Sec. of State Handles Calls for Help from Other States

June 28, 2021 Liv Finne; WPC Education Director Additional Comments on June 23rd Posting As a follow up to yesterday’s comment, today I’d like to focus upon upon my experiences with a district and its policies on controversial material. You cited the authority in RCW 28A.150.230 (2) (g) as giving districts the local authority to reject teaching Critical Race Theory. How might this authority be exercised? In my experience, districts have followed state guideline and essential learnings and have used those as a foundation to develop their own, local, priorities. They also play a great part in textbook adoptions and purchase of support materials. Teachers are often empowered to create supporting materials from sources they have researched. I did so with Dr. Will Durant’s book, “Lessons of History”, which I used to provide higher level thinking and analytical skills in my “High Cap Freshman Social Studies classes” I wrote the unit and lesson plans and ran them by my immediate supervisor. When an issue arose a few years later over over a particular lesson, a different immediate supervisor asked to see my unit and lesson plans and then declared them appropriate for further use. She also said she’d never seen such detailed unit and lesson plans. Furthermore, teachers usually participate in the process of adopting textbooks, which gives them the chance to see the content in more detail before they adopt a particular book or series and the support materials that may go with them. I served on several such committees and my district’s policy was that if the process of selection met their criteria, the selection was usually approved. It would have been a ground shaking decision, if they had not approved. The point is, as I see it, is that there are already policies in place to locally address the selection of materials and the approval of teacher written materials. Those policies will be in force when the issues around Critical Race Theory, either as content or as background to other content, come up. The process will be a professional one and laws, as we are seeing in other states, that forbid the teaching of Critical Race Theory are contrary to those policies and procedures, in that they are dictatorial. There will always exist the opportunity to challenge a particular curriculum or material choice made by local school districts. And, as long as the content of the challenge is deems supported by the facts presented, the boards will make such decisions as RCW authorizes them to make. Neither you nor I have the authority to impose other processes or decisions.