Calling “Bullshit, Bullshit” Part III: Let’s talk about who we are as a community. Because this isn’t it.
by Gayle Martin
Did you know that you can’t compost dog poop?
It is definitely compostable, but just not recommended for your little suburban backyard composter. Composting only occurs with a certain balance of nitrogen materials and carbon materials. Dog poop, like other manure, is high in nitrogen, so if you add too much to your pile, you end up with dog poop slime, not compost. (Trust me. I learned this the hard way.) If you add WAY too much dog poop, the compost can even heat up enough to spontaneously combust.
But, even if you manage to get the right balance and successfully compost Mr. Snuggles the Golden Doodle’s droppings, you shouldn’t use it on your vegetable garden. Because dogs are carnivores, even their properly composted waste contains pathogens that are toxic to humans. What they consume, in other words, poisons their output.
Perhaps you see where I’m going with this overwrought analogy?
In the vast compost heap of the internet, bullshit rants and ideas can be properly balanced with non-bullshit rants and ideas, allowed to age at the proper temperature, and passed through so many munching little worms that they don’t end up poisoning us all. But in the far smaller compost pile of one community’s social media, even a little bullshit can make everyone sick–especially if the producer of that bullshit has been consuming the very, very red meat of, say, a FOX.
This is where RCS school board candidate Andrew Weaver fits in.
In my past two blog posts, I have responded to something Mr. Weaver posted on his Facebook page about Free to Read Rochester and about me personally, pointing out incorrect assumptions, inaccuracies, and fallacies. I have, in short, been pointing out why his posts are bullshit, as defined here.
In this post, I want to look at the bigger picture of not just Mr. Weaver’s Facebook page, but also what has been said at school board meetings by him and others who agree with his opinions. By speaking at school board meetings and sharing their thoughts on social media and now, for some, by running for school board, there is a small group of Rochester residents who are spinning a false narrative of what is happening in Rochester Community Schools and creating a false impression of what kind of a community Rochester is. So, I don’t see this as just disputes about books or curriculum or DEI or SEL or how the district spends its money. I see this as a contest to define who we are as a community. And everything in my experience has shown me that the vision Mr. Weaver and others have expressed is NOT who we are.
The Literal Costs of Ideological Attacks on the Schools
The most immediate and obvious cost to RCS is in actual dollars and cents. Mr. Weaver and other parents have questioned the district’s spending on things like the new administration building, maintenance vehicles, etc. and Mr. Weaver and others have several times said it’s terrible that Dr. Shaner gets large salary increases while teachers barely get any salary increases. (And I don’t disagree with him on that point.) But all that seems hypocritical considering how much of its resources the district has had to spend on the very things Mr. Weaver and others have asked of the district.
First, there are the lawsuits. It has been well advertised that the district settled a lawsuit with a parent for almost $190,000. The cost of this lawsuit to the district was surely much higher than that, taking into account legal costs. Now, to be very clear here: I think the district’s actions that precipitated the suit were wrong and over the line. I don’t even necessarily disagree with the parent bringing a lawsuit for the actions. I also realize that the costs were likely covered by liability insurance. But, especially as public school districts are not a business that can generate new revenu, it was undeniably a huge chunk of change. Moreover, many parents are now acting as if the settlement was a “win” for them, a verdict finding the district guilty. They celebrate it and continue to bring it up, even wearing shirts that say “Read the Depositions.” Their reasoning seems to be that if the district was guilty of this one thing (which is not what a settlement means), it must also be guilty of all sorts of other things.
Another cost to the district is public records requests, or freedom of information act requests (FOIA). Schools all over the state and nation have been fielding unheard of numbers of these requests since the start of the pandemic. Each one costs the school district money. In the Forest Hills Public Schools district near Grand Rapids, for example, district officials raised eyebrows for charging $409,000 to fulfill a FOIA request for “all writings that mentioned ‘critical race theory,’ ‘CRT,’ ‘anti-racist,’ ‘equity,’ and several related terms.” But as the district explained, “The original FOIA request from May 11, 2021 was composed of eight individual requested items. After investigation, the request generated 440,333 documents and emails and completing the request would have taken an estimated 9,800 hours of staff time. That’s nearly five years of staff time and over 4,400 lbs of paper. Even if the entire Forest Hills Public Schools HR department worked on this eight hours a day, five days a week, it would have taken months to fill.”
Mr. Weaver and other parents have filed similar FOIA requests for information that may have absolutely no connection to what their own children are learning or experiencing in their classes. That is their right under the law. But it is also the district’s right to charge a processing fee commensurate with the size and scale of the request. Someone has to search for requested documents or files, compile them, scan through them for information that needs to be redacted by law, and then process them into either an electronic or printed form.
