Utahs Republic

Interview
The Friday 10/29 interview with Hans Anderson before the November 2010 election, Susie Schnell and I were interviewed on air with Hans Anderson. Here is the audio if you would like to listen to it. In the interview we discuss some candidates, but then go into progressive education, humanism, math, and Alpine School District (naturally).

“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” – Thomas Paine, Common Sense (italics mine)

A month ago an article appeared in the Provo Daily Herald entitled, “Alpine district fights to save extended day kindergarten.” (https://bit.ly/hveGpk) In this article, ASD argues for continued funding for all-day kindergarten citing what an amazing job it’s doing to help prepare students for 1^st grade. Really? Any stats on that? How about the emotional toll on 5 year olds separated from their parents all day? Can we get any stats on the long term effects of that?

Among the credits ASD has amassed are:
1) creation of the state charter school board for refusing to approve charter schools within the district
2) providing the impetus for the legislature to raise the state math standards due to use of Investigations math (for which they still haven’t found a study to support it)
3) contributing to UVU’s 70% math remediation rate
4) getting the Utah state superintendent to ban Investigations and Connected math (then ASD told teachers it’s still OK to use them)
5) and now they are proponents of perhaps the most damaging program yet: all-day kindergarten and preschool where children as young as 3 years old are taken away from the nurturing care of parents in the name of “giving them a head start.”

In one longitudinal study comparing full-day and half-day kindergarteners, the study concluded that where disadvantaged children made gains over their half-day economically advantaged counterparts, by the start of 1^st grade these gains were lost, thus proving that length of time in kindergarten isn’t as big a factor as what happens in the home. https://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a917515793&db=all

Senator Howard Stephenson mentioned a couple of books to me a few months ago which I’ve been reading. The books are “School Can Wait” and “Better Late Than Early” by Raymond and Dorothy Moore. Raymond has been a classroom teacher, a school district superintendent, worked at a university, as well as a federal level policy maker. His experiences led him and his wife into researching the literature to find out what they could about when children are truly ready for structured school. The introductory paragraph of their book “School Can Wait” reads:

“We are losing ground academically and behaviorally in the education of our children. The expenditure of ever larger sums for our schools appears to provide little or no relief. The more time and money we spend, the greater the problem grows. It is possible we do not fully understand the developmental needs of our children and that we place our personal freedoms ahead of theirs. We are captivated or persuaded or pressured by conventional wisdom and practice in a system that places vested interests ahead of helpless youngsters. It is conceivable that we are paying our money for state “services” that endanger our children, then paying it again for state attempts at their remedy-remedy of the very problems that they, with our cooperation, have created.” (emphasis mine)

The education system is broken. Educrats have to come up with new twists and ideas on how to fix the problems we face and they never step back to consider if they may have created the problems in the first place. It’s unfathomable to them that they are the source of the very problems we see in our schools because that would contradict their own belief system. It’s beyond reason to them that they have been duped by prominent national educators who have an Agenda to dumb down our children and make them functional illiterates.

I recently attended a lecture where the idea of “cognitive dissonance” (CD) was raised. This term defines a situation where a person holds two conflicting ideas in their head and believes both of them. A person is able to reduce the dissonance through justification, rationalization, blame, denial, etc… For example:

A person lives in Utah and is a member of the predominant religion. Over and over we hear from General Authorities of the LDS church the role of parents as the primary nurturers and educators of our children. Yet educators declare that experts trained in pedagogy should teach our children at young ages to ensure they get a proper start. We believe both statements (CD) and then rationalize that as a parent we do what we can but there are just some things we can’t teach our children so we need the state schools to do it for us…so we let them.

Now lets say you’re an LDS Educrat (an Educrat might be defined as one who blindly follows the prevailing prophets of mankind’s educational philosophies). You’ve heard the teachings of your church leaders that parents are the primary nurturers and educators of their children and believe them, but you’ve been trained by “Experts” who tell you that children must be taught earlier and earlier by trained professionals. So you fight for more money for early education because you have rationalized that LDS leaders aren’t specifically speaking to you about your type of educational areas. They must only be telling parents that they should teach their children church teachings so let’s remove the children from their emotionally nurturing support structure and force them into schools younger and longer because no child can be left behind.

