Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Exit Podcast.
Speaker: This is Dr. Bennett, joined here by Abby Platt.
Speaker: Abby is leading a group of moms against all the craziness that's going on in the Loudoun County public school system in Northern Virginia.
Speaker: Mask mandates, CRT, the craziness with the sex ed, and I wanted to get her on the show to talk about A, why
Speaker: Her group of moms is so concerned about what's going on and B, what she's learned from her experience dealing with the media, dealing with local government and how people can fight back.
Speaker: So welcome to the show, Abby.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you for having me on.
Speaker: I appreciate it.
Speaker: So for starters, I want to get a sense of what started this fight.
Speaker: I know that it has to do with CRT.
Speaker: It has to do with sex ed.
Speaker: It has to do with mask mandates.
Speaker: But what would you say specifically tipped the scale and got maybe you involved?
Speaker: And then what got the energy from the other parents to start essentially this movement?
Speaker: Well, initially,
Speaker: initially the thing that got many parents in Loudoun engaged was that their kids were online.
Speaker: So their kids were at home, they were online.
Speaker: And what happened was they were given a front seat to hear and see exactly what, what their kids were being taught.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And just as a point of reference, at the beginning of the pandemic, my husband was deployed overseas.
Speaker: So I want to be really transparent about this.
Speaker: Because my husband was deployed, he got stuck overseas.
Speaker: And that was quite difficult for our family.
Speaker: And so we immediately enrolled our children in
Speaker: private school to make sure that they had my my littlest guy was in preschool when the pandemic hit he's a really social guy and for him his dad had just left and then he lost all of his cute little friends so he for him he lost his whole world so I felt like having an in-person
Speaker: daily interaction, I knew that that was critical.
Speaker: So I was engaged with what was happening in our community, but our children were in school every day in person.
Speaker: So that was unique for me.
Speaker: But the thing that engaged me that caught my attention initially and kind of ironically really is that
Speaker: I kept hearing this discussion about the school board was going to eliminate all advanced placement courses and in particular math.
Speaker: My oldest at the time was in seventh grade and she she
Speaker: doesn't excel in math.
Speaker: That is her biggest struggle is math.
Speaker: And, but at the time they were going to eliminate all advanced placement courses and in particular math.
Speaker: And I was thinking, okay, who does it in the name of equity?
Speaker: It is unfair that some could advance and some wouldn't.
Speaker: So here I am knowing that my kids are out of the system.
Speaker: but who gets hurt, who gets left behind in the name of fairness, we're gonna eliminate all of this.
Speaker: And then another mom said to me, she was outraged because while they're logging in, you do your name, your student ID, and her second grader was asked to put in their pronoun.
Speaker: And so this is the shift that was happening
Speaker: It was not subtle.
Speaker: And it was not slow.
Speaker: It was in your face, fast.
Speaker: And so for someone who was out of the system saying, whoa, wait a minute, a whole bunch of kids are going to get left behind.
Speaker: And then I'm hearing from friends in our community, listen to what's happening.
Speaker: Um, so, you know, so the beginning of it was parents are at home doing school with their kids, hearing crazy stuff.
Speaker: And then for me, I'm thinking, you know, just as a person in the community, what is happening?
Speaker: Like, this is concerning.
Speaker: So it started that way.
Speaker: And as time has gone on, I feel like
Speaker: COVID, the blessing of COVID was that it was like the carpet was picked up.
Speaker: You know, when you move your furniture and you pick up the carpet and underneath is a whole bunch of dirty mess and you're like, what?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's, that's what happened.
Speaker: It allowed a bunch of people to say, there's a big mess.
Speaker: It pulled that carpet up.
Speaker: And people didn't know, but, but now people know.
Speaker: I almost think that it's, it's, we're in this situation where, I mean, so that the, the, the remote schooling, so the parents are seeing everything, but you also see it with like journalists and bureaucrats on Twitter, teachers on Tik TOK.
Speaker: They're just telling on themselves constantly.
Speaker: And it's, it's,
Speaker: There's a lot of problems associated with social media and these new technologies that we're wrestling with.
Speaker: But one of the blessings is that we all get to see where everybody stands.
Speaker: And I was going to ask you, do you think that this is a problem that showed up in the last few years or something that's been building for a long time?
Speaker: And I think it's just that we're now seeing it.
Speaker: Yeah, that is the great misconception.
Speaker: The misconception is that it just started.
Speaker: The reality is that we didn't know that it started really.
Speaker: A lot of the critical race theory, those things started as I really dug into it, that stuff started.
Speaker: started getting implemented in 2014, 2015.
Speaker: It's easy to look now and hold the people who are sitting in those school board seats.
Speaker: You know, we're wanting to hold them accountable and ask a lot of questions today.
Speaker: But all of that was slowly being implemented beginning in 2014, 2015.
Speaker: It was implemented, funded back then.
Speaker: So this has been a slow rollout and it's taken time, but we just, we didn't know.
Speaker: We just, we really didn't know.
Speaker: And I look back at even the things that I was taught and not taught as a kid.
Speaker: And I think that I can definitely identify things that if my,
Speaker: parents were apprised of everything I was being told in school, even, you know, 25 years ago, that there would have been some surprises and there would have been some pushback.
Speaker: And so it's, it's, you almost can't help inculcating a certain set of values, a certain perspective on the world.
Speaker: And there's this enormous trust that parents are just,
Speaker: Well, this trust that parents are encouraged to place in that system that, you know, you drop off your kids and your kids are going to be taught, you know, well, they're going to be taught to read and to write and to think and to solve problems.
Speaker: And what you're describing is almost like not only are we going to push this insane ideology on like five different fronts, but we're also not going to do algebra anymore, which is like, what is this even for?
Speaker: Like, it's just such a betrayal of that trust.
Speaker: Well, I think at some level, it is, you're right.
Speaker: And at some level, I think as parents, you know, we have a whole bunch of choices.
Speaker: Our kids, we can't insulate our kids from all things forever, right?
Speaker: So there's this continuum of
Speaker: having a balance how do we prepare them to go out into our community and into the world how do we prepare them to interact safely and to to be prepared to contribute positively and I think that um
Speaker: You know, so our kids did a year in private school and candidly, I would have appreciated staying in those, at least in my daughter's school, I wanted her to stay.
Speaker: The other school proved for me not to be a great fit.
Speaker: So private schools have, they're riddled with their own challenges.
Speaker: But our children wanted to come back to the small schools in our community with their friends.
Speaker: We live in a small community.
Speaker: They wanted to be with their friends in our neighborhood.
Speaker: So, you know, I think, so ultimately we did.
Speaker: We came back.
Speaker: And that was hard for me.
Speaker: I'll confess.
Speaker: I might have sobbed.
Speaker: That was very, very difficult.
Speaker: But because of that, we are having really honest conversations.
Speaker: Conversations I never in a million years would have thought I would have with my children.
Speaker: I never would have thought that, particularly at such young ages, but they're dynamic,
Speaker: and they're honest and our kids, I think are the better for it.
Speaker: I think they're smarter, they're better prepared.
Speaker: And, um, it's unfortunate that we're living in a time where we're talking about who do you know, who can you trust?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: My kids were, um, were some of the few that showed up at school and, um, we, um,
Speaker: When the governor passed the executive order that said no more masks, we took that on face value and we said we are opting not to wear masks.
Speaker: And so our children were segregated for a week and then they were suspended for a month.
Speaker: And so we had a lot of conversations during that time.