But FOIAing is a particularly fruitful strategy for anyone who wants to make a school district look bad. First, they may find some damaging information, sure. But even if they don’t, if district personnel whose primary jobs are not to process FOIA requests get bombarded with a bunch of them, it can force mistakes or take a long time and then the requester gets to claim incompetence. If the request is a broad fishing gambit that generates a large bill, then the requester gets to claim the district is “stonewalling” and lacks “transparency.” (And then maybe even sue the district for damages, like one parent and current board of education candidate is doing.) And even if none of these things happen, it is an intimidation tactic. It’s really a win-win for the requester and a lose-lose for the district.
And what about book or curriculum challenges? These cost nothing at all for someone to make except the time it takes to fill out a simple form. But they can “cost” school districts thousands of dollars in redirect staff time and in other ways.
Let’s look at the recent challenge in RCS of six books in the high school library. I don’t know the specifics of the committee or of the meetings, so I am going to make some assumptions and estimates here, which I’ll base on RCS pay scales and my own experiences in the district.
Line Item 1: The Cost of Books - $480
To buy all six challenged books (All Boys Aren’t Blue, Check, Please!, Flamer, Fun Home, The Haters, and The Handmaid’s Tale graphic novel) on Amazon it would cost about $80.
In my experience, a curriculum committee in RCS could have anywhere from 3 or 4 to 10 or more people on it, usually staff from all schools affected and an administrator or two. In addition, I know that this committee included at least one parent and at least one student. So, I’m going to guess the book review committee had six members total. So, $80 x 6 = $480 total to supply each committee member with all the books to read. Maybe the district didn’t buy books for everyone, but it is reasonable to assume they did.
Line Item 2: The Cost of Teacher Participation in Redirected Staff Time - $3,120
Let’s assume that three of the committee members were either classroom teachers or media specialists.
Let’s also assume that it took two full school days for the committee to meet and review all six books thoroughly. This would mean that these teachers or media specialists were not in their classrooms or libraries doing the actual job they are getting paid for. Instead, they were in a committee meeting, meaning the district “lost” money in the form of staff time.
So, how much is a teacher paid for each day in the classroom? Anywhere from a few hundred dollars to over $500 a day, depending on where they are on the pay scale (overall salary/185 work days). So, let’s assume all of the teachers/media specialists on the review committee had a Master’s degree and were somewhere in the middle of the pay scale. We can estimate, then, that the district “lost” in redirected staff hours approximately $400 for each teacher/media specialist each day. That would be $2,400 total.
But, when teachers are out of their classroom or media specialists are out of their libraries, the district usually needs to pay a sub to cover for them. The current sub pay is about $120 per day. So, that would be an extra $720 paying for three subs for two days.
Line Item 3: The Cost of Administrator Participation in Redirected Staff Time - $1,100
Let’s assume that there was one administrator on the committee and that that administrator was a high school principal with some experience.
Let’s assume that the principal also met with the committee for two full days.
Again, depending on the pay scale, a principal’s “day rate” can vary widely. But the day rate for a principal in the middle of the pay scale would be close to $550. So, one administrator for two days would cost the district about $1,100 in redirected staff hours.
These are, as I said, guesses and estimates, but this book challenge potentially cost the district $4,700. That doesn’t even include the time that committee members spent outside of the meeting times reading the books, taking notes, and compiling reports. Which, knowing RCS teachers, they did on their own time, not during working hours.
And just like the FOIA requests, even if the challenged books are not removed from the libraries, the parents still “win” in that they have managed to create enough controversy to intimidate media specialists, teachers, and building administrators into self-censoring out of fear of getting dragged into a prolonged battle.
The More Important Human Costs of Attacks on RCS
Expensive as they may be, the financial costs of attacks on our schools are not the most important to me. What’s important to me is how these attacks affect our students, our teachers, and our entire community. I want to share some stories to illustrate these costs.
Our Students: Let me start with a personal failure (among many) I had as a teacher. Many years ago, maybe in 2007 or 2008, it was the first day of school. I was taking attendance in a senior composition class. Taking attendance the first day is always a fraught endeavor. I would inevitably mispronounce a name or call a student by their legal first name when they don’t go by that name. (For my kids, for example, my own son’s first name is James, but he goes by his middle name, Tanner. That kind of thing.) So, I always prefaced the roll call with an apology if I mispronounced a name and told students to make sure they corrected me so I didn’t keep mispronouncing their name. And if they went by something other than their legal name–a shortened version of their name, for example–be sure to let me know. Names, after all, are very important to a person’s identity.
