Each year school districts across the country set aside days where they provide teachers with continuing education. The idea of course is that professional development will enable the teachers to better serve the students. In Grand Haven, Design Group International, Inc has a contract with Grand Haven Area Public Schools that focuses on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) through professional development. The entire contract can be viewed at the end of this article.
You may be asking why GHAPS needs this type of training? Mary Jane Evink, the GHAPS Director of Instructional Services says teachers have been asking for this training, but wasn’t clear specifically how many teachers were asking. When pressed, Mary Jane Evink relates an incident of racism which took place in Grand Haven around 2010.
In the contract it states that:
“GHAPS leadership desires to gain skills and abilities to build sustainable and intentional equity, inclusion, belonging, utilizing resources, frames, and best practices.”
and
“GHAPS staff have named the commitment to build fluency, be skillful and efficacious to be able to be uncomfortable to talk about racism and other sensitive topics.”
The contract says GHAPS will do the following things:
Implement implicit bias education
Increase consciousness and cultural awareness
Increase support to students with marginalized identities
The list above references some of the goals of the contract. The entire contract reads this way. What do these goals really mean? Let’s break it down a little.
Implicit bias education tells us that we all unconsciously make judgements about groups of people with common characteristics. If the characteristic is race, implicit bias tells us everyone is racist. If the characteristic is gender, implicit bias tells us we are all sexist. So, if GHAPS is implementing implicit bias education, GHAPS is teaching that we are all racist, sexist and homophobic and make judgements about groups of people with common characteristics. Basically, this means we are all using prejudice all the time unconsciously.
Increasing consciousness and cultural awareness means noticing differences in characteristics that groups of people share. For example, skin color, height, hair type, gender, and sexual orientation are characteristics shared by groups of people. So instead of learning to treat people equally regardless of their traits, increasing cultural awareness means we should take note and categorize people by their differences.
A marginalized group is a group of people that experiences social and political inequality. If you “increase support” to any group of people with common characteristics you are giving them an advantage. Giving an unfair advantage to a group of people with common characteristics is the definition of discrimination. Therefore, increasing support to “students with marginalized identities”, means identifying a group of people with common characteristics and discriminating against everyone else.
So to summarize, the goal is for GHAPS to recognize that we all use prejudice, and should become more aware of differences between people so that we can discriminate against the groups that are the majority of the population. In other words, straight, white, males are racist, and we should discriminate against them and give advantages to LGBTQ, brown, women.
Deanna Rolffs is the consultant working with GHAPS. If you are not familiar with Deanna Rolffs, below you can see a few of her retweets, and here is a link to a previous post which explains her views and includes two videos of her speaking.
According to the contract Design Group International, Inc (i.e. Deanna Rolffs) will do the following things:
Lead five 1-hour professional development training sessions for GHAPS teachers
Support Mary Jane Evink at two GHAPS school board program committee meetings
Work with Mary Jane Evink to create a district DEI committee
Design Group International, Inc was paid $34,500. This contract spans one year and will end June 31, 2022. Three Professional Development training sessions have already taken place and the remaining two are scheduled for March 17, 2022 and May 4, 2022. Key GHAPS participants in this contract are the Director of Instructional Services Mary Jane Evink, former Superintendent Andy Ingall, Superintendent Scott Grimes, and former Assistant Superintendent Brian Wheeler. Two of the key GHAPS participants no longer work for GHAPS.
Since this contract took effect the DEIB committee has been created and current members are listed below:
Kate Augustyn – GHAPS Special Education Director
Tarsha Barnett – Social Worker, Lakeshore
Hailey Barton – GHHS Special Education Teacher, Teacher Lead for Calling All Colors
Tammy Basil – Counselor, Lakeshore
Marisa Bradford – former student social worker intern, server at Poquito
Amy Cahalan – Science Teacher, Lakeshore
Kate Drake – Principal, Peach Plains
Marc Eickholt – GHAPS School Board
Kara Endsley – GHAPS Reading Specialist
Mary Jane Evink – Director of Instructional Services
Scott Grimes – GHAPS Superintendent
Jason Klinger – GHHS World History
Sarah McElrath – Middle School Librarian
Tracey Nauta – Home Realty Staff, former GHAPS School Board Candidate
Safornia Pierce – 6th Grade Teacher, White Pines
Jason Reinecke – GHAPS Assistant Superintendent
Deanna Rolffs – Design Group International, Inc
Melissa Sanborn – 2nd Grade Teacher, Robinson
Erin Shillenger – 6th Grade Teacher, White Pines
Gina Schmitt – GHHS Assistant Principal
Noele Stith – Design Group International, Inc
Tim Taylor – Head Pastor Hope Church
There are several interesting members of this committee. Marc Eickholt, Jason Reinecke and Scott Grimes are all members of the committee and have all taken high-level leadership positions at GHAPS since the committee was formed. Kara Endsley, the reading specialist at Griffin, recommended the book Call Me Max which features a transgender main character, be read to GHAPS elementary school students. Hailey Barton leads the Calling All Color club for GHHS. Hailey Barton has also volunteered with the Lakeshore Ethnic Diversity Alliance. In fact she participated in a panel discussion entitled How Teaching Critical Race Theory In Schools Prepares Youth To Create An Equitable Future. News Article - Video -
Here are a few clips from Tracey Nauta’s Facebook page.
Members of the committee were hand-picked by Deanna Rolffs and Mary Jane Evink as per the contract. Although I’m not familiar with everyone on the DEIB committee, Erin Shillenger, has received two glowing reports from parents that had children in her class, while Tim Taylor is reported to be a pastor with flexible interpretations of the bible. Since the members were hand-picked to promote DEIB views within the district I wonder how many hold leftist political views? I also wonder if dissenting views are allowed on this committee?
According to the contract, the committee will do the following:
Put together a book club for the committee
Create a 9-month DEIB committee plan
Conduct a baseline inclusiveness survey with students, staff and administration
Create a staff planning, engagement and communication plan
Two more statements from the contract are as follows:
”Communication and engagement with students and parents is a primary component of the work of this Agreement, to share what we are learning and why we are learning it, we are practicing, sharing resources with them, including roadmaps and models for application.”
and
“The Board of Education Trustees will be included in the work of this Agreement by Mary Jane and the leadership team, to provide updates, resources and accountability to engage regarding their recent resolution of Inclusion and Anti-Racism which was passed in January 2021. District leadership commits engaging the board so that they are prepared to explain the relevancy of this work.”
If the board approved this professional development, then why do they need to be prepared to explain the relevancy of this work?
I actually have an explanation for this. The reason is because this work is not relevant to giving our children a foundational education in reading, writing and arithmetic. Therefore, they need to be given a reason that makes it sound relevant. Race hustlers like Ibrim X Kendi and Al Sharpton have learned how to profit by exploiting ethnic tensions. Deanna Rolffs is no different.
Reading this consulting contract, it is difficult to determine the overall goal and even more difficult to measure the success. This entire contract is race hustling at its finest. Not only does it create profit for Deanna Rolffs during the year the contract is active, it skews the thinking of an entire generation of children ensuring a lucrative future for Deanna Rolffs and others that profit from promoting division and creating racial tension.
GHAPS is introducing concepts of white privilege and implicit bias to our students via the professional development training of our teachers. They have begun teaching our children concepts such as our institutions are filled with systemic racism, social justice creates equity for underrepresented populations, and all people have implicit bias (are prejudice) towards other people. These concepts have entered GHAPS through the teachers and the administrators. Although there are many teachers resistant to these ideas, there are others who are pushing them onto our children and our community.