Speaker: My first grader, for crying out loud, he was the youngest kid in Loudoun County to be suspended.
Speaker: And contrast that with a serial rapist who they protected and did not suspend.
Speaker: My first grader, they did.
Speaker: And not only did they suspend him, they piled on multiple truancies.
Speaker: That is very unusual.
Speaker: So we had a lot of, and we continue to have a lot of conversations about why that happened and about fairness, about adults you can trust and when, and it's, I mean, hard conversations.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And, and to have to tell a kid that age that like they're, they're,
Speaker: it's not really about them, you know, like it's, it's not something you did.
Speaker: It's we're, we're, we're, we're giving this kid truancy charges to shame their parents and to make their parents look a certain way.
Speaker: And, and like to say, basically this has nothing.
Speaker: And I think I want to go back to, to what you said about, um,
Speaker: allowing your kids to see sort of what is out there in the world.
Speaker: And I think that's totally valid.
Speaker: I think that there's a distinction to be drawn between allowing them to access different perspectives and different ways of living versus having...
Speaker: a paid authority figure funded by the state to, to come and say like, this is what you should believe about transgender.
Speaker: This is what you should.
Speaker: And, and to have it be so contrary to your own, to your own values.
Speaker: And so it's like,
Speaker: And that's always the way they frame it.
Speaker: They just frame it as like, oh, we're just, you know, we're just giving them the whole menu, the whole smorgasbord of all the possibilities and letting them pick.
Speaker: But that's not what they're doing.
Speaker: They're saying, this is the truth.
Speaker: You're a bad person if you reject it.
Speaker: And like, I think if a kid has really great parents,
Speaker: that can lead to these conversations that you're talking about.
Speaker: Like in that situation, I'm not as much worried about like my kid getting brainwashed by the, by the teacher.
Speaker: It's more about all the other kids in that classroom who maybe don't have a supportive of a situation at home, or maybe their parents are kind of on the same page.
Speaker: And so it just gets reinforced, reinforced and intensified.
Speaker: And then my kids got to deal with all those other kids.
Speaker: That's what I'm thinking about.
Speaker: Well, I think, you know, it is such a, I want to, I want to be really clear that we did not force our kids, we did not force our kids to go in without masks.
Speaker: And I also want to be very direct in saying that
Speaker: That was not easy.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So Joshua's in the first grade.
Speaker: Brayden's in the fifth grade.
Speaker: Madeline is now in the eighth grade.
Speaker: There was a lot of trepidation on my part.
Speaker: We didn't know how long that would take or what the end would look like.
Speaker: And we sent our small children, we gave them a choice.
Speaker: We talked about, you know, the executive order.
Speaker: We said that the law had changed.
Speaker: And, and I don't, I don't know that I've said this in a recording ever.
Speaker: I am going to say it right now.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: We did have our children, we had cameras on our children, on their backpacks, and we had hidden cameras all over our kids.
Speaker: My husband works in a field in which we know how to do that well.
Speaker: My son wore, my fifth grader wore my Apple Watch.
Speaker: So we were watching them that whole time.
Speaker: When you have a first grader, he's a little guy.
Speaker: He was the youngest kid to be suspended.
Speaker: That is no joke.
Speaker: And by Thursday, I'll tell you, this is going to make me emotional.
Speaker: By Thursday, I was wrecked.
Speaker: I was wrecked.
Speaker: And I begged him to put that mask back on.
Speaker: I begged him.
Speaker: I thanked him.
Speaker: People don't know that side of it.
Speaker: People don't know that.
Speaker: Like there are people that look at us like monsters.
Speaker: Like how would you do this to your children?
Speaker: He would come home at the end of the day.
Speaker: And, and actually on day one, the principal tried to block the door and she was like, sorry, you can't come in.
Speaker: And my husband who is,
Speaker: large.
Speaker: He's really stacked.
Speaker: If you saw him, you would know that he is no one to mess with.
Speaker: He is well built and he is a military man and you would know to back away.
Speaker: The principal said, sorry, if you don't have a mask, you can't come in.
Speaker: And he said, we're not playing that game.
Speaker: They're here for school.
Speaker: They're coming in.
Speaker: And when she took them to the library, she measured the distance between them and she roped off a section.
Speaker: They're brothers, come on.
Speaker: But she put them in the back part of the library and they told them not to look at anyone else.
Speaker: And they were way back.
Speaker: Because line of sight transmits COVID.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They're going to poison someone by looking.
Speaker: So they told other kids not to look at them, not to talk to them.
Speaker: By the end of the day, my littlest guy...
Speaker: So my fifth grader is really, he's, he's really easygoing and, um, mild mannered and he can sit and read and read and read all day.
Speaker: My littlest guy is, he's a busy, he, he's a busy and he's little and there's a difference in that age that, you know, of course.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: he would come home at the end of the day and he would just lose it.
Speaker: He would just lose it.
Speaker: And it wrecked him and that wrecked me.
Speaker: And so by Thursday I was like, we can't do this.
Speaker: This is abuse.
Speaker: Like you can't, you can't just sit a kid in a corner all day.
Speaker: Like this is wrong.
Speaker: This is wrong.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: That, that, I mean, I remember, I remember how, so just my, my age, you know, uh, I'm, I'm getting to be older.
Speaker: I'm 35.
Speaker: I remember the kids my own age that got medicated because they couldn't do that because they couldn't be put.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's common to have that conversation.
Speaker: If you can't sit long enough or quiet enough, like he needs meds.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And like fundamentally, I struggle with that idea.
Speaker: I'll be honest.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And I don't want to discount the, the extremity of what's happening right now.
Speaker: But I think that,
Speaker: we have undersold how hard these environments are for particularly for active little boys.
Speaker: Uh, even, even before all this craziness happened, but I mean, this is a whole new level.
Speaker: And, and the, um, I think about, uh, I remember one time a police officer came to school.
Speaker: Um, I was maybe in seventh grade and he said, uh,
Speaker: we have certain laws on the books expressly for the purpose of if we want to pull somebody over, we have a reason.
Speaker: And, and basically like, like how, what lane you're supposed to occupy when you take a left turn or whatever.
Speaker: And he's like, we'll just follow people around, wait for them to break a rule so that we can pull them over.
Speaker: And that was a, an early, uh,
Speaker: awakening for me of like, Oh, the rules don't work the way I really thought the rules were supposed to work.
Speaker: And in this situation, to bring you back to what we're talking about, all of a sudden, like, you know, that they don't break out the measuring tape and like the rules are different.
Speaker: If you're compliant, it's a way to harass and punish kids with,
Speaker: who are not compliant.
Speaker: It's, oh, you don't like the way it is?
Speaker: Well, we're going to enforce every little piece of this.
Speaker: And that extends from kids to adults, but it's brutal on a five-year-old.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: It's just crazy to do that too.
Speaker: To tell a little kid that he's not allowed to look at anybody and nobody's allowed to look at him, that's just got to be...
Speaker: psychologically, what does that do to a little kid?
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Well, I, I received a text message from a mom who lives nearby and, you know, we didn't going into that.
Speaker: We did not coordinate or discuss with anyone that, you know, this was a decision that we as a family made.
Speaker: we felt strongly about.
Speaker: And Joshua has, this is important, Joshua has chronic asthma.
Speaker: And wearing the mask exacerbated that.
Speaker: And so for us, there are aspects of this.
Speaker: Part of it is a broader expression of freedom.
