In this episode of The Tudor Dixon Podcast, Tudor sits down with Nicki Neily, president and founder of Parents Defending Education, to uncover how parents can reclaim their voice in America’s schools. They discuss the growing influence of DEI programs, gender identity policies, and teachers’ unions, and how these issues are shaping classroom experiences nationwide.
Neily shares powerful insights on why parental involvement, transparency, and accountability are essential to restoring trust in public education. The conversation also dives into the impact of technology on student mental health, political bias in schools, and practical steps parents can take to protect their children’s learning environments. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network. For more visit TudorDixonPodcast.com
Learn more about Parents Defending Education
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, you are listening to the Tutor Dixon Podcast,
and I have one of my favorite people here with
me today, Nicki Neely. She is the president and founder
of Parents Defending Education. It's a group that is out
there to empower parents but also to weed out some
of the bad things that are happening in our schools.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
And I think there's so many more bad things.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Happening in our schools than you even know about. So
that's why we wanted Nikki to come on today, because
she's going to break it all down, the good, bad,
and the ugly. Nikki, thank you for being on here today.
Thank you so much for having me absolutely so. You
have been a champion for parents four years. We were
just talking about. We've known each other for a very
(00:43):
long time. I've always appreciated your work. I love what
you're doing. Now. You had all of these parents sign
on to this letter. Tell us a little bit about
this because I as a parent who is in a
state that continues to defy the federal government with DEI
I think multiple states are doing this and you you
(01:03):
are fighting back.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
So this actually was kicked off because of what had
happened in Iowa a few weeks ago where the Des
Moines superintendent was arrested. He was an illegal immigrant, he
had weapons, there was like a variety of things, but
as it turns out, he was just I mean essentially
a DEI hire of the school district.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
How do they not know?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I mean, did they know he was not a legal citizen?
I mean, is there a background on that? Because I
recognize that that can happen, people can lie, But did
they know?
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
I think they're still trying to sort out whether they knew.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
But I mean, clearly due diligence, Like right now the
school district is pointing fingers at the search firm and
vice versa. So clearly due diligence was dropped along the
way somehow. But even I mean, I think you know,
when you and I changed jobs, you have to do
like an I nine right, you have to submit forms
to the federal government. There's a verify there any one
of a number of and balances that were not.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Followed in this situation.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
But as we actually had uncovered in February of this year, Iowa,
despite being a red state, actually has affirmative action hiring
laws on the books, and so this is the kind
of thing where we thought, wow, if it's happening in
Iowa like this has to be happening elsewhere. And so
just what we did is we send letters to all
fifty states, to the governors, to the heads of the legislatures,
(02:25):
to the chiefs of the education departments, asking them what
we think is a very reasonable request, which is just
can you please conduct an internal audit to make sure
that your policies and procedures and laws comply with federal
anti discrimination law.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Should be pretty reasonable.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Frankly, if you receive a dollar or a penny from
the federal government, you are supposed to be complying with
that stuff anyway. But unfortunately, there are any one of
a number of problems, be it hiring, be it funding,
be it things like this where we have seen school districts,
universities across the country discriminated against teachers, students, and families
on the basis of race, sex, and other mutable characteristics.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And that just has to end.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Particularly as the federal government looks to send power back
to the states.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
We want the states to get their houses in order.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
It's interesting that you that we struggle with this, because
if you're in a state where you have charter schools,
or there is any any funding that goes to something
that is I guess a school that is defined outside
of the traditional public school.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
The auditing is so.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Tight and it's so easy to lose your funding in
those schools that you would think that this is pretty standard,
But the state is generally pretty lax.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
When it comes to the public schools.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I think, especially in blue states, because we know that
the unions give a lot of money, and they may
not give directly to the candidates, but they have a
way of getting money to their Democrat candidates to then win,
and then it's kind of like hands off.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
No, you're totally right.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
After the Janice decision, unions made a very conscious and
public decision just to run sympath either members or sympathetic
individuals in school board races.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Clearly also in state legislatures.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
But we have over the past several years been filing
civil rights complaints against school districts and universities that have
been discriminating on the basis of race. One that we
did in February of this year was against Chicago Public Schools,
where I'm from originally, because they had what they call
a black student achievement plan where only black students would
be eligible for additional tutoring, additional funding, additional programming. And
(04:24):
it's interesting when I started to look through CPS's own documents,
their numbers, their own numbers show that Hispanic students actually
perform worse and struggle more than Black students. And when
we fillow this complaint, CPS's response was, well, this is
a state law.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
We had to do it.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
And like, well the state law is unconstitutional, guys, what
are you doing? And so things like this, you know,
this is like, this feels this is like World War two,
like just following orders, Like no, you kind of follow orders.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
You must follow the constitution full stop. This is the
type what you are doing right now. I want people
to understand. We talk all all the time about what's
happening with our public schools. How can we make sure
there's not indoctrination, not discrimination, all of these things are
not happening. It's organizations like yours that get it done.
(05:11):
Because you know the law, you're able to go in
there with a team, You're able to review what they're doing.
And I think that people go, oh, it's another nonprofit,
but you need it's like a watchdog group. And if
we don't have that, like I said, there is no
control because it's the fox watching the henhouse. You've got
the union leaders just giving money right back to the
(05:32):
people in charge to look the other way. But this
gets dangerous at a certain point. We were talking before
we got on a lot of people don't know this.
I just learned this probably within the last ten years,
and it was stunning to me. So if you haven't
heard this, I think it's probably going to be stunning
to you. If you understand how predators work. When it
(05:54):
comes to child predators, you know that they look for
jobs around kids. So too often people become teachers that
are child predators. I'm not saying that teachers are child predators.
I'm saying child predators look for jobs around children, and
sometimes that can be teaching. But when they are discovered
(06:14):
in the line of teaching, in the field of teaching,
the unions protect them. Explain what happens.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Yes, this is a really it's a horrifying phenomena. You're right,
if a school here's an allegation that a child has
been abused, they clearly they have to conduct an investigation.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
All school employees are what's called mandatory reporters.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
So if they hear, you know that a child is
being beaten, is being raped, if they have reason to
believe that, they must report it.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Just under every state's child protective laws.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
If a school opened an investigation into a teacher, but
the investigation is not closed out, if the teacher quits, transfers,
resigns before the investigation is concluded, there is no paper trail.
And so very often if an investigation is open and
the teacher will just move. This actually happens so frequently
that the term for it is called passing the trash.
(07:06):
And so we watched this happen where yeah, educators will
move from school to school. This also, unfortunately happened in
Virginia a couple of years ago when a student had
assaulted another student, the case of Scott Smith and Lowden County.
Rather than actually adjudicating that case properly, the district just
moved that offending student to another to another high school,
where he went on to assault another student in a bathroom.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
And so this is this happened.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
We had a very similar situation in Michigan. Actually, someone
who is a I believe that the child's parent was
a clerk and the allegedly this clerk went to as
a has political power in the Democrat party and went
to the higher ups and said, I want to see this.
(07:53):
In this particular case, this child was choiced into this school.
