Curtis Thompson
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
The Tribune deserves praise for its editorial supporting governmental agencies complying with the Sunshine Law. However, it should do more than just editorialize; it should expose the violations of that law by the Jefferson City School Board. The paper has information that the board violated the law when it held, without the required notice, a committee meeting that reported to the board in February when the board endorsed that report by keeping the pro-Critical Race Theory, racist, anti-Semitic and antifamily website tolerance.org as part of its resources for its curriculum. The board violated the Sunshine Law by discussing curriculum in its March closed session.
The board continues its violations by not providing documents that would show how it obtained and with whom it has shared the viciously racist Abolitionist Teachers Network Guide that among its outrageous positions demands all-white staff be sent to antiracist therapy, that police be removed from schools, and that reparations be paid to all "children of color." It has also refused to produce documents of how it will address the Biden administration's efforts to include CRT in the classroom. It has refused to address at its open sessions why it spent more than $100,000 to send staff to training last summer that included tenets of CRT. It has refused to address the petition filed at its June meeting to prohibit racist or sexist teaching such as CRT.
The paper has available information about these violations and could ask the board to address these issues including why it allows staff to make decisions after conducting segregated "listening sessions with people of color" and "focus groups of students of color." The paper could ask a board member why she falsely stated the training was "paid with a federal grant it was not paid for with local real estate taxes" when documents show some of the costs for the seminar did come from local real estate taxes.
The board has refused to provide documents it has about the Biden administration offering extra money for teaching tenets of CRT (even though I provided some of those documents to the board in early June), and I have repeatedly asked for the board to comply.
I am disappointed in the paper's ignoring these violations and the relative lack of interest by parents of students in the district. Remember this next April when hopefully two new board members will be elected.