Can his case defeat the cancel culture?
THIS JUST IN AT 7:25 P.M.: After two hours in closed session, the Madison Board of Education restored Jeffrey Copeland’s job BUT with a reprimand and three weeks lost pay and “undergo professional development.” A travesty!
We hope Madison public schools still teach George Orwell’s dystopic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four because Big Brother’s show trial is being played out at the school board level today.
The Ministry of Love, headed by Ali Muldrow, is scheduled to try their Winston Smith, sacked Sennett middle school principal Jeffrey Copeland, for the thought crime of suggesting that a job applicant who might be of minority race (not even certain of that) may not be qualified to teach our children due to lack of communication skills.
That Jeffrey Copeland’s epidermis skews to the darker shade of the color spectrum does not immunize the educator from paranoid Woke doublethink. Today’s Madison lesson plan is that everyone — even a black man — can be a closet racist because Amerikkka, founded by racism in 1619, is itself institutionally racist, doncha know.
(Today’s New York Times: “Herschel Walker is part of a long tradition of black people willing to distance themselves from their community for white praise and white power.” Get the point: there is no free thought, only race-based absolutes.)
Also caught up in MMSD’s virtue signaling was the black security guard three years ago for telling a black student at West high school not to use the N-word. Except that the employee uttered the actual, forbidden word for the shock value. Matters not that the word was use to educate rather than fulminate. When it comes to forbidden thoughtcrime, the Ministry of Woke Truth admits no exceptions.
Madison schools don’t teach critical race theory?
“As part of our US history curriculum, we are learning about slavery, racism, and antiracism for the next couple of weeks. Students will be learning about African emprires (sic), how slavery started, what life was like for Black people, and what is antiracism and racism, how it impacts us today, and what we can do. The quote grounding our work is ‘The first step to building an antiracist American is acknowledging America’s racist past. By acknowledging America’s racist past, we can acknowledge America’s racist present. In acknowledging America’s racist present, we can work toward building an antiracist America.’”
— 8th grade social studies teacher at one of Madison’s middle schools, who specifies the use of she/her/hers pronouns.
→ Public hearing on renaming Jefferson middle school is Tuesday 12-06-22.
Reinstatement is only a start
The Werkes suspects the seven members of the Ministry of Love will reinstate principal Copeland after its closed 5 p.m. meeting this afternoon. The Wisconsin State Journal has commendably girded its loins. “The board should keep Copeland tonight and make this a teaching — other than a gotcha — moment.” (Embarrassed silence from the Woke warriors at The Capital Times, of course.)
Reinstatement is not enough. This twice-defeated school board candidate demands:
• A hefty dollar settlement in Mr. Copeland’s favor.
• That Supt. Carleton Jenkins read a groveling public apology into the camera and post it on the district website and throughout Sennett middle school and all other district schools.
• Discharge the growing bureaucracy of race police at Ruth Doyle administration building.
• Discard the Behavior Education Plan. As Copeland’s firing shows, the BEP is about race, not behavior.
• Reinstate Rob Mueller-Owens at Whitehorse middle school.
• Replace in the April election the two school board members whose terms expire: Nicki Vander Meulen and Christina Gomez-Schmidt. (Circulate papers now!)
Blaska’s Bottom Line: E-mail these points to the school board today.
Blaska Policy Werkes 
17 responses to “Can Jeffrey Copeland reform Madison public schools?”
Distinct possibility: Copeland does get reinstated, but only after *he* grovels, in a criticism / self-criticism session followed by 6 weeks’ “re-education.”
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I very much doubt that either Orwell’s “1984,” or his equally devastating view of leftist authoritarianism, “Animal Farm,” is taught in Madison schools. A little too close to the bone for self-righteous progressives. In fact, anything penned by a straight white male probably vanished from the curriculum years ago, replaced by tedious, whining screeds from approved (oppressed) minorities. It’s one reason kids go to college more familiar with African folktales than with the foundational texts of Western civilization, only to have the whole ideological brainwashing process continued in overdrive.
Since students in Madison schools are learning about the indelible stain of racism in US history, why not widen the perspective to include the role of slavery in world history, including Asia, the Middle East, and Africa–i.e., places where its history is much longer and more brutal?
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Well said. I might add that along the world history lines, “modern” slavery is alive and well in some parts of the world.
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I thought those two books were banned by the religious right.