We have school choice in the state of Michigan. You
could choice into other public schools or charter schools, and
he was choiced into the school. He allegedly attacked this
one of the girls there, and I mean there was
a court case and everything, so I guess at a
(08:14):
certain point it was proven out that this happened, and
the story goes that he was able to stay at
the school even though this poor girl had been attacked
by him. I mean, these are the things that need
to be audited.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
How can a girl have to go to school with
her attack or every day?
Speaker 4 (08:36):
No? And that's what I mean. There are laws in
the books, right there are tenal nine. There are things
like this where school officials are just not upholding the
responsibilities under the law. And I think partially with the
case of these you know, predator teachers. What really frightens
me is when you have a situation like that and
a union that is going to back them up and demand,
you know, do process, et cetera. But then the overlay
(08:57):
of that against bad school policies like rental exclusion policies.
This is something we've been tracking since twenty twenty three,
where we have identified about twelve hundred districts accounting that
have school policies ratified by elected school board officials that
say you, as a parent, don't have a right to
know your child's gender at school, and so in the
course of sex said lessons, et cetera, students are told
(09:20):
keep secrets from mom and dad. The problem with that,
of course, is that it's not just the gay students
that hear that, it's everybody. A couple of years ago,
we had suited school district in Iowa over their parental
exclusion policy. They said, from seventh grade on, you have
no right. Seventh grade is about thirteen, right, so when
kids hit puberty that district had had I want to say,
five incidents of teacher on sexual relations.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Over the previous several years.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
And so you know you as you know you and
I as parents, we tell our kids you never keep
a secret from mom and dad, and if somebody tells
you to do that, they're.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
A dangerous person, and you stay away.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
From them.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
But for our children to be told those lessons with
our tax dollars behind our back, and then to put
them the mercy of these people who have ill intentions
is truly insult injury.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I think oftentimes we've heard this story of the child
that gets trans behind mom and dad's back. That happened
recently in Michigan within the last few months. This was
exposed in the state of Michigan that this happened. But
I think oftentimes parents say, Okay, well, I'm not concerned
about that happening to my child. I've talked to them regularly.
(10:25):
I know what's going on. But you make a great point.
If the school is telling kids in general, there are
things that happen at school that are not supposed.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
To go home.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
That does open a roadway for predators to take advantage
of your kid, and your kid grooming is very manipulative.
It changes a child's mind. There are such big dangers
around this. If this is the policy of your school, but.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
You don't know, you don't know, yeah, and you know
it could be it's sex.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
It could also be drug usage.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
We have seen lots of school districts that don't tell
parents when they're his been a drug overdose in the bathroom.
They say, well, there's student privacy issues at you know,
at stake. Well, what about my right as a parent
to tell my kid, hey, guess what, don't go in
the bathroom and take pills from somebody who you don't.
I just you're not able to protect or imminize your
child against danger if you don't even know what the
danger is.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
How do you find this stuff out?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Families and schools is so fragmented and fraid right now?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
How does your organization find these things out and help?
Or do people come to you?
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Because I think that that's where we as parents are
right now. If we see something, who do we call?
Who do we talk to? We don't feel like we
have a team on our side.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, we we have a tip line.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
We have since our launch in twenty twenty one, been
receiving fifty to two hundred tips a week from across
the country.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
So we still through everything.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
You know, we want people to send us prove if
they have it, a screenshot, a hyperlank, a PEDF.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
But if they don't, we love to file public records requests.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
You'd be surprised what a lot of school leaders put
in writing when they because they don't think of themselves
as public officials. So we have asked for copse of policies,
copies of contracts on all different things, on race, on gender,
on union issues, on I mean, I live in a
district where they regularly ask us to pass nine figure
bonds because they're constantly running.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Out of money.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
What are you spending the money on? There are fewer
students in school right now, achievement is not going well.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Where is the accountability?
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Like if I run out of money, I can't just
ask the taxpayers to pick up the tab.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yet.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Again, that's another thing that I think people haven't seen,
and that's something that so one of the people that
I worked with a few years ago used to run
an organization that did something similar, and he was shocked
by what you would find. You would find that these
local districts would send their superintendents or their their administration
(12:46):
on a retreat to Hawaii for five days. And this
would be cost one hundred thousand dollars or two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars to send ten administrators to Hawaii
at one of the nicest hotels. They're there for five days,
learning about how to be an administrator. I mean this
is this was spending money just to spend money.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
It was like a.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Little cash cow for these people to take vacations, and
I mean all these bizarre things where they have they
have healthcare that covers facelifts and boob jobs and everything else.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Yeah, I mean, and even you think about something as
basic because when there's a teacher in service day for
professional development, you know, when that happens, you and I
have to find a babysitter for our kids for a day.
You know, it's hard to take a day off work.
But what are they learning. Are they learning how to
teach phonics better? Or are they learning how to make
our children do privileged walks and to hide secrets?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Right's?
Speaker 4 (13:40):
You know, who are the outside vendors that some of
these school districts are partnering with with our tax dollars?
You know, are they being responsible stewards of public funds
or not.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
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more after this. Are you regularly auditating this? Do you
(15:13):
have people in different states? I mean, because I do
think that we want to know we're I mean, in
the state of Michigan, we're in an interesting situation where
we have a massive amount of administration so to go
through it because we have too many school districts, so
I think it's like over five hundred. So if you
were to go try to do that, I mean, that
(15:35):
almost helps to hide everything because if you have so
many districts in one state, it's very hard to chase
this stuff down.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Yeah, we work with a network of about three hundred
and seventy five parent groups across the country, varying levels
of you know, size sophistication.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
But we also try and teach people how to do this.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
You know, with the collapse of the local news industry,
I grew up with a local paper where they would
go to the school board meeting and the city council
meeting and report on that. Clearly that's not happening anymore,
either at the local, state, or federal level. So it's
really kind of incumbent on all of us. I think
for so many parents, it was a real wake up
call during COVID that the gatekeepers, the people who we
thought had our children's best interested heart, clearly didn't you know,
(16:15):
the decisions that they were being made, even you know,
with regards to school closures or how funds were being
spent at the federal levels or funding. When they passed
the one hundred ninety billion dollars, I think a lot
of us thought, oh, they're going to buy air purifiers
and hand sanitizers and our kids, look, get back in classrooms.
I mean we saw in California and Illinois programs like that.
You know, schools didn't open, and then the money was
(16:35):
just spent on DEI initiatives that made our children worse off,
hate each other, and not any smarter and not make
up any learning loss. And so it is almost you know,
they're trying to teach parents how to be that voice
and that investigator because there is nobody else keeping an
eye on these things.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Well, and I have heard we've had some people on
the show who have said, you know, in order to
pay for anti racism, you need racism.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
So essentially you're going into the schools and.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
To have a reason to have DEI, you need people
to be bigoted in some way, and so you're almost
teaching that to create an issue where you have to
fund an entire agency that prevents what you're teaching.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
Yes years ago, I heard the Safety of Michigan when
I ran a campus free speech group, and this was
one of the things that came up the university's DEI department.
