St. Louis Public Radio Amy Ryan, a Rockwood parent, reacts Friday during a parent-organized forum on the district s diversity curriculum. What started as a tense debate over whether Rockwood’s schools should reopen in person last fall has descended into schoolyard bullying among the adults. Politics didn’t used to enter the schools. The elementary recitals and high school football games were where parents could put conservative versus liberal views aside, don the school colors and root for their kids. But without that common social fabric in a year of social distancing, the Rockwood School District community is ripping at the seams, frayed first by the pandemic’s closure of schools and then shredded by a fight over whether and how to teach diversity in classrooms. The district’s superintendent and diversity director are both walking away, but educators in the district continue to feel under siege from a group of parents leading a charge against a diversity curriculum they say is “indoctrinating” their children.
St. Louis Public Radio Amy Ryan, a Rockwood parent, reacts Friday during a parent-organized forum on the district s diversity curriculum. Politics didn’t used to enter the schools. The elementary recitals and high school football games were where parents could put conservative versus liberal views aside, don the school colors and root for their kids. But without that common social fabric in a year of social distancing, the Rockwood School District community is ripping at the seams, frayed first by the pandemic’s closure of schools and then shredded by a fight over whether and how to teach diversity in classrooms. The district’s superintendent and diversity director are both walking away, but educators in the district continue to feel under siege from a group of parents leading a charge against a diversity curriculum they say is “indoctrinating” their children.