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“why not widen the perspective to include the role of slavery in world history, including Asia, the Middle East, and Africa–i.e., places where its history is much longer and more brutal?”
And, not to put too fine a point to it, ongoing-n-current!
The Gotch
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One has to wonder if they give him the option of reinstatement under their rules of how a Principal must run a School in Madison or if he doesn’t agree to that a large cash settlement to make him go away. Should be interesting.
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Thomas Jefferson’s son by Salley is buried in Madison.
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Eston Hemings-Jefferson is buried in Forest Hill Cemetery, an under-the-radar local gem.
The Gotch visited the grave, and the several Native American Burial Mounds nearby, ~2 1/2 years ago on a tour conducted by one of his Dear Sisters, and in the company of his Dear late Mother.
The Gotch
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They need to teach Africans captured other Africans and then sold them to the European slave traders. The Europeans didn’t just walk into Africa and gather up people.
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“As part of our US history curriculum, we are learning about slavery, racism, and antiracism for the next couple of weeks.”
Think they’ll…um…teach:
*How slavery in what is now the good ol’ U.S. of A. was a system which was IMPORTED_FROM_THE_CARIBBEAN where it began in the early 1500s**,
*the complicity of the Bono State, the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Imbangala, and the Nyamwezi African tribes with the White Devil, and
*That fewer than 3.7% of the 10.7 million Africans who survived the Middle Passage ARRIVED_IN_NORTH_AMERICA?
Neither does The Gotch
**deviates from the laughably debunked 1619 Project, am I right?
The Gotch
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Or this:
“In 1855, Frederic Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who designed New York’s Central Park, was in Alabama on a pleasure trip and saw bales of cotton being thrown from a considerable height into a cargo ship’s hold. The men tossing the bales somewhat recklessly into the hold were Negroes, the men in the hold were Irish. Olmsted inquired about this to a shipworker.
“ ‘Oh,’ said the worker, ‘the n****rs are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything.’ ” (bolds mine)
The Gotch
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“the Madison Board of Education restored Jeffrey Copeland’s job BUT with a reprimand and three weeks lost pay and ‘undergo professional development.’ ” Geez, MBE has made something a prophet out of me, a virtually unprecedented achievement. Congrats to them. (Truth be told though, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Next bold prediction: Mayor Dave Cieslewicz will sing the praises of MBE for reinstating Copeland but won’t mention the humiliating way it did so.)
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IMHO MBE was concerned about the prospect of a very expensive and embarrassing lawsuit on one hand, and satisying the bloodthirst of the “anti-racist” Angie Hicks on the other. Now Angie can crow about Copeland having to go through re- education camp.
But Copeland has the teachers on his side and the rot in MMSD admin has been exposed. Angie Hicks won’t try that shit again.
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It will be interesting to see how the students grades at Sennett MS do compared to other middle schools after having a no nonsense principal. Maybe MMSD will see the light or maybe not. At least the Board members showed some backbone and stood up to the school superintendent and the woke administration.
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Yep, right on cue, here’s Mayor Dave: https://yellowstripsdeadarmadillos.org/2022/12/03/copeland-is-back-but-wheres-jenkins/ (“Let’s start by giving the Madison School Board credit for voting unanimously to reinstate Sennett Middle School Principal Jeffrey Copeland”); followed by, in effect, blaming the Superintendent for being AWOL on this dispute. Any acknowledgement by Dave of Copeland’s wholly unwarranted punishment (lost pay, written reprimand, re-education camp)? Nope, not a solitary word. Nor acknowledgement that the Board represents the will of Madison’s electorate — a fish may rot from the head down, but the rot here begins with the electorate, not the Superintendent who must answer to the elected board.
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In Dave’s defense he agrees Copeland did nothing wrong besides not being able to properly use a phone. But…he will take what he can get from MBE.
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It’s a fair question, who’s likely to be influenced by this outcome, administrators like Hicks or line workers like Copeland? Given that the latter did *nothing* wrong, I’ll venture that the gratuitous punishment, erroneously meted out to stigmatize him, is indeed “pour encourager les autres.” If the administration can do this to a black principal, think what they can and will do to someone with less stature. So if I’m working in the Madison school system, I’m walking on eggshells and keeping my head down, because I know that my career may be ended over literally nothing. Mayor Dave may be correct that the Superintendent could at least try to exert control, but the latter’s career is also on the line, and I have to think he knows the direction of the wind blowing from the school board.
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