This is the PHM high school student handbook proposed changes for next year. The school board will have first reading of these proposed revisions publicly this coming Monday. On May 20, the board will vote to approve potential changes.
Page 18 might be of particular interest. Notice the red ink?
You can read the full proposed student handbook here.
A recent district-wide email went out to PHM employees notifying them that current DEI officer, Derrick White, will leave that post and take over as Director of Alternative Education and Special Projects starting on July 1. This leaves the PHM DEI officer position open and vacant. I wrote about this change recently.
In my previous article, I wrote that PHM is eliminating the DEI officer position. People took issue with my using the word ‘eliminate’ because the board hasn’t voted to officially eliminate it yet, and may not vote to do so. This was a fair criticism. However, numerous sources inside PHM tell me there are no plans to fill the DEI officer position in PHM. This would effectively leave the position open indefinitely and it would only remain in derelict status. Given that DEI is being rolled back all over the country right now due to political pressure, I can see this position remaining vacant and effectively being eliminated. Arguing over semantics about whether a perpetually vacant position is actually ‘eliminated’ seems like a waste of time and energy. My sources say the position won’t be filled. If that changes, I’ll tell you.
In 2023, DEI jobs fell 5%, and so far they are down 8% in 2024. 30 states have introduced legislation to ban DEI in public education at all levels. Many have succeeded and DEI is being rolled back in many states. In last years Indiana legislative session, HB 1338 would have effectively banned DEI in Indiana education. It didn’t pass, but SB 202 did pass in the 2024 session. DEI has become politically toxic and is in retreat in the corporate world as well as public education.
Now, that doesn’t mean the battle is won. As I’ve highlighted on the show for many years, DEI, CRT, etc. are hidden within other programs like SEL. Just because PHM appears to be leaving the DEI officer post vacant and striking DEI language from the high school student handbook doesn’t mean the tenets of DEI are going away. A point highlighted by Accuracy In Media‘s deep-dive investigation into Indiana public schools hiding DEI and CRT from not only parents and the public, but from school boards as well.
Alternative media, activists, and parent groups pushing back against DEI are effectively driving it underground but the fight is long from over.
Today, Amazon moved Johnny The Walrus out of the kid’s section and into politics.
Johnny The Walrus is no longer classified as a children’s book on Amazon. They moved it to the politics category. Amazon has decided that books promoting self-acceptance are not appropriate for kids. Books promoting chemical castration and hormone pills are totally fine though.
This is actually an outrageous move by Amazon. Johnny The Walrus is a legitimate children’s book. They are officially now making the statement that books which contradict the trans agenda aren’t appropriate for children. The most backwards thing imaginable.
These are the categories they put it in. Humor and “political commentary.” There is nothing remotely political in the book. This is Amazon editorializing. pic.twitter.com/nppmH3HxQx
We’ve been talking about how local school districts have been using SAC meetings in secret to hide from the general public what they are doing in schools. PHM (Penn-Harris-Madison) were one of the districts using this tactic.
In March, the state of Indiana informed PHM they were violating state law in doing so.
The Penn Harris Madison School Corporation is having its first PUBLIC meeting of the Superintendent’s Advisory Council (SAC) on Monday night. The SAC was developed in 2020 following the death of George Floyd and the ensuing Black LivesMatter riots. Since its creation, SAC meetings had been illegally held in secret, closed-door sessions. Parental complaints about the illegal meetings lead to an investigation by the State of Indiana. The state eventually notified the school district that it must allow the public to attend the SAC meetings.
UPDATE: Several hours after I posted this article, Dr. Cheryl Camacho resigned.
I received a letter from the spouse of a teacher at Navarre Middle School in South Bend, IN.
There was a massive fight that broke out at Navarre Middle School on Thursday, April 14.
Concerned citizens took to social media to express their frustrations over another incident at the school.
The letter from a concerned spouse of a Navarre teacher confirms the events people were posting about online.
There was a Malay of fights after school. It was inside and outside. One child told a teacher to move or I’ll shoot you.
My wife tried getting kids back inside.
She was struck once. Kids screaming gun!
The letter also spoke about security at Navarre:
My wife is traumatized. I’m sure there are a lot of kids that are too.
There is no security to speak of.
Police were way late.
This is not the first gun and I believe it’s just a matter of time before there are deaths.
Posts on Facebook indicated when police did arrive, there were numerous officers on the scene.
I reached out to the South Bend Police Department about the fight at Navarre. Here’s their statement:
I can confirm our officers responded to reports of a fight at Navarre Middle School yesterday just after 4 pm. However, while a sizable crowd had formed, our officers only observed two juveniles actively fighting while we were on the scene.
No gun was recovered.
As with most cases happening on school property, any additional information will need to come from South Bend Schools.
I requested comment from Navarre directly but the school is closed today for Good Friday. I’ll update the story when/if I get a response.
As of right now, Navarre has not posted about the incident publicly.
This isn‘t the first time I’ve discussed Navarre Middle School.
In June of 2021, Real News Michiana revealed that Jasmine Brown, an 8th grade Social Studies teacher at Navarre was teaching CRT and advocating for Black Lives Matter in her classroom. Jasmine Brown was also Navarre’s Teacher of the Year for 2020-2021. Some of her lessons included how the prison system is designed to over incarcerate minorities and is a modern form of slavery.
