Amos Roe damns the cruel ‘equity’ of low expectations
in Madison’s worship of victimhood

“I have been teaching children ages 7-18 for about 35 years. Based on this experience, I think that MMSD [the Madison Metro School District] has lost its mind.”

Now THAT is an attention grabber! It’s the first sentence — the “lede” in journalism parlance — to an invited newspaper column written by a candidate for Madison school board. That candidate would be one Amos Roe, a totally unknown entity except to his independent piano students. (Read it here.) (Blaska’s piece will appear in The Capital Times next Wednesday, 02-06-19).

Mr. Roe is running against two practitioners of Madison-style identity politics: Ananda Mirilli (making her second run for school board) and incumbent T.J. Mertz, notorious for throwing up roadblocks at school resource officers in our troubled high schools.

What’s that buzzing, droning sound?

Mirilli, in her Capital Times piece, works the usual Lefty bromides harder than a rented stump grinder. “Racial equity,” “equitable access,” “equity for teachers,” “equity in the classroom” — equity everywhere, over there and in our underwear! A typical bromide: 

Strengthening implementation of racial equity, restorative practices through an equity lens.

“Everyone benefits when students and staff feel a greater sense of belonging,” Ms. Mirilli trills. By contrast, Amos Roe offers no-nonsense, tough-love straight talk: 

MMSD currently promotes an aggressive victimization mentality toward children of color. … MMSD kids are told, from the time that they first enter this system, that they are victims due to their skin color. … If you view yourself as a victim, you become a victim. I think identity politics is child abuse on a mass scale. 

Roe cites the race-shaming the district inflicted on an honored, 16-year teacher named Karen Vieth for blowing the whistle on the dysfunction rampant in Sherman middle school. The district was …

… perfectly happy to grind up what used to be a well-functioning school serving a large percentage of minority children, run by a beloved principal, into a hellhole of chaos, violence and disorder.

“Closing the door on MMSD”

Indeed, Ms. Vieth had described the aftermath of the district’s Behavior Education Plan thusly: 

With discipline removed and no true restoration happening, our climate quickly degraded over the course of three years. Students can swear at teachers, use hate language, talk about blowing up the school, walk out of classrooms, or hit a peer. They would take a quick break out of the classroom and be back to start all over again exhibiting the same behaviors five to ten minutes later. …

Students have pushed staff, broken multiple panes of glass in the windows and doors, and brought weapons and drugs to school. The hallways have been filled to the brim with yelling, swearing, pushing, and shoving. — “Closing the door on the Madison school district”

Amos Roe continues:

This was due to the hiring of a totally incompetent principal by our superintendent … [who] … continued to coddle and excuse this principal, simply because her skin had the color she wanted. Children, with skin that had similar shades of the same color, were deemed expendable.

We’ve never met Mr. Roe face to face but he did ring up the Stately Manor shortly after Blaska announced his candidacy. I surmise that, as punishment for his straight talk, Mr. Roe will be asked a question with which Blaska has been confronted; that being: “How are you going to work with the rest of the seven-member school board?”

Blaska’s Bottom Line: If he is anything like this scribbler, Mr. Roe will respond: how are they going to work with me?