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Today’s blacklisted American: School officials in Florida and Michigan retaliate against parents for being involved in their kids’ schooling

As I did last week on October 20 and 21, today’s blacklist column will cover two stories, both of which are similar and show a pattern of abuse by those in power.

The October 20th story focused on hospitals blacklisting nurses, either for being white or Christian. The October 21st story told the story of teachers being fired for opposing the introduction of the queer agenda in toddler daycare and in elementary schools.

Today’s story describes how school officials in two different states instigated investigations designed solely to destroy the livelihood of parents, simply because those parents questioned the way those officials were doing their job.

Note that in all three cases, the nurses, teachers, and parents were blacklisted simply because they had expressed in public a disagreement with the policies of those in charge. Apparently, to those now in charge, the first amendment has been suspended, so that any dissent against them can be punished harshly.

Targeted for being a concerned parent
Sandra Hernden, targeted for blacklisting
for being a concerned parent

First we Sandra Hernden in Michigan. When her autistic child’s grade scores plummeted because he could not handle remote learning during the Wuhan panic, she began to raise the issue repeatedly with the Chippewa Valley School Board in Michigan, trying to show them that there was no scientific reason to isolate little kids, and that such remote learning policies were very detrimental not only to her son, but all the children in the schools.

The board not only refused to listen, it responded vindictively, so viciously in fact that Hernden as since filed a lawsuit [pdf]. First, the board’s secretary, Elizabeth Pyden, wrote Herndon’s work supervisor, accusing Herndon of expressing “anger, disrespect, and veiled racism.” This immediately caused an investigation to be mounted against Herndon which could have resulted in her losing her job.

Herndon by the way is a police officer. Her supervisors reviewed the evidence and cleared her. They understood that, according to the first amendment, they had no right to silence her, and the board’s attempt to use its power to punish her was actually illegal.

Since Herndon refused to back down, the school board’s president, Frank Bednard, decided to take more serious action. He wrote the Department of Justice, essentially making a criminal referral that asked if there was anything federal law enforcement could do “to curb this behavior by these people.”

What a thug. Bednard didn’t like the opinions of Herndon and other parents, so the obvious solution is to sic the Gestapo on them.

Meanwhile, the evidence continues to pour in proving that Hernden was 100% right, that the school board’s remote learning policies did great harm to the children in its schools, and was based on no valid scientific evidence.

Shawn Hayston, targeted for being a concerned parent
Shawn Hayston, targeted for blacklisting
for being a concerned parent

Next we have a story out of Florida. Parent Shawn Hayston was concerned about certain materials on display at Pasco County Public School that suggested it was indoctrinating the children there into the queer agenda. Hayston — along with a number of other parents — arranged to have a tour of the school with its principal, Jennifer Warren. During that tour Warren became increasingly hostile when the parents kept asking her questions.

Throughout the tour, Principal Warren was “combative,” [fellow parent Jennifer] Houston said, and “left us with more questions than answers.”

Hayston is a firefighter in a different county. Two days after the tour he discovered that Warren had filed a complaint against him, triggering an investigation.

Hayston, the father of two sons, said he was told that the principal of the Pasco County school had called Hillsborough County Fire Rescue and asked the department to do an investigation into his behavior. He said he was told the school’s principal, Jennifer Warren, complained to fire officials that he had been hostile while touring the school, and that she had requested a formal investigation.

She told fire officials he had entered the school without authorization, and also said he’d been charged with trespassing by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office, the firefighter said he was told.

None of that was true, Hayston said.

Like Bednard in Michigan, school principal Warren did not like it that Hayston was expressing concerns about the way the school was being run, and her obvious solution was to lie about him in order to get him fired.

While Hayston was cleared of all wrong-doing after a short two week investigation, he thinks the complaint has probably hurt his future in the fire department. He now plans to run for the school board in its next election in 2024, in the hope he can force some change that way. Apparently, the school system does not consider the responsibility of parents to raise their children as sufficient. The children really belong to the government.

The brutal and vengeful behavior of these school officials should not surprise us. Many government officials nationwide — most of whom are generally on the left — now seem to think they are should be immune from any criticism at all. To their minds, any dissent is the equivalent of violence that must be squelched by any means necessary.

