Head Turkey Resigns

...Well, maybe it would've been more accurate to say, "Head Pilgrim Resigns", but that headline wouldn't have been so attention-getting.

Recently the Indian tom-toms carried the message that Tim Northrop, principal of Condit Elementary School, had quit effective June 30. For some reason, this was not picked up on the John and Ken show on KFI so it took awhile for the news to make it to us.

Readers will recall that Northrop's school was the "Pilgrim" school and the "Indians" at Mountain View School marched up for a Thanksgiving feast last November. The protests, instigated by Mountain View parent Michelle Raheja, made national news and were the top item on the Drudge Report for a day. See here, with links to most of the coverage we saw.

The Daily Bulletin Claremont Now blog gave a brief rundown last week on Northrop's decision. Read it for an extract of his letter. The whole "family responsibilities" excuse is a little threadbare, but he goes on to gusset it with a little story about his life being baseball, et cetera, et cetera, which at least gives him a C+ for originality.

In related news last week the Courier reported Saturday that the school district has brought forth another "district advisory committee" which is usually cover for getting community buy-in for decisions that have already been taken. This is the Committee that Superintendent David Cash promised last Fall to review district policies et cetera et cetera RE: "Cultural Activities". The Courier provided a list of the 19-member committee. And whaddya know? Michelle Raheja is on it, as well as a couple of local professional activists. No worries though, CUSD employees constitute a solid majority (shown in italics, based upon the best information we have) :

Parent/Community
Leslie Corcoran
Marian Gerecke
Siobhan McVeigh
Socorro Pantoja
Michelle Raheja (right)
Alfonso Villanueva
James Wilbur

Student
Wesley Chang
Ana Tinker Valle

Elementary Staff
Patti Amaya
Karen Kellner
Diane Rus
Kim Sapienza

Secondary Staff
Mike Callahan
Sue Hensley

Claremont Faculty Assn
Ann Hardy

Administrative Staff
Steve Boyd
Judy Daley
Mike Lawshe

Take It to the Streets, 5-Year-Olds

photo by Kathleen Lucas, Condit parent of Choctaw heritage

Tuesday morning's Los Angeles Times will carry an article on the Claremont Culture Wars. It was posted on the Times website late Monday evening. As discussed in this afternoon's post, the situation comes to a head Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. when the Indians of Mountain View Elementary are scheduled to make the long march up Mountain Avenue to Condit Elementary.

This entire fracas was initiated by a letter sent by Condit parent and UCR professor Michelle Raheja.

The Times had the take that this was a bunch of pointy-headed professors against the hoi-polloi parents. There was some empirical evidence to support this take when the only people the Times could easily find to speak in favor of banning the construction-paper costumes were, well, pointy-headed academics: Besides ringleader Raheja, there was University of Redlands Assistant Professor of Race and Ethnic Studies Jennifer Tilton as well as an instructor at Riverside Community College and a former professor at Pitzer:

Among the costume supporters, there is a vein of suspicion that casts Raheja and others opposed to the costumes as agenda-driven elitists. Of the handful of others who spoke with Raheja against the costumes at the board meeting, one teaches at the University of Redlands, one is an instructor at Riverside Community College, and one is a former Pitzer College professor.

Raheja is "using those children as a political platform for herself and her ideas," Constance Garabedian said as her 5-year-old Mountain View kindergartner happily practiced a song about Native Americans in the background. "I'm not a professor and I'm not a historian, but I can put the dots together."

One aspect of this affair that is entirely despicable is the cowardly cowering by Superintendent David Cash and principals Tim Northrop and Clara Arocha. According to the Times article, "Cash and the principals of Condit and Mountain View did not respond to interview requests." What's the matter? Cat got their tongues? These are public employees, and they ought to be willing and able to defend and explain their decisions.

The action starts tomorrow morning at 8 when the parents send their kids to school. At 9, the kids are scheduled to head up to Condit. We'll see if the teachers have confiscated the contraband construction-paper costumes.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Parents Revolt

The kindergarten parents of Mountain View and Condit are going to send their kids to school tomorrow wearing their Thanksgiving costumes. And it is likely that many of them will keep their kids out of school on Wednesday to deprive the Claremont Unified School District of Wednesday's coveted ADA (Average Daily Attendance) money from the State.

Mountain View kindergarten mother Dena Murphy got another half hour on KFI's John and Ken drive-time radio show (640 on your AM dial). To put it charitably, the shock-jock hosts are not sympathetic to Michelle Raheja's idea to keep the kindergartener's from wearing their construction paper and white paste Indian and Pilgrim costumes. We have covered this earlier, here, here, and here.

Raheja is an Assistant Professor of English at UC Riverside and the mother of a Condit Elementary kindergartener. UCR also hosts the California Center for Native Nations which, among other projects, seems to advocate removing the image of that old Indian fighter, Old Hickory, Andrew Jackson, from the $20 bill. This seems of a piece with Raheja's "history-defying" (that's a word from this website page) campaign to remove the Indians and Pilgrims from Thanksgiving. Why, next thing you know, they're going to want take the "X" out of Xmas.

We now can link to the audio stream of the four o'clock hour. The Claremont issue takes up the first 40 minutes or so of the 60 minute clip. (This link may change when the audio goes to the KFI on-demand page; we'll try to keep it current.) John and Ken have posted a poll that at this writing is running 25 to 1 in favor of the parents. A few minutes ago, when we captured the screenshot, it was 99 to 1.


John and Ken also recapped this issue at the top of the six o'clock hour--the link is here. They wonder whether the kids will have their feathers confiscated. The riff begins about 30 seconds into the clip.

The event goes down tomorrow morning (Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008). The kids are scheduled to leave Mountain View at 9 a.m. and march up Mountain Avenue to Condit. The parents send their kids to school at 8 and the principals have an hour to sort things out before the march is to begin. There is sure to be a lot of confusion. Be there.

Map of Mountain View and Condit Elementary Schools
click on image to enlarge