To: Members of the Eanes School Board
From: Concerned Parents
Date: August 9, 2021
Re: Follow-up Questions About the Now-Disappeared Resources List
___________________
For over a year, the members of the School Board and Dr. Gooden, the District’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion consultant, endorsed a list of Resources on the District website. Those recommended resources were saturated with the toxic message of applied Critical Race Theory. Then, in July 2021, the Resources list was removed from the district website. The Resources page now states only that “We are reviewing resources for the 2021-22 school year. In the meantime, our school librarians and/or counselors are available to assist families who are looking for particular guidance in a given area. Please contact your campus.”
Regarding this Resources list, please help us understand the evolution of your thinking.
(1) Why the District endorsement? For the past year, the District website has recommended books and websites that promote Critical Race Theory (CRT). Yet you assert that no one in the District is endorsing Critical Race Theory. How is a prominent Resources page posted on the District website—and promoted in a school-board meeting by Dr. Gooden—not an endorsement of applied CRT?
(Some of Dr. Gooden’s remarks endorsing these Resources are found in the May 11, 2021 Special Meeting at 2:08:27 and 2:11:11.)
(2) Why not a balanced conversation? If the District is not embracing applied Critical Race Theory, then why did that Resources page contain only authors who promote applied Critical Race Theory? If this is really about having a “conversation about race” (as Dr. Gooden says), why is only one point of view represented? Why isn’t the District also recommending books and websites by, for example, Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Wilfred Reilly, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, or Kenny Xu?
(3) Have you schooled the librarians? Sometime in the spring of 2021, a long paragraph was added to the top of the website, explaining that the District’s librarians were responsible for the choices on the list: “Our District librarians have been instrumental in the selection of these resources.” Has anyone spoken to the District librarians about how these resources (which are saturated with applied Critical Race Theory) are inappropriate in a District that supposedly does not endorse CRT?
(4) New sources for your resources? According to the appended note, District librarians
considered book reviews in sources like School Library Journal, Horn Book, Booklist and other book recommendation tools that include reviews and recommendations of titles for school libraries. For websites, they looked at web links from recognized organizations like the national PTO, American Psychological Association, the Smithsonian, Harvard Business Review, American Academy of Pediatrics
In reviewing this list of sources, is no one in the District aware of how progressive these sources and organizations are? Was no one able to suggest to the librarians that they might consult other less woke sources in order to present a balance of resources to Eanes parents and students?
(5) Why remove the Resources? If applied Critical Race Theory is not an issue in Eanes, why was the Resources list removed? If the District does not endorse applied Critical Race Theory, have librarians and counselors been advised to develop a Resources list that does not include applied Critical Race Theory? Or on behalf of the District, are these employees still recommending the same resources to parents and students?