Menlo Oaks

When our daughter first joined the school, conversations around gender and race were age-appropriate, thoughtful, and meaningfully connected to the experiences of the children and families in the class. I am terribly disappointed to see that thoughtful approach morph into a distorted caricature of itself, where, among other things, children are enticed with treats by an organizer to join the LGBTQ Alliance.Parents are kept in the dark, information is difficult to come by, and when something is shared, it is often fragmentary and incomplete. This is part of a more general issue at the school: recent program presentations have felt more like “best-of” pitches designed to impress than opportunities to inform, and there seems to be little room for civil but critical discussion about what is actually taking place in some classrooms.The irony is hard to miss: the same people who are supposedly at the helm of a project intended to develop “upstanders” and “democratic community members” seem unable to embrace transparency, criticism, or self-reflection themselves. If you question any of their approaches, you risk being branded “not an ally.” I wouldn’t be surprised if gag orders were the next step.I wish the school would return to a genuine whole-child approach grounded in actual democratic principles.