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Exit Podcast Episode 35: Public School Resistance (feat. Abbie Platt)
692 Plays3 years ago
Abbie Platt is a friend of mine, and is leading the resistance against CRT, sex education, and mask mandates in the Loudoun County public schools in Northern Virginia. We discuss how this situation got out of hand for years under parents' noses, how COVID remote schooling woke them up, and what they're doing to fight it.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Issue and Key Players
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome to the Exit Podcast.
00:00:19
Speaker
This is Dr. Bennett, joined here by Abby Platt.
00:00:21
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.
00:00:27
Speaker
Mask mandates, CRT, the craziness with the sex ed, and I wanted to get her on the show to talk about A, why
00:00:36
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.
00:00:47
Speaker
So welcome to the show, Abby.
00:00:48
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:49
Speaker
Thank you for having me on.
00:00:50
Speaker
I appreciate it.
00:00:52
Speaker
So for starters, I want to get a sense of what started this fight.
00:00:56
Speaker
I know that it has to do with CRT.
00:00:58
Speaker
It has to do with sex ed.
00:01:00
Speaker
It has to do with mask mandates.
00:01:01
Speaker
But what would you say specifically tipped the scale and got maybe you
Parental Concerns About Curriculum Exposure
00:01:08
Speaker
involved?
00:01:08
Speaker
And then what got the energy from the other parents to start essentially this movement?
00:01:16
Speaker
Well, initially,
00:01:18
Speaker
initially the thing that got many parents in Loudoun engaged was that their kids were online.
00:01:29
Speaker
So their kids were at home, they were online.
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Speaker
And what happened was they were given a front seat to hear and see exactly what, what their kids were being taught.
00:01:45
Speaker
Um,
00:01:46
Speaker
And just as a point of reference, at the beginning of the pandemic, my husband was deployed overseas.
00:01:54
Speaker
So I want to be really transparent about this.
00:01:59
Speaker
Because my husband was deployed, he got stuck overseas.
00:02:03
Speaker
And that was quite difficult for our family.
00:02:09
Speaker
And so we immediately enrolled our children in
00:02:14
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
00:02:44
Speaker
daily interaction, I knew that that was critical.
00:02:48
Speaker
So I was engaged with what was happening in our community, but our children were in school every day in person.
Equity vs. Advanced Placement: A School Board Controversy
00:02:59
Speaker
So that was unique for me.
00:03:02
Speaker
But the thing that engaged me that caught my attention initially and kind of ironically really is that
00:03:13
Speaker
I kept hearing this discussion about the school board was going to eliminate all advanced placement courses and in particular math.
00:03:25
Speaker
My oldest at the time was in seventh grade and she she
00:03:34
Speaker
doesn't excel in math.
00:03:36
Speaker
That is her biggest struggle is math.
00:03:38
Speaker
And, but at the time they were going to eliminate all advanced placement courses and in particular math.
00:03:47
Speaker
And I was thinking, okay, who does it in the name of equity?
00:03:53
Speaker
It is unfair that some could advance and some wouldn't.
00:03:59
Speaker
So here I am knowing that my kids are out of the system.
00:04:04
Speaker
but who gets hurt, who gets left behind in the name of fairness, we're gonna eliminate all of this.
00:04:12
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.
00:04:27
Speaker
And so this is the shift that was happening
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Speaker
It was not subtle.
Exposing Systemic Issues: Remote Schooling and Social Media
00:04:35
Speaker
And it was not slow.
00:04:39
Speaker
It was in your face, fast.
00:04:42
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.
00:04:53
Speaker
And then I'm hearing from friends in our community, listen to what's happening.
00:05:00
Speaker
Um, so, you know, so the beginning of it was parents are at home doing school with their kids, hearing crazy stuff.
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Speaker
And then for me, I'm thinking, you know, just as a person in the community, what is happening?
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Speaker
Like, this is concerning.
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Speaker
So it started that way.
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Speaker
And as time has gone on, I feel like
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Speaker
COVID, the blessing of COVID was that it was like the carpet was picked up.
00:05:37
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?
00:05:46
Speaker
Right.
00:05:46
Speaker
That's, that's what happened.
00:05:49
Speaker
It allowed a bunch of people to say, there's a big mess.
00:05:54
Speaker
It pulled that carpet up.
00:05:56
Speaker
And people didn't know, but, but now people know.
00:05:59
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.
00:06:17
Speaker
They're just telling on themselves constantly.
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Speaker
And it's, it's,
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Speaker
There's a lot of problems associated with social media and these new technologies that we're wrestling with.
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Speaker
But one of the blessings is that we all get to see where everybody stands.
00:06:36
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?
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Speaker
And I think it's just that we're now seeing it.
00:06:48
Speaker
Yeah, that is the great misconception.
00:06:51
Speaker
The misconception is that it just started.
00:06:54
Speaker
The reality is that we didn't know that it started really.
00:07:03
Speaker
A lot of the critical race theory, those things started as I really dug into it, that stuff started.
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Speaker
started getting implemented in 2014, 2015.
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Speaker
It's easy to look now and hold the people who are sitting in those school board seats.
00:07:25
Speaker
You know, we're wanting to hold them accountable and ask a lot of questions today.
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Speaker
But all of that was slowly being implemented beginning in 2014, 2015.
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Speaker
It was implemented, funded back then.
00:07:43
Speaker
So this has been a slow rollout and it's taken time, but we just, we didn't know.
Trust in Education vs. Parental Challenges
00:07:51
Speaker
We just, we really didn't know.
00:07:52
Speaker
And I look back at even the things that I was taught and not taught as a kid.
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Speaker
And I think that I can definitely identify things that if my,
00:08:05
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.
00:08:16
Speaker
And so it's, it's, you almost can't help inculcating a certain set of values, a certain perspective on the world.
00:08:27
Speaker
And there's this enormous trust that parents are just,
00:08:35
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.
00:08:51
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?
00:09:09
Speaker
Like, it's just such a betrayal of that trust.
00:09:12
Speaker
Well, I think at some level, it is, you're right.
00:09:18
Speaker
And at some level, I think as parents, you know, we have a whole bunch of choices.
00:09:23
Speaker
Our kids, we can't insulate our kids from all things forever, right?
Mask Mandates and Family Dilemmas
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Speaker
So there's this continuum of
00:09:33
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
00:09:55
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.
00:10:11
Speaker
The other school proved for me not to be a great fit.
00:10:18
Speaker
So private schools have, they're riddled with their own challenges.
00:10:24
Speaker
But our children wanted to come back to the small schools in our community with their friends.
00:10:31
Speaker
We live in a small community.
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Speaker
They wanted to be with their friends in our neighborhood.
00:10:37
Speaker
So, you know, I think, so ultimately we did.
00:10:45
Speaker
We came back.
00:10:47
Speaker
And that was hard for me.
00:10:48
Speaker
I'll confess.
00:10:50
Speaker
I might have sobbed.
00:10:52
Speaker
That was very, very difficult.
00:10:54
Speaker
But because of that, we are having really honest conversations.
00:11:05
Speaker
Conversations I never in a million years would have thought I would have with my children.
00:11:12
Speaker
I never would have thought that, particularly at such young ages, but they're dynamic,
00:11:18
Speaker
and they're honest and our kids, I think are the better for it.
00:11:24
Speaker
I think they're smarter, they're better prepared.
00:11:27
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?
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:38
Speaker
My kids were, um, were some of the few that showed up at school and, um, we, um,
00:11:49
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.
00:12:02
Speaker
And so our children were segregated for a week and then they were suspended for a month.
00:12:11
Speaker
And so we had a lot of conversations during that time.
00:12:16
Speaker
My first grader, for crying out loud, he was the youngest kid in Loudoun County to be suspended.
