By now, I’m sure most of my Fort Wayne area friends have
heard of Amanda Tokos, one of the five candidates for two seats on SACS School
Board. As a parent of students in SACS,
I feel I have a responsibility to discuss the dangerous and problematic
positions she espouses. For starters,
Amanda Tokos has been a very loud proponent of banning books from libraries
that she finds offensive. By and large
the books are not offensive and have long been considered acceptable for
students to read. Their only “problem”
is that they do not align with her extreme conservative views.
In this
article from earlier this year, her group, Advisory Book Club of Allen
County, is quoted as stating their goal to “create evidence in an effort to
have them removed from the schools and restricted from minors in public
libraries.” Now, I’m going to believe
she is not actually fabricating evidence.
The group is simply compiling evidence to support their agenda. We all do that to some extent, so the
question is more about the broader implication of their goal. There we find a problem. I don’t have an issue with any of the members
of ABC policing which books their children are allowed to read. I do have a problem with them decided that
their values should be enforced across the entire community. Since we know Tokos’s credentials, I’ll use
those as an example. She had no
background in education or library science.
Sure, her campaign site claims she’s studied educational issues for the
past year and a half, but that’s not the same as a designed academic course of
study into education or library science.
She is entitled to her opinion, but, perhaps, we should leave the final
decision over the books on our library shelves to the trained
professionals. The books that ABC would
seek to ban are the same books that another parent would love their children to
read and the library, public or school, may be the only way that parent can
introduce their child to that book. Our
libraries, including the ones in schools, should be a rich and diverse
collection of materials and viewpoints.
There are also several problems with the “issues” she has
listed on her campaign site. There are
two, specifically, that I will address.
First, she wants parents to have access to daily lesson plans from
teachers on demand. That is a wholly
unreasonable expectation to place upon our teachers. Teachers may have broad outlines of the plan
for the week, but they require flexibility to adapt those plans on the fly to
meet the needs of the students. I can
remember, when I was in school, teachers changing the lesson plan for the day
because we didn’t get yesterday’s lesson and needed to spend more time on
yesterday’s topic before moving on. The
current teachers I’ve interacted with have all done a wonderful job
communicating what is being taught in class and what is coming up for my
children. If parents do have concerns
about what is being taught, the state standards are available here. The specifics of how a teacher meets those
standards should be left in the hands of the trained professionals and not
subject to on-demand review by parents.
I fully support a parent’s right to communicate with teachers regarding
their child’s education. That’s not what
Amanda Tokos is aiming at. She wants to
empower parents to tell the teachers how to do their job. Look no further than her Op-Ed in the Journal
Gazette. “Over time, parents became conditioned to trust that school
boards, administrators and teachers had their children’s best interests in mind
when teaching, managing and maintaining their school district.” Apparently, she believes we
shouldn’t trust the school board, administrators or teachers to have the best
interests of my children in mind. In
today’s day and age, where both parents often work, we have to trust our school
boards, administrators and teachers to have our children’s best interests in
mind. Our school board should be in the
business of hiring quality teachers and then giving them all the resources and
tools they need to teach successful students, not coming up with new ways for
parents to judge and harass teachers.
The other
major issue I have a problem with is her approach to school discipline. On her issues page she has a section on “Restore
Classroom Discipline” where she notes that she would “give teachers the
authority to remove disruptive students.”
Here’s the relevant portion of the elementary student handbook available
on SACS website:
“Teachers or
other school staff members shall, when pupils are under their charge, have the
right to take any action, which is reasonably necessary to carry out or to
prevent an interference with an educational activity that they supervise. They may remove a student to another
classroom with prior permission from that classroom teacher or to the school
office.”
The handbook
literally states the exact right that Amanda Tokos wants to give to teachers. There is similar wording in the high school
handbook as well. It’s pretty difficult
to give people something they already have.
She also wants to “set discipline standards and consequences that are
clear to students and parents.” Again,
this is something that’s laid out pretty clearly in the school handbooks. When I see a candidate trying to make an
issue out of something that clearly isn’t, I start to seriously question how
well suited that candidate is for office.
Lastly,
Amanda Tokos wants to “end disruptive behavior and distracting behavior.” If you’ve ever worked with kids, you know
that’s a ridiculous expectation, especially for younger grades. There can be consequences for distracting and
disruptive behavior. Children need to
learn that actions have consequences.
However, I seriously question her goal to end such behavior. Kids are going to goof off and if Amanda
Tokos intends to eliminate such behavior from our schools, she would have to
resort to draconian measures that would do more harm than good.
For the sake
of our teachers and students, do not vote for Amanda Tokos for SACS School
Board. There are other candidates more
worthy of your support. Stephanie Veit
and Kim Moppert are both better suited to serve the needs of our teachers and
students. Veit has the background in
construction and commercial lending that will be vital to helping SACS navigate
the building needs of the district as the student population continues to
grow. Moppert spent 20 years as a
teacher, including within SACS, and knows what our teachers need to help our
students achieve their full potential.
