Educrats don’t touchdown

There are two outrages this week, either of which could support an entire essay on the arrogance of elites.

I will postpone until next week the implications of the decision by a headline writer at the Los Angeles Times to label as “also-rans” the men and women of the U.S. military who are “passed over” for promotion. In two weeks I will be touring the cemeteries of Normandy, wondering among other things how many of those buried there were “also-rans” who stayed on or were recalled to serve their country and the world. In fact, the lists of the “also-rans” who have died in the defense of the country is a long one.

Perhaps by the time I write for next week’s column, the Times will have apologized, or John Madigan, Chairman of the Tribune Company, which owns the Times, will have done so. I don’t hold out much hope as one outraged veteran who wrote to protest the insult received an e-mail back explaining that no one had objected until a radio talk show host – that would be me – had pointed out the headline.

I guess the Times is operating on the theory that if an insult falls in the forest, and nobody sees it, it’s not an insult. Like I said, it’s material enough for a full column, which will be coming.

There is a smaller perp than the Los Angeles Times to consider, one which ordinarily would never catch the attention of a national audience. After a show I devoted to this subject last week, Fox News Network called looking for names. For this interest I am very glad, because this outrage is very bad, very serious, and very ominous if left uncorrected. First the facts.

Mission Viejo High School in Mission Viejo, Calif., is a fine high school in a fine, ordinary community. It’s a pretty conservative place, in the heart of the very Republican Orange County. The largest church west of the Mississippi is also in Mission Viejo, Saddleback Valley Community Church. So one would expect the school district and the school board to reflect the values of the community.

If so, one would be wrong.

Beginning more than five years ago, the School Board of the Saddleback Valley Unified School District embarked upon a policy that denied the Fellowship of Christian Athletes a place on the high-school campus, saying it was not “curriculum-related.” Though most observers quickly recognized this decision as an unlawful departure from the statutory guarantees of “equal access” and as an unconstitutional foray into prohibited “viewpoint discrimination,” the school district persisted. A trial court agreed with the school district, but in February an appeals court reversed that decision “in full” and by a 3-0 vote mandated equal treatment for this club.

Prior to that ruling the community had been content to allow the court system to adjudicate the claims. Only a few Christian kids were being denied equal treatment, and that’s pretty uncontroversial nowadays, so the case ground along. The appeals court ought to have been the last word.

Except the school board decided on a fit of righteous pique, and issued a sweeping edict last week: The school district “trustees” – talk about a misnomer – decided to revoke club status from 29 groups rather than allow this one Bible-based club access to the campus during school hours. Beginning yesterday, 1,185 members of various clubs arrayed across Mission Viejo High School and three other high schools in the district can no longer meet during the school day, use school bulletin boards, or have access to the yearbooks, closed circuit television system, etc. Clubs as diverse as the Key Club, the Red Cross Club and Amnesty International got the boot. Makes a lot of sense, right? It gets better.

Trying to defend the indefensible, the board president offered up this jewel: “If people aren’t happy with that, they can go to the Christian club and thank them for it.” I’m not making that up. The president of the school board blamed the club which had been discriminated against for nearly six years for causing the school board to take an obviously vindictive, small-minded and hurtful action against a bunch of high-school kids.

Under this logic, the marchers in Selma had it coming to them.

But there really isn’t much logic here at all. Petty bureaucrats, like petty tyrants the world over, can no more admit error than they can levitate. Here this American Gang of Five has backed themselves into a legal corner, and rather than allow the vindicated club its rights and demonstrate through its meetings that nothing happens in the way of cults arriving to sweep away the youth, the board issues an interdict order excommunicating all clubs.

“Screw the kids,” the board is saying, “who do you think this district is run for anyway? Parents and students?”

Now once the parents figure out that this little tantrum by the board is going to cost the kids in terms of their friendships, their interests (and yes, their college-admissions prospects), the outcry will hopefully force the board into retreating. The timing of the announcement – coming more than three months after the decision and just as summer prevents organized opposition – is more than a little transparent, but I doubt it will stifle alarm and disgust for long. Whoever is up for election in 2002 will get wiped away no doubt, and will probably decide not to run anyway, so out-of-step is this foolishness. Still, there are lessons here.

First, the biggest enemies of public education in the country are the folks who push their extremist agenda of division and, yes, of hatred for the ordinary members of their community who live according to faith. It was wrong to have singled out the Christian club for exclusion and marginalization. But it is simple bigotry to encourage the community to blame these students for the board’s unilateral act. Just imagine if there is any sort of reprisal against one of the members of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. There won’t be a hole deep enough for any member of this board to hide in, so great will their culpability be. And if you doubt that
Christian kids are already feeling exposed on public school campuses, revisit the chilling details of the Columbine tragedy. My guess is that this board didn’t bother to think that through.

I doubt they thought through the cost of the Section 1983 action which is hurtling their collective way as well. This provision of federal law punishes with damages any action taken “under the color of state law” that violates an individual’s federal constitutional rights. To change a district-wide policy in order to spite people acting on their combined free-exercise and free-speech rights seems to me to invite just such litigation. Of course the parents of this district have seen thousands of dollars wasted on one silly lawsuit, and will no doubt be frustrated at the mindless expenditure of even more scarce resources, but there is a silver lining: Section 1983 allows for damages to be assessed against individuals. Perhaps some day in the distant future, these five foolish people will be staring at a judgment that costs them as much as it has cost innocent kids.

The board is, of course, “modeling” all that is wrong with the American left today: intemperance; hyper-sensitivity on matters of religion; vindictiveness; and an arrogance unseemly in “representatives” of the people. We can only hope that the students of Mission Viejo High School understand that government was not designed to be run by mean-spirited, anti-religious zealots.

I can hear the objections coming now: The board members are Republicans; they are nice people; they go to church; they are afraid of cults etc., etc., etc. Spare me.

I have reported the details of the collapse of a large swath of American public education for years. I know where the schools are hanging on to excellence, and where it seems to have been irretrievably lost. Many dramas are played out over and over again. One that particularly annoys is where, such as in Saddleback, a board of unknowns somehow gets elected or a superintendent appointed, and they or he promptly confuse that very small achievement with the decades of efforts by students, parents, teachers, coaches and – yes – churches. The board/superintendent promptly sets itself up as the defender of what it did not create, using tactics and rhetoric that would shame a South American caudillo. Disgust is followed by detachment and decline. Thanks a lot. Put another knife in the back of public education.

Hats off to the students who fought for their rights, and to the lawyers at the Pacific Justice Institute who defended them. I can only hope the board is shocked back to common sense, and that an apology is offered by the board president for what surely rates as one of the most regrettable statements ever uttered by a school board member anywhere.

Given the board’s actions to date, however, we can keep watch for pigs flying with equal optimism.