00:12:25
Speaker
And contrast that with a serial rapist who they protected and did not suspend.
00:12:33
Speaker
My first grader, they did.
00:12:36
Speaker
And not only did they suspend him, they piled on multiple truancies.
00:12:42
Speaker
That is very unusual.
00:12:44
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.
00:13:02
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:13:03
Speaker
And, and to have to tell a kid that age that like they're, they're,
00:13:13
Speaker
it's not really about them, you know, like it's, it's not something you did.
00:13:17
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.
00:13:28
Speaker
And, and like to say, basically this has nothing.
00:13:31
Speaker
And I think I want to go back to, to what you said about, um,
00:13:37
Speaker
allowing your kids to see sort of what is out there in the world.
00:13:42
Speaker
And I think that's totally valid.
00:13:45
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...
00:13:59
Speaker
a paid authority figure funded by the state to, to come and say like, this is what you should believe about transgender.
00:14:09
Speaker
This is what you should.
00:14:10
Speaker
And, and to have it be so contrary to your own, to your own values.
00:14:14
Speaker
And so it's like,
00:14:16
Speaker
And that's always the way they frame it.
00:14:17
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.
00:14:26
Speaker
But that's not what they're doing.
00:14:27
Speaker
They're saying, this is the truth.
00:14:29
Speaker
You're a bad person if you reject it.
00:14:31
Speaker
And like, I think if a kid has really great parents,
00:14:39
Speaker
that can lead to these conversations that you're talking about.
00:14:43
Speaker
Like in that situation, I'm not as much worried about like my kid getting brainwashed by the, by the teacher.
00:14:50
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.
00:15:01
Speaker
And so it just gets reinforced, reinforced and intensified.
00:15:05
Speaker
And then my kids got to deal with all those other kids.
00:15:07
Speaker
That's what I'm thinking about.
00:15:10
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.
00:15:33
Speaker
And I also want to be very direct in saying that
00:15:40
Speaker
That was not easy.
00:15:43
Speaker
Sure.
00:15:43
Speaker
So Joshua's in the first grade.
00:15:46
Speaker
Brayden's in the fifth grade.
00:15:47
Speaker
Madeline is now in the eighth grade.
00:15:53
Speaker
There was a lot of trepidation on my part.
00:16:01
Speaker
We didn't know how long that would take or what the end would look like.
00:16:08
Speaker
And we sent our small children, we gave them a choice.
00:16:12
Speaker
We talked about, you know, the executive order.
00:16:16
Speaker
We said that the law had changed.
00:16:20
Speaker
And, and I don't, I don't know that I've said this in a recording ever.
00:16:29
Speaker
I am going to say it right now.
00:16:32
Speaker
Um,
00:16:34
Speaker
We did have our children, we had cameras on our children, on their backpacks, and we had hidden cameras all over our kids.
00:16:45
Speaker
My husband works in a field in which we know how to do that well.
00:16:55
Speaker
My son wore, my fifth grader wore my Apple Watch.
00:17:01
Speaker
So we were watching them that whole time.
00:17:06
Speaker
When you have a first grader, he's a little guy.
00:17:09
Speaker
He was the youngest kid to be suspended.
00:17:14
Speaker
That is no joke.
00:17:16
Speaker
And by Thursday, I'll tell you, this is going to make me emotional.
00:17:21
Speaker
By Thursday, I was wrecked.
00:17:24
Speaker
I was wrecked.
00:17:25
Speaker
And I begged him to put that mask
Health Implications and School Policies
00:17:28
Speaker
back on.
00:17:28
Speaker
I begged him.
00:17:30
Speaker
I thanked him.
00:17:31
Speaker
People don't know that side of it.
00:17:34
Speaker
People don't know that.
00:17:36
Speaker
Like there are people that look at us like monsters.
00:17:39
Speaker
Like how would you do this to your children?
00:17:45
Speaker
He would come home at the end of the day.
00:17:49
Speaker
And, and actually on day one, the principal tried to block the door and she was like, sorry, you can't come in.
00:17:57
Speaker
And my husband who is,
00:18:00
Speaker
large.
00:18:01
Speaker
He's really stacked.
00:18:05
Speaker
If you saw him, you would know that he is no one to mess with.
00:18:10
Speaker
He is well built and he is a military man and you would know to back away.
00:18:19
Speaker
The principal said, sorry, if you don't have a mask, you can't come in.
00:18:23
Speaker
And he said, we're not playing that game.
00:18:26
Speaker
They're here for school.
00:18:26
Speaker
They're coming in.
00:18:30
Speaker
And when she took them to the library, she measured the distance between them and she roped off a section.
00:18:43
Speaker
They're brothers, come on.
00:18:46
Speaker
But she put them in the back part of the library and they told them not to look at anyone else.
00:18:54
Speaker
And they were way back.
00:18:57
Speaker
Because line of sight transmits COVID.
00:19:01
Speaker
Right.
00:19:02
Speaker
They're going to poison someone by looking.
00:19:04
Speaker
So they told other kids not to look at them, not to talk to them.
00:19:10
Speaker
By the end of the day, my littlest guy...
00:19:15
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.
00:19:27
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.
00:19:37
Speaker
And, um,
00:19:39
Speaker
he would come home at the end of the day and he would just lose it.
00:19:43
Speaker
He would just lose it.
00:19:45
Speaker
And it wrecked him and that wrecked me.
00:19:49
Speaker
And so by Thursday I was like, we can't do this.
00:19:53
Speaker
This is abuse.
00:19:54
Speaker
Like you can't, you can't just sit a kid in a corner all day.
00:20:02
Speaker
Like this is wrong.
00:20:03
Speaker
This is wrong.
00:20:07
Speaker
And you know what?
00:20:08
Speaker
And you know what?
00:20:08
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.
00:20:19
Speaker
I'm 35.
00:20:22
Speaker
I remember the kids my own age that got medicated because they couldn't do that because they couldn't be put.
00:20:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:30
Speaker
It's common to have that conversation.
00:20:32
Speaker
If you can't sit long enough or quiet enough, like he needs meds.
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:38
Speaker
And like fundamentally, I struggle with that idea.
00:20:42
Speaker
I'll be honest.
00:20:43
Speaker
Sure.
00:20:44
Speaker
Sure.
00:20:44
Speaker
And I don't want to discount the, the extremity of what's happening right now.
00:20:51
Speaker
But I think that,
00:20:52
Speaker
we have undersold how hard these environments are for particularly for active little boys.
00:21:00
Speaker
Uh, even, even before all this craziness happened, but I mean, this is a whole new level.
00:21:05
Speaker
And, and the, um, I think about, uh, I remember one time a police officer came to school.
00:21:15
Speaker
Um, I was maybe in seventh grade and he said, uh,
00:21:20
Speaker
we have certain laws on the books expressly for the purpose of if we want to pull somebody over, we have a reason.
00:21:31
Speaker
And, and basically like, like how, what lane you're supposed to occupy when you take a left turn or whatever.
00:21:38
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.
00:21:42
Speaker
And that was a, an early, uh,
00:21:45
Speaker
awakening for me of like, Oh, the rules don't work the way I really thought the rules were supposed to work.
00:21:52
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.
00:22:05
Speaker
If you're compliant, it's a way to harass and punish kids with,
00:22:11
Speaker
who are not compliant.
00:22:14
Speaker
It's, oh, you don't like the way it is?
00:22:16
Speaker
Well, we're going to enforce every little piece of this.
00:22:19
Speaker
And that extends from kids to adults, but it's brutal on a five-year-old.
00:22:25
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:22:26
Speaker
It's just crazy to do that too.
00:22:29
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...
00:22:39
Speaker
psychologically, what does that do to a little kid?
00:22:41
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:22:41
Speaker
Well, I, I received a text message from a mom who lives nearby and, you know, we didn't going into that.