May the next few elections remove such people from power, forever.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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14 comments

  • Alton Blevins

    Edit on Mom and Police officer:

    and the board’s attempt to use its power to punish her for [[ expewas ]] actually illegal.

  • Alton: At some point some extra letters got inserted by mistake. I have fixed things. Thank you!

  • Cotour

    Related because it is all related:

    This is worth a quick review, this and things like are what is being taught in schools today:

    Read the first three or four posts.

    Pat ???️‍??? (@PatPanActivist) / Twitter

    This may be the best counter intuitive contradictory sentence ever written:

    “We need to make sure the election is fair so that we win no matter what.”

    This is apparently what is bouncing around in some people’s brains.

    https://twitter.com/PatPanActivist/photo

    And that is one hell of a mellon!

    What is a Pansexual?

    Pansexuality is sexual, romantic, or emotional attraction towards people regardless of their sex or gender identity. [1] [2] Pansexual people may refer to themselves as gender-blind, asserting that gender and sex are not determining factors in their romantic or sexual attraction to others.

    A confused self-indulgent moron in other words.

  • Consider that those who push this have come to believe that, if they normalize LGBTQ behavior, they will demoralize/marginalize and ultimately reduce dissent – particularly Christian dissent – to irrelevance in the overall society,

    It is high-intensity gaslighting … make all this normal, so that dissenters question their own normality and shut up the dissent.

    And it is based in a paranoid belief that the dissent will turn coercive, based upon stereotypes of fundamentalist Christianity that have not reflected reality for thirty years … driven by the primal fear of the busybodies involved that someone will pop their Utopian bubble with credible criticism of their position, that other reasonable people will take seriously.

    The 1980’s called, and they want their Moral Majority back …

  • To repeat what was said in 2020 by the BLM and Antifa violent rioters:

    “Your speech is violence; Our violence is speech”

    More and more it seems that Leftist are completely detached from reality. On another blog (Virtual Mirage) it was pointed out that Leftists live in the moment, doing or saying whatever will produce the immediate gratification of a feeling of moral superiority. It is also a form of mental illness. That person that Cotour pointed to is a prime example. It wants constant, immediate gratification without realizing the consequences of said actions both in what it writes and what it does to itself. (I will have to go wash my eyes out with soap to relieve the pain of looking at its picture).

  • Jester Naybor observed: “It is high-intensity gaslighting … make all this normal, so that dissenters question their own normality and shut up the dissent.”

    If you have a solid intellectual and moral foundation, you can tune out a lot of noise.

    “And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:

    And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.”

    Matthew 7:26-27 KJV

    Otherwise,

    “I got no rudder. Wind blows northerly, I go north. That’s who I am. Now, maybe that ain’t a man to lead, but they have to follow.”

    Malcolm Reynolds ‘Serenity’ 2005

  • BLSinSC

    I am fully behind these PARENTS and feel those who VINDICTIVELY ASSAULT them should face criminal charges! Abuse of Office – FALSE STATEMENTS – whatever!! This RETALIATION against LEGITIMATE concerns needs to have CONSEQUENCES! I do hope the lawsuits go forward and people have to pay PERSONALLY for their actions! That is the only way to change the behavior of the LEFT – when they have to pay out of their OWN pockets!

  • BLSinSC

    I ‘m 70 and am constantly confused by all these new “sexes”! Is a “trans-man” a man thinking he’s a woman or a woman thinking she’s a man?? And a “non-binary” is really confusing. “non” means NOT and “binary” means TWO! So if you’re “non-binary” then that means that you are just ONE?? Well, WHICH ONE?? And REALLY, NONE of this should be discussed in PRE-SCHOOL or ANY SCHOOL! Leave that for kids to discover and NOT be pushed into something due to peer pressure of ADULT pushers! Leave the CHILDREN ALONE and just TEACH them the BASIC subject matters!

  • Robert Arvanitis

    Sarah Hoyt is right when she calls for “heads on pikes.”
    It’s the only way they learn.

  • Cotour

    BLSinSC:

    There are no “NEW” sexes.

