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As a candidate for college board, Ben Helgeson says he needs to function a bridge between dad and mom and lecturers, opening up dialogue and restoring belief.
As a guardian, Helgeson despatched dozens of emails to district directors, lecturers, and union leaders accusing a instructor of being a “priestess” of essential race concept, accusing the union of pushing a racist, non secular ideology, and accusing Superintendent Chris Gdowski of being complicit in all of it.
Helgeson is a part of a slate of conservative candidates looking for to shift the stability of energy in Adams 12 5 Star Faculties, a various suburban district north of Denver. It’s one in every of dozens of Colorado districts seeing contested faculty board races this yr formed by non secular and political divisions. Academics unions and conservative teams are spending huge in an effort to sway voters.
In Adams 12, the general public rhetoric is extra muted. Candidates on either side speak about paying lecturers extra, bettering tutorial outcomes, and maintaining college students protected. However Helgeson is also deeply involved the lecturers union is pushing essential race concept into Adams 12 school rooms.
Chalkbeat obtained lots of Helgeson’s emails via a public data request. Some have been redacted or withheld. Helgeson’s first complaints concerned quarantines and masking guidelines, however quickly he was writing virtually solely about essential race concept. Important race concept is an educational area that analyzes how race is embedded in American legal guidelines and insurance policies, but it surely has change into a catch-all time period for progressive approaches in training.
Helgeson wrote that instructor coaching programs supplied by the Colorado Schooling Affiliation on books like Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” and Ibram X. Kendi’s “How To Be an Antiracist” have been themselves systematically racist and would pave the way in which to authoritarianism. An Adams 12 highschool instructor led one of many programs.