Speaker: But another part of it is that
Speaker: his asthma was so bad that come the weekend um well and and let me take you back when he was at the private school um his asthma got so bad and he got these open sores all around his little mouth and i had taken him to the doctor and the doctor was like this mask has to come off now mind you this was when all the other kids in northern virginia were online
Speaker: Our kids were one of the very few that were actually in school.
Speaker: I was so grateful that they were in person every day and everyone else was begging LCPS to open back up.
Speaker: And the doctor said, this mask has to come off.
Speaker: And so he wrote a doctor's note that said, take this dumb thing off.
Speaker: So I went to the school and the procedure at the time is you drive up, you roll down the window, they take the kids temperature through the window.
Speaker: And then if you pass, then, you know, your kid gets out.
Speaker: Parents never went into the school.
Speaker: So, you know, we did that.
Speaker: And I said, I have this doctor's note and, you know, he had these huge open source all over his face and,
Speaker: And I said, and he was on a nebulizer in the morning before school, immediate.
Speaker: And I would come sometimes at lunch.
Speaker: to give him a breathing treatment at lunch.
Speaker: That's how bad his asthma was.
Speaker: And then we do it immediately after school and then at dinner and then at night, sometimes in the middle of the night.
Speaker: And when your asthma gets that bad, he would wake up in the night coughing and then he'd puke because he couldn't get enough air that he would cough and then it would make him puke.
Speaker: So this day I go to the school, I had the doctor's note
Speaker: And the person at the window took the note and was like, oh, okay.
Speaker: Now, kindergarten, my son gets out.
Speaker: He's elated.
Speaker: I don't have to wear the mask.
Speaker: Of course, he's telling everyone, I don't have to wear a mask.
Speaker: So the end of the day is like 2.30 is pick up.
Speaker: I get a call at 2.00.
Speaker: At 2.00 p.m., his teacher calls and says,
Speaker: Mrs. Platt, I just wanted to talk to you about Joshua's medical note.
Speaker: He is required to wear a mask.
Speaker: And I said, he has a medical exemption.
Speaker: I handed the note to you.
Speaker: Well, I'm sorry, the CDC.
Speaker: And I was like, whoa, no.
Speaker: And I just about went through the roof.
Speaker: Right now, this was at the private school.
Speaker: But at that point, the damage was done, right?
Speaker: Because they shamed him so badly and they put a mask back on him.
Speaker: And at that point, he would not take it off.
Speaker: The damage was done.
Speaker: So now when the governor signs this executive order, we're like, the governor signed this.
Speaker: He's the law in Virginia.
Speaker: And that's why it was a big deal to us.
Speaker: And so we had that conversation.
Speaker: And when great big giant muscly dad shows up at the school and says, don't touch my son.
Speaker: Don't touch my son.
Speaker: We're not wearing masks.
Speaker: And you go in with your brother and our kids knew this was the one time they, they were wearing multiple hidden cameras.
Speaker: They were on their back and they were sewn in their clothes and
Speaker: so we were watching them closely that was brutal that was brutal but we were prepared we were prepared and and and so if you really want to teach your kids not that i suggest this for everyone but this is where this is where we're at and i think you know i i
Speaker: This has been a huge wake up call for a lot of people because a lot of people even right now don't think that there's been a lot of discussion about what is or isn't happening at schools.
Speaker: You know, the mask, the mandates with the vaccines and all of that.
Speaker: I want to respect the fact that people are going to have a lot of different feelings about their personal health.
Speaker: And I'm comfortable with that.
Speaker: Like we each get to be in that personal space.
Speaker: I am going to be a fierce advocate for parental rights.
Speaker: And this is where my hope is that individually people will engage in this conversation because our local schools are working very hard to shut us out.
Speaker: And even if you don't have a child in the system,
Speaker: As a taxpayer, as a resident in this area, you want to engage because what is happening in these schools will have a huge impact on the value of your home.
Speaker: You are going to continue to pay taxes.
Speaker: And our county supervisors are not holding them accountable.
Speaker: And that's where I think there's sort of a disconnect
Speaker: I understand it's easy to say I'm taking care of my child, I'm taking care of my family, and I respect that enormously that we each are going to make the decisions that are uniquely personal and right for our families.
Speaker: But in our community, if we don't pay attention to what's happening and we don't hold our elected officials responsible at the county level for the money that is feeding into the schools,
Speaker: what will happen in our community is we will lose they're teaching kids they're literally teaching kids that there's oppressors and the others are being oppressed and these ideas these really um these really
Speaker: And it's even hard to articulate because it is so socially progressive that.
Speaker: It's evil.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's evil.
Speaker: It's evil.
Speaker: And, you know, my son- Forget about property values.
Speaker: I mean, these are the kids that my kids have to make friends with and eventually date.
Speaker: And this is the culture that they have to grow up in.
Speaker: Well, these will be the leaders of the world.
Speaker: And these are people that are going to be your colleagues.
Speaker: They're going to be your neighbors.
Speaker: They're going to be-
Speaker: They're our next generation.
Speaker: It's important.
Speaker: It's so important.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, we homeschool our kids and we do that, you know, because partly because we're able to and not everybody is able to.
Speaker: And I'm a strong advocate for that, but not because it's a way to dodge this problem.
Speaker: Cause you can't dodge this problem.
Speaker: This, this is everybody's problem.
Speaker: And you have to, I mean, you have to fight.
Speaker: And, and like, I think the way you frame that, if somebody comes at you with like, oh, you don't even go to this school is I think the way you frame that is it's about, it's about the fact that it's your money and it is your, you know,
Speaker: The government works for you as much as for anybody else.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, we have to care about our community.
Speaker: We have to care about our country.
Speaker: We have to care about the interactions that we have with each other.
Speaker: There is this broad network that we are all interrelated.
Speaker: So you can't run and hide.
Speaker: You cannot.
Speaker: You cannot.
Speaker: And that really that is the underlying truth.
Speaker: And when I look at when I look at the school system and the fact that the county supervisors held their budget meeting.
Speaker: And the superintendent didn't show up and the school board didn't show up.
Speaker: But who was there?
Speaker: Parents were there.
Speaker: And the county supervisors were livid.
Speaker: They were livid that the superintendent had, you know, submitted their request for $85 million more than last year.
Speaker: Their student enrollment is down by $10,000.
Speaker: And yet they're asking for 80, it's really 86, it's $86 million more than last year.
Speaker: And their enrollment is way down.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Because people are saying, no, we're going to go to private school.
Speaker: We're going to homeschool.
Speaker: Enough of this nonsense.
Speaker: We're opting out.
Speaker: We're moving away.
Speaker: We're choosing something different.
Speaker: And yet county supervisors did not hold them accountable.
Speaker: They were mad, but not mad enough to hold them accountable.
Speaker: Well, your, your tax value there, they're increasing your tax value arbitrarily.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The value of your home went up.
Speaker: That's all fine and good, but you should not have to pay more just because some elected official wants to dip into your pocket.
Speaker: That is wrong.
Speaker: And regardless of that, even if you separate the money from it,
Speaker: as a community and as a country, we have to care deeply about what our children are being taught and about, I mean, even at the most basic level, so many of the classes in Loudoun County, they're not hearing the Pledge of Allegiance or if it is being played in their classroom, they're not standing, they're not putting their hand over their heart.
Speaker: That is a huge problem.
Speaker: To me, that's a huge problem.
Speaker: That's an indicator that we're off course.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And Loudon is this interesting case.