So, that first day, I noticed a young man walk into my class right before the bell. He wasn’t dressed like most of the other young men–I don’t remember exactly how he was dressed now–and I noticed he got a few sideways looks from other students and he sat at a table by himself, not with any friends. When I got to his typically male name that could have several nickname variations on the list and called it out, he said he was here, but then caught me off guard by saying he goes by a feminine name. I looked up at him and said something like, “Sorry, what?” At that point, there were some snickers in the classroom. I could tell the student was embarrassed, and he said, “Nevermind.”
He never came back to my class. He dropped it.
I don’t know for sure why he dropped my class, but I have never forgotten that one incident. I always felt that my initial confusion made him feel that I would be unable to accept him, made him feel he wouldn’t be able to be himself around me and that I wouldn’t protect him. And if a student doesn’t feel like they can have the basic freedom to be themselves with a teacher or in a classroom, they will not learn.
The reason that parents have given for challenging the six high school library books is that they are, in their opinion, “sexually explicit.” But it is also true that four of the six books are by LGBTQ+ authors and/or about LGBTQ+ characters. There are many, many more books in the library by straight and cis authors about straight and cis characters that could be considered “sexually explicit” as well. But the ones with LGBTQ+ themes were disproportionately targeted. Add to that that the books are also targeted in states like Florida due to their “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, and the fact that Mr. Weaver posted a secretly recorded class discussion from Adams High School of The 57 Bus on his YouTube channel earlier this year and criticized it because the class was discussing gender, and you end up with a pretty clear picture of what the parents really find “inappropriate” about the books. Certainly, it is not lost on our LGBTQ+ students or teachers or community members. How do you think it makes them feel? Maybe like they are not wanted here, either?
When I was a teacher I didn’t have the luxury of only picking students who fit nicely into my own world view. Vehemently declaring some hypothetical person’s identity is something you find disgusting or you don’t approve of or you don’t believe in or you don’t think should be acknowledged is quite different than having an actual vulnerable human child with that identity in your class each day, needing your acceptance. Teachers aren’t trying to “indoctrinate” or “sexualize” or “groom” students. They are trying to offer some kind of acknowledgment that they are seen and accepted, a very small lifeline to marginalized students–be it a few books on the shelf validating their lived experiences or be it calling them by their preferred names and pronouns. Because they want to teach them, just like all of their other students.
Our Teachers: A teacher friend of mine told me this story: We were at a school board meeting in the spring, speaking against removing books from libraries. After the meeting, my teacher friend stopped one of the parents who had spoken in favor of removing books because she wanted to tell her a story about the parent’s child, who my friend had in class. My friend said at first the parent seemed a little wary, but as she told the parent the heart-warming story about her child, my friend said she could feel the parent’s wariness fading. They spoke about the student a bit more and shared a laugh, and then at the end of the conversation, the parent said that she hoped that the teachers didn’t think that she was angry with them because of what she said at the meeting. My friend said she, personally, didn’t think that, but she knows other teachers do. Because my friend is kind and compassionate.
But, of course teachers think that all of the anger is directed at them. And many, if not most, feel like they have a target on their backs all the time. When parents complained that teachers weren’t being accommodating enough or weren’t teaching and were lazy during virtual school; when parents implied, or actually said, that they didn’t care if teachers caught COVID as long as their children didn’t have to wear a mask in class; when parents say at board meetings that whoever is responsible for putting “pornography” in schools should be fired; when they say that some teachers may be fine, but some are probably pedophiles trying to “groom” kids (Yup. Someone actually said that.); when they enlist students to secretly record their teacher and then post that recording on YouTube; when they prowl teachers’ personal social media and contact administrators–teachers’ bosses– about it if they find something they don’t like; when they claim, without proof, at school board meetings that teachers are teaching kids what to think not how to think; when parents say they support teachers, but not the Rochester Education Association because it’s harming the schools, completely ignoring the fact that almost 90% of RCS teachers are REA members and, therefore, they are the union, then yes. Teachers tend to think it’s about them.
And, Rochester, our teachers are not okay.
For pretty much my entire teaching career, I felt that our society as a whole was anti-teacher and anti-public school. A Nation at Risk was published in 1983, the year I graduated high school, and started the narrative that our public schools were failing. Mostly unregulated charter schools became legal in Michigan in 1994, and Besty DeVos started lobbying hard for school vouchers in the late 1990s again because public schools were “failing.” Michigan became a right-to-work state in 2013, and Michigan’s legislature, along with many other state legislatures, started hobbling the teacher unions, painting teachers as greedy and incompetent along the way. Just a few weeks ago, at an event pushing vouchers and charter schools in Tennessee, the president of Hillsdale College said, “that teachers ‘are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country,’ and that ‘anyone’ can teach.”
