The Arizona school board has become the target of the Arizona superintendent of public instruction in the wake of the board electing to terminate its contract with one Christian university due to a few of the board members claiming that the religious beliefs of the school were very worrying.
Back on the 23rd of February, in the wake of numerous board members directly attacking the university, Washington Elementary School District officially cut its contract held with Arizona Christian University, which allowed the student teachers for the district to gain highly valued field experience.
“My concern is when I go to Arizona Christian University’s website, [they are] ‘committed to Jesus Christ, accomplishing his will and advancements on earth as in Heaven,'” whined board member Tamillia Valenzuela. “At some point, we need to get real with ourselves and take a look at who we’re making legal contracts with and the message that is sending to our community. Because that makes me feel like I could not be safe in this school district.”
As expressed in her bio, Valenzuela is “a bilingual, disabled, neurodivergent Queer Black Latina … who loves a good hot wing (but only with the right ranch) and things that sparkle.”
She also seemed to suggest that it was the Christian view of sexuality from the university that was the issue.
“I want to know how bringing [teachers] from an institution that is ingrained in their values so directly brings impact to three of your board members who are a part of the LGBT community,” the board members went on.
Quickly Kyle Clayton, another member of the school board, chimed back in, exclaiming, “Proselytizing is embedded into how they teach. And I just don’t believe that that belongs in schools.”
However, Tom Horne, the Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction who previously served from 2011 to 2015 as Attorney General of Arizona, clapped back hard against the group as he told Fox News that the decision from the school board had been outright wrong.
“There’s nothing more outrageous than religious prejudice. Prejudice of all kinds has been responsible, in my opinion, for almost all of the evil in the history of humankind. And the person who raised this on the school board describes herself as a ‘neuro-divergent queer.’ And when she says that she expects you to be tolerant of her” he stated.
“I’m Jewish, and there’s an old Jewish expression: ‘He who expects respect, has to give respect,’” continued Horne. “And this is an absolutely outrageous violation of people’s religious rights.”
“The best teachers’ preparation program in Arizona is a Christian college; it’s called Grand Canyon,” he highlighted. “I served 24 years on the school board, and we always want to get as many teachers from there as we could get because they were the best at preparing teachers for the classroom.”
“There’s some bad things that have developed in our society, primarily Critical Race Theory,” he went on. “I made that my number one issue in the political campaign. Everybody who voted for me knows I was against Critical Race Theory because my volunteers and I put up 1,500 signs all around the state that had my name on it and it said ‘Stop Critical Race Theory.’”
“So we who want the normal, as the governor of [Arkansas] said; there’s a battle between the normal and the crazy,” concluded Horne. “Those of us who want the normal, we’ve got to organize; we’ve got to fight back, we’ve got to elect people to statewide office and local office and school board office and we’ve got to fight back and we’ve got to bring the country back to normal.”
He also stated that teachers should go along with state guidelines and not attempt to push their own beliefs onto the kids.
