Radical “Liberated Ethnic Studies” Team Leader/Teachers Union Member Wins CA School Board Seat
In California’s Oak Grove School District (in San Jose), Taunya Jaco won election. Expect to see many more candidates who are wholly in the tank for critical race theory and ethnic studies, and who are members of the educational bureaucracy, to run for school board positions.
Over the last year and a half, parents received a lot of publicity for removing radical school board members in California and Virginia (here and here). In Virginia, parental opposition to school policies discriminating against Asian students, pushing Critical Race Theory (CRT), and transgender “rights” putting (cis-)girls at risk, was credited with bringing underdog candidate Glenn Youngkin to victory in last year’s gubernatorial race.
Opponents of progressive educational policies should not rest on their laurels. Just as they have fought back against radicalization of education, so too radicals promoting that education are fighting to keep control and further radicalize education policies.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year: seeing #EducationChampions who won their elections get sworn in!
The educator-trustee energy is strong tonight in Oak Grove, with newly elected @SCCOE Trustee @votemaimona swearing in @DrJacoSays to her seat on the @OakGroveSD board. pic.twitter.com/1rMQVVTH3a
— Elizabeth Barcelos (@CTAElizabeth) December 16, 2022
In California’s Oak Grove School District (in San Jose), Taunya Jaco won election to the Board of Trustees and was sworn in as a new board member. Although Jaco claimed to run on a non-partisan basis, she is deeply embedded in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ideology, as well as “Liberated” Ethnic Studies. Her Oak Grove board member biography includes this:
Dr. Jaco is a defender of equity, inclusion, and justice in education. She conducted an exploratory documentary film study entitled Fidelity At The Forefront: The Fight For Ethnic Studies. The documentary illuminates the plight of Ethnic Studies practitioners and scholars as the state of California sought to develop the K-12 Ethnic Studies model curriculum, which is the first of its kind in the nation.
Jaco is in fact a leadership team member of Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium (LESMCC). Specifically, she is the lead for Chapter Two: Black Studies. She is also a former teacher, has held a variety of offices with the California Teachers Association (CTA) including as a member of its Racial Equity Affairs Committee, is a member of the National Education Association (NEA) Board of Directors, Secretary for the NEA Black Caucus, and chairs the CTA State Council’s Civil Rights in Education Committee. Jaco also served on a CTA racial justice task force dedicated to showing teachers that Black Lives Matter at school.
Jaco is either pursuing or has completed an education doctorate at San Jose State University on the implementation of Ethnic Studies in California K-12 schools and its impact on teacher preparation programs. (The LESMCC website lists her as still “pursuing” a doctorate, but a description from a Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate event from January 2022 identifies her as having completed an Ed.D., and her Twitter handle is @DrJacoSays.) According to CTA, Jaco is “using Critical Race Theory as the basis to complete her doctoral degree in Education Leadership.” Her bio sketch from the CPED event included this:
While using Critical Race Theory as the basis to complete her doctoral degree in Education Leadership at San Jose State University, Dr. Jaco conducted an exploratory documentary film study entitled Fidelity At The Forefront: The Fight For Ethnic Studies. The documentary illuminates the plight of Ethnic Studies practitioners and scholars as the state of California sought to develop a K-12 Ethnic Studies model curriculum, which is the first of its kind in the nation.
Ethnic Studies as a field is deeply intertwined with both CRT and anti-Semitism (typically posing as anti-Zionism, but also clearly anti-Jewish).
As LIF has reported, LESMCC is the group behind the 2019 model curriculum that California rejected for anti-Semitism. It is now marketing its version of ethnic studies privately to school districts, and has signed contracts to provide its “expertise” to Castro Valley, Napa Valley, and Hayward Unified School District.
LESMCC’s curricular focus on “Palestine” paints Israel as a horrid human-rights violator abusing Palestinian Arabs out of racism, “Islamophobia”, etc. LESMCC tries to counter charges of anti-Semitism proactively by redefining it. “Antisemitism is discrimination against, violence towards, or stereotypes of Jews for being Jewish,” LESMCI asserts. In other words, LESMCC claims, anti-Semitism is strictly a religious hatred. It has nothing to do with racism or any hatred against Jews based on race, ethnicity, or nationality.