As Real News Michiana’s investigations into Navarre continued, we learned that a local police hating BLM activist was promoted to Dean of School Culture at Navarre. Regina Williams-Preston called for police to be removed from schools at a press conference in May 2021.
“This is a public call to school board members, district administrators to do your job, uphold the law and remove police from schools now.”
She has also been tied to Eli Cantu, a local gang member.
Valeria Chamorro taught social studies at Navarre and was promoted to an Assistant Principal position. She repeatedly posted “All Cops Are Bastards” online.
Navarre Middle School is a part of the South Bend Empowerment Zone. Schools in the SBEZ are failing schools in the South Bend Community School Corporation. The SBEZ was created as a way to prevent a state takeover of the schools and to help prevent failing schools from further dragging down SBSC’s proficiency ratings.
Another SBEZ school had a viral moment when a South Bend Police officer was thrown out of Coquillard Elementary School during a standard community walkthrough by the CEO of the South Bend Empowerment Zone.
Dr. Cheryl Camacho expressed her discomfort with the officer’s presence in the school even though he’d been stopping by the school for years, as is commonplace for officers. After the officer asked if she was uncomfortable with him coming by the school, she said:
“Okay, yeah. And it’s not that, I wouldn’t say blanket uncomfortable. We’re just breaking from a lot of past practices to the prior years.”
Dr. Camacho is also in charge of Navarre Middle School.
From the top-down, SBEZ schools like Navarre Middle School are not focused on student education and safety. Rather than focusing on classical education, they are propagandizing students with CRT, 1619 Project lies, and BLM radicalism. Meanwhile, Navarre continues to fail students.
Navarre students are also well below the state average for student growth towards proficiency. In other words, the school is failing to bring students up to speed so they can become proficient.
Beyond the violence discussed at the top of this article, disciplinary issues are also a major problem at Navarre.
At $11,258 per pupil, Navarre Middle School is better funded than the Indiana state average ($10,262).
Their student-to-teacher ratio is equal to, or better than, the state average of 17:1. I’ve found some that calculate their ratio as being closer to 14:1. They are rated as the second-best in South Bend for student/teacher ratio.
Schools with similar demographics in Indiana outperform Navarre by wide margins according to the Indiana Department of Education.
This is a school filled with social justice activists in an Empowerment Zone run by social just activists and they are absolutely failing minority students.
Perhaps Navarre faculty needs to start focusing on education and discipline and less on activism.
There is no better example than Navarre Middle School to support parental school choice.
Jonathan Choe, was a reporter for KOMO News in Seattle, WA.
He wrote an article on Medium that he was fired for how he covered a Proud Boys rally. The Proud Boys are a group that has been falsely labeled as a white supremacist hate group by alt-left extremist organizations in spite of The Proud Boys clearly rejecting racism in their charter and allowing all races to join their ranks while being led by a man who is not white.
Choe was covering the rally in the Washington state capital of Olympia earlier this month. He tweeted a photo montage of the Proud Boys rally, including some controversial music in the clip. That drew outrage from the Twitterati, who allegedly accused him of being a “white supremacist.”
In a Tweet recapping the day, I decided to create a photo montage with natural sound from the march(in TV news this is what’s called a “NAT Pkg”). One of my videos picked up music blasting from a speaker strapped over the shoulder of one of the protesters. I could not make out the words and had never heard this song in my life. You could also hear car horns and the footsteps of marchers as I weaved in and out of the crowd. I laid some photos over this natural sound from the video and hit send.
I later learned the song is called “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” and is sometimes played at white nationalist rallies. This piece was never meant to air on KOMO News and it never did. I wanted it to be a conversation starter, and it sure did incite an unexpected response. In hindsight, I wish I added more context to this Tweet. But before I could clarify or respond to the criticism, my news director told me to take down all my social media related to the Proud Boys march. I was also told by my boss not to speak to any outside media. The following day, I was fired from KOMO.
I’d never heard the song before either. The version used during the rally appears to be Pine Tree Riots – We’ll Have Our Home Again.
The Pine Tree Riot was an act of resistance to British royal authority undertaken by American colonists in Weare, New Hampshire on April 14, 1772 – Wikipedia
Everything that has its roots in patriotism is labeled as ‘white nationalist’ by the alt-left blue anon conspiracy theorists.
There’s nothing in the lyrics to suggest the song is racist in any way without severe mental gymnastics. Whether or not it’s played at ‘white nationalist’ rallies is irrelevant. I’m still waiting for someone to define what a ‘white nationalist’ actually is. They keep freezing up when I ask that question.
Allowing any group to coopt anything to become their own is a sign of societal weakness. Just because a small group uses a symbol that is commonplace, doesn’t mean that symbol now exclusively represents that small group. To say otherwise is silly.
Choe was fired by KOMO because he didn’t lie about The Proud Boys and their rally. It was peaceful and he reported it as such. For that, he was fired.
MY SIDE OF THE STORY. It's official. I parted ways with KOMO News. Thank you to all my amazing colleagues who gave me a chance in one of the most important media markets in America. But I am not done serving the good people of #Seattle. Stay tuned. https://t.co/jplr2VCUq1
