At this point, the constant barrage of anti-Darby Boddy sentiment at Lakota schools is laughable. At the school board meeting on 4.17.23, the second-year school board member, who has been the center of controversy, proposed the board vote on banning transgender bathrooms and athletes at Lakota schools, and the reaction was predictably hostile. School board members Kelly Casper and Julie Shaffer, who have supported transgender bathrooms in the past, were openly hostile toward Darbi for even bringing it up. And the rest of the board noticeably leaned left on the issue, leaving Darbi in a 4-to-1-squabble over an obvious problem. Of course, the media picked up the story and attempted to sling it negatively toward Darbi Boddy, as they have for the entire last year. But the real problem on the board, just as it is with their grasp of financial concepts, is that the Lakota school board cares much more about its public image than the actual quality of the school. And I have news for them. They can play keep away with the facts all they want, but the reality is that eventually some version of the Backpack Bill will pass in Ohio and the money will go away from the school and will follow the kids. Public schools as we know it will change forever; it’s an inevitable fate. And only one of the school board members at Lakota, Darbi Boddy, is trying to prepare for that inevitability by asking questions that will eventually make Lakota schools more competitive. When the community brings issues to the school board, their reaction has been to hide and keep away from the facts, trying to limit public expression at extreme measures to hide the actual problems from themselves.
For instance, there has been talk for several years now, going back to the previous board president, where Lakota spent much of its excess budget on woke administrators to fill positions like equity inclusion and other ridiculous progressive government roles. The school board attempts to say that they are not a political body of administration and that everything they do is “for the kids.” And anyone who questions that premise they berate like a bunch of thugs robbing a Walmart in Chicago, as if the potential for violence and name-calling might hide the reality of their true intentions, which is extreme political activism, such as is the case with gender-neutral bathrooms in a public school, which Julie Shaffer has undoubtedly supported in the past, who is now up for re-election this year. But like in the case of Kelly Casper, who was openly very rude to Darbi Boddy during the Monday school board meeting, she has been pressing the issue that Lakota has cut all the meat off the bone that they could, so why couldn’t Lakota get more state money to cover their costs. Lakota has too many administrators who perform woke, purely political tasks. Every administrator Lakota hires toward woke causes costs around $100,000 yearly after salary and benefits. Then obviously, ten useless administrators will add a million dollars to the payroll. The question then becomes, how many useless administrators are there at Lakota schools? Around 30%? That is the financial problem at Lakota. It’s a spending problem by big government hacks, not an actual budget problem that requires more state revenue. Lakota needs to go the other way on their cost structure for the eventual day when a Backpack Bill in favor of School Choice passes, and Lakota will become an option instead of a zip code-mandated limit.
Then in that regard, Darbi is asking all the right questions. Darbi wants to show the voting public that Lakota is taking a stand against transgender activism because that is something that people with kids are concerned about, and if Lakota makes that stand now, they might want to send their kids to Lakota still later. Transgender issues are in the news, so now is the time for Lakota to state its position to ease parents’ minds. But the other board members dug in and lashed out at Darbi for even bringing up the question, with big spender Kelly Casper calling Darbi on stage a “petulant 2-year-old,” obviously trying to score points with the radical teacher union base she most represents. But behind the entire meeting was anger that Darbi even brought up the issue because the board, just as they had done over their superintendent antics, where there were reports of alarming activity that they ignored which drove the need for a public position, and they wanted to pretend as if there was no merit behind Darbi’s vote recommendation. As if reporting any of this transgender activity to the acting superintendent might actually result in action, which we all know by now, it will be ignored because it might damage the school’s reputation. Yet, parents are concerned; I received information that can be seen here from a kid in the 6th grade at VanGorden Elementary at Lakota who brought home the book Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky. That book was given to the child in school, and they brought it home for their parents to discover, and it is all about a boy who feels like a girl, so he takes the journey to become one. It clearly says on the back of the book, “What if who you are on the outside doesn’t match who you are on the inside?” This is what is being taught in Lakota schools, and the school board should be aware of it. According to them, they aren’t aware, which shows how out of touch they are with reality. Only Darbi Boddy is trying to do anything about it. Darbi is right; we need a new board built around people like her because the rest are part of the political problem and spending disasters.
But even worse than all that, all this transgender talk is technically a religious issue. It’s not just a political platform for liberal politics. The same people advocating for transgender bathrooms and student-athletes are the same who would say that the Cross of Christ or Bible studies in any public school would be a violation of church and state. Yet it’s perfectly ok to plaster the walls of Lakota with rainbows and Pride paraphernalia to show equity inclusion. But the trans movement is religious; it’s the Cult of Ishtar, which is a thing of its own. Where religion becomes part of a political movement, which trans rights clearly are. If a school is going to allow for rainbow representations of a sexual lifestyle in the Pride movement, then they must also enable open displays of the Ten Commandments and the Cross on the walls. You can’t have one without the other. But the instances are that one is allowed, but the other isn’t, and that is indeed the core problem we are dealing with at all public schools. We are supposed to accept that transgender issues are a moral mandate while other religious practices are rejected as a separation of Church and State, which is reprehensible. And the Lakota school board, except for Darbi Boddy, wants to ignore this massive problem just to protect their ability to get more tax money from the public in the future because they waste so much money they have no other management option based on the politics of the system itself. And to that point, only Darbi Boddy has been willing to tackle the problems at Lakota to make it a more viable destination for the education dollar spent. The rest just hope the problem will disappear, especially if they ignore the evidence, which is ridiculously complicit in progressive politics that is the foundation of everything that goes on in public education.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 