00:22:53
Speaker
We did not coordinate or discuss with anyone that, you know, this was a decision that we as a family made.
00:23:04
Speaker
we felt strongly about.
00:23:06
Speaker
And Joshua has, this is important, Joshua has chronic asthma.
00:23:13
Speaker
And wearing the mask exacerbated that.
00:23:18
Speaker
And so for us, there are aspects of this.
00:23:24
Speaker
Part of it is a broader expression of freedom.
00:23:29
Speaker
But another part of it is that
00:23:33
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
00:24:01
Speaker
Our kids were one of the very few that were actually in school.
00:24:05
Speaker
I was so grateful that they were in person every day and everyone else was begging LCPS to open back up.
00:24:16
Speaker
And the doctor said, this mask has to come off.
00:24:20
Speaker
And so he wrote a doctor's note that said, take this dumb thing off.
00:24:25
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.
00:24:36
Speaker
And then if you pass, then, you know, your kid gets out.
00:24:39
Speaker
Parents never went into the school.
00:24:42
Speaker
So, you know, we did that.
00:24:44
Speaker
And I said,
Parental Rights and Community Involvement
00:24:45
Speaker
I have this doctor's note and, you know, he had these huge open source all over his face and,
00:24:52
Speaker
And I said, and he was on a nebulizer in the morning before school, immediate.
00:24:59
Speaker
And I would come sometimes at lunch.
00:25:01
Speaker
to give him a breathing treatment at lunch.
00:25:03
Speaker
That's how bad his asthma was.
00:25:06
Speaker
And then we do it immediately after school and then at dinner and then at night, sometimes in the middle of the night.
00:25:13
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.
00:25:27
Speaker
So this day I go to the school, I had the doctor's note
00:25:31
Speaker
And the person at the window took the note and was like, oh, okay.
00:25:37
Speaker
Now, kindergarten, my son gets out.
00:25:41
Speaker
He's elated.
00:25:43
Speaker
I don't have to wear the mask.
00:25:44
Speaker
Of course, he's telling everyone, I don't have to wear a mask.
00:25:49
Speaker
So the end of the day is like 2.30 is pick up.
00:25:55
Speaker
I get a call at 2.00.
00:25:57
Speaker
At 2.00 p.m., his teacher calls and says,
00:26:00
Speaker
Mrs. Platt, I just wanted to talk to you about Joshua's medical note.
00:26:10
Speaker
He is required to wear a mask.
00:26:12
Speaker
And I said, he has a medical exemption.
00:26:17
Speaker
I handed the note to you.
00:26:20
Speaker
Well, I'm sorry, the CDC.
00:26:22
Speaker
And I was like, whoa, no.
00:26:26
Speaker
And I just about went through the roof.
00:26:28
Speaker
Right now, this was at the private school.
00:26:31
Speaker
But at that point, the damage was done, right?
00:26:34
Speaker
Because they shamed him so badly and they put a mask back on him.
00:26:40
Speaker
And at that point, he would not take it off.
00:26:44
Speaker
The damage was done.
00:26:47
Speaker
So now when the governor signs this executive order, we're like, the governor signed this.
00:26:53
Speaker
He's the law in Virginia.
00:26:55
Speaker
And that's why it was a big deal to us.
00:26:59
Speaker
And so we had that conversation.
00:27:02
Speaker
And when great big giant muscly dad shows up at the school and says, don't touch my son.
00:27:11
Speaker
Don't touch my son.
00:27:12
Speaker
We're not wearing masks.
00:27:15
Speaker
And you go in with your brother and our kids knew this was the one time they, they were wearing multiple hidden cameras.
00:27:23
Speaker
They were on their back and they were sewn in their clothes and
00:27:27
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
00:27:51
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.
00:28:04
Speaker
You know, the mask, the mandates with the vaccines and all of that.
00:28:07
Speaker
I want to respect the fact that people are going to have a lot of different feelings about their personal health.
00:28:14
Speaker
And I'm comfortable with that.
00:28:15
Speaker
Like we each get to be in that personal space.
00:28:21
Speaker
I am going to be a fierce advocate for parental rights.
00:28:27
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
Funding vs. Enrollment: A School Board Critique
00:28:45
Speaker
out.
00:28:45
Speaker
And even if you don't have a child in the system,
00:28:50
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.
00:29:08
Speaker
You are going to continue to pay taxes.
00:29:12
Speaker
And our county supervisors are not holding them accountable.
00:29:16
Speaker
And that's where I think there's sort of a disconnect
00:29:20
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.
00:29:33
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,
00:29:50
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
00:30:14
Speaker
And it's even hard to articulate because it is so socially progressive that.
00:30:21
Speaker
It's evil.
00:30:22
Speaker
It is.
00:30:23
Speaker
It is.
00:30:25
Speaker
It's evil.
00:30:26
Speaker
It's evil.
00:30:27
Speaker
And, you know, my son- Forget about property values.
00:30:31
Speaker
I mean, these are the kids that my kids have to make friends with and eventually date.
00:30:36
Speaker
And this is the culture that they have to grow up in.
00:30:41
Speaker
Well, these will be the leaders of the world.
00:30:44
Speaker
And these are people that are going to be your colleagues.
00:30:49
Speaker
They're going to be your neighbors.
00:30:51
Speaker
They're going to be-
00:30:55
Speaker
They're our next generation.
00:30:58
Speaker
It's important.
00:30:59
Speaker
It's so important.
00:31:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:01
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.
00:31:16
Speaker
And I'm a strong advocate for that, but not because it's a way to dodge this problem.
00:31:24
Speaker
Cause you can't dodge this problem.
00:31:26
Speaker
This, this is everybody's problem.
00:31:28
Speaker
And you have to, I mean, you have to fight.
00:31:33
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,
00:31:47
Speaker
The government works for you as much as for anybody else.
00:31:50
Speaker
Right.
00:31:51
Speaker
I mean, we have to care about our community.
00:31:54
Speaker
We have to care about our country.
00:31:56
Speaker
We have to care about the interactions that we have with each other.
00:32:01
Speaker
There is this broad network that we are all interrelated.
00:32:10
Speaker
So you can't run and hide.
00:32:12
Speaker
You cannot.
00:32:14
Speaker
You cannot.
00:32:15
Speaker
And that really that is the underlying truth.
00:32:18
Speaker
And when I look at when I look at the school system and the fact that the county supervisors held their budget meeting.
Declining Standards and Educational Alternatives
00:32:27
Speaker
And the superintendent didn't show up and the school board didn't show up.
00:32:32
Speaker
But who was there?
00:32:34
Speaker
Parents were there.
00:32:36
Speaker
And the county supervisors were livid.
00:32:40
Speaker
They were livid that the superintendent had, you know, submitted their request for $85 million more than last year.
00:32:50
Speaker
Their student enrollment is down by $10,000.
00:32:54
Speaker
And yet they're asking for 80, it's really 86, it's $86 million more than last year.
00:33:01
Speaker
And their enrollment is way down.
00:33:03
Speaker
Why?
00:33:04
Speaker
Because people are saying, no, we're going to go to private school.
00:33:07
Speaker
We're going to homeschool.
00:33:09
Speaker
Enough of this nonsense.
00:33:10
Speaker
We're opting out.
00:33:12
Speaker
We're moving away.
00:33:13
Speaker
We're choosing something different.
00:33:15
Speaker
And yet county supervisors did not hold them accountable.
00:33:19
Speaker
They were mad, but not mad enough to hold them accountable.
00:33:23
Speaker
Well, your, your tax value there, they're increasing your tax value arbitrarily.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yes.
00:33:30
Speaker
The value of your home went up.
00:33:32
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.
00:33:41
Speaker
That is wrong.
