If boys are ever allowed in the girls’ bathrooms, Tina Wilson said she will pull her daughter from Elizabethtown High School.
The mother of two admits she already does not trust that the school environment is safe and calls often to check on the school’s progress in creating a bathroom policy she believes could help protect her 11th grade daughter from males entering female bathrooms.
“If this is happening, that’s the day my daughter stops going to that school,” Wilson told The Lancaster Patriot.
Wilson, who owns a home-based e-commerce business, is running for a seat on the Elizabethtown Area School Board. At the top of her list of concerns is the transgender issue.
The school’s lack of clarity on the bathroom issue bothers Wilson. “They don’t have a policy regarding that right now,” she said. “They said if it comes up, those children would be directed to a single restroom.”
When asked what the policy should be, Wilson said she did not know and would need to do “a lot of research” and would need the help of attorneys to write a bathroom policy.
Wilson is also concerned about the content of the school district’s Social Emotional Learning (SEL) program, Leader In Me. She said the program looks great at first glance because it aims to teach kids how to be empathetic, but thinks it focuses too much on concepts like “equity” and “bias.”
Wilson filed a Right to Know request to find out more about the program, and while the school district provided her with some written material, she said they have yet to allow her to see the videos.
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), an organization that provides overviews for various SEL programs, describes Leader In Me as a program offering “strategies for working with bias and youth action projects,” including tools to “help educators grow their ability to identify and reduce bias in order to create equitable learning environments.”
Wilson, who sees the program as a means to separate students into groups of oppressor or oppressed, said other school subjects are also infused with racial and gender equity themes. She said that another parent in the school district told her an elementary math question included a reference to “non-binary students.”
Wilson is joined by four other Republicans running for the Elizabethtown Area School Board: James Gilles, Kelly Carter, Lynda Shrum, and Menno Riggleman.
Riggleman previously served on the board but stepped down because he felt he was the lone conservative voice and was unable to accomplish his goals.
“It wasn’t a matter of Republican versus Democrat,” he said. “But of conservative versus liberal, because you can call yourself Republican or Democrat, but it’s how you vote that shows your true values.”
This time around, he believes there is a better chance that enough conservative Republicans will be elected to make a difference on policy votes.
If elected, a major area Riggleman plans to address is the school district’s spending. He highlighted the current policy of the school district paying for lodging of parents and student-athletes on overnight trips. He said the taxpayers should not be paying for the hotels of parents and students, and if parents want their children to be involved in overnight athletic events, they should personally foot the bill.
All five candidates have been endorsed by the Elizabethtown Republican Committee.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/us/the-conservative-school-board-strategy.html