Their sort of definition of what bias and hate was
was a unconstitutional but it was basically any time somebody's
feelings were hurt. How do you triangulate around that as
a student. If I don't know what is going to
(17:35):
upset you, then out of an abundance of caution, I'm
just not going to say anything at all because I
don't want to possibly get in trouble and be hauled
into a star chamber hearing so things like that where
when there are no clear lines and there is nobody saying,
I don't know if this is the right problem, we
should be prosecuting. Michigan's Bias Response team actually, one of
the things that they had a list of all the
(17:56):
different complaints people had made. One of them was that
somebody had built a phallax shaped snow sculpture. I mean,
is that like a microaggression. Is that a hate crime?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Or is that just an eighteen year old boy being
a little bit immature.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
But when you start to look at the numbers, right,
if this bureaucracy says, well we had twice as many
hate incidents as we did the year before. We need
more money, we need more programming, we need more staffers,
it does become this self perpetuating machine. It's you know,
it's like the Reagan's saying, the closest thing to eternal
life is is a government program.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
They will never say mission accomplished, let's shut it down.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
You brought up the speech that I think it was
a University of Michigan where it was like somebody was
overheard saying something and someone else was offended. The idea
of these microaggressions, I think, like, how is that even
a term?
Speaker 2 (18:42):
People say that.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
I'm like, I don't even know the word that you're
talking about. I'm not even sure what you're what you're saying.
You know, it's this is insane. But this is when
we leave the high school and we as parents have
much less control. We are sending our kids to universities
where suddenly they get overheard on camp and they get
called into a hearing That also was stunning to me.
(19:04):
I'm nervous enough about sending my kids away and having
whatever happens on a college campus happen and whatever professors
are telling them, but to think that they could be
overheard talking to a friend walking through campus and then
called in for a hearing that they are afraid will
go on truly a permanent record that we'll go to employers. Yes, absolutely,
(19:24):
and so it is.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
You know, that's sort of the interesting and one of
the reasons that we had expanded into higher ed in
April of this year is the policies on campus are
not staying on campus. A lot of them are metastasizing
down to CATA twelve, so biased response teams where students
are encouraged to anonymously report on others we now see
in K to twelve settings. But also, at the same time,
a lot of the illiberal behaviors that we're seeing taught
(19:45):
in the CA to twelve system are manifesting on college campuses. Clearly,
students don't have any civic understanding when they get to college,
which is why they think it is appropriate and just
to punch another student in the face, if they disagree
with their speech, or if they've never been disciplined for
anything in the their entire life, then they think, of
course I can create an encampment and terrorize my fellow students.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Well, and where did we just see the teaching assistant
that was fired for turning over the turning Point table?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Right?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
That was just at a university campus. This, this is happening.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
We had. I went to a Turning Point campus probably
four weeks ago, and the student who started up this
Turning Point chapter was tabling. And that means he's out
on campus with his table and had a professor pour
hot coffee over his head. I mean, if you are
a student who sees a professor do that, then you
(20:39):
think that that kind of and that is violent. That's
violence when you are pouring hot coffee over someone's head.
This is not speech. This is violence. And it seems
to be conflated. People are not understanding the difference these days.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Yes, it's absolutely wild, and it's been so funny and
the response to a lot of what had been you know,
the encampments and everything. In October seventh, all of the
people who wanted nothing more than to shut down and silence.
Conservatives over the past you know, decade are not claiming
that they have free speech rights. And as you said, no,
physical violence doesn't count as free speech. Like there are
some very clear lines, and you can't have it both ways.
(21:16):
But of course, you know, the intention of these policies,
as well as the behavior of the students and professors,
is that they want they want people just as self censor.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
They just want to shut you up.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
It's that I don't have to punch everyone in the face,
but if I punch tutor, then everyone is going everyone
who thinks like her is going to keep their mouth
shut going forward.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Well, I mean, obviously that's what we saw with Charlie.
You know, if I silence won, I can stop this
from happening. And I do think that there is a
lot of division going.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
On and there there's a lot of.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
It's pushing this idea that you have a lot of
people saying speech is violence. It changes the narrative then
to if speech is violence, you can respond with violence.
There's a confusion among our young people. I will say
that there's a push right now in K through twelve,
and I've seen this from Republicans as well. We've got
(22:10):
to get more mental health treatment. We've got to get
more mental health treatment. It's got to be in our schools.
But I have to tell you the idea of someone
counseling my child without me there, and in my state,
once my kid hits twelve, I don't get to see
their medical records unless they sign it off for me
to see. So that could very easily mean that there
(22:32):
is a medical professional in the school treating them for
a mental health issue that I don't know about.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
I am uncomfortable with that.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
And absolutely you should be, and you're right.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
I mean, the medical age of consents and so many
of these states is appallingly low. A lot of the
say nineties, it was when you know, it was a
push for birth control in schools. If you know, mommy's
Catholic and she doesn't want you to have birth control, let's,
you know, let's get that to you. And then the
definition of you know, health care services has just expanded,
and so even right reproductive care in nineteen ninety five
(23:06):
was you know, birth control.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Now it's transgender hormones.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
And so just again to sort of watch these little
feefdoms expand, and to your point about the mental health screenings.
I mean, yeah, there are the surveys that take place,
but it's the even you know, the information that they
gather and what ideas are they putting into students' heads
when you when you pull a student over and over again,
are you suicidal?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Are you suicidal?
Speaker 4 (23:28):
It starts to actually put that idea in and normalize it. Well,
I wasn't, but is everybody? Am I the only one
who isn't? Maybe I'm weird, maybe I should be. And
then to cut parents out of that loop. I mean,
you know, you and I have to sign permission slips
for our kids to have sunscreen and abvil, you know,
and but you can go on and then, you know,
and then have somebody who is not even necessarily a
(23:50):
licensed mental health professional perhaps like maybe it's a guidance
counselor who generally is like are you going to Michigan
or Michigan State? Right, Like they're the person who is
having these very very high stakes to say.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
That changes from Michigan to Michigan State too. Are you
a woman or a man? You're probably not what you
were born? You know, I mean, this is crazy, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
And we also have it.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I mean I say that at the same time where
I feel like girls are really struggling in school to
prove that they shouldn't have to share a locker room
with someone who is in that situation.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Well, this is what I think.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
You have a lot of these counselors who are pushing
kids into this. You're probably the wrong gender. It tends
to be male to female that we're seeing going into
sports and they are going into the locker room with women,
and they're changing, and they're watching girls change and they're
taking over their sports. And it is like today there
(24:48):
are people on the left who think you are insane
for saying that is not okay, and I can't even
believe it.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
Yeah, but again, this is one of those fundamental things
that we tell our children as parents. Right, if you
have a bad feeling, if you feel unsafe, right, listen
to your body and follow it. But we now have
our girls in schools if they are uncomfortable and they
say I don't really want to get naked in front
of that guy, then they're told by school administrators you're
a bad person.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
In Europe.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Pass and again, so it's causing all of these students,
all of these children to second guest themselves and that
is really dangerous.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Most parents of girls are very
concerned about it right now. I was telling my girls
the other day. They said they don't do this anymore,
and they were shocked that we did so when I
was in high school, which was a million years ago.