Quotes abound on this and other sites that express how John Goodlad and other prominent educators have a goal of separating children from parents as early as possible to prevent them from acquiring too much of their parent’s moral structure. Some education “experts” are even suggesting stepping into the homes after birth to begin the process of “expertly” raising that child. Excuse me? At what point do we wake up and say, “succeed or fail, that child belongs to a family who has been given the responsibility to raise that child without the intervention of do-good educrats and bureaucrats.”

The following letter is from an educator in Orem which explains what is really happening in these early education programs.

I am aware of the current push for all-day pre-school and kindergarten. (Deseret News 10/6/10, “Lawmakers Consider All-Day Kindergarten”) I have been a teacher at the Utah School for the Deaf/Orem and have watched the effects of all-day kindergarten and extended-day preschool. I did considerable research on this topic last year as the Utah School for the Deaf had extended its preschool to 1:00 p.m.  and proposed going  to all day for the 2010-2011 school year.  They also announced they would continue the all-day Kindergarten which has been in place for a number of years.  All this over the protests of teachers, parents, and specialists.

As a parent of 9 children (7 with special needs), a neurodevelopmental specialist, and a certified teacher I personally I fought with them over it, petitioned administration, and presented my data and arguments.  It all, ironically speaking, fell on deaf ears.  So, just as the other teachers and I warned, now little barely-3-year-olds are being bundled up on cold, early  mornings at 7:30 a.m. (earlier in some cases) put on vans for their hour long journey (for some of them) to their schools. Including the return ride. That’s 2 hours a day or more riding strapped in a car seat, in mid-winter, leaving home in the dark and returning home at nearly dusk and all in the name of early intervention!

I observed one little boy in a class younger than mine last year.  I did not know his age but since he was a husky, rather tall little fellow, I assumed he was 4-4 1/2.  He cried nearly every morning and frequently through the extended-day preschool day from the beginning of the year throughout the entire year. At the end of the year I was saddened when I became aware that he had just barely turned 3 when the school year began. I wonder if he still cries this year now that he sees his home even less and at only 4 years old?

If the early morning scene with the littlest children at school is the same as I observed last year, after awakening some of the children in their vans and getting them to stop crying whenever possible, the teachers do what they can intensively for a couple of hours then it’s lunch time and the children, developmentally speaking, are certainly ready to go home who were never ready to be there in the first place!  But, no, now we must keep them at school until 3:30 for reasons that do not make sense developmentally, emotionally, or academically as considerable research verifies. Just plain common sense and mothers’ hearts should tell us this!  In actuality, the children eat lunch and then need naps. It is developmentally appropriate and healthy for 3- 5 year olds to nap an hour or longer in the afternoon.  I observed how difficult it was for some of the little Kindergarteners last year to begin a nap but have to be awakened after a short time because certainly teacher time could not be justified watching napping children!  I can only imagine how tough it must be for the 3 year olds now! I would hold a little 5 year old in my arms as he napped, on occasion, because his awakening at school was often frightening to him. It was difficult to motivate the children to accomplish anything in the afternoons when often they awoke too early from naps calling for their mothers and slightly disoriented or were over-stimulated, unable to nap and “hyper”, running on adrenalin but really needing to be home cuddling with their moms, reading a book or napping in their own beds.  “But, children are resilient”, it is often said. “They adapt.”  And they do.  They suppress their natural, healthy emotional and physical needs. They suffer long-lasting adverse effects to the deep bonds with their parents as they are forced to be with “Not My Mom”, however compassionate and professional she may be, at very early ages and for most of their day-time hours and for all of childhood.  It results in what psychologists call “the de-personalization of children”.  Why do we have sick teenagers and angry, alienated youth?  Another discussion for another day.

I was the unofficial neurodevelopmental specialist for the Utah School for the Deaf/Orem. My work took me deep into neuroscience and research on global neurodevelopmental readiness for academic learning.  What is being done at the School for the Deaf (and any other school advocating this type of separation of tiny children from their parents) is so wrong and counter to everything natural, nurturing, and neurologically integrating— everything we learned during neuroscience’s 2000-2010 “decade of the brain.” It is outrageous to me. Time with parents is, according to data from many sources, the most critical factor for healthy cognitive and academic functioning and later adult life success  (New York Longitudinal Study; Carla Hannaford, Smart Moves: Learning is Not All in Your Head). Raymond Moore concludes in his book, Better Late Than Early, after a review of 8,000 studies on global neurodevelopmental readiness for learning and later academic achievement,  “Twenty minutes with mother=3 hours in a classroom.”