Jaco’s platform included this: “Supporting students means supporting teachers, specialists & support professionals.” In other words, teachers know best what and how to teach. Parents should butt out. It’s the same mindset Terry McAuliffe blurted out during his debate with Glenn Youngkin, that probably cost McAuliffe reelection as Virginia’s governor;
Terry McAuliffe: "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." pic.twitter.com/7S15pTv1gY
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 28, 2021
The same mindset California’s Rep. Eric Swalwell recently aired in responding to South Carolina’s Sen. Tim Scott:
Please tell me what I’m missing here. What are we doing next? Putting patients in charge of their own surgeries? Clients in charge of their own trials? When did we stop trusting experts. This is so stupid. pic.twitter.com/VZRMZpp234
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) November 10, 2022
Expect to see many more candidates who are wholly in the tank for critical race theory and ethnic studies, and who are members of the educational bureaucracy, running for school board positions.
Last year’s victories should not blind parents of the need to keep fighting. They’ve won some battles, but the war has just begun.
UPDATE 12/22/22: The article originally referred to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin as Todd Youngkin. Our apologies for the mistake.
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Comments
A time of reckoning is coming in the future as enough solid citizens wake up to the evils going on around us.
Solid citizens are just that. It takes a different sort of citizen to end this ‘legal’ child abuse.
San Jose? Gateway to Silicon Valley?
Social Menckenism. “They deserve to get it good and hard.”
“Doctor.”
Huh? I’m confuzzled. That definition seems not only correct, but almost tautological. I don’t understand how you derive from it that antisemitism is about religion and not race, ethnicity, or nationality. Being Jewish has nothing to do with what a person believes; it is entirely about race/ethnicity/nationality. An atheist Jew, a Catholic Jew, a Buddhist Jew are all no less Jewish than the Chief Rabbis of Israel. John Cardinal O’Connor didn’t even know he was a Jew, but he was one nonetheless, and had someone who did know done something hateful to him because of that it would have been antisemitism.
Meanwhile someone who believes passionately in the Torah and all of its principles, but wasn’t born Jewish and hasn’t converted, isn’t Jewish.
It’s like being a US citizen; you become one by being born that way or by being naturalized, not by what you believe. A US citizen can believe in communism or nazism or radical Islam, and be dedicated to overthrowing the US constitution, but he’s still a citizen. A foreigner who has memorized the Declaration of Independence, the constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and the entire run of the Federalist, is still not a citizen.
Oh, and I also don’t agree that stereotypes of Jews are by definition antisemitic. Some are, but many are not. Certainly the positive and neutral ones aren’t, but even some negative ones may not be, if they’re valid.
The curriculum described is anti American and anti Semitic in nature
If your going to run Marxists Seminaries do it right and get Marxists School board members.
It won’t end well.
It won’t end nicely either.
This article entirely misses the point. What’s wrong is government schools. The entire system must be abolished.
Thanks for noticing! I keep pointing this out, but there is an irresistible attraction to the idea that we can prevail by taking control of America’s best example of totalitarian socialism.
One more time: Thank You, Lord, that I live in a “backward” Southern state.
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Even so, do not turn your back on your state board of education or your county board. Question your children as to what the teacher might be teaching. Teachers are like the rest of us, they like to be paid. My wife and I have read too many hand written personal essays of teachers who have been and are applying to grad schools for field advancement. How some of these marginally literate and questionably educated people actually made it to teaching is just incomprehensible.
How some of these marginally literate and questionably educated people actually made it to teaching is just incomprehensible.
____________________________________________________
because they could not make it in the privat sector
Those who can’t DO, teach.
(Then I recall something about teaching gym.)
I took the courses needed to get a teaching certification (post baccalaureate), and you wouldn’t believe how easy the courses were.
Small wonder that nearly every regular student graduates summa cum laude.
In my class, 99% of the students were Early Ed, and two were secondary hard science, a buddy of mine and me. He had to drop out for reasons unrelated to the curriculum.
it’s to be expected from a government school system in a sub literate society.
Okay, I think there is now sufficient evidence to conclude that any sort of “doctorate” degree in “education” constitutes a rebuttable presumption that the person holding that degree is a craven leftist motivated by 50 shades of hate towards anyone or any idea disfavored by socialists. “Dr.” Jaco is just the latest bit of evidence.
Just for the heck of it; will each person please raise their hand who is genuinely surprised that “Dr” Jaco is a full-on, leftist weenie?
I’m not seeing too many hands … !
You can get an Ed. D. degree from the bottom of a Crackerjack box.
There’s an inherent conflict of interest in having someone who is both labor and management at the same time. A supreme court justice can’t also be president. A police officer can’t serve on the citizen’s oversight board. A player can’t also be the umpire. Students don’t get to grade their own essays or assign their own homework.