At middle school too, we had to shower after jim
(25:45):
every single day and there was a gym teacher in
the shower to make sure you showered, which is even
creepier now that you think about it.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
And we had these towels that were two feet it
didn't wrap all the way around you.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
It was the craziest thing.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
And I hadn't thought about it million years, And I
was like, oh, when we were kids, we had to
shower in front of all of our friends, and you
were forced to shower, and if you didn't shower, you
were in trouble. They watched you to make sure you showered.
But I think about it, and it wasn't like horrifying.
I mean, it was gross, but it wasn't horrified. What
if a boy were in there, I would have been horrified.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
No.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I live in Northern Virginia, and there have been a
number of horrible incidents along these lines.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Recently, there was.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
A sex offend, registered sex offender that was in the
locker room of a high school and he was exposing
himself to small children. I was in an event with
Secretary McMahon a few weeks ago and one woman said,
my nine year old daughter was hiding cowering in a
bathroom stall, waiting for him to go away, and they
didn't do anything on it because he identified as a woman,
(26:44):
and so they felt that they had to let him in.
They didn't run IDs, they didn't check, you know, so
they didn't check against a sex offender registry. But then
also conversely, in another district in Louden County, there was
a girl that went into the boys bathroom.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
She identified as a male.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
She was recording the boys in there as mat changing
and the boys complained and they are now under investigation
on Title nine charges because they are considered sexually harassing
and discriminating on the basis of gender. So it is
we're through the looking glass on so many of these issues.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
That's a whole new level too.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
The recording, the constant recording the kids are going through
and I know that that's something. Parents have been fighting
to get cell phones off of school campuses, and I
really do believe that cell phones should not be allowed
on the campus. You either come in you have to
lock them up and get them at the end of
the day. But just think about the number of things,
(27:37):
I mean all the schools. So for parents who don't
have kids in high school, now high schools all have
their own somebody. Our school has this an Instagram page
where like a senior, we don't know who. Every year,
a senior is running the Instagram page and it passes
from senior to senior and they figure out the next
senior they pass it down and it is just to
(27:58):
make fun of kids at the school, so they find
old pictures or they take videos. And every day people
are so afraid of ending up on this Instagram page
because yes, and I.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Think this is happening.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
I mean, my daughter, my niece, they totally different states,
they have this same situation. So I think that people
need to understand that our kids have a really different
life than what we had. And this idea that you
can mix genders, that everybody's the same, all this stuff,
it's going to lead to abuse and it's going to
(28:30):
lead to real mental harm.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
M yeah, I mean the cyber bowling is terrifying.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
And then there is also just the element of youthful
indiscretion and kids changing their mind. I certainly don't have
the same political opinions I did when I was fourteen.
You know, many of us have done stupid things, right,
you know, but it's there is this element of personal growth.
I feel like over the past couple years, we've seen
stories of even fellow students that have held or kept
or saved videos of people and then used it years
(28:58):
later to destroy somebody's life who they didn't like. Oh
you know, I just got this girl's offer pulled from
her college because I showed that she you know, said
something awful four years ago.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
And you know, where is that?
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Like we do, there is an element of you know,
we should want to bestow Christian grace on others and
forgiveness and allow people to learn from their mistakes and evolve.
But everything online lives forever, and it really it denies
that opportunity to people.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I'll just say this is a total aside, but my
girls they had phones in middle school, which parents go crazy,
you know, there's this idea like keep your kids away
from phones, and they had phones in middle school and
it was kind of like a came from my parents
thing and.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
We just dealt with it.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
But it's also the technology that they are going to
live with the rest of their lives. And they learned
and we monitored very closely. But they're some other friends.
Their parents said, well, you're not getting it until you
turn sixteen or until you get into high school, and
they're like, mom, this is something I had never considered.
They're like, mom, you know how you go through that
(30:00):
really cringey phase of taking videos of yourself And I'm like, no,
because that was not a thing. So genuinely, no, I
have no knowledge of this. And they're like, oh, our
friends that get their cell phones in high school they're
going through their cringy phase then, and there's horrible videos
of them. And I'm like, things I hadn't thought about.
And then you end up those are your permanent people
(30:22):
know that of you in high school. There's just so
much as parents, we don't know how this technology is
going to affect our kids.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Yeah, no, it's really scary. My children are smaller, they're
ten and twelve.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
They don't have phones yet, but it is watching my
friends and my peers and sort of trying to figure
out how to navigate that and keep them from being
excluded in the one you know, the two weird kids
who don't have phones and can't talk to people, who.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Go through their cringy phase and college in high school. Yeah, no,
it's hard.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I mean, that's what I That's why I think your
organization is so great because I think as parents we
are dealing with so many things that we weren't. I
never my parents never had to deal with any of
this stuff. I mean, there wasn't this kind of thing
happening at schools. There weren't kids that were meowing in
the hallways, and there weren't cell phones, and there wasn't roadblocks.
(31:09):
I mean, you think about what we deal with as
parents so much different than what our parents had to
deal with.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
My mom says it all the time.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
I'm not envious of you raising kids today, and I
think every generation says that. But I think the biggest
change was the technology between my childhood and my kid's childhood.
So I do believe we are having a harder time
doing this, and your organization is one that we need
so desperately to be aware of and be in contact with.
(31:38):
So can you tell people how they can look everything
up and find you guys?
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Yeah, our website is defending ed dot org.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Run all of the social media platforms Twitter and Facebook
and Instagram, but we have a tip line people.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Can say they can.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
Submit things to us anonymously, so we will never have
anybody's names involved. We don't want, you know, I think
people credibly fear tale Ethan both a gets themselves as
well as their children, and and so we will always
be the bad guys and take the hate mail. But
we also yeah, we love to investigate things and then
just to pull together lots of the anecdotes that we see.
When we see a handout that's been in like fifteen schools,
like the gender unicorn or something, we think, where is
(32:13):
this coming from, who is putting this out, who is
funding this, how is this getting it, you know, making
its way across the country, and then getting all that
information into the hands of policymakers so we can actually
affect real change at the local, state, and federal level.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
I love that because I do oftentimes get messages from
people like our schools sent I think just because I'm
known in the state, so people will send me private
messages on Facebook or Twitter and say, you know this,
I got this letter home from my school today.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
This is scary. I'm going to sert sending those to you,
just because I think it's good to have a record
of all the schools that are doing it.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
No, and we want to work with people.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
You know, everybody getting to yes and getting to a
good resolution is different for everybody. Some people are just like,
you know, I don't want that handout ever again. Or
some people are like, I want a new superintendent. And so,
you know, we are happy to work with people, have
private conversation and then also just give general tips on
how to get engaged. You know, so many parents were
not politically active until COVID happened, and so we have
(33:07):
guides on questions to ask your teacher about different topics,
readings to get smart, how to file a civil rights complaint,
how to write a press release, you know, how to
write a letter to the editor. Just you know, ways
where people can just be a little bit more involved,
because at the end of the day, it's really only
us that have our children's best interest at heart. It's
not the policymakers. It's not the you know, the administrators,
it's it's us as parents.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Absolutely, absolutely well, thank you for what you do, and
thank you Nicky Neely for coming on the podcast today,
thank you for having me, absolutely and thank you all.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
For listening to the Tutor Dixon podcast. For this episode
and others.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
You can go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. You can also watch it
on Rumble or YouTube at Tutor Dixon. But make sure
you join us next time and have a blessed day.
