CDMedia reported earlier this year on pending litigation by Westport, CT parents against the town for allowing a Marxist board to operate illegally which has influence over town decisions and is attempting to inject Marxist indoctrination into the Westport School District.
Today this same group of parents released an article detailing how 'Team Westport' controls the Westport School District Board of Education, and associated town decisions.
Excerpts from the revealing article are below:
Fast forward seventeen years, TEAM Westport appears to have become exactly what it promised skeptical RTM members it would not become: an organization that enjoys the imprimatur of Town government that tells people what to think and what they ought to do and champions a philosophy. TEAM does this brazenly on our Town website. “Antiracism” is the philosophy by which TEAM now defines itself. The group dedicates an entire page to this subject where it sets forth the following commandment to the citizens of Westport:
"To create an equal society, we must commit to making unbiased choices and being antiracist in all aspects of our lives."
In recent weeks, a document has circulated which compiles direct verbatim quotes from the minutes of TEAM Westport meetings. The information compiled in the document was drawn from TEAM’s own meeting minutes since 2016, which are also available here.
We urge all Westporters to review these documents in detail, as they reveal TEAM’s shocking and, in our view, highly improper level of involvement in our schools. We call attention to three critical areas where TEAM has aggressively sought to influence how our schools operate and has apparently achieved significant success.
What our children study in school is a highly sensitive matter that should be determined by the educational experts we hire and the Board of Education we elect to oversee them. Outside groups, especially ideologically motivated groups such as religious organizations or activist committees like TEAM, should not weigh in and apply pressure on these decisions. You may be wondering why your tenth grader is now assigned to read antiracism advocate Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped. Or why your eighth grader no longer studies Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (a classic work of American literature once considered essential to our understanding of civil rights but a book that is now in the crosshairs of antiracist cancel culture and is perhaps not so coincidentally attacked by Kendi himself in Stamped ). Clues to these questions are hiding in plain sight in TEAM’s minutes.
Curriculum
July 2016: “TEAM Westport should meet the new curriculum and teacher development heads.”
September 2016: TEAM Westport members “met with Westport Schools curriculum heads.”
September 2017: “Educational material is in the process of being diversified.”
September 2019: “At the high school, the 10th grade social studies curriculum is being reviewed… [A TEAM member] expressed a concern that work is primarily being done at the high school level where kids are more empowered. Several members around the table agreed that work needs to be done with the younger children and that teachers need to be equipped to handle whatever needs to be done.” [Emphasis added].
March 2020: “The Superintendent focuses more on the high school, but we do need to look at K-8.”
September 2020: “We are on track to strengthen our curriculum with regard to racism, PreK-12.”
September 2020: “We will push for evaluation of the K-5 curriculum this year… All our students in grade 10 are reading Stamped – The Remix by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi.”
September 2020: “With respect to curriculum concerns, we cannot look only at areas of study that go deep. We have to go wide, because unless all teachers get the message and reinforce the message, the message will be seen as pertaining to just Social Studies, just English, or just AP. Every discipline has to deliver the same message of equity and fairness… No one gets a pass.”
Hiring Practices
July 2017: A WPS administrator “is proactively recruiting candidates based on skill level and other factors… we recommend that more teachers of color be hired.”
April 2019: TEAM Westport Chair “has written a letter to the board requesting some involvement by TEAM Westport in the process of hiring new administrators.”
May 2019: “We particularly recommend a superintendent search slate with candidates from diverse backgrounds.”
September 2019: The interim superintendent “said that soon we would have news about the process for selecting a new superintendent… TEAM Westport would like to have some part in that process.”
January 2020: TEAM Westport members “met last Thursday with… the consultant working with the Board of Education (BOE) on the search for our new school superintendent. Presented to him were… a list of recommendations developed by TEAM Westport re: diversity equity and inclusion… Foremost is the need for someone who will lead the team focused on diversity for the entire district.”
June 2020: “We made sure that TEAM Westport spoke with the recruiter for the Superintendent position. The Board spoke with candidates of color. [The current Superintendent] has made the connection with TEAM Westport already.”
Professional Development
November 2017: TEAM Westport members “presented to a group of teachers at a Westport Professional Development Day.”
June 2018: Additional “[t]eacher training from [TEAM members].”
April 2019: “…[E]quity needs to be a theme for all administrative training going forward. We are looking to line up an anti-racism session this August, based on Dr. Ibram Kendi’s work.”
June 2019: “The school district is talking to several groups about providing equity training… Teachers read this year’s TEAM Westport essays to help determine professional development needs.”
December 2019: “Training conducted by Dr. Chris Petrella, Director of Engagement at American University’s Antiracist Research & Policy Center, and a colleague from the Center for the top 40 administrators in our school system took place on December 11th… very similar in content to our session last year in December 2018.”
February 2020: “On December 9th, 2019, training was given to Westport school administrators by the Anti-Racist Research and Policy Center founded by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi (American University).”
June 2020: “[Interim Superintendent] Working with TEAM Westport has prompted us to do things I would not have done. We brought in 2 trainers from the Anti-racism Center at American University for 40 administrators. It brought practical results in the way we hire…”
You can access the article from the Westport concerned parents website and sign up for the newsletter atWP06880.com.
The mission at Creative Destruction Media is to be the catalyst for the "process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."
The mission at Creative Destruction Media is to be the catalyst for the "process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."
