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said she will sign an executive order banning Critical Race Theory in the state’s K-12 schools after the legislature killed the bill.

The legislature passed the bill that bans Critical Race Theory in universities.

“I brought two bills this legislative season that banned Critical Race Theory from being taught in our classrooms, in our K-12 schools and another one that banned it in our universities,” said Noem. “The legislature supported and passed it and I signed into law the university one. So now, in South Dakota going forward, Critical Race Theory cannot be taught in our universities. They killed the K-12 one. So tomorrow I will be signing an executive order to make sure that Critical Race Theory is not taught to our kids, in our public schools, too.”

In March, Noem signed HB 1012 into law banning Critical Race Theory in universities and colleges under the South Dakota Board of Education.

However, the bill only applies “to orientation and training.” The law does not stop teachers “from teaching such concepts in academic instruction, answering questions about divisive concepts in orientation and training, nor does it violate the First Amendment or academic freedom and intellectual diversity.”

The state Senate defeated the K-12 portion of the bill with criticism coming from Republicans and Democrats:

“No one is more opposed to critical race theory [than me],” said Sen. Jim Bolin, R-Canton. “[But] we should not be putting requirements both for Board of Regents, the Board of Technical Education and our K-12 system [into the same bill].”

Ultimately, the amendment failed on a close 18-15 vote. It was a different story for the standalone bill, however.

Democrats and a few moderate Republicans did attempt to dissuade colleagues from adopting a measure they painted as extreme. Sen. Reynold Nesiba, D-Sioux Falls, characterized the measure as akin to what “they do in Russia.”

“So a professor has free speech in his or her classroom,” said Nesiba, noting the measure excludes “content or conduct” of a classroom from its strictures. “But if you walk across campus and happen to be doing an orientation, you lose that free speech?”

Sen. David Wheeler, R-Huron, also cautioned against codifying a list of “divisive concepts” in state law, as a potential abuse of power.

“It’s a bad power that we should not be in the habit of using,” Wheeler warned.

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Comments

If she wants to make a real long term difference her state legislature is waiting.

henrybowman | April 5, 2022 at 4:10 pm

Noem seems to have this habit of leading from the rear… and even then occasionally misreading the flow of traffic.

    Danny in reply to henrybowman. | April 5, 2022 at 4:14 pm

    She read it correctly here, CRT and other social issues are the important issues of our time.

      henrybowman in reply to Danny. | April 5, 2022 at 7:21 pm

      After fumbling the ball badly with the men-in-women’s-sports issue last year.

        Danny in reply to henrybowman. | April 5, 2022 at 10:19 pm

        I agree, but in this case she finally learned to read. We should hope she remains literate at this because a governor is a very powerful and important person.

    JohnSmith100 in reply to henrybowman. | April 5, 2022 at 4:44 pm

    Overall, South Dokata has many tings going for it. I am considering retiring to South Dokata and setting my disabled, now adult chid there.

CRT is straight up Marxism. Read Race Marxism by James Lindsay, he goes through where it came from and their no end in sight but a Race dictatorship

She wants to be put on the ticket so bad

She’s a RINO

PrincetonAl | April 5, 2022 at 5:45 pm

Compare this to the Florida bill, which actually tries to get CRT out of the classroom.

This only gets DEI efforts out of orientation and training. Which most teachers and faculty embrace and will pick up anyway, so this benefits the 3% of teachers and faculty who are conservative.

As always, Noem is a pale imitation of DeSantis, a day late and a dollar short, passing weak bills that check the box while defending “academic freedom” … the freedom to force every teacher to indoctrinate kids in racist Marxist teachings.

RINOs keep hoping these battles will go away and things will return to “normal”.

They won’t. Fight or retire.

E Howard Hunt | April 5, 2022 at 6:26 pm

Luck Palin she has a tame cuckold for a hubby.

She’s squarely in the GOPe column and will not get my vote in the 2024 primary. Keep her in SD if you like her.

    Jacque in reply to r2468. | April 7, 2022 at 11:49 pm

    Agreed. She’s proven she isn’t worth a vote on the national level. Keep her at the state level where her stupidity is limited to SD. Poor SD, though. I suppose they can do much worse.

Sure, all of your criticisms are valid but she’s still the only Governor I’ve ever wanted to kiss.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair | April 6, 2022 at 2:16 am

When it comes down to it, the existence of public school, itself, is the key to the problem. Too much government in the wrong place. It is not a popular opinion, but public school really needs to be done away with. It is far more harmful to society than helpful, and even if one fixes it, somewhat, now … it will always devolve back into this same destructive state, because it is too much government involvement and control (total control) in the wrong place.

This seems like too much work. Why not just allow taxpayers to use their money to send their kids to their school of choice?