In a unanimous vote during a special meeting Wednesday, July 28, the board approved the statement: “Wrenshall School District #100 will not teach the critical race theory. The Wrenshall School District will follow the Minnesota State Standards as required by the Minnesota Department of Education.”
After the meeting, both Superintendent Kim Belcastro and board chair Michelle Blanchard declined to define “critical race theory” or answer questions about what would happen, if anything, when a teacher is accused by a parent or community member of teaching the theory in their classroom.
Belcastro said Wrenshall’s legal counsel has instructed the board not to discuss critical race theory, but she did refer back to a handout from a previous meeting for a definition of the term.
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In a handout from the Minnesota Association of School Administrators provided at a June 14 meeting, critical race theory was defined as providing a “framework to challenge legal scholarship and policy analysis for understanding root causes for structural inequality and the role of race in the creation and maintaining of inequality. It allows those structural and systemic inequities to be understood and discussed as experienced by communities of color.”
Before the vote, Blanchard, who will be installed as Wrenshall principal at the board’s Aug. 16 meeting, called critical race theory a “non-issue.” It was unclear if she had abstained from the voice vote, and social studies teacher Denise North asked for a clarification. Blanchard confirmed the vote was unanimous with no abstentions.
At the June 14 special meeting, board vice chair Jack Eudy asked that critical race theory to be added to the agenda. During the discussion, Belcastro declared unequivocally the topic is not a part of Wrenshall’s curriculum.
“What I want to be clear with is that critical race theory is not something that we are supposed to be teaching in our public schools and it’s not going to be added any time soon either,” Belcastro said at the time. “We have had one parent, I know for sure, call and ask about this ... the parent did say if it’s being taught in Wrenshall, they’re pulling their kids out.”
Belcastro’s words were not enough for some community members, according to Eudy. He asked that the statement be added to the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting after parents contacted him since the June meeting to say they want to make sure it isn’t taught at Wrenshall.
“We’ve had parents stating that if it is taught in any way, shape or form, they’re pulling their kids,” Eudy said. “This was brought on by the news media people watch. I got emails, I got phone calls and people came up and approached me about it and they’re telling us to stop it.”
Eudy bristled when he learned the action was to be a statement and would not change any board policy.
“It can’t be a policy, it can only be a statement,” Blanchard told Eudy. “That’s from the (Minnesota School Board Association).”
Eudy described critical race theory as an “unproven idea not supported by facts.”
‘A specific thing’
Ashley Stone, a professor at the George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development, said critical race theory is not what Eudy described. Instead, it is a framework developed by legal scholars in the 1970s as a response to persisting evidence of racism in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
“Critical race theory as a theoretical academic construct is not something that you would find in a K-12 setting ... there is something that school boards or legislators at the state level are trying to ban, but it’s not what they’re saying they want to ban," Stone said. "It’s a specific thing and it’s not really in the places they’re saying it is.”
Instead, critical race theory has been used by some in the media and some conservative legislators, according to Stone, and the result is a misunderstanding of the term.
“It’s been co-opted to be this large umbrella term for talking about anything that has to do with race or addressing or thinking about racism,” Stone said.
Stone said critical race theory is too advanced to be used at the middle or high school level, but is troubled by what those campaigning against critical race theory are trying to ban.
“If it’s 'we don’t want to present an accurate history of slavery, of the Civil Rights Movement, of these different parts of our history,' if it’s 'we don’t want to present the full truth of what happened' — that is what I find deeply concerning,” Stone said. “If you teach that, it can be really hard for people to take on and understand, but also if we don’t teach it, we can’t learn from it and we can’t do better in the future.”
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Wrenshall board takes stand against critical race theory - Pine Journal
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