00:33:43
Speaker
And regardless of that, even if you separate the money from it,
00:33:48
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.
00:34:15
Speaker
That is a huge problem.
00:34:18
Speaker
To me, that's a huge problem.
00:34:20
Speaker
That's an indicator that we're off course.
00:34:23
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:34:25
Speaker
And Loudon is this interesting case.
00:34:26
Speaker
I mean, you know, these public or these charter school advocates like Cory D'Angelis, they're talking about school choice and bringing...
00:34:40
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.
00:34:48
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.
00:35:03
Speaker
Uh, a lot of them do anyway.
00:35:04
Speaker
And so this, this, uh,
00:35:07
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.
00:35:18
Speaker
And what is that?
00:35:19
Speaker
Like, how does that cash out?
00:35:21
Speaker
Well, here's what's unique about Virginia.
00:35:25
Speaker
So for decades, decades, Fairfax and Loudoun have been heralded as having had the best schools in the country.
00:35:35
Speaker
But you start cracking in 2014, 2015.
00:35:41
Speaker
That's when all of this diversity and equity nonsense starts filtering in.
00:35:47
Speaker
And that's when, so like right now, even if a kid fails, you cannot fail.
00:35:55
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
00:36:21
Speaker
So they've changed their own standard and, and they've shifted the way they do everything.
00:36:28
Speaker
So it's harder to measure our, like where we're at.
00:36:34
Speaker
And, and so you look at these, these changes over, over time.
00:36:40
Speaker
And because we've been, we've been considered,
00:36:46
Speaker
we've been regarded as such great schools for so long.
00:36:50
Speaker
There hasn't been a demand for charter.
00:36:52
Speaker
There hasn't been a demand for private schools.
00:36:55
Speaker
So now people are saying, what do we do?
00:36:58
Speaker
So the year that I pulled my kids out and did private school, I paid $50,000 for three kids.
00:37:07
Speaker
And, but in that year, because I acted so quickly and,
00:37:13
Speaker
And and I was able to get in because I did it right then and there.
00:37:19
Speaker
Now I'd be on a waiting list for two or three years.
00:37:24
Speaker
I couldn't get in now.
00:37:27
Speaker
There's nowhere to go.
00:37:28
Speaker
That's the difference that we have in Virginia.
00:37:31
Speaker
There aren't charter schools.
00:37:34
Speaker
We have less charter schools than anywhere in the country.
00:37:37
Speaker
There's been no demand for them.
00:37:39
Speaker
Now there are some private schools that are popping up, but even, you know, um, corner infrastructure, it's not there.
00:37:48
Speaker
It takes time.
00:37:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:49
Speaker
It takes time.
00:37:50
Speaker
So cornerstone announced that they, they are a large Christian school.
00:37:55
Speaker
They announced they're going to start their own school, but it won't open until fall of 2023.
00:38:03
Speaker
They have a waiting list of, I think, like a couple thousand kids.
00:38:08
Speaker
They can only take 500, but that's in fall of 2023.
00:38:15
Speaker
So, yes, there's a huge demand.
00:38:21
Speaker
There's a huge demand for it, but it will take so much time to get to where it needs to be.
00:38:30
Speaker
And so, despite...
00:38:34
Speaker
despite the, the need, despite the demand, there's nowhere to go.
00:38:39
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,
00:39:01
Speaker
She begged.
00:39:03
Speaker
She's in middle school.
00:39:05
Speaker
She wanted to be with her friends.
00:39:08
Speaker
I feel like a huge part of this, this is her education.
00:39:16
Speaker
I want her to be invested in it.
00:39:19
Speaker
Otherwise, I lose that relationship with her.
00:39:23
Speaker
If I make my decision based on only what I think is best, then I lose her investment in whatever that decision is.
00:39:34
Speaker
I want her to know that I value her input in that decision as much as my own.
00:39:43
Speaker
I want her to be invested too.
00:39:46
Speaker
She wanted to go back and be with her friends.
00:39:49
Speaker
She's a straight A student.
00:39:52
Speaker
So that was very hard.
00:39:54
Speaker
I, I sobbed when she wanted to go back.
00:39:57
Speaker
I would rather pay the 50 grand and know that my kids are not being indoctrinated.
00:40:03
Speaker
But now the trade-off is that she comes home and she says, mom, here's a recording.
00:40:11
Speaker
She records her on our children are trained spies.
00:40:16
Speaker
She records on her Apple watch.
00:40:19
Speaker
Um,
00:40:21
Speaker
I won't tell you every class just in case somebody listens and wants to know.
00:40:26
Speaker
But I listened to a couple of her classes every day.
00:40:31
Speaker
And that takes time.
00:40:32
Speaker
That takes time.
00:40:34
Speaker
That is, that is not a small order, but.
00:40:37
Speaker
Trust is, trust is a technology.
00:40:40
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.
00:40:51
Speaker
because this is a huge, not a huge subject change.
00:40:54
Speaker
I'm bringing it back.
00:40:56
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.
00:41:05
Speaker
They used to all get it from the same place in North Africa.
00:41:07
Speaker
And then once the supply chain broke down, people had to make their own and it's not as good.
00:41:12
Speaker
And so you can trace like, ah, here's when the roads became unsafe in this part of the world.
00:41:18
Speaker
And that trust,
00:41:20
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.
Rebuilding Trust in Education
00:41:28
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?
00:41:46
Speaker
I think you would agree that it's like, it's crazy that you have to do that.
00:41:49
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.
00:42:12
Speaker
And so for me, I have this huge effort to like, go find them friends.
00:42:17
Speaker
And both of these,
00:42:20
Speaker
this effort that we're putting in shouldn't be necessary.
00:42:25
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.
00:42:34
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
00:42:50
Speaker
what is best for my oldest might not meet the best need of my youngest guy.
00:42:58
Speaker
And, and so we try to meet those needs individually and prayerfully.
00:43:07
Speaker
And, and, and so I, I want to, with each of our kids, we, and I guess this is on a positive note,
00:43:19
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.
00:43:41
Speaker
I never in a million years would have thought that I would undermine my
00:43:46
Speaker
another adult in a position of authority.
00:43:51
Speaker
I never, I don't like to do that.
00:43:53
Speaker
I really don't like to do that.
00:43:55
Speaker
But teaching them those nuances is actually really an important part of critical thinking.
00:44:02
Speaker
And I think that they'll be better off for it.
00:44:05
Speaker
You know, my daughter earned the, she earned the honor roll and they did not recognize her.
00:44:13
Speaker
And she,
00:44:14
Speaker
They had these letters out in homeroom.
00:44:17
Speaker
She didn't get one.
00:44:20
Speaker
I emailed her principal and I said, you know, my daughter didn't get this.
00:44:25
Speaker
I'm sure you would not punish her because of the mask issue and the suspension.
00:44:34
Speaker
The emergency injunction that was court ordered said you could not, there could be no retribution.
00:44:42
Speaker
So I'm sure this is just an oversight, an administrative oversight.
00:44:46
Speaker
Anyway, we went back and forth for two and a half weeks.
00:44:51
Speaker
And I won't bore you with the nonsense in those emails.
00:44:55
Speaker
But at the end of the day, the response was, sorry, my bad.
00:45:01
Speaker
Whoopsie.
00:45:02
Speaker
And he did try to blame it on a budget issue.
00:45:05
Speaker
We ran out of money.
00:45:07
Speaker
We don't have any pins.
00:45:08
Speaker
And I said, surely you can print a letter and acknowledge the achievement.
00:45:15
Speaker
No budget is needed to print a letter and acknowledge an achievement.
00:45:20
Speaker
And even that did not happen.
00:45:23
Speaker
Things are real tight here at Loudoun.
00:45:26
Speaker
They have a $2 billion budget.