I wrote a draft proposal while at the School for the Deaf last year for a home-supported preschool program. Early intervention for deaf children from birth on is creating a miracle! Implanted with cochlear implants very early, deaf children are becoming typical speakers and excellent listeners by age 4!  Deafness need be no more in our day for most children!  So, I would never argue against early intervention for any child with special needs. There are just better ways than removing them from the richest language learning environment there is, the home. Among the data I gathered for the proposal were figures on costs of supported-home preschools versus public school preschools.  Two similar, high quality programs with comparable results created by the University of Wisconsin gave figures of $325 per child per year in the supported-home preschool program and up to $5,000 per year for the public school building venue “for Milwaukee’s deprived children” (I assume the same population we’d call high-risk as referred to in the Deseret News article).  These figures adjusted for inflation would still show great savings in dollars alone thru a supported-home preschool delivery model.  Isn’t now the time?

As I re-read the Deseret News article, “Lawmakers Consider All-Day Kindergarten”, I just shake my head and mourn at not only the foolishness of it but the downright damaging potential it has for Utah’s children—all of them, both typical kids and those with special needs. We have so enshrined public school education in Utah that people can’t see beyond it or any way to re-invent the old forms.  But these economic times will require something different.  So, if enabling mothers to spend more time with their young children is healthier, more educationally sound, and less costly, why are we not considering it?  The immediate response, of course, would be, “Most mothers of young children work outside the home, statistically speaking.  Supported-home preschools and kindergartens are not possible in this day and age.  Most parents need school for day-care, anyway.”  That is cynical to me. I personally know a growing number of courageous young mothers who understand the critical nature of quantity time with mom for all children up to at least age 8.  They and their husbands and extended families sacrifice much to allow the mother to stay in the home with her little ones gathered around her as long as possible.  It has, however, stopped being a value to many young families or something to strive for.  Some of them can’t even conceptualize it. They erroneously believe they are inadequate to be skilled early childhood teachers and nurturers of their children—that the professionals will do it better. Not now that we have the “decade of the brain” research and “theory of mind” data!  It just simply isn’t true and never was.

The information that Assistant Superintendent Brenda Hales presented, mentioned in the Deseret News article, needs to be seen over the long view.  Data I read tells me that whatever initial advantages may have been gained by children in all-day pre-school programs are gone by the end of 1st grade. (U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, January, 2010) The cost and negative impact on family life and future educational progress of the child is definitely not worth it.  Let’s explore children staying home with their parents longer and give them some professional support.  At very least let’s keep the current half-day Kindergarten arrangement! As the founders of our country intended, those who cannot possibly provide this early educational support for their children and who are the “poorest of the poor” should have the help of their countrymen with public school programs.  But, compulsory, universal all-day preschool through high school for America’s children was something they would have entirely opposed!

I admire former BYU education professor, Dr. C.R. Harms’ suggestion in his letter to the editor, Deseret News 2-21-10, “Start School at Age 9”.   He said in part, “A four-year elementary school starting at age 9 followed by a four-year secondary school, as done in days past, would solve many educational and financial problems,”  Outlandish? No, out-of the-box and entirely appropriate–if we care to listen to the neuroscientists and our hearts.

Kathleen Sorensen, M.Ed.
Orem, Utah

What a concept. Shaving 4.5 grades out of our system would save probably a billion dollars a year in Utah but that won’t stop the educators from vetoing it since some of them would lose their jobs (and for progressives who would lose their influence over young children). Some children may legitimately need early interventions, but as Kathleen points out, that could be done at home, even if in-home help was needed, for a lot cheaper than what we’re paying now.

Moving interventions into the home and supporting parents means children keep the nurturing influence of parents who have the God-given right to be the nurturers. If class size is so important to educators, how about a class size of 1? Lets support parents in their true role instead of assuming the state and the so-called “experts” can step in and do a better job.

Part of the service we should provide parents is the DVD “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story.” This is a phenomenal true story about a failing young man who through the efforts of his uneducated mother, became an incredible brain surgeon who performed miraculous surgeries. I strongly encourage you to watch this inspirational movie. Here’s a link to a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5qyOUKnlxA

In the meantime, I think leaving children at home for another year or two to mature and be more ready for school sounds intriguing. Maybe it’s an idea whose time has come.

