Check the record

Let me just tell you, getting this video to this state took forever, between ripping the DVDs (two of them!) and getting them processed, spliced down and uploaded, I thought I wouldn’t get it done before Election Day.  Yes, I finally have video of the December 2009 vote for the anti-bullying curriculum.

Here’s the thing, at the beginning of this election, Trish Spencer embraced the fact that she:

support[s] the education of anti-bullying for all (differently-abled/special needs, ethnicities, gender, LGBTQ, race, religion) to ensure a safe learning environment.

But at every turn when she had an opportunity to vote for Lesson 9, she was determined to vote against it.   I’ll point out that in public critiques of Trish Spencer’s record, no one has called Trish Spencer “anti-gay,” but it’s interesting that she and her supporters attribute clarifying and pointing out Trish Spencer’s record on voting against Lesson 9 as calling her “anti-gay.”   Before a detailed record of her votes and the minutes became public, Trish Spencer conveniently omitted that she voted “no” on continuing using Lesson 9 until the complete curriculum was established.

Now, Trish Spencer is claiming that she voted no in December 2009 because she felt as though continuing Lesson 9 until such a time when a complete curriculum was established would be “backsliding.”   I’ll point out that this argument is completely specious.   The idea that introducing children to the concept that LGBT families exist in Alameda can’t happen unless specific curriculum exists for all the “protected classes” is silly.  I think the frustration of some folks who have watched this whole process shake down comes from not understanding why retaining Lesson 9 in the interim was so objectionable to Trish Spencer that she felt the need to vote against it time and time again.

And, she still has not adequately explained why she voted against the book list in April 2010 which did exactly what she is claiming that she wants today: inclusively protecting all groups.   Because, as I mentioned in another post, her arguments today about why she voted against the book list is not supported by the public record of the public comments.

The thing about this whole business is, for folks out there that get upset about national politicians blatantly lying about what they said or did and then present it as “well it’s technically true” all the while their message infers something different than the actual reality, this whole airbrushing of Trish Spencer’s record is as troubling to me as those national political shenanigans.

Anyway, here’s the video, this is after the first motion and vote.   The first motion was made by Mike McMahon and everyone voted for this with the exception of Tracy Jensen.   While the rest of the Board was attempting to figure out what to do about the remainder of the recommendations from the Superintendent and whether the motion covered those recommendations, Trish Spencer felt as though they should “move on” and that the matter had been dispensed with.   She eventually voted against the motion made by Tracy Jensen after multiple restatements and clarifications of the scope of Tracy Jensen’s motion.   In uncharacteristic Trish Spencer style, for this motion, she absolutely did not want any discussion on the issue instead insisting that there was something untoward about multiple motions on a given agenda item.   Rather than clarify why she voted against Lesson 9 this time around, she simply voted no instead of giving the reason she is now giving.

And finally, here is video of the April 2010 meeting, which Trish Spencer has indicated that she voted against because members of “protected classes” expressed concern about how they and their children were depicted.   Reading that, one would assume that she was upset about books about people with disabilities and such, but the main thing that Trish Spencer honed in on was whether or not there were enough representations of “traditional” roles for boys and girls.   Such as one story about a little girl who likes fire trucks might wipe away all the representations of tea parties, dolls, and princesses that have inundated our culture and little girls might feel ashamed of liking those “traditional” girl pursuits.

Then she is concerned about a story of a princess who turns the prince saving the princess meme on its head because at the end the princess has the gall to call the prince a “bum.”   Clutch the pearls!   Of course she failed to mention that one, the book was written in 1980, so perhaps the language is not as “soft” as we would prefer it today for books meant to teach some lesson.   And two, that it was a response to the prince asking her to conform to societal “norms” that he felt she should conform to.

So in both instances, the major concern expressed by Trish Spencer was not about “protected classes” but rather ensuring that the presentation of two books didn’t interfere with traditional gender roles.   In the end, even though this book list was meant to do what Trish Spencer said that she wanted to do, represent all protected classes, she voted against it.

Video, apologies about the skipping and rendering problems, that’s how I got it, but the parts where Trish Spencer talks about the two books I mentioned above are pretty clean, starts around 18 minutes for the discussion referenced above.