00:45:31
Speaker
Process that for a minute.
00:45:32
Speaker
$2 billion.
00:45:35
Speaker
My personal tax, the tax I pay on my house is $8,000 a year.
00:45:42
Speaker
So give my daughter a piece of paper and acknowledge her achievement.
00:45:47
Speaker
I mean, I don't want to get...
00:45:49
Speaker
I don't want to get feisty right now, but it puts me over the edge, but they didn't.
00:45:55
Speaker
And so when you have that conversation with a kid,
00:45:59
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
00:46:19
Speaker
And so, you know, if that doesn't tell you how crazy smart you are, I don't know what would.
00:46:28
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.
00:46:40
Speaker
It does.
00:46:41
Speaker
It truly does.
00:46:42
Speaker
And, and they're, they're teaching them all this crazy crap and,
00:46:47
Speaker
You know, I'm finding a lot of the guys who come into my group.
00:46:56
Speaker
I was at a meetup in St.
00:46:59
Speaker
Louis or Branson this last week.
00:47:03
Speaker
And one of the sort of themes of everybody's story was that like,
00:47:10
Speaker
I'm not a dissident type of person.
00:47:14
Speaker
I'm not an anti-authoritarian type of person.
00:47:17
Speaker
Like, I like rules, and I like having a system that I can rely on.
00:47:24
Speaker
And what I'm hearing from you, like, for me, temperamentally, I'm a little bit more like...
00:47:30
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.
00:47:40
Speaker
And that's, and, and what's so cool about this moment, I think, is that guys like me are realizing that,
00:47:52
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.
00:48:01
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
00:48:14
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.
Coalitions and Advocacy for Change
00:48:21
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.
00:48:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:41
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,
00:49:04
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.
00:49:14
Speaker
How have you managed the different perspectives on all that stuff and brought people, found where everybody can come together?
00:49:23
Speaker
Okay, this is so tricky, and I'll tell you why.
00:49:28
Speaker
People in this area...
00:49:31
Speaker
There's a lot of federal employees.
00:49:37
Speaker
And, well, that's part of it.
00:49:40
Speaker
That's part of it.
00:49:41
Speaker
But there's also, you have kind of, ugh, this is so tricky.
00:49:48
Speaker
You have some very vocal people who, you know, there have been some public people
00:50:00
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
00:50:25
Speaker
The masking is behind us, but that was kind of a, at that time, that was a flagship, right?
00:50:35
Speaker
That was kind of a, it was a...
00:50:39
Speaker
It was a indicator of where you might be on the political spectrum.
00:50:45
Speaker
So now- Which I think that was the purpose.
00:50:49
Speaker
Because they know it doesn't- First of all, they know kids are safe.
00:50:53
Speaker
And second of all, they know these masks don't work.
00:50:55
Speaker
It's really, are you in line?
00:50:58
Speaker
Are you compliant?
00:51:00
Speaker
Maybe, yeah.
00:51:02
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.
00:51:12
Speaker
They'll come after your children.
00:51:14
Speaker
They'll come after your job.
00:51:17
Speaker
Um, I think for us personally, we, we had a very direct conversation with our children.
00:51:23
Speaker
My husband, because of his job, he is not supposed to do anything on the media.
00:51:30
Speaker
And we said, we may have to move, we might lose everything.
00:51:34
Speaker
We may have to move in with grandma and grandpa.
00:51:36
Speaker
And we talked about, you know, the whole spectrum of what it means.
00:51:44
Speaker
And we talked about our son's health.
00:51:47
Speaker
It literally took us all of Christmas vacation to get his asthma into a place that was healthy.
00:51:54
Speaker
And then we talked about our freedom and about the law and all of these different components.
00:52:00
Speaker
Now you get to critical race theory.
00:52:03
Speaker
My children are biracial.
00:52:05
Speaker
This is an important topic to me.
00:52:10
Speaker
My husband was adopted as a small boy.
00:52:20
Speaker
He was lined up in an orphanage in South Korea, and a Catholic nun walked those halls and literally picked him.
00:52:31
Speaker
And so when you talk about these issues really...
00:52:40
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
00:53:01
Speaker
that he's worth less or he'll have less opportunity.
00:53:05
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.
00:53:22
Speaker
You are wrong.
00:53:24
Speaker
Stop telling people that they're less or they're more or that they don't have opportunity.
00:53:30
Speaker
This is so messed up.
00:53:32
Speaker
Why are we dividing people?
00:53:35
Speaker
We've come so far.
00:53:37
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.
00:53:48
Speaker
Has it stopped me?
00:53:50
Speaker
No, it hasn't.
00:53:52
Speaker
Do I allow it to help me to rise and be better and to learn more and to be more competitive?
00:53:58
Speaker
I do.
00:54:00
Speaker
And so we can shrink and we can complain or we can do better and we can be better.
00:54:06
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.
00:54:22
Speaker
So the way CRT is being taught and there's a lot of controversy about, you know, people, the
00:54:29
Speaker
There are people that will tell you it's not being taught.
00:54:34
Speaker
I've seen the receipts.
00:54:36
Speaker
I know what it looks like.
00:54:37
Speaker
There is social and emotional learning.
00:54:40
Speaker
At the elementary level, they are teaching our babies for 45 minutes a day.
00:54:50
Speaker
That makes me want to puke.
00:54:53
Speaker
It makes me want to puke.
00:54:54
Speaker
And an outside contractor owns the curriculum.
00:55:00
Speaker
And what that means is a parent like me, guess what?
00:55:04
Speaker
I can't look at it because LCPS doesn't own it.
00:55:09
Speaker
So I try to get my hands on it.
00:55:11
Speaker
Sorry, we don't have it.
00:55:14
Speaker
But I know that's exactly that.
00:55:16
Speaker
They hide everything that way.
00:55:18
Speaker
That's that's how they hide censorship.
00:55:20
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.
00:55:29
Speaker
Sorry.
00:55:31
Speaker
Yep, we can't see it, we can't look at it.
00:55:34
Speaker
In the high school and middle school, they just kind of pepper it in.
00:55:39
Speaker
Those kids are not hearing it.
00:55:42
Speaker
It's at the elementary level that you really have to be concerned.
00:55:48
Speaker
But you ask about, like, how do you get other parents involved?
00:55:53
Speaker
You have Loudon Equity, Loudon For All.
00:55:57
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,
00:56:09
Speaker
that the attorney general is targeting the trans community.
00:56:14
Speaker
That is nothing more than a big, fat, bold-faced lie.
00:56:19
Speaker
You know, they hide behind children.
00:56:25
Speaker
And this is what's tricky.
00:56:28
Speaker
If you have the audacity to step out of line, they will target you.
00:56:34
Speaker
They will come at you with veracity and they will hammer you.
00:56:39
Speaker
They have no problem pounding you.
00:56:43
Speaker
And so people are afraid of stepping out.
00:56:48
Speaker
For someone like me, I am self-employed.
00:56:52
Speaker
I gave up my anonymity and I said, I'm all in.
00:56:59
Speaker
And I could lose everything.
00:57:02
Speaker
And for me, my feeling is
00:57:06
Speaker
You do what is right because it's the right thing.
00:57:10
Speaker
And my children's future is on the line.
00:57:13
Speaker
And I would rather lose it all.
00:57:16
Speaker
I would rather lose it all.
00:57:18
Speaker
And my parents will take us in.
00:57:23
Speaker
It sounds like you're saying that the challenge with coalition building is more about...
00:57:30
Speaker
just people having the courage to speak rather than it being a question of like, do we really all agree?
00:57:37
Speaker
Is that fair to say?
00:57:38
Speaker
There, um, there, I think there, there, do say it again.
00:57:48
Speaker
There, there are people that are never going to speak.