Hey, everyone, you are listening to the Tutor Dixon Podcast,
and I have one of my favorite people here with
me today, Nicki Neely. She is the president and founder
of Parents Defending Education. It's a group that is out
there to empower parents but also to weed out some
of the bad things that are happening in our schools.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
And I think there's so many more bad things.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Happening in our schools than you even know about. So
that's why we wanted Nikki to come on today, because
she's going to break it all down, the good, bad,
and the ugly. Nikki, thank you for being on here today.
Thank you so much for having me absolutely so. You
have been a champion for parents four years. We were
just talking about. We've known each other for a very
(00:43):
long time. I've always appreciated your work. I love what
you're doing. Now. You had all of these parents sign
on to this letter. Tell us a little bit about
this because I as a parent who is in a
state that continues to defy the federal government with DEI
I think multiple states are doing this and you you
(01:03):
are fighting back.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
So this actually was kicked off because of what had
happened in Iowa a few weeks ago where the Des
Moines superintendent was arrested. He was an illegal immigrant, he
had weapons, there was like a variety of things, but
as it turns out, he was just I mean essentially
a DEI hire of the school district.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
How do they not know?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I mean, did they know he was not a legal citizen?
I mean, is there a background on that? Because I
recognize that that can happen, people can lie, But did
they know?
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
I think they're still trying to sort out whether they knew.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
But I mean, clearly due diligence, Like right now the
school district is pointing fingers at the search firm and
vice versa. So clearly due diligence was dropped along the
way somehow. But even I mean, I think you know,
when you and I changed jobs, you have to do
like an I nine right, you have to submit forms
to the federal government. There's a verify there any one
of a number of and balances that were not.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Followed in this situation.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
But as we actually had uncovered in February of this year, Iowa,
despite being a red state, actually has affirmative action hiring
laws on the books, and so this is the kind
of thing where we thought, wow, if it's happening in
Iowa like this has to be happening elsewhere. And so
just what we did is we send letters to all
fifty states, to the governors, to the heads of the legislatures,
(02:25):
to the chiefs of the education departments, asking them what
we think is a very reasonable request, which is just
can you please conduct an internal audit to make sure
that your policies and procedures and laws comply with federal
anti discrimination law.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Should be pretty reasonable.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Frankly, if you receive a dollar or a penny from
the federal government, you are supposed to be complying with
that stuff anyway. But unfortunately, there are any one of
a number of problems, be it hiring, be it funding,
be it things like this where we have seen school districts,
universities across the country discriminated against teachers, students, and families
on the basis of race, sex, and other mutable characteristics.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And that just has to end.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Particularly as the federal government looks to send power back
to the states.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
We want the states to get their houses in order.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
It's interesting that you that we struggle with this, because
if you're in a state where you have charter schools,
or there is any any funding that goes to something
that is I guess a school that is defined outside
of the traditional public school.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
The auditing is so.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Tight and it's so easy to lose your funding in
those schools that you would think that this is pretty standard,
But the state is generally pretty lax.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
When it comes to the public schools.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I think, especially in blue states, because we know that
the unions give a lot of money, and they may
not give directly to the candidates, but they have a
way of getting money to their Democrat candidates to then win,
and then it's kind of like hands off.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
No, you're totally right.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
After the Janice decision, unions made a very conscious and
public decision just to run sympath either members or sympathetic
individuals in school board races.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Clearly also in state legislatures.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
But we have over the past several years been filing
civil rights complaints against school districts and universities that have
been discriminating on the basis of race. One that we
did in February of this year was against Chicago Public Schools,
where I'm from originally, because they had what they call
a black student achievement plan where only black students would
be eligible for additional tutoring, additional funding, additional programming. And
(04:24):
it's interesting when I started to look through CPS's own documents,
their numbers, their own numbers show that Hispanic students actually
perform worse and struggle more than Black students. And when
we fillow this complaint, CPS's response was, well, this is
a state law.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
We had to do it.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
And like, well the state law is unconstitutional, guys, what
are you doing? And so things like this, you know,
this is like, this feels this is like World War two,
like just following orders, Like no, you kind of follow orders.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
You must follow the constitution full stop. This is the
type what you are doing right now. I want people
to understand. We talk all all the time about what's
happening with our public schools. How can we make sure
there's not indoctrination, not discrimination, all of these things are
not happening. It's organizations like yours that get it done.
(05:11):
Because you know the law, you're able to go in
there with a team, You're able to review what they're doing.
And I think that people go, oh, it's another nonprofit,
but you need it's like a watchdog group. And if
we don't have that, like I said, there is no
control because it's the fox watching the henhouse. You've got
the union leaders just giving money right back to the
(05:32):
people in charge to look the other way. But this
gets dangerous at a certain point. We were talking before
we got on a lot of people don't know this.
I just learned this probably within the last ten years,
and it was stunning to me. So if you haven't
heard this, I think it's probably going to be stunning
to you. If you understand how predators work. When it
(05:54):
comes to child predators, you know that they look for
jobs around kids. So too often people become teachers that
are child predators. I'm not saying that teachers are child predators.
I'm saying child predators look for jobs around children, and
sometimes that can be teaching. But when they are discovered
(06:14):
in the line of teaching, in the field of teaching,
the unions protect them. Explain what happens.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Yes, this is a really it's a horrifying phenomena. You're right,
if a school here's an allegation that a child has
been abused, they clearly they have to conduct an investigation.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
All school employees are what's called mandatory reporters.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
So if they hear, you know that a child is
being beaten, is being raped, if they have reason to
believe that, they must report it.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Just under every state's child protective laws.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
If a school opened an investigation into a teacher, but
the investigation is not closed out, if the teacher quits, transfers,
resigns before the investigation is concluded, there is no paper trail.
And so very often if an investigation is open and
the teacher will just move. This actually happens so frequently
that the term for it is called passing the trash.
(07:06):
And so we watched this happen where yeah, educators will
move from school to school. This also, unfortunately happened in
Virginia a couple of years ago when a student had
assaulted another student, the case of Scott Smith and Lowden County.
Rather than actually adjudicating that case properly, the district just
moved that offending student to another to another high school,
where he went on to assault another student in a bathroom.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
And so this is this happened.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
We had a very similar situation in Michigan. Actually, someone
who is a I believe that the child's parent was
a clerk and the allegedly this clerk went to as
a has political power in the Democrat party and went
to the higher ups and said, I want to see this.
(07:53):
In this particular case, this child was choiced into this school.
We have school choice in the state of Michigan. You
could choice into other public schools or charter schools, and
he was choiced into the school. He allegedly attacked this
one of the girls there, and I mean there was
a court case and everything, so I guess at a
(08:14):
certain point it was proven out that this happened, and
the story goes that he was able to stay at
the school even though this poor girl had been attacked
by him. I mean, these are the things that need
to be audited.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
How can a girl have to go to school with
her attack or every day?