I close by repeating part of Thomas Paine’s opening line from his famous “Common Sense,” the pamphlet that won the Revolutionary War.

“…a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”

Milton Friedman’s brilliant response to Phil Donahue’s attack on capitalism.

Red-Meat-Radio-Republic 12-11-2010

This morning I was on Red Meat Radio with Senator Howard Stephenson and Representative Greg Hughes talking about the news of the week. We discussed:

• Alpine School District’s newest problem where over 4,000 graduation transcripts had to go through a manual review because the State Board of Regents told them no more students would be admitted from ASD to most of the state colleges because their transcripts had been miscalculated
• the teacher email flap at Alpine School District
• progressive education agenda items on John Goodlad’s NNER home page

UTAH TAX DOLLARS APPEAR TO HAVE HELPED FUND A GLOBAL EDUCATION AGENDA SPREADING MARXIST PHILOSOPHIES AND THE GAY AGENDA ALL AROUND THE COUNTRY.

This letter should be of interest to all Utah citizens, but especially those in the Jordan, Wasatch, Nebo, Provo, and Alpine school districts. Your school dollars have been going to the BYU-Public School Partnership (PSP) facilitating arm known as CITES (Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling) which is the teacher training center for John Goodlad’s Agenda. I hope by the time you are done reading you will have a desire to contact your school board and ask why they are sending money to CITES which has been heavily involved promoting and supporting Goodlad’s NNER (National Network for Educational Renewal) and IEI (Institution for Educational Inquiry) organizations.

John Goodlad isn’t shy about his global education agenda. There is good reason Charlotte Iserbyt in Reagan’s department of education called Goodlad the nation’s “premier change agent” for moving us toward socialism. This is a snapshot of what is currently on Goodlad’s NNER home page as of November 20, 2010. It’s never been more clear what Goodlad stands for.

We see here that the NNER is inviting teachers to create activism toward social justice which is nothing less than the Marxist redistribution of wealth. Further down the page you can see a link to a 2010 expert panel discussing how to prepare teachers to move the gay agenda forward and ensure “equity” in the classroom. The first paragraph inside this expert panel report starts with this sentence.

“Our group used the four dimensions of the Agenda for Education in a Democracy as a framework for our suggestions of important topics and issues to be included in a teacher education program.”

In Alpine School District spokesperson Rhonda Bromley’s recent letter to teachers, legislators, and citizens, she wrote:

“Another concern that has been expressed is in regard to the ‘Moral Dimensions of Teaching.’ Several years ago, all five districts along the Wasatch Front entered into a partnership with BYU called the CITES partnership. The districts included are Alpine, Provo, Nebo, Wasatch, and Jordan. Collectively, the partnership adopted what is called the “Moral Dimensions of Teaching,” and with it, four core values. In recent months some have raised concern about those values. Since last fall, the administrators and Board of Education have changed the way those values are worded because of those concerns.”

If nothing else you have to appreciate the honesty Rhonda displays in admitting that since some people have raised concerns over Goodlad’s Agenda, the district sought to help them out by changing the terminology to make it more palatable, not that the actual intent or Agenda from John Goodlad has changed.

Goodlad wrote in the preface of the book Schooling for a Global Age, pg. xiii-xvii:

“Enlightened social engineering is required to face situations that demand global action now. Education is a long-term solution. … Parents and the general public must be reached also … Otherwise, children and youth enrolled in globally oriented programs may find themselves in conflict with values assumed in the home. And then the educational institution frequently comes under scrutiny and must pull back.”

Better read that a couple times and let it sink in. It makes sense that ASD has followed his instructions and pulled back since parents have exposed Goodlad’s progressive education influence in the education system. It is also obvious from Rhonda’s comments that they aren’t changing what they believe, they’re just trying to hide it. It is utter foolishness to think you can partner with a subversive organization like Goodlad’s and choose what you’ll participate in and not get contaminated. When ASD’s superintendent was on the executive committee for Goodlad’s NNER, he saw these things first hand but took no action to remove ASD from being involved with the organization.

How do we know the involvement in this Agenda is real? There are 4 John Goodlad appointed AED Scholars (Agenda for Education in a Democracy) in Utah. Two at ASD (Superintendent Vern Henshaw and curriculum specialist Barry Graff), another is the director of CITES (Steven Baugh), and the last is a professor at BYU’s McKay School of Education (John Rosenberg). It’s important to realize that awards are given as rewards for outcomes in implementing the Agenda and not given for intent (or else many more would have such scholar designations).