Speaker: I mean, you know, these public or these charter school advocates like Cory D'Angelis, they're talking about school choice and bringing...
Speaker: basically allowing people to take their money with, to have their money, follow their, their kid versus, uh, having the money go straight to the school.
Speaker: And Loudon is this interesting case where, um, the money is going to the school, but parents, you know, because Loudon is affluent, parents have the choice to just pull their kids out.
Speaker: Uh, a lot of them do anyway.
Speaker: And so this, this, uh,
Speaker: This is kind of a problem that could almost only emerge in a place like this because people are able to just leave, but the money stays.
Speaker: And what is that?
Speaker: Like, how does that cash out?
Speaker: Well, here's what's unique about Virginia.
Speaker: So for decades, decades, Fairfax and Loudoun have been heralded as having had the best schools in the country.
Speaker: But you start cracking in 2014, 2015.
Speaker: That's when all of this diversity and equity nonsense starts filtering in.
Speaker: And that's when, so like right now, even if a kid fails, you cannot fail.
Speaker: you you cannot fail them if they fail they can retest and retest and retest so if you start tracking that from the beginning of its inception if you will and how they change so like what used to be a hundred percent they've dropped their standard what used to be a hundred is now 70 right so 70 bumps up to be the new hundred
Speaker: So they've changed their own standard and, and they've shifted the way they do everything.
Speaker: So it's harder to measure our, like where we're at.
Speaker: And, and so you look at these, these changes over, over time.
Speaker: And because we've been, we've been considered,
Speaker: we've been regarded as such great schools for so long.
Speaker: There hasn't been a demand for charter.
Speaker: There hasn't been a demand for private schools.
Speaker: So now people are saying, what do we do?
Speaker: So the year that I pulled my kids out and did private school, I paid $50,000 for three kids.
Speaker: And, but in that year, because I acted so quickly and,
Speaker: And and I was able to get in because I did it right then and there.
Speaker: Now I'd be on a waiting list for two or three years.
Speaker: I couldn't get in now.
Speaker: There's nowhere to go.
Speaker: That's the difference that we have in Virginia.
Speaker: There aren't charter schools.
Speaker: We have less charter schools than anywhere in the country.
Speaker: There's been no demand for them.
Speaker: Now there are some private schools that are popping up, but even, you know, um, corner infrastructure, it's not there.
Speaker: It takes time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It takes time.
Speaker: So cornerstone announced that they, they are a large Christian school.
Speaker: They announced they're going to start their own school, but it won't open until fall of 2023.
Speaker: They have a waiting list of, I think, like a couple thousand kids.
Speaker: They can only take 500, but that's in fall of 2023.
Speaker: So, yes, there's a huge demand.
Speaker: There's a huge demand for it, but it will take so much time to get to where it needs to be.
Speaker: And so, despite...
Speaker: despite the, the need, despite the demand, there's nowhere to go.
Speaker: And so for someone like me, I say, I could pull my kids out at any time I have, and I wouldn't, I, I don't hesitate to do it again, but consider also, and I've had this conversation with a lot of people, my eighth grader, um,
Speaker: She begged.
Speaker: She's in middle school.
Speaker: She wanted to be with her friends.
Speaker: I feel like a huge part of this, this is her education.
Speaker: I want her to be invested in it.
Speaker: Otherwise, I lose that relationship with her.
Speaker: If I make my decision based on only what I think is best, then I lose her investment in whatever that decision is.
Speaker: I want her to know that I value her input in that decision as much as my own.
Speaker: I want her to be invested too.
Speaker: She wanted to go back and be with her friends.
Speaker: She's a straight A student.
Speaker: So that was very hard.
Speaker: I, I sobbed when she wanted to go back.
Speaker: I would rather pay the 50 grand and know that my kids are not being indoctrinated.
Speaker: But now the trade-off is that she comes home and she says, mom, here's a recording.
Speaker: She records her on our children are trained spies.
Speaker: She records on her Apple watch.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I won't tell you every class just in case somebody listens and wants to know.
Speaker: But I listened to a couple of her classes every day.
Speaker: And that takes time.
Speaker: That takes time.
Speaker: That is, that is not a small order, but.
Speaker: Trust is, trust is a technology.
Speaker: And, and when that trust breaks down, it's just like, you know, that there's a, one of the ways that, that archeologists trace the fall of the Roman empire is they look at the pottery.
Speaker: because this is a huge, not a huge subject change.
Speaker: I'm bringing it back.
Speaker: But they look at the pottery and they trace when the pottery started to become like crappy because everybody used to get the same pottery.
Speaker: They used to all get it from the same place in North Africa.
Speaker: And then once the supply chain broke down, people had to make their own and it's not as good.
Speaker: And so you can trace like, ah, here's when the roads became unsafe in this part of the world.
Speaker: And that trust,
Speaker: of like, I know where everything's gonna come from, I know that it's reliable, I know it's gonna be here, makes everybody's life better.
Speaker: And in this case, it's like, if you could trust that your kids could just go here and learn, then A, like, you know, what you're doing, what you're having to do is this, like, absurd level of surveillance, right?
Speaker: I think you would agree that it's like, it's crazy that you have to do that.
Speaker: And, and like in our case, because we're homeschooling, like I have no illusions about the fact that like, if, if I just let my kids be here at home all day long, they're going to lose a lot of social opportunities and a lot of value and a lot of, and a lot of joy that they're supposed to have as kids.
Speaker: And so for me, I have this huge effort to like, go find them friends.
Speaker: And both of these,
Speaker: this effort that we're putting in shouldn't be necessary.
Speaker: We should be able to trust that there's a community that we can integrate our kids into and it just doesn't exist anymore and it's a real tragedy.
Speaker: Well, I wonder if, you know, I think that as parents, I feel confident that we as parents know what is best for our children and what
Speaker: what is best for my oldest might not meet the best need of my youngest guy.
Speaker: And, and so we try to meet those needs individually and prayerfully.
Speaker: And, and, and so I, I want to, with each of our kids, we, and I guess this is on a positive note,
Speaker: Even though it's stunning, and I never in a million years, and we've said to our kids, there's been so many times where I say, I am disappointed that I'm having a conversation with you about whether or not you can trust your principal.
Speaker: I never in a million years would have thought that I would undermine my
Speaker: another adult in a position of authority.
Speaker: I never, I don't like to do that.
Speaker: I really don't like to do that.
Speaker: But teaching them those nuances is actually really an important part of critical thinking.
Speaker: And I think that they'll be better off for it.
Speaker: You know, my daughter earned the, she earned the honor roll and they did not recognize her.
Speaker: And she,
Speaker: They had these letters out in homeroom.
Speaker: She didn't get one.
Speaker: I emailed her principal and I said, you know, my daughter didn't get this.
Speaker: I'm sure you would not punish her because of the mask issue and the suspension.
Speaker: The emergency injunction that was court ordered said you could not, there could be no retribution.
Speaker: So I'm sure this is just an oversight, an administrative oversight.
Speaker: Anyway, we went back and forth for two and a half weeks.
Speaker: And I won't bore you with the nonsense in those emails.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, the response was, sorry, my bad.
Speaker: Whoopsie.
Speaker: And he did try to blame it on a budget issue.
Speaker: We ran out of money.
Speaker: We don't have any pins.
Speaker: And I said, surely you can print a letter and acknowledge the achievement.
Speaker: No budget is needed to print a letter and acknowledge an achievement.
Speaker: And even that did not happen.
Speaker: Things are real tight here at Loudoun.
