The Olympia School District in Washington state is considering canceling music classes for fourth graders they suggest foster, “white supremacy culture” and “significant institutional violence.”
The District, facing budget shortfalls, held a meeting on April 17 to discuss budgetary adjustments.
According to KOMO News, School Board Director Scott Clifthorne shared at the meeting, “We’re a school district that lives and is entrenched, and is surrounded by white supremacy culture. There’s nothing about string, or wind instrumental music that is intrinsically white supremacist. However, the ways in which it is, and the ways in which all of our institutions, not just schools but local government, state government, our churches, and our neighborhoods allow white supremacy to be propagated, and cause significant institutional violence are things that we have to think about here. I think we have to do that interrogation and address the ways in which it creates challenges for the educational day for our elementary learners.”
“We also know that there are other folks in the community that experience things like a tradition of excellence as exclusionary,” Clifthorne said.
“We’re a school district that lives in and is entrenched in and is surrounded by white supremacy culture. And that’s a real thing.”
The board director told concerned parents that there was nothing “intrinsically white supremacist” about string or instrumental music, but warned that there are ways in which it could contribute to the racist culture.
“The ways in which it is and the ways in which all of our institutions — not just schools, but local government, state government, our churches, our neighborhoods — inculcate and allow white supremacy culture to continue to be propagated and caused significant institutional violence are things that we have to think about carefully as a community,” he said.
A spokesperson for the district told The Post that the cuts only applied to a music elective students were able to opt-in for in addition to their general classes — the district wouldn’t be cutting any secondary music offerings, general elementary music or fifth-grade band and strings, the latter of which was also on the chopping block.
“It is having a disparate impact across our schools on students who choose to participate in band and strings and on those who choose not to,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The ‘opportunity’ offered to all forces choices between things like lunch, recess or intervention time and this ‘opportunity’ disrupts our teachers’ ability to teach all kids in their classes academic content in an already packed school day.”
Washington State is a troubling place to raise a family. The Gateway Pundit reported in April that the Washington State Legislature passed SB 5599, which allows the state to legally take children away from their parents if they don’t consent to their child’s gender transition surgeries.
In February, Centennial Elementary School in Olympia, Washington barred white children from a student affinity group that meets during lunchtime.
Source material can be found at this site.