These people have been heavily involved presenting at Goodlad’s conferences over the past decade (example 1, example 2). Steven Baugh was one of the organizers of the 2009 conference. Even if these individuals don’t personally believe all of Goodlad’s teachings, Goodlad trusts them enough with his Agenda to give them scholar status. There are only a total of 30 individuals in the entire nation with this prestigious designation.

The next thing you need to understand is that Goodlad’s organizations are membership driven. This means that at some level there is a payment to cover the membership. From the 2007 tax return for Goodlad’s Institute of Educational Inquiry (IEI), we read on page 16 that the IEI shares employees with the NNER under a “common agenda.” Page 18 reveals the IEI transferred $341,960 to the NNER after it just received 501(c)3 status (even though it has existed since the mid 1980’s). On page 22 the IEI amends its Articles of Incorporation to show a modification of it’s purpose…

“to advance the public democratic purpose of education through inquiry, demonstration, and training projects that engage a variety of national partners–including universities, school districts, and other groups interested in education–in promoting the public purpose of education and the making of a democratic public.”

An example of inquiry based education is constructivist math such as the failed Investigations math program at Alpine School District which the district cannot support with a single study. Other examples also in use around Utah are Everyday math, and Growing with Mathematics.

CITES is the “facilitating arm for the initiatives” of the PSP, a structure which Goodlad helped set up. From the Utah Office of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst of the state legislature, I have obtained at least a partial trail of funding to CITES from the partnership school districts. The relevant tables are below. The only other information you need to know is that CITES (which is receiving public tax dollars) will not disclose how they use these funds and have stonewalled Senator Margaret Dayton’s attempts to find them out. It is unknown if the PSP is separately receiving funds from the school districts.

Brigham Young University
Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education & Schooling (CITES)
School District Funding to CITES

2008-2009 Funding School District*

District	Local	Federal	Total
Alpine	$ 29,180	$ 12,050	$ 41,230
Jordan	$ 143,698		$ 143,698
Nebo			$ 71,375
Provo	$ 20,000	$ 507,027	$ 527,027
Wasatch	$ 31,250		$ 31,250
Total	$ 227,998	$ 532,527	$ 831,900

2009-2010 Funding

District	Local	Federal	Total
Alpine	$ 29,180	$ 12,050	$ 41,230
Jordan	$ 73,718		$ 73,718
Nebo			$ 71,375
Provo	$ 10,730	$ 380,957	$ 391,687
Wasatch	$ 8,755		$ 8,755
Total	$ 122,383	$ 393,007	$ 568,455

*Note: Information is self‐reported by school districts. No information was included by Nebo SD on their mix of funds

Prepared by Office of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst, 05/2010 PL

The NNER and IEI are membership driven organizations, in other words, membership is not free. Someone has paid for the memberships of these school districts and/or the PSP or CITES themselves. It makes sense that these funds being sent from the 5 PSP districts may in fact have gone toward some form of membership money to John Goodlad’s organizations. What this means is that John Goodlad’s radical anti-family, anti-freedom Agenda has been supported by our public education tax dollars. It has given tremendous credibility to Goodlad’s Agenda to have school districts and universities in “conservative family-values Utah” as members and *leaders* in his organization structure.

If you live in one of the 5 partnership School Districts, I would ask that you contact your school board and ask why they are sending money to CITES which is directed by a John Goodlad scholar. Our teachers and professionals went to school to learn to teach. There is no need for these partnership programs. We should drop them while we are in a down economy and pinching pennies for education. Here is one place to cut right now.

If you missed Glenn Beck’s shows this week on “The Puppet Master” George Soros, you really missed out seeing the man behind hundreds of left wing organizations working together toward a one world government. However, this clip should sum things up for you. Our great flaw? Only Americans have a vote in congress.

It was also lovely to see Soros’ new touchy-feeley ad where he proclaims how he loves democracy and how he helped topple communism in Eastern Europe. This from the man working toward global communism.

Click this George Soros link if you want the research Beck produced exposing Soros’ god-complex and the rest of his “philanthropy.” If you want to catch up on the shows you missed, I’d guess most of it is on YouTube if you search for “Glenn Beck Puppet Master.”

