By Chris Powell
How did the infamous “pizza sex” assignment get into a middle school classroom in Enfield in January? And was a Hartford school nurse, suspended in March, telling the truth when she wrote on social media that the school system conceals from parents the gender dysphoria suffered by their children?
The school systems resolutely refuse to answer those questions and are defying Connecticut’s freedom-of-information law by refusing to release documents that might provide answers.
Under the law such documents are plainly public and this writer has asked the state Freedom of Information Commission to order their disclosure.
Responding to this writer’s formal request, Enfield Superintendent Christopher J. Drezek provided copies of complaints from parents about the “pizza sex” assignment but nothing about how it came into the school system, the focus of the request. Pressed on the point, Drezek refused to say whether there are any documents addressing the assignment’s origin, even as he asked that the complaint to the FOI Commission be withdrawn.
So it may be assumed that there [ITALICS] are [END ITALICS] such documents and that they are embarrassing. While the superintendent has admitted that giving the “pizza sex” assignment to students was a mistake, he won’t come clean about it.
A publicist for Hartford Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez acknowledged receipt of this writer’s request for access to the personnel file of the nurse but the superintendent’s office has not responded to it. In earlier correspondence the publicist refused to say whether the nurse had told the truth. So the nurse probably did.
The superintendent claims that the nurse was suspended for identifying in her social media posts a young student receiving puberty-blocking drugs, but the post that was made public identified no one. In any case whether Hartford school policy is to conceal the gender dysphoria of students from their parents is a fair question quite apart from the nurse’s suspension, and the school system refuses to answer it.
Such profound unaccountability and subversion of parents seems to be spreading rapidly through Connecticut school systems. Last week the Connecticut Health I-Team reported that New Haven’s Board of Education unanimously has approved a policy that “grants students the right to change their name and gender identity on school records without parental permission, the right to be called by their preferred name and pronoun in school,” and “the right to keep this information private without school staff telling parents or peers.”
Enfield’s Board of Education has purported to be investigating the “pizza sex” assignment for seven months but has disclosed nothing about it. The board needs only to ask the superintendent at a public meeting to explain how the assignment got into the school system. That the board has not done so suggests that it already knows and doesn’t want its constituents to know.
Hartford’s school board appears not to be curious about the assertions of the suspended nurse. Hartford’s newspaper, the Courant, shows no curiosity either.
The FOI Commission presumably will call a hearing on the complaints eventually. But the commission has a backlog and both school systems may be counting on delaying disclosure until after the election in November to prevent the unaccountability of school systems and their subversion of parents from becoming an issue in the gubernatorial and state legislative campaigns.
It might be a pretty good issue if any candidates ever began to wonder aloud whether public education is really public at all.
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WHAT SAFETY?: Last week his campaign for re-election issued a statement headlined: “Governor Lamont Joins Advocates to Outline Four More Years of Gun Safety in Connecticut.” Meanwhile last week there were more than the usual shootings in the cities, seven in Hartford alone.
The governor isn’t particularly to blame for the worsening social disintegration in the state. But he [ITALICS] is [END ITALICS] to blame for asserting that more gun laws will bring the state “four more years of gun safety” — and that Connecticut already has had four such years.
Gun violence is a mere symptom of social disintegration, not a cause, and more gun laws, like the ones already in force, will be effective only against people who obey laws. Connecticut has many other people.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.
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Chris Powell column 