Editorial

School district appears to be doing right by our children

Posted 11/29/22

The Powell School District appears to be doing its best to both teach our youth well and weather the divisive culture war topics that have gone from the national to the local level.

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Editorial

School district appears to be doing right by our children

Posted

The Powell School District appears to be doing its best to both teach our youth well and weather the divisive culture war topics that have gone from the national to the local level.

Superintendent Jay Curtis’ recent comments about the school’s teaching of social emotional learning, which some have seen as a form of Critical Race Theory, shows very well how he is threading the needle between the views of people who are concerned that educators talk too much about race, and of those who don’t think it’s taught enough.

As he notes, the faculty, staff administrators who work in the school district live here, are part of the community and many were themselves students in Powell. These are not the people to push fringe ideas from deep blue coastal cities onto a solidly conservative community. They are our neighbors and should be trusted until actual evidence proves otherwise, and this newspaper is not hearing any evidence locally that would give credence to taking away that trust.

At the same time, schools are meant to be challenging, not just in terms of being rigorous with teaching and preparing youths for a bright future, but in terms of giving students a glimpse of some of the other views and issues outside of the Big Horn Basin.

Eventually many of our children are going to leave the Basin, whether to Laramie, to a career, even to a military base, so they should be taught, when age appropriate, that there are many different views from the ones the majority of locals hold on many issues.

As a parent myself, with two children in the school district, I appreciate what my boys’ teachers are doing to mold them into productive citizens and well-balanced adults. From what I’ve seen, they want to partner with parents to make Powell’s youth the best it can be. And for parents with concerns about teaching material, the district is open to showing materials such as those related to social emotional learning.

If we have the chance to verify, it’s not fair to assume divisive issues are being taught unless that’s proven to be correct.

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