Speaker: They have a $2 billion budget.
Speaker: Process that for a minute.
Speaker: $2 billion.
Speaker: My personal tax, the tax I pay on my house is $8,000 a year.
Speaker: So give my daughter a piece of paper and acknowledge her achievement.
Speaker: I mean, I don't want to get...
Speaker: I don't want to get feisty right now, but it puts me over the edge, but they didn't.
Speaker: And so when you have that conversation with a kid,
Speaker: and you say you know what you are remarkable you do not need another adult or a piece of paper to tell you what you achieved you did it and you worked hard and they they kept you out of school for a month you taught yourself all of those things and you passed all of those classes
Speaker: And so, you know, if that doesn't tell you how crazy smart you are, I don't know what would.
Speaker: And, and, you know, I, I look at my boys and I think if you can look at a principal and know that they're trying to trick you, it breaks my heart.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: It truly does.
Speaker: And, and they're, they're teaching them all this crazy crap and,
Speaker: You know, I'm finding a lot of the guys who come into my group.
Speaker: I was at a meetup in St.
Speaker: Louis or Branson this last week.
Speaker: And one of the sort of themes of everybody's story was that like,
Speaker: I'm not a dissident type of person.
Speaker: I'm not an anti-authoritarian type of person.
Speaker: Like, I like rules, and I like having a system that I can rely on.
Speaker: And what I'm hearing from you, like, for me, temperamentally, I'm a little bit more like...
Speaker: it's kind of cool to, to not listen to the principal and not, and not, but, but there's tons of people who are like, right, right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker: And that's, and, and what's so cool about this moment, I think, is that guys like me are realizing that,
Speaker: oh no, these authority figures actually performed a really important function in society and it maybe sucks that we can't trust them and maybe we should get back to that point.
Speaker: And I think other people who are more inclined to respect and trust those systems of authority are like, oh no, sometimes these things are not reliable and that's really dangerous and
Speaker: And I think it's allowing everybody to learn a lot and come together in a way that I think is actually really cool.
Speaker: And I wanted to ask you, as part of this coalition building that you've had to do, I mean, I know Loudoun is, at least by my perception, a relatively progressive place nowadays.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The mask mandate thing is maybe a little more, it's maybe a little bit of an easier sell, but with, or I don't know, maybe it is or isn't, but with the CRT and the sex ed stuff, as you are trying to get parents enthusiastic about fighting this,
Speaker: Have you had occasions where some folks who are kind of in the tent are like, well, but wait a minute, I like this piece of it, or I know I agree with this.
Speaker: How have you managed the different perspectives on all that stuff and brought people, found where everybody can come together?
Speaker: Okay, this is so tricky, and I'll tell you why.
Speaker: People in this area...
Speaker: There's a lot of federal employees.
Speaker: And, well, that's part of it.
Speaker: That's part of it.
Speaker: But there's also, you have kind of, ugh, this is so tricky.
Speaker: You have some very vocal people who, you know, there have been some public people
Speaker: um lawsuits that people have heard about where um groups tried to they did they doxed people so people are terrified of getting involved and speaking out because if you have the audacity to do so they will come after you and um
Speaker: The masking is behind us, but that was kind of a, at that time, that was a flagship, right?
Speaker: That was kind of a, it was a...
Speaker: It was a indicator of where you might be on the political spectrum.
Speaker: So now- Which I think that was the purpose.
Speaker: Because they know it doesn't- First of all, they know kids are safe.
Speaker: And second of all, they know these masks don't work.
Speaker: It's really, are you in line?
Speaker: Are you compliant?
Speaker: Maybe, yeah.
Speaker: So I think, so we have, we have, um, we have these groups that are not afraid to come after you personally and professionally.
Speaker: They'll come after your children.
Speaker: They'll come after your job.
Speaker: Um, I think for us personally, we, we had a very direct conversation with our children.
Speaker: My husband, because of his job, he is not supposed to do anything on the media.
Speaker: And we said, we may have to move, we might lose everything.
Speaker: We may have to move in with grandma and grandpa.
Speaker: And we talked about, you know, the whole spectrum of what it means.
Speaker: And we talked about our son's health.
Speaker: It literally took us all of Christmas vacation to get his asthma into a place that was healthy.
Speaker: And then we talked about our freedom and about the law and all of these different components.
Speaker: Now you get to critical race theory.
Speaker: My children are biracial.
Speaker: This is an important topic to me.
Speaker: My husband was adopted as a small boy.
Speaker: He was lined up in an orphanage in South Korea, and a Catholic nun walked those halls and literally picked him.
Speaker: And so when you talk about these issues really...
Speaker: They bring true and they dig deep for us because if you listen to what they are trying to tell our children and tell us, I'm sorry, but I'll be damned if you tell my kid that
Speaker: that he's worth less or he'll have less opportunity.
Speaker: When I sit at my dinner table and somebody tells my husband, who's a Marine, that he's been robbed of opportunity because of his race, get out of my kitchen, get out of my house, stop trying to indoctrinate my children.
Speaker: You are wrong.
Speaker: Stop telling people that they're less or they're more or that they don't have opportunity.
Speaker: This is so messed up.
Speaker: Why are we dividing people?
Speaker: We've come so far.
Speaker: And, you know, as a woman, I will tell you that certainly I have been met with chauvinism and I've been met with discrimination.
Speaker: Has it stopped me?
Speaker: No, it hasn't.
Speaker: Do I allow it to help me to rise and be better and to learn more and to be more competitive?
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: And so we can shrink and we can complain or we can do better and we can be better.
Speaker: And and I think as people, you know, I don't I'm concerned if you look at the different I think a lot of parents.
Speaker: So the way CRT is being taught and there's a lot of controversy about, you know, people, the
Speaker: There are people that will tell you it's not being taught.
Speaker: I've seen the receipts.
Speaker: I know what it looks like.
Speaker: There is social and emotional learning.
Speaker: At the elementary level, they are teaching our babies for 45 minutes a day.
Speaker: That makes me want to puke.
Speaker: It makes me want to puke.
Speaker: And an outside contractor owns the curriculum.
Speaker: And what that means is a parent like me, guess what?
Speaker: I can't look at it because LCPS doesn't own it.
Speaker: So I try to get my hands on it.
Speaker: Sorry, we don't have it.
Speaker: But I know that's exactly that.
Speaker: They hide everything that way.
Speaker: That's that's how they hide censorship.
Speaker: It's how they hide all of the the essentially thought crime enforcement is they outsource it to private companies and then they say, oh, that's a private company.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Yep, we can't see it, we can't look at it.
Speaker: In the high school and middle school, they just kind of pepper it in.
Speaker: Those kids are not hearing it.
Speaker: It's at the elementary level that you really have to be concerned.
Speaker: But you ask about, like, how do you get other parents involved?
Speaker: You have Loudon Equity, Loudon For All.
Speaker: You have those groups that if you look on social media right now, you know, they're talking about this grand jury investigation and they're pushing this hard line that, you know,
Speaker: that the attorney general is targeting the trans community.
Speaker: That is nothing more than a big, fat, bold-faced lie.
Speaker: You know, they hide behind children.
Speaker: And this is what's tricky.
Speaker: If you have the audacity to step out of line, they will target you.
Speaker: They will come at you with veracity and they will hammer you.
Speaker: They have no problem pounding you.
Speaker: And so people are afraid of stepping out.
Speaker: For someone like me, I am self-employed.
