Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/1509126
Karen Poznanski, a member of Murrieta Educators Association and 12-year public school teacher, spoke at the September 2023 Murrieta Valley Unified School District board meeting in response to comments made by President Paul Diff ley at the previous month's meeting. In speaking about MVUSD's forced outing policy, which requires schools to inform parents if a student appears to identify as transgender or gender-nonconforming, Diffley stated, among other comments, "I agree that there are some parents who may beat their kids, spank their kids, ignore their kids…. Yes, there are going to be a couple of parents that 'explode', I understand that. ere are parents that will explode for lots of dif- ferent things. ' You didn't make the baseball team? Whack!'…I understand that." M R . D I F F L E Y, Y O U S T A T E D "Entering into a particular 'mood' where the child can bury what he or she is and go through that process can be dangerous because they can be referred to other agencies without the parents ever knowing it, and then boom…. the parents have no control." I implore you to reevaluate your perception of what I spend my contracted hours doing in my classroom. On any given day, I am lucky if all my students write their name on their paper. I make as much use of my minimal time and abys- mal budget as I can to teach struggling middle school students how to read and write a proper paragraph. Your insinuation that I have the time, resources or desire to "refer children to outside agencies" for medical guidance or treatment is a statement that defies logic or fact. You possess a glaring lack of understanding of what actually goes on in the classroom and have no place making statements that accuse teachers of such actions because they are absolutely false. When you speak about a lack of trust between parents and teachers, it is from your inaccurate and fallacious statements that such distrust is sown. You are manufacturing this chaos, and feeding into a dangerously misinformed moral panic that only serves to distract from real issues. Furthermore, when confronted about the risk of harm that would fall upon certain queer students if outed to homophobic or transphobic households, you said you agreed and understood why that would happen. Mr. Diffley, as board president you are the purveyor of safety in our schools. I would hope that you would be appalled at any child being physically harmed for any reason. As a parent, I am dis- gusted by your comments. As an employee, I am ashamed that someone I work for, who suppos- edly shares my obligation to student safety and success, would ever make such a comment. Up until August 10, you had always done the right thing by supporting students and teachers as a productive board member. But [now], long after your tenure, you will be remembered not for the years of good you did, but for the utter negligence and abandonment of decency you committed when those words came out of your mouth. I want to finish on a positive, by sharing with you a success story. In 2021, you had a student graduate from MVUSD with a 4.4 overall GPA, president of several accoladed programs like National Honor Society, Link Crew and the dra- matic arts. ey graduated in the top 10 of their class, and thus their picture hung in the school's front office for a year. As board president, you likely signed one of this student's awards when they were named Student of the Month, a district-level academic honor. is student went on to attend UCLA, the #1 public My School Board President A Message for by Karen Poznanski " When you speak about a lack of trust between parents and teachers, it is from your inaccurate and fallacious statements that such distrust is sown. You are manufacturing this chaos." 15 O C T O B E R / N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 3 S Y O U R V O I C E