ROPE Report

In a post made to the Edmond Public Schools website, Superintendent Dr. Grunewald addressed what she characterized as “negative and sometimes false comments” made by parents at the 11.1.21 Board Meeting.  On the playground we used to say, “It takes one to know one.”  Dr. Grunewald’s response to parents in this missive is either deliberately false, or – worse – uninformed by reality.  Here’s how we know.

I have known Molly Jenkins – like every other ROPE Board Member – for 8-10 years.  She’s tough and smart and like the rest of us, VERY concerned about what is happening to our children in public education.

In the Spring of 2021, she was very troubled by an assignment that was brought to the attention of the EPS Board at a regular Board meeting by a parent who was alerted to the assignment by their child who was completing work online due to COVID.

The class was reading The Absolutely True Diary of A Part Time Indian, a book about a native American boy who lives on a reservation, has troubles in school, reads books and draws cartoons. 

Unfortunately, what might be a really interesting book, centers a great deal on the differences between Native Americans and white people from his perspective.  Another book in a long litany of books for young adults that introduce race (or sexuality) as a way of indoctrinating readers into certain worldviews.

In May, after the passage of HB1775 preventing the teaching of Critical Race Theory ideals, Molly – still concerned about the “white vs indian” assignment she’d seen – drove to the EPS Administration building and asked for a meeting with Superintendent Grunewald.  

She wanted to speak with the Superintendent personally to make certain they were going to follow HB1775 after seeing what she felt to be a completely inappropriate narrative.
An appointment was made and on the day she returned for the meeting with Dr. Grunewald, she was interested to find 10-12 copies of a book sitting on a table in her office with the word ‘equity’ in the title.

“That looks like an interesting book,” she remarked to the Superintendent who then suggested she take a copy to read.

During the meeting, Molly shared her CRT concerns with Dr. Grunewald who assured her they were not teaching CRT tenets in Edmond Public Schools.  So, with little further to say after that ‘assurance’, Molly headed home to read the book she was given.

Once home, it took her just about four hours to read the book from cover to cover, she found it so unnerving.  On nearly every page she made notes to herself about what she was reading and how it directly connected to the ideals which derive from CRT – the ones specifically outlawed by HB1775.  

After reading the book, she immediately contacted EPS Administration to make a further appointment with Dr. Grunewald, which was granted.

At that meeting, she explained to the Superintendent what she had found in the book and that she found CRT tenets on nearly every page.

She asked Dr. Grunewald if she had read the book in its entirety and was told NO, BUT SHE HAD SCANNED IT.

Molly asked the Superintendent who she was giving the book to read – since there had been numerous copies on the table.  Dr. Grunewald would NOT give her a clear answer, saying only, “some people around here”.  She felt that the Superintendent was very dismissive with her – almost a “you do you we’ll do us” kind of attitude.

Now, let’s examine Dr. Grunewald’s statement from November 2.

Look at the first bullet point.  Now, look at this:

What Dr. Grunewald said was simply a talking point described by leftist educators to defend against the use of CRT in schools.  In literally means nothing.  It’s a deflection for parents who have done their homework and know better.

Bullet point 2 – no one has said it was a standard.  Another deflection.

Bullet point 3 – this point references the book we’ll discuss in the next frame – “Belonging Through A Culture of Dignity”.

Bullet point 4 – SEL=CRT.  Guest poster Emily Wright (EPS mom of 3) made that abundantly clear in her blog of this week.  You can find that here.  SEL is Social Emotional Learning, another education fad created by a bunch of leftist teachers in order to indoctrinate children.  If you don’t believe me, read this page.  Talk about mumbo-jumbo, word salad – not to mention that children’s EMOTIONS are strictly the territory of PARENTS, not schools.

In this portion of her response, Dr. Grunewald claims she’s read the book “Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity”.  Here’s what WalMart said about the book when I went searching for it.

“Once these fundamental human needs are understood, educators can gain clarity of the barriers to meaningful student relationships, especially across dimensions of difference such as race, class and culture…Through their work, the authors aim to equip educators with the tools necessary to deliver the promise of DEMOCRACY through schools by breaking the cycle of equity dysfunction once and for all.”

Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity: The Keys to Successful Equity Implementation Kindle Edition
by Floyd Cobb  (Author), John Krownapple (Author), Brenda CampbellJones (Foreword) 

FULL STOP.  There is so much wrong with those sentences it’s hard to breakdown in a blog, but let me do it by asking some questions: 

• How did public schools create students OF EVERY COLOR and sex smart enough to put a man on the moon without this tripe?
• Has anyone looked to see what the National Assessment of Academic Progress scores of Oklahoma students are in Math, Science and Reading?  (I have – they’re dismal and have been for a decade)  Have schools been teaching, or modifying behaviors?
• If you specifically hone in on race, class and culture do you make disparities clearer to children or less clear?
• Since when are schools a DEMOCRACY?
• Who says there is a “cycle of equity dysfunction” except for the people like Dr. Becky Bailey who stand to make a KILLING on all the stuff she sells to promote ‘dignity’ through SEL programming?  Is this about money or the welfare of kids?