Speaker: I gave up my anonymity and I said, I'm all in.
Speaker: And I could lose everything.
Speaker: And for me, my feeling is
Speaker: You do what is right because it's the right thing.
Speaker: And my children's future is on the line.
Speaker: And I would rather lose it all.
Speaker: I would rather lose it all.
Speaker: And my parents will take us in.
Speaker: It sounds like you're saying that the challenge with coalition building is more about...
Speaker: just people having the courage to speak rather than it being a question of like, do we really all agree?
Speaker: Is that fair to say?
Speaker: There, um, there, I think there, there, do say it again.
Speaker: There, there are people that are never going to speak.
Speaker: You're going to have very few people that have very few people are going to speak.
Speaker: Very few people.
Speaker: Very few people.
Speaker: But that's maybe the beauty of a secret ballot, right?
Speaker: Like as long as the conversation is happening, you know, and that happened with the 2016 election.
Speaker: People were shocked by that because people weren't telling phone pollsters, yeah, I'm going to go vote for Trump.
Speaker: And it's...
Speaker: The fact is, you know, you can say what you're saying and it's true and everybody knows it's true.
Speaker: But then sort of that's not reflected in like the public conversation because people are afraid.
Speaker: But then when you get to the ballot box, well, you get Governor Youngkin.
Speaker: And I wanted to talk to you about that.
Speaker: Like what role do you think this issue played in getting him elected?
Speaker: For sure, it had a huge, I think for sure, this was huge, huge, because within the conversation, there are a ton of moderate, there are a ton of Democrats who just feel like their party has left them and who are
Speaker: are not even sure where they fit anymore.
Speaker: I think, um, I think when it comes to your kids, politics are, are off limits.
Speaker: And so I think, um, yeah, for sure that had a huge hand in the governor's election.
Speaker: Um, no doubt.
Speaker: Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I want to, if you still, do you still have time for a few more questions or are we cutting it close?
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I want to talk to you about your actual like brass tack experience with the media.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: I'm sure that you've been contacted by some people who were like, Hey, I really just want to tell your story.
Speaker: Like we're like, I mean, I'm sure a lot of the, a lot of the, the Fox news type people were like, yeah, let's, let's support this.
Speaker: Let's signal boost this.
Speaker: And that was probably a little bit easier to deal with, but did you get contact from people that were hostile and how did you deal with that?
Speaker: A lot of the,
Speaker: The, um, sometimes, yeah, I'm laughing a little bit.
Speaker: One of the first, one of the first interviews that I did, uh, I want to say the mistake.
Speaker: Uh, one of the first interviews I did was with Lester Holt and, um, I spent a good 45 minutes of
Speaker: visiting, having a conversation and visiting on camera.
Speaker: And I made the mistake of thinking that he would be sympathetic to my small boys because my children were mistreated.
Speaker: i made the mistake and in our exchange there was like a wait your your children are being segregated from their classmates wait what there was a lot of like jaw drop and surprise they like there was a lot of surprise so then when it aired when the story aired
Speaker: And I made some rookie foolish mistakes because I did not lock down my social media, my personal social media, as tightly as I should have.
Speaker: And so when it aired, like I got like 10 seconds.
Speaker: And then it aired in Florida at like 4 and then Eastern Time, Central Mountain, and then Pacific.
Speaker: and then it aired again.
Speaker: So I got a heap of, I got hundreds and hundreds of rotten messages from really mean people.
Speaker: So I, fortunately that was at the beginning of that, you know, uh, that was at the beginning of the press that I did.
Speaker: Um, um,
Speaker: Did they give you a really unflattering 10 seconds or was it just not contextualized?
Speaker: The mask issue, I think, is so... Right now, the mask was such a polarizing thing.
Speaker: And I think, like you so aptly said before, it was a flagship for, like, are you in this camp or are you in this camp?
Speaker: And it, and it was like, you're either all this or you're all that.
Speaker: And I tried to, I was very careful in my messaging to say, my son has chronic asthma and the governor changed the law.
Speaker: And for us, this is about parental rights.
Speaker: I was very crisp and clean in my messaging.
Speaker: And, um, the way they cut it was really vicious.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: Man, the awful things that people said in response were vicious.
Speaker: So my feeling about the media is this.
Speaker: Most of the liberal outlets do not want to speak with me.
Speaker: Most of them don't care to have the other voice.
Speaker: They don't care.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: I've been on almost every I've been on almost every outlet at this point.
Speaker: I, I, I did interview with CNN and it has not aired yet.
Speaker: I do feel a little bit trepidatious about that.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Because,
Speaker: because that first one hammered me so bad.
Speaker: And, um, I, I may have wept a little bit after that.
Speaker: That was brutal.
Speaker: But at the same time, um, at the end of the day, I feel really, really confident that, um,
Speaker: you're not going to please everyone.
Speaker: You're not going to, you're certainly not going to convince anyone, right?
Speaker: People for the most part are firmly wherever they are.
Speaker: And, um, I hope if nothing else, if nothing else, I think the people that you're, you're, your target audience are probably people that are like-minded.
Speaker: And if, if nothing else, um,
Speaker: I hope to encourage people to link arms and encourage other people to just engage in a meaningful way to be supportive.
Speaker: Even like there's a lot of people who will quietly say to me, thank you so much for the work that you're doing.
Speaker: I know that not everybody is in a position to be vocal.
Speaker: Not everyone is in a position to, um,
Speaker: to lose their anonymity.
Speaker: I know I, and I, and I don't expect that of other people.
Speaker: So, um, and you know, I spent, I spent a decade on Capitol Hill.
Speaker: So I have a little bit of, I have a little bit of experience, you know, with messaging and that is helpful.
Speaker: Um, I think that, I think that just,
Speaker: understanding who these people are makes it a lot easier.
Speaker: Like, like I think some, I have known people who get contact from journalists and they feel so blindsided and so betrayed when, uh,
Speaker: when their words are twisted and when they're misrepresented.
Speaker: And I think it can be kind of a healthy thing.
Speaker: And I guess what I would say to somebody who's had that experience or is coming to the other side of it is like, it's a lot easier to handle psychologically
Speaker: when you know what to expect and when you, when you're not surprised by it anymore.
Speaker: And so, so I think that that's part of maybe what you're experiencing is like, you're going, you're going for round two with these guys, but you kind of know how it's going to go.
Speaker: And, and so it's, it's a lot easier to just like ride the wave, you know?
Speaker: One of the things that I've gotten pretty good at at this point is, is,
Speaker: I will engage with them personally.
Speaker: I'll say they'll, you know, they'll ask me if I'm willing to visit with them and I'll say, sure.
Speaker: Tell me about you.
Speaker: Where are you from?
Speaker: And, you know, they, they want to just dig in and make me look like a crazy person.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: And I think I've done a decent job humanizing myself and my children.
Speaker: And so engaging with them, I'll say, tell me about you.
Speaker: Where are you from?
Speaker: Do you have a family?
Speaker: Do you have children?
Speaker: Oh, you do.
Speaker: How old are your kids?
Speaker: And then when I find out about them and I find out about their kids, oh, your kids are about the same age as my kids.
Speaker: I have three and they're kind of spread out.
Speaker: So somewhere in their spread, I've got somebody that's close to one of their, were they a boy or their girl?
Speaker: And I kind of hijack their interview and I get to know them just enough that I want them to know that I'm real.
Speaker: I become real to them.
Speaker: It's harder for them to demonize me when I'm just a real person.