This all weighed heavily on me and most other teachers, but at least I always felt that parents here in Rochester mostly trusted the teachers and the schools to do a good job. So, imagine how teachers in Rochester feel now.
I actually don’t have to imagine because I know. I hear it from them. Instead of general support or at least satisfaction, many teachers now feel a palatable hostility from parents. Every time I talk to a former colleague who is still teaching, they tell me the same thing: They can’t wait to get out. The most recent attacks on the profession are not the only reason, but they are the last straw for many. A lot of these teachers are close to being able to retire, and what will RCS do when they leave? It is well-known that few college students are going into teaching any more. So, how will Rochester attract the best candidates of that small pool? RCS doesn’t pay any more than districts around us, in fact, it pays less than some. And why would a new teacher want to come here (or stay here) when parents at school board meetings are calling teachers pornographers and pedophiles?
Our Community: That brings me to the effect that hysteria about things like “sexually explicit” books and “Critical Race Theory” being forced on kids and “woke indoctrination” in our schools have on our community. Here’s another story from a teacher friend: Several months ago, my friend ran into a parent of some of her former students. She and the parent chatted, and the parent told my friend how much her grown children still appreciate her and the education they received in RCS. But then the parent went on to say that her children now have their own children and are wondering if they should send them to Rochester schools because they’re hearing about how bad everything is getting and how teachers are preaching about LGTBQ+ issues and gender all the time.
And that is the knife that cuts both ways for our community. Rochester is still a bedroom community that many people choose because of the public schools. But now some people who tend to be more conservative are wondering if Rochester is a good place to raise their kids because they have heard the schools have started pushing “wokeness” over core academics. On the other hand, families who may be non-traditional or maybe have LGTBQ+ members may question whether they will be welcome in a community where some very vocal members seem hostile to their very existence.
The long term effects of this could be devastating for our schools, and therefore our community. Michigan public schools receive $8,700 per enrolled student per year from the state. (That amount will go up to $9,000 next year.) It currently has over 15,000 students enrolled. If RCS lost even one percent of their enrollment, or 150 students, because a small group of vocal parents created a false negative impression of the district that scared other families away, it would lose over $1.3 million in funding per year. Heck, if it lost even .001 percent, or 15 students, it would lose $135,000 per year.
Is This Really Who We Are?
But, again, aside from the monetary costs that would affect all of us, that impression of Rochester as either run amok in “wokeness” or intolerant of or hostile to certain groups is just not who we are. I know this because I’ve lived and worked here for well over 30 years. Yes, the community has always tended to be more conservative. But it has never been hyper-partisan or openly hostile to other points of view. It is usually neighborly. No matter their political leanings, residents enjoy and support their downtown businesses, like to go to Arts and Apples and the Big Bright Light Show and the Christmas Parade and the fireworks at Borden. We take our kids to the park and Dinosaur Hill and Van Hoosen Farm and the library. We try to raise our kids to be respectful and kind and to work hard and to give back when they can. I know. I’ve met thousands of your kids over 30 years of teaching. And they were always the best part of my job.
Maybe Mr. Weaver and others who repeatedly attack the school district for a whole host of mostly unfounded reasons really believe they are “helping” the community or doing what is best for the community. But they are not. And, unfortunately, the bullshit coming from partisan media sources that they are believing and repeating is starting to slime up of all of the positive things we know to be true about our schools and community, such as all three of our high schools being ranked in the Top 20 of all high schools in our state, or such as our students raising thousands of dollars every year to give to charities, or such as at the beginning of the pandemic the Rochester Cares Facebook group started solely to help out neighbors that may have never met before and it now has over 7,000 members. Or such as the fact that Rochester is consistently ranked as one of the best places to live in the U.S. by various publications, and in 2017 when it was the only city in Michigan to receive such a distinction, this is how it was explained: “One of the largest indicators of quality of life is education. High school students in Rochester Hills test better than students in any city in Michigan other than Troy or Ann Arbor, and 57.3% of adults have at least a bachelor’s degree — far more than the 31.3% of adults nationwide.”
That is the Rochester I know and love and have called my home for my entire adult life.
I am now done with Mr. Weaver and local politics. For three grueling (for me, and if you have made it this far, for you, too I’m sure) blog posts, I have held all this and concentrated and have decided that it does not bring me joy. So I am throwing it out and making more room for books.