Speaker 4 (08:36):
No? And that's what I mean. There are laws in
the books, right there are tenal nine. There are things
like this where school officials are just not upholding the
responsibilities under the law. And I think partially with the
case of these you know, predator teachers. What really frightens
me is when you have a situation like that and
a union that is going to back them up and demand,
you know, do process, et cetera. But then the overlay
(08:57):
of that against bad school policies like rental exclusion policies.
This is something we've been tracking since twenty twenty three,
where we have identified about twelve hundred districts accounting that
have school policies ratified by elected school board officials that
say you, as a parent, don't have a right to
know your child's gender at school, and so in the
course of sex said lessons, et cetera, students are told
(09:20):
keep secrets from mom and dad. The problem with that,
of course, is that it's not just the gay students
that hear that, it's everybody. A couple of years ago,
we had suited school district in Iowa over their parental
exclusion policy. They said, from seventh grade on, you have
no right. Seventh grade is about thirteen, right, so when
kids hit puberty that district had had I want to say,
five incidents of teacher on sexual relations.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Over the previous several years.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
And so you know you as you know you and
I as parents, we tell our kids you never keep
a secret from mom and dad, and if somebody tells
you to do that, they're.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
A dangerous person, and you stay away.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
From them.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
But for our children to be told those lessons with
our tax dollars behind our back, and then to put
them the mercy of these people who have ill intentions
is truly insult injury.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I think oftentimes we've heard this story of the child
that gets trans behind mom and dad's back. That happened
recently in Michigan within the last few months. This was
exposed in the state of Michigan that this happened. But
I think oftentimes parents say, Okay, well, I'm not concerned
about that happening to my child. I've talked to them regularly.
(10:25):
I know what's going on. But you make a great point.
If the school is telling kids in general, there are
things that happen at school that are not supposed.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
To go home.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
That does open a roadway for predators to take advantage
of your kid, and your kid grooming is very manipulative.
It changes a child's mind. There are such big dangers
around this. If this is the policy of your school, but.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
You don't know, you don't know, yeah, and you know
it could be it's sex.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
It could also be drug usage.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
We have seen lots of school districts that don't tell
parents when they're his been a drug overdose in the bathroom.
They say, well, there's student privacy issues at you know,
at stake. Well, what about my right as a parent
to tell my kid, hey, guess what, don't go in
the bathroom and take pills from somebody who you don't.
I just you're not able to protect or imminize your
child against danger if you don't even know what the
danger is.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
How do you find this stuff out?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Families and schools is so fragmented and fraid right now?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
How does your organization find these things out and help?
Or do people come to you?
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Because I think that that's where we as parents are
right now. If we see something, who do we call?
Who do we talk to? We don't feel like we
have a team on our side.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, we we have a tip line.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
We have since our launch in twenty twenty one, been
receiving fifty to two hundred tips a week from across
the country.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
So we still through everything.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
You know, we want people to send us prove if
they have it, a screenshot, a hyperlank, a PEDF.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
But if they don't, we love to file public records requests.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
You'd be surprised what a lot of school leaders put
in writing when they because they don't think of themselves
as public officials. So we have asked for copse of policies,
copies of contracts on all different things, on race, on gender,
on union issues, on I mean, I live in a
district where they regularly ask us to pass nine figure
bonds because they're constantly running.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Out of money.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
What are you spending the money on? There are fewer
students in school right now, achievement is not going well.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Where is the accountability?
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Like if I run out of money, I can't just
ask the taxpayers to pick up the tab.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yet.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Again, that's another thing that I think people haven't seen,
and that's something that so one of the people that
I worked with a few years ago used to run
an organization that did something similar, and he was shocked
by what you would find. You would find that these
local districts would send their superintendents or their their administration
(12:46):
on a retreat to Hawaii for five days. And this
would be cost one hundred thousand dollars or two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars to send ten administrators to Hawaii
at one of the nicest hotels. They're there for five days,
learning about how to be an administrator. I mean this
is this was spending money just to spend money.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
It was like a.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Little cash cow for these people to take vacations, and
I mean all these bizarre things where they have they
have healthcare that covers facelifts and boob jobs and everything else.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Yeah, I mean, and even you think about something as
basic because when there's a teacher in service day for
professional development, you know, when that happens, you and I
have to find a babysitter for our kids for a day.
You know, it's hard to take a day off work.
But what are they learning. Are they learning how to
teach phonics better? Or are they learning how to make
our children do privileged walks and to hide secrets?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Right's?
Speaker 4 (13:40):
You know, who are the outside vendors that some of
these school districts are partnering with with our tax dollars?
You know, are they being responsible stewards of public funds
or not.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
We've got more coming up with Nicky Neely. But your
heart health is important too. So if you're over fifty
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more after this. Are you regularly auditating this? Do you
(15:13):
have people in different states? I mean, because I do
think that we want to know we're I mean, in
the state of Michigan, we're in an interesting situation where
we have a massive amount of administration so to go
through it because we have too many school districts, so
I think it's like over five hundred. So if you
were to go try to do that, I mean, that
(15:35):
almost helps to hide everything because if you have so
many districts in one state, it's very hard to chase
this stuff down.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Yeah, we work with a network of about three hundred
and seventy five parent groups across the country, varying levels
of you know, size sophistication.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
But we also try and teach people how to do this.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
You know, with the collapse of the local news industry,
I grew up with a local paper where they would
go to the school board meeting and the city council
meeting and report on that. Clearly that's not happening anymore,
either at the local, state, or federal level. So it's
really kind of incumbent on all of us. I think
for so many parents, it was a real wake up
call during COVID that the gatekeepers, the people who we
thought had our children's best interested heart, clearly didn't you know,
(16:15):
the decisions that they were being made, even you know,
with regards to school closures or how funds were being
spent at the federal levels or funding. When they passed
the one hundred ninety billion dollars, I think a lot
of us thought, oh, they're going to buy air purifiers
and hand sanitizers and our kids, look, get back in classrooms.
I mean we saw in California and Illinois programs like that.
You know, schools didn't open, and then the money was
(16:35):
just spent on DEI initiatives that made our children worse off,
hate each other, and not any smarter and not make
up any learning loss. And so it is almost you know,
they're trying to teach parents how to be that voice
and that investigator because there is nobody else keeping an
eye on these things.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Well, and I have heard we've had some people on
the show who have said, you know, in order to
pay for anti racism, you need racism.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
So essentially you're going into the schools and.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
To have a reason to have DEI, you need people
to be bigoted in some way, and so you're almost
teaching that to create an issue where you have to
fund an entire agency that prevents what you're teaching.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
Yes years ago, I heard the Safety of Michigan when
I ran a campus free speech group, and this was
one of the things that came up the university's DEI department.