Speaker: And, um, and, um,
Speaker: I hope that in my exchange with people that I'm always decent because sometimes our counterparts demonize us.
Speaker: They have no problem doing that.
Speaker: I never want to be that person.
Speaker: I want to be the person that tells the truth.
Speaker: I want to always tell the truth and I want to be real.
Speaker: These are our children.
Speaker: This is our future.
Speaker: This is our community.
Speaker: That is why I'm doing this.
Speaker: That's the only reason when I left Capitol Hill a dozen years ago, I moved to the country to raise my babies.
Speaker: I moved to the country to go to these schools right here.
Speaker: And now look what's happened.
Speaker: And so I care so deeply about my children.
Speaker: I care about my community.
Speaker: I love this great country.
Speaker: My husband fought for this country.
Speaker: He would tell you he's the luckiest guy ever.
Speaker: He was picked in a line of a whole bunch of orphans.
Speaker: You know, he was picked.
Speaker: He was the lucky one.
Speaker: So here we are, you know, here we are fighting this crazy battle where people are trying to muzzle us and control us and take away the ability to communicate and tell and share our free thoughts.
Speaker: This is wrong.
Speaker: It's wrong.
Speaker: And so here we are.
Speaker: And, and we have to, we're having dynamic conversations and telling our children that adult is not safe.
Speaker: They're lying to you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's crazy.
Speaker: Um, well, and it's, it's so funny.
Speaker: Uh, people don't know this.
Speaker: I, I, uh, I,
Speaker: I don't, I didn't actually get in touch with Abby through like some sort of political connection.
Speaker: Abby, Abby helped us buy our house.
Speaker: She's our realtor.
Speaker: And I, I just feel very blessed and, um,
Speaker: And I, and I think that there was, there was some, some, some providence in us, uh, us connecting that way.
Speaker: And, um, so it's, it's, I'm just really proud to know you and really proud of what you're doing.
Speaker: And, um, well, anyway, tell me, tell me what the next steps are for, for, for you and, and, and this, this movement.
Speaker: Well, um,
Speaker: I am going to be at the school board tonight again, every, every other week.
Speaker: I am, I'm, I'm in, I'm at the school board and thank you.
Speaker: Thank you for letting me help you find your beautiful home and help your family.
Speaker: That is a privilege and one that I don't, I don't take lightly.
Speaker: I will fight every single day until we get the school board on.
Speaker: off of that dais until we get people in there that are worthy of our trust and until we get the superintendent until we get a new superintendent.
Speaker: Um, there is a lawsuit that I am involved in that has to do with parental rights that will, that will be, um, filed very soon.
Speaker: So there's, you know, there's, there's a whole bunch of things I'm helping with the, um,
Speaker: I'm working with the attorney general and with some of these things that are right at the forefront.
Speaker: So we will keep bringing these issues every day.
Speaker: Every day.
Speaker: We're going to keep pounding them until we get a new school board, until we get a new superintendent.
Speaker: So folks who are outside Loudoun,
Speaker: how can they either a get involved in support what you're doing or B how would you recommend that they make moves in their own communities?
Speaker: Um, probably first and foremost, um, if you're in Loudoun County, I would say attend your school board meetings.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: attend your school board meetings.
Speaker: You can watch them online.
Speaker: They're all online.
Speaker: Um, and get engaged with groups like fight for schools or army of parents.
Speaker: Um, feel free to message me if you need kind of a, a quiet inside track.
Speaker: I know anonymity is super important.
Speaker: Um, and I respect that.
Speaker: It's nothing to be ashamed of.
Speaker: it's important.
Speaker: So those are kind of your first starting points is engage in the dialogue, whether it's just by listening and following those groups, they're all online and, um, and watch what's happening.
Speaker: And that, that really, those are the starting points is just follow, follow what's happening.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: And then you'll know kind of the next steps follow with those groups.
Speaker: They'll tell you where to go and what to do.
Speaker: And, and, and, um, in your own local communities, follow your school board, follow your school board.
Speaker: Cause really, I think this is kind of the misconception is that we focus on the big races.
Speaker: We focus on, you know, all the national stuff.
Speaker: But yeah, it's those.
Speaker: And here's the misconception is that they're making the big decisions.
Speaker: But you look at Loudoun County.
Speaker: Six of our nine school board seats were financed and funded by George Soros, our county attorney.
Speaker: nearly a million dollars funded by george soros regardless of where you're at on a political spectrum that tells you something you know yeah and there's so apparently these races matter a lot and and it means that you know we have like the the when you look at sexual predators
Speaker: They're in one door and out the other.
Speaker: We have a lot of crime that is not, they're really soft on crime.
Speaker: And that is, you look at any George Soros funded crime.
Speaker: County attorney and we have four or five in Northern Virginia.
Speaker: He gave millions of dollars in Northern Virginia.
Speaker: Tell me why you look at them across the country.
Speaker: You start tracking them.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: He's destroying big cities.
Speaker: They're burning big cities, soft on crime.
Speaker: And look at the infiltration in small schools.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: They're going after the hearts and minds of our children.
Speaker: It is a very methodical, slow, thought out process.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, it's deliberate.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I think there is, I believe very strongly in being a student of your enemy when the enemy is doing something that's working.
Speaker: And obviously, some of their tactics are, the tactics themselves are evil, and it would be wrong to do what they're doing.
Speaker: But I think there are also cases where they've just learned a lot of competence in some important arenas.
Speaker: And I think kind of the small time ground game is a place where we can learn an awful lot.
Speaker: And the importance of it, just recognizing that it matters.
Speaker: And I would love to see, I mean, first of all, you're talking about you went to this school board and to your teacher and to your principal with like, you know, a statement from the governor of the state.
Speaker: And they were still able to make your life hard.
Speaker: They were still able to flex.
Speaker: And I guess what I'm saying is,
Speaker: it may be possible in some jurisdictions for us to tell the governor to pound sand and for us to gum up the gears and make it hard when the governor's trying to do something that's immoral.
Speaker: And I like, I just, I think that there's something to be learned there.
Speaker: Well, I think it is, you know, when I think it's, it's interesting that I shake my head because I,
Speaker: You look at the, you look at what's happening.
Speaker: It really is so nefarious.
Speaker: It's so sinister.
Speaker: You look at the control that one bad actor has.
Speaker: There are 80,000 children in Loudoun County schools.
Speaker: And, and when my children go into that school, I guess what?
Speaker: I can't go into the school.
Speaker: I can't go into that school.
Speaker: And, and this is why the parental rights conversation is so extremely important to me because they control who comes in and out.
Speaker: I can't go in.
Speaker: And, and so, but you've got a superintendent that is, is training teachers, telling teachers that if a, if a child says, you know,
Speaker: my name is bobby but now i want to go by brenda then that teacher can and will call them brenda but will not tell the parent anything about it and on all of the internal documents the name will be changed but to the parent to all the outside
Speaker: All the outside stuff, the parent, everything outside, they'll never know.
Speaker: They will keep all of that aside.
Speaker: If you look at all of the, at their documents from the school, those are public documents.
Speaker: You can see that well-documented in their training exercises.
Speaker: But, but, and that as a parent, that concerns me a great deal.
Speaker: Well, fundamentally, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but no, that's fine.
Speaker: But, but fundamentally, there's just a disagreement about who these kids belong to.
Speaker: And, and we talk about this, like it's a policy disagreement.
Speaker: Like we just don't like, like we're arguing over,
Speaker: this, this ground level issue of like, should kids be kids be taught X and Y and how should that be approached?
