Tonight (2017-09-26) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
Minor notes for the evening was the new head of the Facilities department (Aaron Smith) and watching a group correct typos can be amusing (2015 should be 2016). Besides that, the bulk of the meeting was ‘diversity’ under it’s various headings.
There was a workshop on “Cultural Competence in our Curriculum” which divided the group in two. Half for each presentation, switch, then regroup to compare notes.
The first half (for the group I tagged along with) was Dr. Justin Behrend from SUNY Geneseo. What really struck me was how reasonable he sounded. From other sources the ‘diversity’ movement on college really comes off poorly, with all the ‘safe zones’ and focus on what has been done wrong in this nations past. Sounds rather totalitarian. Yet listening to him it all sounded good and proper. Which leaves the question of which view is (closer to) right?
Also the ‘narrative’ of Nazi’s in Honeoye Falls came up again. Great word that: “Narrative”. Which is to say, a story: account of event (possible imaginary) told for entertainment. Or put differently, a well packaged lie. I look forward to the opportunity to talk with the alleged ‘Nazi’. Until then I’ll have to be content with amusement in those that equate the idea of preservation of history with Nazism.
After the switch it was a collection of school teachers (mostly high school), which felt like a collection of anecdotes. Noticed Islam, and studying of it, being mentioned more then once. Also how terrible child brides in India were/are. Which was ironic in contrast to increase in tolerance noticed regarding sexual orientation of students. The inconsistency of where ‘diversity’ does and does not apply. Reminds me of the tradition of hanging those who burn widows.
With that the Board members rejoined and chatted a bit on their personal views. As I’m not a Board member, I didn’t get to join in there. Instead I’ll type two thoughts I had here:
“Diversity” appears to mean “Not Straight White Christian Male”.
“White Man’s Burden” has returned, only instead of ‘uplifting’ non-whites, it places all others above whites.
And what was the best part of the night, the only black at the table, managed to shock the Board. The student representative spoke in favor the Urban-Suburban Program and compared it to Dunkin Donuts. In essence, he said that we should ignore naysayers and move the program along, just as Dunkin Donuts was moved along. Then commented on how no one he knew was against it. Which brought the shock as a number of Board members pointed out they were against Dunkin Donuts. Perhaps there is something to this ‘diversity’ thing after all. Just needs to focus a little more on diversity of opinion and a little less on diversity of physical traits.
On the topic of the Urban-Suburban Program: If importing students from Rochester is good (for both the individual student and the HFL district), is importing students from Livonia or Penfield also good? At what point do the geographic boundaries of a ‘school district’ stop meaning anything?
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the September 26th, 2017 meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education.
As has become the norm for this group, Agenda’s and similar information can be found at HFL’s BoardDocs page.