Their sort of definition of what bias and hate was
was a unconstitutional but it was basically any time somebody's
feelings were hurt. How do you triangulate around that as
a student. If I don't know what is going to
(17:35):
upset you, then out of an abundance of caution, I'm
just not going to say anything at all because I
don't want to possibly get in trouble and be hauled
into a star chamber hearing so things like that where
when there are no clear lines and there is nobody saying,
I don't know if this is the right problem, we
should be prosecuting. Michigan's Bias Response team actually, one of
the things that they had a list of all the
(17:56):
different complaints people had made. One of them was that
somebody had built a phallax shaped snow sculpture. I mean,
is that like a microaggression. Is that a hate crime?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Or is that just an eighteen year old boy being
a little bit immature.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
But when you start to look at the numbers, right,
if this bureaucracy says, well we had twice as many
hate incidents as we did the year before. We need
more money, we need more programming, we need more staffers,
it does become this self perpetuating machine. It's you know,
it's like the Reagan's saying, the closest thing to eternal
life is is a government program.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
They will never say mission accomplished, let's shut it down.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
You brought up the speech that I think it was
a University of Michigan where it was like somebody was
overheard saying something and someone else was offended. The idea
of these microaggressions, I think, like, how is that even
a term?
Speaker 2 (18:42):
People say that.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
I'm like, I don't even know the word that you're
talking about. I'm not even sure what you're what you're saying.
You know, it's this is insane. But this is when
we leave the high school and we as parents have
much less control. We are sending our kids to universities
where suddenly they get overheard on camp and they get
called into a hearing That also was stunning to me.
(19:04):
I'm nervous enough about sending my kids away and having
whatever happens on a college campus happen and whatever professors
are telling them, but to think that they could be
overheard talking to a friend walking through campus and then
called in for a hearing that they are afraid will
go on truly a permanent record that we'll go to employers. Yes, absolutely,
(19:24):
and so it is.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
You know, that's sort of the interesting and one of
the reasons that we had expanded into higher ed in
April of this year is the policies on campus are
not staying on campus. A lot of them are metastasizing
down to CATA twelve, so biased response teams where students
are encouraged to anonymously report on others we now see
in K to twelve settings. But also, at the same time,
a lot of the illiberal behaviors that we're seeing taught
(19:45):
in the CA to twelve system are manifesting on college campuses. Clearly,
students don't have any civic understanding when they get to college,
which is why they think it is appropriate and just
to punch another student in the face, if they disagree
with their speech, or if they've never been disciplined for
anything in the their entire life, then they think, of
course I can create an encampment and terrorize my fellow students.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Well, and where did we just see the teaching assistant
that was fired for turning over the turning Point table?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Right?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
That was just at a university campus. This, this is happening.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
We had. I went to a Turning Point campus probably
four weeks ago, and the student who started up this
Turning Point chapter was tabling. And that means he's out
on campus with his table and had a professor pour
hot coffee over his head. I mean, if you are
a student who sees a professor do that, then you
(20:39):
think that that kind of and that is violent. That's
violence when you are pouring hot coffee over someone's head.
This is not speech. This is violence. And it seems
to be conflated. People are not understanding the difference these days.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Yes, it's absolutely wild, and it's been so funny and
the response to a lot of what had been you know,
the encampments and everything. In October seventh, all of the
people who wanted nothing more than to shut down and silence.
Conservatives over the past you know, decade are not claiming
that they have free speech rights. And as you said, no,
physical violence doesn't count as free speech. Like there are
some very clear lines, and you can't have it both ways.
(21:16):
But of course, you know, the intention of these policies,
as well as the behavior of the students and professors,
is that they want they want people just as self censor.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
They just want to shut you up.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
It's that I don't have to punch everyone in the face,
but if I punch tutor, then everyone is going everyone
who thinks like her is going to keep their mouth
shut going forward.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Well, I mean, obviously that's what we saw with Charlie.
You know, if I silence won, I can stop this
from happening. And I do think that there is a
lot of division going.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
On and there there's a lot of.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
It's pushing this idea that you have a lot of
people saying speech is violence. It changes the narrative then
to if speech is violence, you can respond with violence.
There's a confusion among our young people. I will say
that there's a push right now in K through twelve,
and I've seen this from Republicans as well. We've got
(22:10):
to get more mental health treatment. We've got to get
more mental health treatment. It's got to be in our schools.
But I have to tell you the idea of someone
counseling my child without me there, and in my state,
once my kid hits twelve, I don't get to see
their medical records unless they sign it off for me
to see. So that could very easily mean that there
(22:32):
is a medical professional in the school treating them for
a mental health issue that I don't know about.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
I am uncomfortable with that.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
And absolutely you should be, and you're right.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
I mean, the medical age of consents and so many
of these states is appallingly low. A lot of the
say nineties, it was when you know, it was a
push for birth control in schools. If you know, mommy's
Catholic and she doesn't want you to have birth control, let's,
you know, let's get that to you. And then the
definition of you know, health care services has just expanded,
and so even right reproductive care in nineteen ninety five
(23:06):
was you know, birth control.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Now it's transgender hormones.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
And so just again to sort of watch these little
feefdoms expand, and to your point about the mental health screenings.
I mean, yeah, there are the surveys that take place,
but it's the even you know, the information that they
gather and what ideas are they putting into students' heads
when you when you pull a student over and over again,
are you suicidal?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Are you suicidal?
Speaker 4 (23:28):
It starts to actually put that idea in and normalize it. Well,
I wasn't, but is everybody? Am I the only one
who isn't? Maybe I'm weird, maybe I should be. And
then to cut parents out of that loop. I mean,
you know, you and I have to sign permission slips
for our kids to have sunscreen and abvil, you know,
and but you can go on and then, you know,
and then have somebody who is not even necessarily a
(23:50):
licensed mental health professional perhaps like maybe it's a guidance
counselor who generally is like are you going to Michigan
or Michigan State? Right, Like they're the person who is
having these very very high stakes to say.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
That changes from Michigan to Michigan State too. Are you
a woman or a man? You're probably not what you
were born? You know, I mean, this is crazy, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
And we also have it.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I mean I say that at the same time where
I feel like girls are really struggling in school to
prove that they shouldn't have to share a locker room
with someone who is in that situation.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Well, this is what I think.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
You have a lot of these counselors who are pushing
kids into this. You're probably the wrong gender. It tends
to be male to female that we're seeing going into
sports and they are going into the locker room with women,
and they're changing, and they're watching girls change and they're
taking over their sports. And it is like today there
(24:48):
are people on the left who think you are insane
for saying that is not okay, and I can't even
believe it.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
Yeah, but again, this is one of those fundamental things
that we tell our children as parents. Right, if you
have a bad feeling, if you feel unsafe, right, listen
to your body and follow it. But we now have
our girls in schools if they are uncomfortable and they
say I don't really want to get naked in front
of that guy, then they're told by school administrators you're
a bad person.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
In Europe.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Pass and again, so it's causing all of these students,
all of these children to second guest themselves and that
is really dangerous.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Most parents of girls are very
concerned about it right now. I was telling my girls
the other day. They said they don't do this anymore,
and they were shocked that we did so when I
was in high school, which was a million years ago.
At middle school too, we had to shower after jim
(25:45):
every single day and there was a gym teacher in
the shower to make sure you showered, which is even
creepier now that you think about it.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
And we had these towels that were two feet it
didn't wrap all the way around you.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
It was the craziest thing.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
And I hadn't thought about it million years, And I
was like, oh, when we were kids, we had to
shower in front of all of our friends, and you
were forced to shower, and if you didn't shower, you
were in trouble. They watched you to make sure you showered.
