It was refreshing to read The Coronado News balanced piece about “watchdog” oversight of Coronado Public schools.
Your outlet is the “new [news] source” in town.
As a member of We the Parents Coronado, I thank you for allowing some additional background to provide clarity.
As your piece suggested, We the Parents Coronado does not claim to represent anyone’s views, except those of concerned parents who contact us when disturbed by policy or curriculum decisions made without public disclosure or comment. Several recent policy changes trouble parents and taxpayers, particularly legislation viewed as endangering the well-being of students.
It is not correct to suggest We the Parents is a shadowy group. We are Coronado parents and grandparents. Many members of our group have lived in Coronado for decades and some have parents and grandparents who graduated from CHS.
Regarding private meetings, WTPC has invited and hosted City Council members, the mayor, CUSD trustees and certificated teachers, and CUSD support staff to meetings. We have hosted open town hall-style meetings and candidate forums. WTPC members routinely communicate with the superintendent and trustees through established CUSD channels.
“WTPC is committed to making sure an excellent education is available to Coronado students.”
-Paul Machin
WTPC is committed to making sure an excellent education is available to Coronado students and does not want to get sidetracked by those who would attempt to attack and politicize our objectives.
Disparaged for exercising free speech
In fact, members of WTPC and others have been subjected to calls to their employers disparaging them for exercising a parent’s right to be heard in public forums. Anyone paying attention knows how politicized public education issues have become and the ruthless “cancel culture” measures those who insist on “having their way” will use to silence dissenting opinions.
No one from WTPC ever disrupted a school board meeting. Here I must caution against using a single “named source” as an example to describe WTPC as those “[who] have disrupted school board meetings for more than two years.… [and] continue to rant at public meetings and in the media.”
To do so is unfair, baseless and misleading. Our purpose is accurately described as WTPC members have spoken up at school board meetings and often express ‘disagreement’ with state and district education policy.
Disagreement is not disruption.
“Tortilla-Gate”
I was encouraged to see the attention paid to the wound of “Tortilla-Gate.”
While door to door campaigning with my wife for a school board seat, it was clear that Coronado’s citizens have not “moved on” from this outrage.
A group of young men worked hard and earned a championship title.
Not one of them did anything wrong.
The wrong was all done by adults. One party-affiliated, politically active Coronado man set the team and the community up, and his actions resulted in national and international humiliation and ridicule.
Coronado’s sons were, without reflection or restraint, instantly publicly admonished in an official statement by the superintendent.
Far more egregiously, the Board of Trustees, by then knowing the identity of the perpetrator, piled on with their infamous public condemnation of the Coronado community as “racist, classist and colorist.”
No apology
Why? They were more concerned about constructing a politically correct façade for national media rather than finding the truth. When their own investigation proved they got it wrong, not a single trustee had the courage to admit it and offer the team, the student body and the Coronado Community the genuine apology they deserved.
While “Tortilla-Gate” was a classic example of the absence of CUSD transparency and accountability, it was but one of many.
Critical Race Theory was mentioned in your piece.
Critical race theory
CUSD’s stealth introduction of the ADL’s No Place for Hate, under cover of COVID, followed by their concoction of the lie that doing so was a student initiated “club,” was another.
Parents don’t like being misled, as it leads to distrust. No Place for Hate was so undeniably a political indoctrination program targeted at children that today, even its originators no longer affirm it.
The forces behind the recent motivation to reshape public education as forces for moral transformation are not the excellent teachers or the hands-on administrators managing day to day school operations.
They are legislators, the “experts” from professional education organizations, and teachers union leaders who have decided that they, rather than parents, should be the final authority responsible for the moral and social formation of California’s young people.
Bottom line: It is with good cause parents and taxpayers have issues with CUSD top administrators and Trustees to put students’ interests and well-being ahead of fashionable political concerns.
Call it Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) or Social Emotional Learning (SEL), all are purposeful efforts to teach children what to think rather than how to think. Political indoctrination has no place in public schools. Parents are responsible for their children’s moral formation and state schools should not be trying to override their influence and responsibility.
Call to attend board meetings
WTPC encourages parents to attend school board meetings and advocate for your children.
Pay attention to the books they are reading and the textbooks selected.
Volunteer in their classrooms and help out with reading programs and special projects and events.
The time devoted to your children and the attention you give to what they are learning in school will pay great dividends in the future.
Paul Machin is a Coronado resident and part of We the Parents Coronado.