Speaker: And like, we're all on the same page as far as the fundamental premises, but we're not like for them.
Speaker: Think about this, Kevin, think about it's the end of the school year right now on my kitchen table.
Speaker: I've got a stack of permission slips the end of the year.
Speaker: They have all of these fun parties and,
Speaker: And so I have permission slips.
Speaker: Can your child have popcorn?
Speaker: Can they have the cotton candy?
Speaker: Can they have this?
Speaker: Can they have that?
Speaker: But a teacher can have a conversation with my son about his penis.
Speaker: But I have to sign a permission slip.
Speaker: Can he have popcorn?
Speaker: This is very real.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like there is a fundamental disconnect between the sexualization of our schools and the
Speaker: kicking a parent out of those conversations, right?
Speaker: There is a fundamental disconnect between we've got a concern about allergies, but not about their penis.
Speaker: And it's not
Speaker: And it's not, I don't, I don't believe it's because they think sexual issues are more innocuous, more harmless, more, more low stakes than cotton candy.
Speaker: It's because they don't trust the parents and they want to exclude them from the conversation.
Speaker: That's exactly right.
Speaker: That's exactly right.
Speaker: And even just in the last, you know, two weeks, my son, who's in the fifth grade came home and he was in the bathroom at a urinal and a girl walked in.
Speaker: And of course he was tremendously embarrassed.
Speaker: And that is so awkward.
Speaker: And I'm telling him, don't use the urinal anymore.
Speaker: Just go into the stall.
Speaker: But there's not enough time.
Speaker: There's not enough stalls.
Speaker: And it's too bad because in his fifth grade class, there are two biological girls.
Speaker: And the way he would describe it, he said they're pretending to be boys.
Speaker: And this is what happens when you spend millions of dollars on a diversity library that they put in the class.
Speaker: in the class they are right putting this stuff in front of them all day every day so as a parent with with graphic depictions of oral sex and everything i mean it's it's it's unbelievable what they put in there it's crazy so we have to be really well prepared to have uncomfortable conversations and and you you've got to be prepared you've got to be prepared
Speaker: And, and they're going to tell us that we're all sorts of rotten things.
Speaker: And, and I'm, and I'm prepared to say, you want me to sign a permission slip about cotton candy, but not about my son's penis.
Speaker: That is crazy.
Speaker: And I've said that on live TV.
Speaker: I'll say it again.
Speaker: And that's, and that's something that I want to touch on is like, like there's,
Speaker: they rely so heavily on
Speaker: on conservative religious people being afraid to say blow job, to be afraid to say penis.
Speaker: And because then they get to just own that whole space.
Speaker: Well, it's the same thing right now.
Speaker: The big issue right now is that the attorney general is doing this grand jury investigation.
Speaker: And so they requested all of these people
Speaker: records, student records.
Speaker: There was one trans student in a whole bunch of records that they requested.
Speaker: There was one trans student.
Speaker: And so Loud and Equity and all these other equity groups are, and, and all of the, all of the, um,
Speaker: you know, Wexton and Phyllis Randall, Julie Briskman, all of these Democrat people are all over social media saying the AG is on a witch hunt.
Speaker: And I'm saying, you know what?
Speaker: The truth, the truth of what is happening right now is you are using children.
Speaker: You're crying wolf.
Speaker: You're hiding behind children and you're crying wolf with a trans child to again, hide rapes in our school.
Speaker: The investigation is about the superintendent covering up sexual assaults in our school.
Speaker: And it's so disgusting.
Speaker: Like they continue to hide behind our children.
Speaker: And that's where I have a really hard time.
Speaker: You're crying wolf.
Speaker: You're using a trans kid.
Speaker: You're holding one trans kid.
Speaker: And you're saying, stop with your witch hunt.
Speaker: And this is the message.
Speaker: And I'm saying, you stop hiding behind children, vulnerable children.
Speaker: You're crying wolf.
Speaker: You're using children.
Speaker: And I hope.
Speaker: I hope somebody with more media power than I have will use that line because I think it's effective.
Speaker: And they're all, there's this big insidious thing
Speaker: web that they're all entangled in.
Speaker: And I, and I think it will take them all down is the truth because they're all in it.
Speaker: The NAACP owns LCPS.
Speaker: That's, and that's one of the dirty little secrets is that the NAACP has a contract with LCPS.
Speaker: They're paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars for all this equity garbage that
Speaker: And nobody wants to see a blonde white woman speak the truth about that.
Speaker: But, and so fortunately I have my beautiful biracial babies that gives me coverage.
Speaker: I've gotten a little bit of coverage out of that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you, you have to, so basically as long as you, as long as you accept their frame that like,
Speaker: that essentially they're right about the basics of sexuality.
Speaker: And like, you have to reject the whole system because if their frame is right, then there is that, you know, that, that, that one trans kid is the little, is the little lost sheep.
Speaker: And we're leaving the 99 to go take care of this one.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: That is exactly what we should be doing.
Speaker: But the way to help that kid is not by indulging,
Speaker: what we've told that kid about who they are.
Speaker: That, that is totally, that's abusive.
Speaker: That's wrong.
Speaker: And so, and so like something, something happened to that kid.
Speaker: something bad.
Speaker: And we have to stop assuming like good faith on the part of the people that are doing this to those kids.
Speaker: Because, because if we assume good faith and we say, Oh, we just have this honest disagreement about this and that it's, I mean, they mop the floor with you because, because their, their frame is the one that's being blasted by the teachers, by the principal, by CNN, by everybody else.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: And you have to fight that frame.
Speaker: That has to be part of the conversation.
Speaker: Well, and here's the thing is you've got to have the guts to lean into that conversation.
Speaker: And this is why I think so many conservatives are polite.
Speaker: They stay in their lane.
Speaker: And we've been polite for a really long time.
Speaker: We play nice and we stay in our lane.
Speaker: We want to raise our families and live a quiet life.
Speaker: I moved to the country to hide.
Speaker: That's the truth.
Speaker: It's not working out for me.
Speaker: And yet here we are.
Speaker: If I, if we don't have these hard conversations often and openly, somebody else will.
Speaker: And that's where we're going to get in a lot of trouble.
Speaker: And, and, and, and it's not, it's going to come in a lot of different tricky ways.
Speaker: So your kids need to know that there are some tricky adults out there that are going to tell them some things that are,
Speaker: tricky and weird.
Speaker: And so we're not shielding, you know, I grew up in the most conservative county in America.
Speaker: And now my children are at the heart of the culture wars.
Speaker: And we are somehow leading this crazy endeavor.
Speaker: And we have inside spice.
Speaker: Here we are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, this has been such a great conversation.
Speaker: I really appreciate you taking the time.
Speaker: And is there a particular URL that you'd like to lead people to as far as where they can support this kind of thing?
Speaker: I know you said Fight for Schools.
Speaker: Is it just fightforschools.org or where should they go?
Speaker: I think it is Fight for Schools.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, it's fightforschools.org.
Speaker: And that's really, that's probably the best place to go and stay engaged.
Speaker: And, and if you want to contact me, abbyplatt.com.
Speaker: And I'm happy to stay in touch and, and to be of help.
Speaker: And awesome.
Speaker: Happy to have a conversation.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much.
Speaker: Guys, if you want to learn more about what we do at Exit, you can check us out at exitgroup.us or follow us on Twitter at exit underscore org.
Speaker: Thanks so much, Abby.
