Friday August 4, 2023

COMMENTARY: Princess Leia, Out

COMMENTARY: ‘Princess Leia, Out’

by Martin Davis

After nearly two years of standing up for students, their families, and her fellow teachers across Spotsylvania County, Heather Drane decided the final insult that Superintendent Mark Taylor and School Board Chair Lisa Phelps hurled at her was too much.

Involuntarily removed from her classroom and forced to change schools for no practical reason; offered no help to relocate years of teaching materials to her new site; and following Taylor and Phelps bullying her by playing games with her contract, Drane took to social media and announced that she was leaving.

“Princess Leia, out,” she said through tears.

Drane is not the only teacher who has had enough. Stafford County in particular has benefitted from the Spotsylvania Schools’ brain-drain, as teachers travel a few miles up I95 for much better pay, a school board that at present is supportive of its teachers, and a work environment that doesn’t include illiterate parents raging against pornography in books and LGBTQ+ students in the classroom.

Stafford is a county that isn’t forcing parents to say “Yes” or “No” to this question: “Do you want your students to have access to sexually explicit content* in school libraries?” The asterisk then references a laundry list of sexual proclivities and practices outlined in state code.

In Spotsylvania County, if parents don’t select an answer, they are not allowed access to ParentView, which is the tool that teachers use to communicate with families and allow them to see their students’ grades.

That Taylor and Phelps would block access to the main piece of technology that teachers use to be transparent with parents about their children’s academic progress makes a lie of their yowling about “parents’ rights.”

One can only imagine what Taylor and Phelps will do with the names of parents who select “Yes.” Will they report them to Child Protective Services? Will they leak the data to organizations that would have no scruples about releasing it publicly and shaming parents?

The reality is, Taylor, Phelps, April Gillespie, Rabih Abuismail, and Kirk Twigg don’t give a damn about children, their parents, and those parents’ rights.

What they care about is destroying public education in Spotsylvania County, and replacing it with a dystopian asylum that stymies free thinking and robs Spotsylvania’s children of their futures.

The reality is, Taylor, Phelps, Lisa Gillespie, Rabih Abuismail, and Kirk Twigg don’t give a damn about children, their parents, and those parents’ rights.

If change does not come in November, Spotsylvania is going to feel the pain of what failing to educate its children will bring.

Families who care about education, and understand that their children need a broad, rigorous liberal education to succeed will either pull their kids out of school, or simply leave the county.

Businesses who need communities that can provide an educated labor force will abandon their businesses, or scratch Spotsylvania off their list of potential sites.

Meanwhile, Fredericksburg, Stafford, and other regions that embrace education and democracy and what Norman Rockwell captured in his paintings The Four Freedoms, will surge. Leaving Spotsylvania to return to the cultural backwater that so many of its leaders fetishize.

Spotsylvania’s citizens need to ask themselves – who do I want my children exposed to?

A celebrated teacher who cares so deeply about her job and her students and the power of education to lift lives that she fights against Taylor and Phelps until her own emotional well-being is endangered? And is then quickly sought after by a neighboring county because it knows talent when it sees it?

Or Taylor and the four School Board members who use words they don’t begin to understand – “Rights,” “Freedom,” “Education” – and daily take steps that force real professionals from their jobs and break them emotionally in the process.

Liberals and conservatives; Christians, Muslims, Jews and atheists; rich and poor; American-born and foreign-born who truly embrace what makes America the great nation that it has become – tolerance, respect, and a commitment to equality under the law – don’t hesitate.

They side with those who place others before themselves. With those who see people not like them as individuals to learn from, not evangelize and save. With those who stand firmly against those who would deny anyone their rights, because if even one isn’t free, then none of us is free.

We raise a glass to Princess Leia, and celebrate all that she has done to defend what is right.

The Force is on her side, and the Force will be with those who pick up the fight from here.l

Rest, Princess, and recover.

The fight goes on.

This article is covered by a Creative Commons license.