00:57:52
Speaker
You're going to have very few people that have very few people are going to speak.
00:57:58
Speaker
Very few people.
00:58:00
Speaker
Very few people.
00:58:02
Speaker
But that's maybe the beauty of a secret ballot, right?
00:58:05
Speaker
Like as long as the conversation is happening, you know, and that happened with the 2016 election.
00:58:13
Speaker
People were shocked by that because people weren't telling phone pollsters, yeah, I'm going to go vote for Trump.
00:58:19
Speaker
And it's...
00:58:22
Speaker
The fact is, you know, you can say what you're saying and it's true and everybody knows it's true.
00:58:32
Speaker
But then sort of that's not reflected in like the public conversation because people are afraid.
00:58:38
Speaker
But then when you get to the ballot box, well, you get Governor Youngkin.
00:58:44
Speaker
And I wanted to talk to you about that.
00:58:46
Speaker
Like what role do you think this issue played in getting him elected?
Media Representation and Bias
00:58:51
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
00:59:20
Speaker
are not even sure where they fit anymore.
00:59:23
Speaker
I think, um, I think when it comes to your kids, politics are, are off limits.
00:59:34
Speaker
And so I think, um, yeah, for sure that had a huge hand in the governor's election.
00:59:43
Speaker
Um, no doubt.
00:59:45
Speaker
Yeah, no doubt.
00:59:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:48
Speaker
Um,
00:59:50
Speaker
I want to, if you still, do you still have time for a few more questions or are we cutting it close?
00:59:55
Speaker
Great.
00:59:56
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:57
Speaker
I want to talk to you about your actual like brass tack experience with the media.
01:00:03
Speaker
Like,
01:00:05
Speaker
I'm sure that you've been contacted by some people who were like, Hey, I really just want to tell your story.
01:00:12
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.
01:00:19
Speaker
Let's signal boost this.
01:00:20
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?
01:00:32
Speaker
A lot of the,
01:00:38
Speaker
The, um, sometimes, yeah, I'm laughing a little bit.
01:00:46
Speaker
One of the first, one of the first interviews that I did, uh, I want to say the mistake.
01:00:57
Speaker
Uh, one of the first interviews I did was with Lester Holt and, um, I spent a good 45 minutes of
01:01:08
Speaker
visiting, having a conversation and visiting on camera.
01:01:16
Speaker
And I made the mistake of thinking that he would be sympathetic to my small boys because my children were mistreated.
01:01:33
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
01:02:02
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.
01:02:16
Speaker
And so when it aired, like I got like 10 seconds.
01:02:21
Speaker
And then it aired in Florida at like 4 and then Eastern Time, Central Mountain, and then Pacific.
01:02:32
Speaker
and then it aired again.
01:02:35
Speaker
So I got a heap of, I got hundreds and hundreds of rotten messages from really mean people.
01:02:45
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.
01:02:58
Speaker
Um, um,
01:02:59
Speaker
Did they give you a really unflattering 10 seconds or was it just not contextualized?
01:03:06
Speaker
The mask issue, I think, is so... Right now, the mask was such a polarizing thing.
01:03:13
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?
01:03:22
Speaker
And it, and it was like, you're either all this or you're all that.
01:03:26
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.
01:03:37
Speaker
And for us, this is about parental rights.
01:03:40
Speaker
I was very crisp and clean in my messaging.
01:03:44
Speaker
And, um, the way they cut it was really vicious.
01:03:50
Speaker
And, um,
01:03:52
Speaker
Man, the awful things that people said in response were vicious.
01:03:58
Speaker
So my feeling about the media is this.
01:04:06
Speaker
Most of the liberal outlets do not want to speak with me.
01:04:11
Speaker
Most of them don't care to have the other voice.
01:04:15
Speaker
They don't care.
01:04:17
Speaker
I did.
01:04:18
Speaker
I've been on almost every I've been on almost every outlet at this point.
01:04:25
Speaker
I, I, I did interview with CNN and it has not aired yet.
01:04:31
Speaker
I do feel a little bit trepidatious about that.
01:04:35
Speaker
Sure.
01:04:36
Speaker
Because,
01:04:38
Speaker
because that first one hammered me so bad.
01:04:42
Speaker
And, um, I, I may have wept a little bit after that.
01:04:46
Speaker
That was brutal.
01:04:48
Speaker
But at the same time, um, at the end of the day, I feel really, really confident that, um,
01:04:57
Speaker
you're not going to please everyone.
Honesty and Advocacy: Personal Motivations
01:05:00
Speaker
You're not going to, you're certainly not going to convince anyone, right?
01:05:04
Speaker
People for the most part are firmly wherever they are.
01:05:08
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.
01:05:22
Speaker
And if, if nothing else, um,
01:05:24
Speaker
I hope to encourage people to link arms and encourage other people to just engage in a meaningful way to be supportive.
01:05:35
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.
01:05:42
Speaker
I know that not everybody is in a position to be vocal.
01:05:47
Speaker
Not everyone is in a position to, um,
01:05:52
Speaker
to lose their anonymity.
01:05:53
Speaker
I know I, and I, and I don't expect that of other people.
01:05:58
Speaker
So, um, and you know, I spent, I spent a decade on Capitol Hill.
01:06:06
Speaker
So I have a little bit of, I have a little bit of experience, you know, with messaging and that is helpful.
01:06:13
Speaker
Um, I think that, I think that just,
01:06:20
Speaker
understanding who these people are makes it a lot easier.
01:06:25
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,
01:06:41
Speaker
when their words are twisted and when they're misrepresented.
01:06:45
Speaker
And I think it can be kind of a healthy thing.
01:06:51
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
01:07:04
Speaker
when you know what to expect and when you, when you're not surprised by it anymore.
01:07:10
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.
01:07:20
Speaker
And, and so it's, it's a lot easier to just like ride the wave, you know?
01:07:27
Speaker
One of the things that I've gotten pretty good at at this point is, is,
01:07:33
Speaker
I will engage with them personally.
01:07:35
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.
01:07:40
Speaker
Tell me about you.
01:07:42
Speaker
Where are you from?
01:07:44
Speaker
And, you know, they, they want to just dig in and make me look like a crazy person.
01:07:48
Speaker
And, um,
01:07:50
Speaker
And I think I've done a decent job humanizing myself and my children.
01:07:58
Speaker
And so engaging with them, I'll say, tell me about you.
01:08:01
Speaker
Where are you from?
01:08:02
Speaker
Do you have a family?
01:08:04
Speaker
Do you have children?
01:08:05
Speaker
Oh, you do.
01:08:07
Speaker
How old are your kids?
01:08:10
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.
01:08:18
Speaker
I have three and they're kind of spread out.
01:08:21
Speaker
So somewhere in their spread, I've got somebody that's close to one of their, were they a boy or their girl?
01:08:28
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.
01:08:37
Speaker
I become real to them.
01:08:39
Speaker
It's harder for them to demonize me when I'm just a real person.
01:08:44
Speaker
And, um, and, um,
01:08:48
Speaker
I hope that in my exchange with people that I'm always decent because sometimes our counterparts demonize us.
01:08:59
Speaker
They have no problem doing that.
01:09:01
Speaker
I never want to be that person.
01:09:06
Speaker
I want to be the person that tells the truth.
01:09:09
Speaker
I want to always tell the truth and I want to be real.
01:09:13
Speaker
These are our children.
01:09:14
Speaker
This is our future.
01:09:16
Speaker
This is our community.
01:09:18
Speaker
That is why I'm doing this.
01:09:20
Speaker
That's the only reason when I left Capitol Hill a dozen years ago, I moved to the country to raise my babies.
01:09:29
Speaker
I moved to the country to go to these schools right here.
01:09:34
Speaker
And now look what's happened.