But I think about it, and it wasn't like horrifying.
I mean, it was gross, but it wasn't horrified. What
if a boy were in there, I would have been horrified.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
No.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I live in Northern Virginia, and there have been a
number of horrible incidents along these lines.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Recently, there was.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
A sex offend, registered sex offender that was in the
locker room of a high school and he was exposing
himself to small children. I was in an event with
Secretary McMahon a few weeks ago and one woman said,
my nine year old daughter was hiding cowering in a
bathroom stall, waiting for him to go away, and they
didn't do anything on it because he identified as a woman,
(26:44):
and so they felt that they had to let him in.
They didn't run IDs, they didn't check, you know, so
they didn't check against a sex offender registry. But then
also conversely, in another district in Louden County, there was
a girl that went into the boys bathroom.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
She identified as a male.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
She was recording the boys in there as mat changing
and the boys complained and they are now under investigation
on Title nine charges because they are considered sexually harassing
and discriminating on the basis of gender. So it is
we're through the looking glass on so many of these issues.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
That's a whole new level too.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
The recording, the constant recording the kids are going through
and I know that that's something. Parents have been fighting
to get cell phones off of school campuses, and I
really do believe that cell phones should not be allowed
on the campus. You either come in you have to
lock them up and get them at the end of
the day. But just think about the number of things,
(27:37):
I mean all the schools. So for parents who don't
have kids in high school, now high schools all have
their own somebody. Our school has this an Instagram page
where like a senior, we don't know who. Every year,
a senior is running the Instagram page and it passes
from senior to senior and they figure out the next
senior they pass it down and it is just to
(27:58):
make fun of kids at the school, so they find
old pictures or they take videos. And every day people
are so afraid of ending up on this Instagram page
because yes, and I.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Think this is happening.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
I mean, my daughter, my niece, they totally different states,
they have this same situation. So I think that people
need to understand that our kids have a really different
life than what we had. And this idea that you
can mix genders, that everybody's the same, all this stuff,
it's going to lead to abuse and it's going to
(28:30):
lead to real mental harm.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
M yeah, I mean the cyber bowling is terrifying.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
And then there is also just the element of youthful
indiscretion and kids changing their mind. I certainly don't have
the same political opinions I did when I was fourteen.
You know, many of us have done stupid things, right,
you know, but it's there is this element of personal growth.
I feel like over the past couple years, we've seen
stories of even fellow students that have held or kept
or saved videos of people and then used it years
(28:58):
later to destroy somebody's life who they didn't like. Oh
you know, I just got this girl's offer pulled from
her college because I showed that she you know, said
something awful four years ago.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
And you know, where is that?
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Like we do, there is an element of you know,
we should want to bestow Christian grace on others and
forgiveness and allow people to learn from their mistakes and evolve.
But everything online lives forever, and it really it denies
that opportunity to people.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I'll just say this is a total aside, but my
girls they had phones in middle school, which parents go crazy,
you know, there's this idea like keep your kids away
from phones, and they had phones in middle school and
it was kind of like a came from my parents
thing and.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
We just dealt with it.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
But it's also the technology that they are going to
live with the rest of their lives. And they learned
and we monitored very closely. But they're some other friends.
Their parents said, well, you're not getting it until you
turn sixteen or until you get into high school, and
they're like, mom, this is something I had never considered.
They're like, mom, you know how you go through that
(30:00):
really cringey phase of taking videos of yourself And I'm like, no,
because that was not a thing. So genuinely, no, I
have no knowledge of this. And they're like, oh, our
friends that get their cell phones in high school they're
going through their cringy phase then, and there's horrible videos
of them. And I'm like, things I hadn't thought about.
And then you end up those are your permanent people
(30:22):
know that of you in high school. There's just so
much as parents, we don't know how this technology is
going to affect our kids.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Yeah, no, it's really scary. My children are smaller, they're
ten and twelve.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
They don't have phones yet, but it is watching my
friends and my peers and sort of trying to figure
out how to navigate that and keep them from being
excluded in the one you know, the two weird kids
who don't have phones and can't talk to people, who.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Go through their cringy phase and college in high school. Yeah, no,
it's hard.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I mean, that's what I That's why I think your
organization is so great because I think as parents we
are dealing with so many things that we weren't. I
never my parents never had to deal with any of
this stuff. I mean, there wasn't this kind of thing
happening at schools. There weren't kids that were meowing in
the hallways, and there weren't cell phones, and there wasn't roadblocks.
(31:09):
I mean, you think about what we deal with as
parents so much different than what our parents had to
deal with.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
My mom says it all the time.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
I'm not envious of you raising kids today, and I
think every generation says that. But I think the biggest
change was the technology between my childhood and my kid's childhood.
So I do believe we are having a harder time
doing this, and your organization is one that we need
so desperately to be aware of and be in contact with.
(31:38):
So can you tell people how they can look everything
up and find you guys?
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Yeah, our website is defending ed dot org.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Run all of the social media platforms Twitter and Facebook
and Instagram, but we have a tip line people.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Can say they can.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
Submit things to us anonymously, so we will never have
anybody's names involved. We don't want, you know, I think
people credibly fear tale Ethan both a gets themselves as
well as their children, and and so we will always
be the bad guys and take the hate mail. But
we also yeah, we love to investigate things and then
just to pull together lots of the anecdotes that we see.
When we see a handout that's been in like fifteen schools,
like the gender unicorn or something, we think, where is
(32:13):
this coming from, who is putting this out, who is
funding this, how is this getting it, you know, making
its way across the country, and then getting all that
information into the hands of policymakers so we can actually
affect real change at the local, state, and federal level.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
I love that because I do oftentimes get messages from
people like our schools sent I think just because I'm
known in the state, so people will send me private
messages on Facebook or Twitter and say, you know this,
I got this letter home from my school today.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
This is scary. I'm going to sert sending those to you,
just because I think it's good to have a record
of all the schools that are doing it.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
No, and we want to work with people.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
You know, everybody getting to yes and getting to a
good resolution is different for everybody. Some people are just like,
you know, I don't want that handout ever again. Or
some people are like, I want a new superintendent. And so,
you know, we are happy to work with people, have
private conversation and then also just give general tips on
how to get engaged. You know, so many parents were
not politically active until COVID happened, and so we have
(33:07):
guides on questions to ask your teacher about different topics,
readings to get smart, how to file a civil rights complaint,
how to write a press release, you know, how to
write a letter to the editor. Just you know, ways
where people can just be a little bit more involved,
because at the end of the day, it's really only
us that have our children's best interest at heart. It's
not the policymakers. It's not the you know, the administrators,
it's it's us as parents.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Absolutely, absolutely well, thank you for what you do, and
thank you Nicky Neely for coming on the podcast today,
thank you for having me, absolutely and thank you all.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
For listening to the Tutor Dixon podcast. For this episode
and others.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
You can go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. You can also watch it
on Rumble or YouTube at Tutor Dixon. But make sure
you join us next time and have a blessed day.
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