Yesterday someone sent me news that the Humanists are now advertising their religion through online videos. As you can see in this example, they take a segment of scripture from the Bible (1 Timothy 2:11-12), ridicule it for being out of touch with today’s society, and then present what is obviously a more favorable viewpoint that men and women are equals.

Consider Humanism – Robert Ingersoll

At first blush, many people who have not studied the Bible, the customs of the Jews, or sought an understanding of the Godly and differing roles of men and women as parents, may be turned away from scripture and have a positive impression toward humanism. I don’t consider myself an expert on Biblical traditions and customs, but I have studied the Bible enough to know that when Paul wrote letters to the various churches, they were tuned into specific issues they were dealing with. He certainly had more to say on this issue than in one letter to Timothy, which may not even be exactly what he originally recorded since scribes weren’t perfect in their transcribing of the ancient records.

The role of a husband has always been to preside in righteousness over his household. God created woman as an “help-meet” (Gen. 2:18) for man and told the man to cleave to his wife and be of one flesh (Gen. 2:24), clearly implying a special relationship. Woman was created from man’s side to show that she is part of man and co-equal in her unique role. She was not created from a bone from his head or foot showing her above or below man. Paul clearly understood this and wrote much in Ephesians 5 about this. In this set of writings Paul calls upon wives to submit themselves to their husbands and then admonishes the husbands to love their wives even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. He tells men to love their wives even as they love themselves. What woman, properly treated by a righteous man who loves her as he loves himself and serves her as Christ served the church and even died for it, wouldn’t feel submissive to the righteous requests of such a man and seek to honor him in their household?

Peter talks about this as well in 1 Peter 3 where he says women should be in subjection to their husbands and serve them that they may be converted and give honor to the wife as they would a “weaker vessel” or one who deserves protection, in order that they may be “heirs together of the grace of life.”

The humanists would turn us against God’s word in a perversion of equality (dare I say democracy? :)). Men and women do indeed have different roles, but are partners in life and need to serve each other. The role of a husband is to preside in righteousness and work by the sweat of his brow to take care of his family, and the role of a wife is to be an help-meet, mother, nurturer, and true companion that the husband relies on for her wisdom and compassion.

Here is one very interesting take on the humanist religion. Even the humanists acknowledge if the courts were consistent in their application of the “religion test” it would be the end of Horace Mann’s public education plan (and maybe the return to what our Founding Fathers intended for public education). https://www.christiananswers.net/q-sum/sum-g002.html

Maybe we can get the “One call for justice” Utah personal injury attorneys to help us out. :)

Now let me preface this post with *I am not advocating this type of school.* I am posting this to get your thoughts on what this information presents below. I am going through a period of study trying to figure out what an ideal school system might be today. We’ve had some discussions on this in the past and it’s a topic that needs more exploration. So with that said, there are 3 videos below. The first is a short history of compulsory education I came across online. The second and third are actual schools where the students are practically on their own. Very limited structure. Please watch these and leave a thought below. Could you put your child in a school like this?

The first video is 6.5 minutes, the second two are about 10 each and if you watch one you don’t necessarily have to watch the other, unless you’re really fascinated. They are similar schools. If you don’t want to watch or have time right now, you can read this brief essay from one of the schools. https://www.sudval.com/05_essay.html

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uexMYBkfCic[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awOAmTaZ4XI[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgpuSo-GSfw[/youtube]

[Sudbury schools]

With the elections over and everyone needing a little break, I thought I’d post a couple of videos. The first is a spoof of the famous 1984 Mac ad, but the second…I don’t know if I should laugh or cry.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh7X3JAKOLs[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTSQozWP-rM[/youtube]

2 of our 4 endorsed candidates for Alpine School District won. Wendy Hart beat Chrissy Hannemann and Paula Hill beat Donna Barnes. Congratulations to both of them.

In the other two races, Tim Osborn lost to ASD sponsored John Burton in the American Fork race. This was a case of the district wanting Tim off the board since he’s the lone voice of the parents and Burton is a former district administrator. Tim has done an awesome job on the board advocating for better math and parent’s rights and he will certainly be missed.

In another unfortunate loss marred by scare tactics, JoDee Sundberg supporters put out a flier calling JoDee the “conservative” candidate and announcing that Scott would essentially defund public schools. Scott handled all the charges leveled at him very well, but unfortunately the public bought into the lies and re-elected JoDee, the establishment choice.