01:09:36
Speaker
And so I care so deeply about my children.
01:09:41
Speaker
I care about my community.
01:09:43
Speaker
I love this great country.
01:09:45
Speaker
My husband fought for this country.
01:09:47
Speaker
He would tell you he's the luckiest guy ever.
01:09:52
Speaker
He was picked in a line of a whole bunch of orphans.
01:09:56
Speaker
You know, he was picked.
01:09:57
Speaker
He was the lucky one.
01:09:59
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.
Accountability and Community Vigilance
01:10:17
Speaker
This is wrong.
01:10:19
Speaker
It's wrong.
01:10:19
Speaker
And so here we are.
01:10:21
Speaker
And, and we have to, we're having dynamic conversations and telling our children that adult is not safe.
01:10:29
Speaker
They're lying to you.
01:10:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:33
Speaker
It's crazy.
01:10:34
Speaker
Um, well, and it's, it's so funny.
01:10:37
Speaker
Uh, people don't know this.
01:10:39
Speaker
I, I, uh, I,
01:10:41
Speaker
I don't, I didn't actually get in touch with Abby through like some sort of political connection.
01:10:48
Speaker
Abby, Abby helped us buy our house.
01:10:50
Speaker
She's our realtor.
01:10:52
Speaker
And I, I just feel very blessed and, um,
01:10:59
Speaker
And I, and I think that there was, there was some, some, some providence in us, uh, us connecting that way.
01:11:06
Speaker
And, um, so it's, it's, I'm just really proud to know you and really proud of what you're doing.
01:11:11
Speaker
And, um, well, anyway, tell me, tell me what the next steps are for, for, for you and, and, and this, this movement.
01:11:20
Speaker
Well, um,
01:11:23
Speaker
I am going to be at the school board tonight again, every, every other week.
01:11:29
Speaker
I am, I'm, I'm in, I'm at the school board and thank you.
01:11:33
Speaker
Thank you for letting me help you find your beautiful home and help your family.
01:11:37
Speaker
That is a privilege and one that I don't, I don't take lightly.
01:11:44
Speaker
I will fight every single day until we get the school board on.
01:11:50
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.
01:12:01
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.
01:12:13
Speaker
So there's, you know, there's, there's a whole bunch of things I'm helping with the, um,
01:12:20
Speaker
I'm working with the attorney general and with some of these things that are right at the forefront.
01:12:27
Speaker
So we will keep bringing these issues every day.
01:12:33
Speaker
Every day.
01:12:33
Speaker
We're going to keep pounding them until we get a new school board, until we get a new superintendent.
01:12:41
Speaker
So folks who are outside Loudoun,
01:12:45
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?
01:12:56
Speaker
Um, probably first and foremost, um, if you're in Loudoun County, I would say attend your school board meetings.
01:13:10
Speaker
Um,
01:13:12
Speaker
attend your school board meetings.
01:13:14
Speaker
You can watch them online.
01:13:16
Speaker
They're all online.
01:13:18
Speaker
Um, and get engaged with groups like fight for schools or army of parents.
01:13:24
Speaker
Um, feel free to message me if you need kind of a, a quiet inside track.
01:13:30
Speaker
I know anonymity is super important.
01:13:34
Speaker
Um, and I respect that.
01:13:36
Speaker
It's nothing to be ashamed of.
01:13:39
Speaker
it's important.
01:13:40
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.
01:13:56
Speaker
And that, that really, those are the starting points is just follow, follow what's happening.
01:14:01
Speaker
And, um,
01:14:04
Speaker
And then you'll know kind of the next steps follow with those groups.
01:14:08
Speaker
They'll tell you where to go and what to do.
01:14:11
Speaker
And, and, and, um, in your own local communities, follow your school board, follow your school board.
01:14:19
Speaker
Cause really, I think this is kind of the misconception is that we focus on the big races.
01:14:25
Speaker
We focus on, you know, all the national stuff.
01:14:29
Speaker
But yeah, it's those.
01:14:31
Speaker
And here's the misconception is that they're making the big decisions.
01:14:38
Speaker
But you look at Loudoun County.
01:14:42
Speaker
Six of our nine school board seats were financed and funded by George Soros, our county attorney.
01:14:52
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
01:15:19
Speaker
They're in one door and out the other.
01:15:23
Speaker
We have a lot of crime that is not, they're really soft on crime.
01:15:35
Speaker
And that is, you look at any George Soros funded crime.
01:15:40
Speaker
County attorney and we have four or five in Northern Virginia.
01:15:45
Speaker
He gave millions of dollars in Northern Virginia.
01:15:47
Speaker
Tell me why you look at them across the country.
01:15:50
Speaker
You start tracking them.
01:15:52
Speaker
Why?
Systemic Issues and the Need for Reform
01:15:53
Speaker
He's destroying big cities.
01:15:55
Speaker
They're burning big cities, soft on crime.
01:15:59
Speaker
And look at the infiltration in small schools.
01:16:03
Speaker
Why?
01:16:05
Speaker
They're going after the hearts and minds of our children.
01:16:08
Speaker
It is a very methodical, slow, thought out process.
01:16:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's deliberate.
01:16:18
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:16:19
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.
01:16:29
Speaker
And obviously, some of their tactics are, the tactics themselves are evil, and it would be wrong to do what they're doing.
01:16:37
Speaker
But I think there are also cases where they've just learned a lot of competence in some important arenas.
01:16:43
Speaker
And I think kind of the small time ground game is a place where we can learn an awful lot.
01:16:52
Speaker
And the importance of it, just recognizing that it matters.
01:16:58
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.
01:17:17
Speaker
And they were still able to make your life hard.
01:17:20
Speaker
They were still able to flex.
01:17:23
Speaker
And I guess what I'm saying is,
01:17:26
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.
01:17:38
Speaker
And I like, I just, I think that there's something to be learned there.
01:17:43
Speaker
Well, I think it is, you know, when I think it's, it's interesting that I shake my head because I,
01:17:56
Speaker
You look at the, you look at what's happening.
01:18:01
Speaker
It really is so nefarious.
01:18:03
Speaker
It's so sinister.
01:18:05
Speaker
You look at the control that one bad actor has.
01:18:10
Speaker
There are 80,000 children in Loudoun County schools.
01:18:17
Speaker
And, and when my children go into that school, I guess what?
01:18:24
Speaker
I can't go into the school.
01:18:27
Speaker
I can't go into that school.
01:18:28
Speaker
And, and this is why the parental rights conversation is so extremely important to me because they control who comes in and out.
01:18:38
Speaker
I can't go in.
01:18:40
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,
01:18:56
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
01:19:18
Speaker
All the outside stuff, the parent, everything outside, they'll never know.
01:19:23
Speaker
They will keep all of that aside.
01:19:26
Speaker
If you look at all of the, at their documents from the school, those are public documents.
01:19:35
Speaker
You can see that well-documented in their training exercises.
01:19:40
Speaker
But, but, and that as a parent, that concerns me a great deal.
01:19:47
Speaker
Well, fundamentally, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but no, that's fine.
01:19:53
Speaker
But, but fundamentally, there's just a disagreement about who these kids belong to.
01:20:00
Speaker
And, and we talk about this, like it's a policy disagreement.
01:20:03
Speaker
Like we just don't like, like we're arguing over,
01:20:08
Speaker
this, this ground level issue of like, should kids be kids be taught X and Y and how should that be approached?
01:20:15
Speaker
And like, we're all on the same page as far as the fundamental premises, but we're not like for them.
01:20:20
Speaker
Think about this, Kevin, think about it's the end of the school year right now on my kitchen table.
01:20:27
Speaker
I've got a stack of permission slips the end of the year.
01:20:30
Speaker
They have all of these fun parties and,
01:20:33
Speaker
And so I have permission slips.