    There is male and there is female and then there are those who find themselves either psychologically or biologically different or anomalies and are confused by their personal individual situation as it relates to society and culture and how they are accepted or rejected within it.

    This Leftist movement is an attempt to rectify what people through ignorance and their natural reaction to “The different”. But they go about it in a forced / mandated / Communistic manner and that forced / mandated / Communistic manner must be rejected.

    And it must be recognized that people can be different in real terms.

    But there are only two sexes and this third classification of individual who can be biologically born the one but is genuinely compelled and identifies as the other is clearly a minority within the population. And it is THEIR job to adapt and find their way in the world. Easier said than done for sure, but that is the reality of the matter.

    We are dealt what we are dealt in life, make the best of it.

    And once again I point out that it is necessary to teach mutual respect in schools if anything is to be taught to “Other” people’s children. And not teach racism or sexism or hatred, and that is what the radical Left who now dominates the teachers’ unions and many of the teaching positions in schools teach. From the top down.

    Where politics comes in in order to take advantage of this “Difference” and make an issue of it and use that issue as a political cudgel or weapon in order to further retain or further acquire political power.

    But in the end, within the parameters that the Constitution structures all is revealed in time in order that the people be better able to choose.

    What is about to take place in American politics will be possibly never before seen. Why? Because the Democrat party machine has gone too far, and they have abused their political power at the cost of the people’s freedoms in the extreme. To the point that I personally consider much of what they have done as treason in many ways.

    Trust NONE of them in either political party.

    And that in the end it what it is all about.

  • Edward

    Robert wrote: “The brutal and vengeful behavior of these school officials should not surprise us. Many government officials nationwide — most of whom are generally on the left — now seem to think they are should be immune from any criticism at all. To their minds, any dissent is the equivalent of violence that must be squelched by any means necessary.

    This concept that the educators know better than the parents is not new. My parents used to go to PTA meetings (Parent Teacher Association), thinking that the purpose of the group was for parental input into our education. They got a rude awakening when the teachers rejected input, claiming that they were the education experts and that the parents didn’t know what they were talking about. Apparently, the PTA’s purpose was to inform the parents, not to be informed by the parents.

    The left has long demanded that its members toe the line, whatever the line is and whenever the line changes. This got Rosanne Barr into trouble when the line changed without her noticing. Her show was cancelled, and her cast and crew were out of jobs.

    When I was in college, some of us joked about the need for a PC magazine (there was one for Personal Computers, but we needed one for Politically Correct speech) What was deemed to be politically correct changed constantly, and keeping up was difficult. Of course, we didn’t care, because we were not the ones who bothered trying to be politically correct, but we often knew what had changed before our leftist friends did. It was kind of surprising to us that we were better informed than those who would be shunned for saying the wrong things. At the time it all seemed so stupid. It still does, but now they are forcing stupidity onto us all.

    So now these authoritarians are forcing their own views onto people outside their leftist clan and using the government to be their enforcers. Despite the requirement to be neutral, government has taken sides. Welcome to Obama’s fundamentally transformed America, land of the formerly free.

  • pzatchok

    I remember when my son was in grade school.
    Because I was one of the few parents who actually went to the teachers conference they wanted me to join and run for the head of the PTA.
    I asked the school( of 400 students) how many parents showed up for the meetings. It turned out to be less than 4 parents out of a class size of 25.
    And at the time there were only 10 PTA members.

    Our school would have been thrilled to actually have parents show up and care about anything.

  • Edward

    pzatchok,
    You wrote: “Our school would have been thrilled to actually have parents show up and care about anything.

    I’m sure that they would, but would they have wanted parental input or did they just want them there to express their expertise?

  • pzatchok wrote, “Our school would have been thrilled to actually have parents show up and care about anything.”

    And there in a nutshell is the reason we now have porno in schools, and drag queens, and attempts by teachers to groom little children for sex. Parents (like too many Americans) stopped paying attention. For years, even if you told them this stuff was happening, they’d shrug and say, “Not my problem. It ain’t important enough to miss the next soap opera or football game.”

    It does appear however that this apathy is beginning to vanish. Thank god.

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