"Good evening. Tonight is the fifth or sixth time I’ve stood and spoken
before the School Committee, the superintendent, and assistant
superintendent, since last October. My concern and suspicion then,
was that our kids were being exposed to the tenets and pillars of
Critical Race Theory while attending Westerly Public Schools. In the last
ten months I have, without doubt, proven this to be the case. For the
record, I have told the truth every single day since this all began last
year. I also find it curious and alarming that the WTA president, at the
request of your superintendent, would email teachers, asking them to
email the School Committee, or speak this evening, against the
resolution. What is in the resolution that your superintendent and/or
union president finds so disagreeable?
From a sophomore ELA class, which teaches our kids about white
power, privilege, and oppression, and how to demonstrate for social
justice, to an early elementary conflict resolution lesson, called, “I Want
the Ball”, to the RARI Jason Reynolds/Ibram Kendi book, Stamped, to
the shaming and belittling of our teachers during mandated implicit
bias training, Westerly Public Schools, like many school districts in RI,
and around the country, has fallen victim to the woke hard left,
seemingly abandoning and forgetting about all of this country’s great
qualities, in favor of ripping apart the very fiber of our country in the
interest of artificially engineered equitable outcomes or, as the
buzzword says, “Culturally Responsive Teaching”… Equality of
opportunity, which we are all guaranteed by law, does not necessarily
translate into an equitable outcome. All kids are different, and will
achieve differently, for myriad reasons.
It is not because of racial discrimination. As a white person, what rights
do I have that people of color do not? What may I do that a person of
color may not? The answer is nothing.
We have great teachers, as I’ve said time and time again, the vast
majority of whom take wonderful care of our kids, and do an excellent
job teaching them. However, we also have at least three that I know of
that are not so great, and whom I do not support. One purports her
views to be those of the district in a WPS Anti-Racism Policies &
Practices Google survey, using taxpayer means in order to get her
radical and baseless message out. Two others, SS teachers at the
middle and high schools, have singled out, demeaned, disciplined, and
silenced students who differ with them politically. This is wrong, and I
will fight against this as long as I am breathing. Everyone in this room
knows who these teachers are. Their names are in my APRA request,
filed by Judicial Watch, the nation’s largest public records litigator, on
my behalf. These teachers should be fired, immediately.
These incidents have been continually denied by your superintendent,
even though we know that meetings between these teachers, parents,
and school leadership have occurred. This, combined with the
superintendent charging me $9,300.00 for the above APRA request,
demonstrates the lengths to which he will go to hide and cover up
unsavory things occurring in the district. No matter how this turns out
this evening, our fight for our kids and our good teachers will continue.
As I’ve stated before, America has a history, filled with good things, and
bad. But it is a history. A true history which must be confronted head
on and learned from. And we have. This country has evolved into the
most generous and charitable country on the face of the Earth. We
learn from our history, so as not to repeat it.
One cannot juxtapose incidents which occurred over 200 years ago,
under the mores and customs of those times, with events of today, and
draw comparisons.
It is apples and oranges. In order for history to be understood, it must
be viewed through the lens of the time in which it occurred. It must be
contextualized. I know one thing: this country, warts and all, is still the
greatest country in the world…If not, why are over 6,000 illegal
immigrants crossing our southern border every day, and risking their
lives, to come here?
Critical Race Theory removes hard work, determination, grit, and
accountability, as reasons for a person’s success or failure, and replaces
them with one immutable characteristic: race. In effect it says, when a
white person succeeds, it is because he/she is privileged…that the
success was not earned. When a POC fails, it is because of a racist
system and racist white people. It tells a POC that he/she cannot
achieve excellence without an outcome being engineered for them.
We know this is not true. In fact, it’s insulting. Ask the millions of hard-
working successful people of color how they feel about this.
Proponents of CRT don’t seek these people out because they blow their
narrative to pieces.
Tonight, you six people will decide what kind of Westerly you want.
After tonight is over, we will know if our schools and our town, will be
steamrolled by Angelica Infante-Green’s CRT-laden curriculum, which
will teach our kids to be ashamed of their skin color, if they are white,
because they are oppressors. It will teach them to hate themselves.
Rather than bring kids of all colors together, it will drive them apart,
and teach them to hate one another.
It will teach kids of color that they don’t have what it takes to succeed
unless an equitable outcome is engineered for them. And, make no
mistake, it will teach all kids to hate this country.
Our kids, as well as our good teachers, will be viewed and used as
nothing more than a means to an end by the hard left, which includes
the NEA and AFT, who both support the teaching of CRT in schools, and
all teacher union leadership. The head of the WTA cares more about
protecting three rogue teachers than she does about the hundreds of
good teachers she supposedly represents, more than the 2,724 kids in
this district, and certainly more than the parents of these kids, as she
stated publicly.
You can also decide to do the courageous and right thing. To pass the
resolution before you, and opt out of the Education Commissioner’s
CRT-laden curriculum, which is being rammed down our throats
because of S0863, passed in 2019, which, basically, took away all School
Committee curriculum approval responsibilities, and ceded them to the
state. State and federal monies may be withheld if you don’t go with
Infante-Green’s curriculum. Don’t do it for the money. Do it for our
kids, about whom you claim to care so much.
Instead, you could opt in favor of my plan, which would be to form a
sub-committee, made up of a representative cross-section of Westerly
residents who, while reporting to the School Committee, would make
improvements, if necessary, to the current curriculum…taking an
objective approach to teaching our true history, and improving, rather
tearing down, the very fiber of our town, which is our schools.
Since you all have publicly stated your opposition to the tenets and
pillars of CRT being taught in our schools, you must make it official, and
vote to approve this resolution, which will unite this community in a
spirit of working together, rather than polarizing it, and, as your mission
statement professes: create an inspiring, challenging, and supportive
environment where students are encouraged and assisted in reaching
their highest potential. Teaching through the lens of Critical Race
Theory, with the objective being equity of outcome, rather than
equality of opportunity, is the antithesis of this mission statement.
Vote to approve the resolution. Thank you." - Bob Chiaradio, Westerly Resident and Activist