A petition article that appears on the ConVal and in Jaffrey-Rindge warrants, with almost identical language, calling for school boards to make publicly available all classroom learning materials originated with a man in Alstead who wrote the article to put on the Fall Mountain district’s warrant.
Rich Nalevanko said he wrote the article with transparency in mind. The article calls for school districts to put all instructional materials such as textbooks and materials, in either printed or electronic form, as well as professional training materials for teachers and administrators, in libraries in each of the district’s towns.
“It’s an issue of transparency in government, accountability and parents exercising a basic inherent right to know what their kids are being taught in school,” he said. “School administrators are hired help, and you ought to know what the hired help is doing and what you’re paying them for.”
Nalevanko’s article found its way to residents in the ConVal and Jaffrey-Rindge districts mostly through word-of-mouth, he said, as he told friends and they began to spread it among themselves. One of the proponents of the article in Jaffrey-Rindge, Jim Qualey, said openness and transparency was of chief importance to him.
“It makes sense that parents should have ready access to the curriculum materials that are being used as the basis for teaching their children,” he said, adding that he was more interested in this than barring any specific topics. “I know people are concerned about specific content, and the best way to dispel concerns like that is to have more data about what the content is.”
Roberta Oesser, another supporter of the Jaffrey-Rindge article, said she was concerned about specific content.
“I know that in some districts in the country, not necessarily around here, the parents were outraged at some of the sexuality stuff that was being taught in very low grades, and they thought it was very inappropriate,” she said. “Sexual orientation, that’s my opinion, I think some of it is inappropriate and they push it. It’s not just informational. There’s always the big hubbub about the Critical Race Theory and ‘The 1619 Project.’ That’s fiction; that has been debunked so badly but there are schools that are putting it in that are like, ‘This is history.’”
Dave Dewitt of Dublin, who signed the ConVal version of the article, voiced similar concerns.
“I think it’s primarily in the area of history, American history, ‘The 1619 Project’ stuff,” he said. “Kind of like having children feel that for some reason, some groups are oppressed and others are oppressors. It’s amazing how this stuff creeps in.”
Both Oesser and Dewitt, as well as other petitioners who spoke at both district deliberative sessions, said they did not believe these content areas were being taught, but rather that this was a preventative measure.
Other community members in both districts found the idea of overseeing certain types of content unsavory.
“This smacks of censorship,” said Marc Tieger at Jaffrey-Rindge’s deliberative session. “It is an attempt, perhaps by intimidation, to control what is being taught, and I can’t understand why people would want to do that.”
Richard Sanders of Peterborough, speaking at ConVal’s deliberative session, said that he was concerned about what district officials would have to do if community members were “nitpicking” curriculum content all the time.
“I think this goes much further,” he said. “I can just see, with this kind of article, even though it doesn’t say that, I can see where we might be headed on something like this and I find it scary.”
Other issues with the articles included feasibility and cost. ConVal School Board Chair Tim Theberge said it would cost the district extra to buy and distribute copies of books or movies used in classes, and that copyright issues could also come into play.
Another issue that Nalevanko acknowledged was that the article calls for districts to put the materials in public libraries when districts would not have the authority to do so.
“I didn’t think about that,” Nalevanko said, and added that at his district’s deliberative session, he amended the article to have it say the school district should offer to make it available upon request by the library.
The article in ConVal was not changed and will appear as written on voting day, but the article in Jaffrey-Rindge was amended to remove the portions of the article calling for providing the materials to libraries, leaving only the opening of the article that summarizes the reasoning behind it.
Kevin Swift of Jaffrey, who proposed the amendment, pointed out another element that many took issue with in both districts, saying everything is available and people only need to ask.
In ConVal, Katherine Heck of Greenfield said districts already have their curriculums publicly accessible, and that she had previously taken advantage of that when there was something she wanted to understand.
Nalevanko acknowledged that such information is already accessible at public schools and said making that process easier would help parents be more involved.
“Parents are educators,” he said. “It’s not teachers who teach kids how to walk, how to utter sounds, how to learn the language.”
The future of the article is uncertain in each district. In Jaffrey-Rindge, Qualey said that while the article was rendered ineffective at the deliberative session, people could try to bring it back next year.
“It could well come back,” he said. “And it would’ve been better if the school district had been interested in coming up with a solution that met all the requirements.”
In ConVal, Dewitt said he thought it unlikely that the article would pass due to the issues raised, and that even if it did, the district’s attorney has stated that the article is advisory in nature and the School Board would not have to act on it.
“I think my feeling was that it would just let the School Board know that there are people in the area that are concerned about the curriculum content,” he said.
Voting in ConVal and J affrey-Rindge will take pla ce on March 8. Specific times and voting locations can be found on the district websites, convalsd.net and sau47.org.