Two weeks ago, the Department of Education launched a portal where concerned parents, students, teachers, and community members could report “divisive ideologies and indoctrination” happening in public schools. From the outset, the intent was clear: the site essentially hosted a snitch form, welcoming people to inform on their neighbors for transgressing the edicts of President Trump, who has demanded that public schools be whitewashed (literally) of any instruction that smacks of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
By the time I tried to submit my own form, encouraged by social media posts to flood the website with false claims as a way to make good trouble, the site had already crashed. Here’s what I was hoping to report:
Unbelievably, the Newberg-Dundee School District hired a superintendent and gave him one of the most lucrative contracts in the state for his work, even though he’d been fired from a previous district for harboring sexual predators. There was another white guy who was well-qualified, over qualified even, and they chose this superintendent over him. After only a year, that superintendent had totally wrecked the Newberg school system, and the school is in shambles now. Almost $14 million budget deficit!
Unbelievable!
Here’s the discriminatory part: the superintendent was hired because he was a white guy and the board wanted to “own the libs” by putting someone in place who had zero qualifications for the job. Amazing. Turns out, there is more than one way to ruin a school through “divisive ideologies and indoctrination.”
That superintendent was fired several weeks ago, for cause, after causing significant havoc in our district over the last few years. A FOIA request for the investigation that led to his firing shows significant, troubling patterns of behavior, from calling students “whites and brownies, gays and weirdos,” to an inability—or unwillingness—to follow Oregon state standards for budgets and reporting. He’d been hired by a MAGA-inspired school board who came into power by campaigning against “divisive ideology.” Like the current DOE, that school board believed that schools should “just teach kids,” giving them access to “education without indoctrination.”
Painful Destruction
Time and time again, I’ve thought about what unfolded in Newberg over the last few years as a blueprint for what is happening nationwide, since President Trump’s administration was also carried into power by an absurd promise to unify America by banning “divisive ideology.” By which he meant, of course, that he intended to quash the idea that every person deserves basic human rights.
Despite other qualified candidates even within his own party, the president inexplicably won another term, and the result has been absolute chaos, the clear destruction of so many institutions and alliances and values on which America was built. He’s managed to hire sycophants and toadies to some of the nation’s highest leadership positions, gutting the federal workforce and its talented civil servants in the name of “efficiency.”
I despair that our country can ever come back from the destruction he’s wrought.
Hope in the Destruction
My hometown’s school district was similarly gutted. Over two hundred educators left the district, and another 100 were RIFed (reduction in force) this past year, when it was clear the superintendent has blown the budget by millions. Numerous families left the district, and over-full schools are operating on very lean funds.
And still, what happened here in Newberg gives me hope that not all is lost for us, or for our nation. Here, the election of an alt-right school board, and the damaging decisions they made, woke people from their complacency. They started to organize, to hold rallies, to find and fund candidates for the next election, with the intent of shifting the balance to something more stable for our community. People found allies in the morass of chaos and division and, no longer complacent, have created a more vibrant community where teachers are supported and students—especially those on the margins—are receiving better care. It will take a long time to repair the damage left by a school board’s and superintendent’s bad choices, but I’m certain our community will never take that destructive path again.
Of course, the stakes feel higher at the federal level, the decisions that President Trump (or more likely, Elon Musk et al.) riskier for us all. Yet it also seems like people are waking up from their complacency. They are finding allies, organizing, holding their leadership accountable for allowing billionaires free reign in our country. The momentum seems to be building, and while it will take a long time—generations, even—to restore what has been damaged, I have faith that we will emerge as a stronger nation, one that cares more ardently for all its people.
As goes Newberg, so goes America. At least, that’s my hope and prayer.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In