The Daily Agenda: Same schtick, different day
New PAC focused on transgender students at CFSD ... Students aren't having it ... Primary Election Day is tomorrow.
The stage is set for another year of nuttiness over transgender students at the Catalina Foothills School District.
The candidates who failed to win seats on the district’s governing board last year, after campaigning against social emotional learning and claiming CFSD teachers were indoctrinating students, formed a political action committee this month for the 2024 election cycle.
The new PAC is called the Center for Excellence in Public Schools and their public face is Save CFSD. The new PAC’s treasurer is Bart Pemberton, one of the three-candidate slate who ran for the governing board in 2022. Another candidate on that slate, Grace Jasin, is one of the eight donors to the new PAC.
Their focus is strikingly similar to the controversy that sprang up at CFSD board meetings in April: which bathrooms transgender students should use, whether school staff should tell parents when their children identify as transgender, and other fodder for the culture wars.
Judging by how forcefully CFSD students stood up for their transgender classmates at the April meetings, and how badly the candidates lost the 2022 election, the new PAC is in for a slog.
“I strongly believe that this concern was completely manufactured by the adults,” one high school student said at the April 11 board meeting. “This has never been a problem and I don’t think it will ever be a problem at our school. The simple way to put this is that this is an issue a very small group of adults have, not the students.”
A similar drama is playing out at school boards across Arizona, and in Virginia, New Jersey, Tennessee, and other states where parents are obsessed with the idea transgender students are somehow a threat (they’re not).
Save CFSD is already gearing up for the first CFSD Governing Board meeting next month. They’re planning to hold the “Southern Arizona Values in Education Summer Conference” on Aug. 5 at the Catalina Foothills Church.
Pemberton, Jasin, and fellow failed candidate William Morgan (who does not appear in the documents the PAC filed) only earned the votes of about one-third of the electorate. The message they’re selling with their PAC is a lot like what they tried to sell voters last year.
For now, they’re fashioning their message as supporting parental rights. But that message can get nasty really quickly. Another donor to the PAC, Jennifer Pershing, was quoted in a Daily Caller article that brought national attention to CFSD in March.
“Jennifer Pershing, a mother of four with one student at CFHS, told the DCNF the school is embracing a ‘dangerous social contagion’ and ‘discriminating against the truth.’ Perishing [sic] said she has ‘compassion for children suffering from gender dysphoria’ but argued that it was not going to help anyone to ‘pretend it is normal.’”
Pershing said some parents have tried to ignore what is going on because it feels like a losing battle, but she said that the “transgender ideology is a lie” and will “ultimately fail,” according to the Daily Caller.
A few weeks after that article, the CFSD board’s meeting room was packed with parents concerned about an email a school administrator sent in 2021 that listed students who didn’t want teachers to share their preferred pronouns with their parents. The governing board later said teachers were required to tell parents about their children’s pronouns if parents asked.
The governing board canceled its next meeting due to threats and intimidation.
One woman who spoke at the meeting said she was “told all the time I should just pull my kids out of public schools,” the Arizona Daily Star’s Genesis Lara reported at the time.
"Frankly, I shouldn't have to move my kids out of the district because the board is more interested in serving the needs and rights of less than 1% of students, instead of being champions for all our students," the woman said.
Students who spoke at the meetings in April did not see eye to eye with the upset parents.
“I largely disagree with the parents who have the belief that they should be entitled to their child’s name and pronouns if they’re not going to be accepting,” one high school student told KGUN9 outside the April 4 meeting.
Help Caitlin and Curt stay caffeinated so they can cover more school board meetings.
Amid the parade of students and parents who spoke out on behalf of transgender students at the April 11 meeting, one high school student was particularly eloquent.
The previous semester, she took a physical education class, which entailed changing in the locker room before and after the class, she said.
“Everyone walks in, waits in line, either on their phone or talking with friends, then uses the bathroom in a private stall, washes their hands, and then leaves,” she said. “Occasionally, you’d see people fixing their makeup or hair in the mirror, but never have I seen or heard of someone being inappropriate or exposing themselves.”
She noted that if any student felt uncomfortable, they have access to a separate bathroom.
Then, in a calm, deliberate voice, she got to the heart of why the debate was happening at all.
“As high schoolers, we already have enough to worry about and the four minutes we spend in the bathroom at school isn’t part of that. This bathroom hysteria isn’t a problem. So stop trying to make it one,” she said.
Democracy in action: Tuesday is Primary Election Day. If you still have your ballot, take it to a voting location where you can drop off completed ballots, fill out and cast your vote-by-mail ballot or receive a vote-by-mail replacement ballot. More information about the Primary Election can be found on the Tucson City Clerk’s website.
Cacti crisis: Saguaro cacti in Central and Southern Arizona are feeling the effects of record heat, including an elevated mortality rate, the Arizona Daily Star’s Tony Davis reports. While there have been no reports yet in Southern Arizona of dying or damaged cacti specifically due to the current heatwave, the director of a group of researchers said he has noticed elevated numbers of older saguaros that have died since summer 2020 in desert areas west of Tucson.
Grocery game: Cochise County residents raised concerns about a potential merger between Kroger and Albertsons during a community meeting with Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes last week, according to Arizona Public Media’s Summer Horn. Issues included possible store closures, higher food costs, staff cuts and a lack of accountability.
“When you remove options, you remove competition, you remove accountability," said resident Rebecca Smith. "There’s no reason why prices couldn’t keep going up if you’re the only grocery store in the area.”
Groceries aren’t cheap. Help Caitlin and Curt keep feeding themselves and their families by donating to the Tucson Agenda.
If a tree falls in the city: Friday’s monsoon may have been a bit of a setback for Mayor Regina Romero’s Million Trees Initiatives, with microbursts toppling trees around town. Tucson City Council member Lane Santa Cruz must have seen it coming, because she included information about reporting storm damage in her newsletter sent out that morning. Trees blocking roadways or sidewalks should be reported to the Tucson Department of Transportation at (520)791-3154 or by emailing Tdotconcerns@tucsonaz.gov. After-hours issues can be addressed by calling 311, with city crews on standby to remove storm debris from the road.
No charges filed: Santa Cruz County Attorney George Silva has cleared two Nogales police officers in an April shooting that left a 31-year-old man dead, the Nogales International’s Angela Gervasi reports. The officers fired 10 shots at Edrei Toledo Ochoca during an altercation outside the Circle K on Mariposa Road. They told investigators that Ochoca threatened them with a handgun and two folding knives.
Justice is served: An Oro Valley man who falsely accused Georgia Tech basketball coach Josh Pastner of assault and sued Caitlin while she was reporting on the story has been sentenced to nearly three years in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Ron Bell pleaded guilty in March to a federal conspiracy charge, after recruiting a security guard to lie and say he saw Pastner assault Bell’s then-fiancée. Bell sued Caitlin in 2019, claiming she made "false statements" in news reports about the legal fight, but the lawsuit was dismissed less than a year later.
“This sentence proves that the FBI will not tolerate false allegations and will do everything in our power to seek the truth and hold individuals who commit these type of crimes accountable for their selfish actions,” said Keri Farley, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta.
16: The number of transgender high school athletes who requested waivers to play sports at Arizona schools in recent years, out of a total of 170,000 high school athletes, Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer reported.
I'm really curious to know what "transgender ideology" is. I wonder if it's like "book banning ideology" or "election denying ideology?"