01:20:35
Speaker
Can your child have popcorn?
01:20:37
Speaker
Can they have the cotton candy?
01:20:39
Speaker
Can they have this?
01:20:40
Speaker
Can they have that?
01:20:41
Speaker
But a teacher can have a conversation with my son about his penis.
01:20:45
Speaker
But I have to sign a permission slip.
01:20:47
Speaker
Can he have popcorn?
01:20:50
Speaker
This is very real.
01:20:52
Speaker
Right.
01:20:53
Speaker
Like there is a fundamental disconnect between the sexualization of our schools and the
01:21:02
Speaker
kicking a parent out of those conversations, right?
01:21:06
Speaker
There is a fundamental disconnect between we've got a concern about allergies, but not about their penis.
01:21:14
Speaker
And it's not
01:21:15
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.
01:21:27
Speaker
It's because they don't trust the parents and they want to exclude them from the conversation.
01:21:33
Speaker
That's exactly right.
01:21:34
Speaker
That's exactly right.
01:21:35
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.
01:21:50
Speaker
And of course he was tremendously embarrassed.
01:21:54
Speaker
And that is so awkward.
01:21:57
Speaker
And I'm telling him, don't use the urinal anymore.
01:22:00
Speaker
Just go into the stall.
01:22:02
Speaker
But there's not enough time.
01:22:04
Speaker
There's not enough stalls.
01:22:06
Speaker
And it's too bad because in his fifth grade class, there are two biological girls.
01:22:14
Speaker
And the way he would describe it, he said they're pretending to be boys.
01:22:19
Speaker
And this is what happens when you spend millions of dollars on a diversity library that they put in the class.
01:22:29
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
01:22:59
Speaker
And, and they're going to tell us that we're all sorts of rotten things.
01:23:04
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.
01:23:14
Speaker
That is crazy.
01:23:15
Speaker
And I've said that on live TV.
01:23:18
Speaker
I'll say it again.
01:23:19
Speaker
And that's, and that's something that I want to touch on is like, like there's,
01:23:26
Speaker
they rely so heavily on
01:23:30
Speaker
on conservative religious people being afraid to say blow job, to be afraid to say penis.
01:23:39
Speaker
And because then they get to just own that whole space.
01:23:43
Speaker
Well, it's the same thing right now.
01:23:46
Speaker
The big issue right now is that the attorney general is doing this grand jury investigation.
01:23:55
Speaker
And so they requested all of these people
01:24:00
Speaker
records, student records.
01:24:02
Speaker
There was one trans student in a whole bunch of records that they requested.
01:24:09
Speaker
There was one trans student.
01:24:12
Speaker
And so Loud and Equity and all these other equity groups are, and, and all of the, all of the, um,
01:24:24
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.
01:24:41
Speaker
And I'm saying, you know what?
01:24:44
Speaker
The truth, the truth of what is happening right now is you are using children.
01:24:51
Speaker
You're crying wolf.
01:24:54
Speaker
You're hiding behind children and you're crying wolf with a trans child to again, hide rapes in our school.
01:25:04
Speaker
The investigation is about the superintendent covering up sexual assaults in our school.
01:25:13
Speaker
And it's so disgusting.
01:25:15
Speaker
Like they continue to hide behind our children.
01:25:19
Speaker
And that's where I have a really hard time.
01:25:20
Speaker
You're crying wolf.
01:25:22
Speaker
You're using a trans kid.
01:25:24
Speaker
You're holding one trans kid.
01:25:26
Speaker
And you're saying, stop with your witch hunt.
01:25:29
Speaker
And this is the message.
01:25:31
Speaker
And I'm saying, you stop hiding behind children, vulnerable children.
01:25:37
Speaker
You're crying wolf.
01:25:39
Speaker
You're using children.
01:25:40
Speaker
And I hope.
01:25:43
Speaker
I hope somebody with more media power than I have will use that line because I think it's effective.
01:25:49
Speaker
And they're all, there's this big insidious thing
01:25:55
Speaker
web that they're all entangled in.
01:25:57
Speaker
And I, and I think it will take them all down is the truth because they're all in it.
01:26:02
Speaker
The NAACP owns LCPS.
01:26:06
Speaker
That's, and that's one of the dirty little secrets is that the NAACP has a contract with LCPS.
01:26:14
Speaker
They're paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars for all this equity garbage that
01:26:21
Speaker
And nobody wants to see a blonde white woman speak the truth about that.
01:26:27
Speaker
But, and so fortunately I have my beautiful biracial babies that gives me coverage.
01:26:37
Speaker
I've gotten a little bit of coverage out of that.
01:26:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:42
Speaker
And you, you have to, so basically as long as you, as long as you accept their frame that like,
01:26:52
Speaker
that essentially they're right about the basics of sexuality.
01:26:55
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.
01:27:06
Speaker
And we're leaving the 99 to go take care of this one.
01:27:09
Speaker
And you know what?
01:27:10
Speaker
That is exactly what we should be doing.
01:27:13
Speaker
But the way to help that kid is not by indulging,
01:27:16
Speaker
what we've told that kid about who they are.
01:27:18
Speaker
That, that is totally, that's abusive.
01:27:22
Speaker
That's wrong.
01:27:23
Speaker
And so, and so like something, something happened to that kid.
01:27:32
Speaker
something bad.
01:27:34
Speaker
And we have to stop assuming like good faith on the part of the people that are doing this to those kids.
01:27:42
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.
01:28:01
Speaker
And,
01:28:02
Speaker
And you have to fight that frame.
01:28:04
Speaker
That has to be part of the conversation.
01:28:08
Speaker
Well, and here's the thing is you've got to have the guts to lean into that conversation.
01:28:16
Speaker
And this is why I think so many conservatives are polite.
01:28:23
Speaker
They stay in their lane.
01:28:24
Speaker
And we've been polite for a really long time.
01:28:29
Speaker
We play nice and we stay in our lane.
01:28:32
Speaker
We want to raise our families and live a quiet life.
01:28:38
Speaker
I moved to the country to hide.
01:28:39
Speaker
That's the truth.
01:28:41
Speaker
It's not working out for me.
01:28:45
Speaker
And yet here we are.
01:28:46
Speaker
If I, if we don't have these hard conversations often and openly, somebody else will.
01:28:55
Speaker
And that's where we're going to get in a lot of trouble.
01:28:58
Speaker
And, and, and, and it's not, it's going to come in a lot of different tricky ways.
01:29:05
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,
01:29:13
Speaker
tricky and weird.
01:29:14
Speaker
And so we're not shielding, you know, I grew up in the most conservative county in America.
01:29:23
Speaker
And now my children are at the heart of the culture wars.
01:29:28
Speaker
And we are somehow leading this crazy endeavor.
01:29:34
Speaker
And we have inside spice.
01:29:39
Speaker
Here we are.
01:29:42
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:43
Speaker
Well, this has been such a great conversation.
01:29:45
Speaker
I really appreciate you taking the time.
01:29:47
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?
01:29:54
Speaker
I know you said Fight for Schools.
01:29:55
Speaker
Is it just fightforschools.org or where should they go?
01:29:58
Speaker
I think it is Fight for Schools.
01:30:00
Speaker
I mean, yeah, it's fightforschools.org.
01:30:03
Speaker
And that's really, that's probably the best place to go and stay engaged.
01:30:11
Speaker
And, and if you want to contact me, abbyplatt.com.
01:30:16
Speaker
And I'm happy to stay in touch and, and to be of help.
01:30:24
Speaker
And awesome.
01:30:25
Speaker
Happy to have a conversation.
01:30:28
Speaker
All right.
01:30:28
Speaker
Well, thank you so much.
01:30:30
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.
01:30:38
Speaker
Thanks so much, Abby.