Molly read the entire book.  Here are some of the most horrifying nuggets from the book:

Pg 42: “Schools routinely offer our students on the margins (e.g., impoverished and minoritized) inferior academic experience to students of affluence and cultural dominance. – Nor did it require educators to prioritize a sense of belonging for students racialized as Black (or otherwise) who were displaced and had to leave the safety and belonging of home schools and move into often unwelcoming school cultures that were exclusively White.  Thus a “belonging gap” emerged within racially integrated schools. (Hilariously, ‘bussing’ was created by liberals believing that black students couldn’t possibly get a good education in black schools – a racist notion in and of itself – so they moved them from their homes into white areas to get equal access to education excellence.  Yet another one of the ‘liberals screw it up and screw it up worse trying to fix their original screw up’ because they simply have to find fault with something all the time.)

Pg 62:  The whole page is filled with racist nonsense, but here are a few examples:  “To redress inequity and create a socially just system of education, ensuring access is not enough For educational equity, access and belonging are both vital”.  “Historically marginalized identity groups are most vulnerable to the stereotype threat and belonging uncertainty when aspiring to achieve in the dominant culture.”

pg 76:  “Perhaps the concept of race (being White, more specifically) is the most prominent example of social exclusion and belonging in US history.”

pg 77:  “Whiteness, as Joe Feagin (2013) argues, is more definitely characterized as the absolute right to exclude and, ultimately the entitlement to determine who belongs.”  “Entitlement has determined, among other things, where groups of people can live or work, whether or not they have basic rights (e.g., voting, health care), and what type of social activities and relationships they can have with whom (e.g. marriage).  In 2018 and 2019, the hashtag #LivingWhileBlack went viral on social media, documenting racial exclusivity  Droves of videos show White Americans calling the police on everyday people – Black, Latinx, Muslim, Americans – going about their lives (without markers of Whiteness in places where they are perceived not to belong: Starbucks, swimming pools, golf courses, fitness centers, sidewalks, parks, picnic tables, libraries, college campus tours, and more.  To this day, the markers of race often determine the extent to which people feel they belong in any given environment.”

Look up HB1775 and then compare that to these book excerpts.  Everything here DEFIES letters a, b, f, g and h of that bill, causing the book – and Dr. Grunewald by pushing it – to violate HB1775.

Now let’s look at her next statement:

Once again, we find that Grunewald has little to say but echoing the talking points of others in the public education cabal.

Apparently, she just surfed the internet and came up with the definition the rest of the sheep use.

And now, how about the concept that we must ‘heal the child before we can educate the child’?  That’s a concept that’s been pushed since John Dewey wanted to take control of society by getting between parent and child since parent wouldn’t necessarily bring the child up to be a democratic socialist the way he envisioned children should be brought up.  (Read more about Dewey in “John Dewey & the Decline of American Education: How The Patron Saint of Schools Has Corrupted Teaching & Learning” – It was VERY enlightening about why public education is the way it is.)

Now look at her last bullet point.

So they’ve increased the number of counselors.  Why?  Because the state Department of Education gave schools money to hire counselors – $35 million dollars in ESSR funds to be exact – because, well, COVID.  Schools pay half – the state pays half – everyone’s happy.  Except that the “School Counselor Corps” as they are being called, apparently come mainly from the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) – an organization that says:

School counselors work toward cultural competence and engage in anti-racist actions by advocating to change racist policies, procedures, practices, guidelines and laws contributing to inequities in students’ academic, career and social/emotional development

American School Counselors Association

You can see more about the ASCA here.  The ASCA also pushes SEL, driving more CRT tenets into children through counseling and data-collection surveys (from the company owned by the husband of the daughter of Merrick Garland, the federal Attorney General who told the FBI to investigate parents at school board meetings – oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.)

So, yet again, Superintendent Grunewald seems to literally be falsifying information or have no idea what she’s reading, what she’s saying or what goes on in her own schools.

Clearly EPS is saturated with SEL and clearly, SEL is the pipeline for CRT pushed by counseling services and Dr. Grunewald herself through “Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity”.

In closing, Dr. Grunewald is doing little more than many Superintendents do anymore when confronted by parents who actually care – they are either outright lying, or are too soaked in their own indoctrination to understand what they’re doing to our kids.

This is another excellent reason why SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS ARE PARAMOUNT.  School boards can literally get rid of these kinds of Superintendents and hire ones that actually care about kids, not merely pushing what the education cabal wants pushed on kids.

GET INVOLVED IN SCHOOL BOARDS AND SCHOOL BOARD RACES IN YOUR DISTRICT TODAY!