Forsyth County Georgia Board of Education - Jere Krischel - 02/18/2025

Under the previous presidential administration, it was incredibly difficult to be a parent with a conscience. It became clear that while we weren't looking, a lot of age-inappropriate sexual and racist materials were being pushed into our school libraries. And sadly, parents who stood up for their children were admonished for noticing the problem, rather than being thanked for discovering it.

Our school board meetings in this very room were often the front lines of this culture war, featuring frustrated mothers ejected for reading out loud the pornographic books their children were being exposed to. Activist groups, on both sides, spent time protesting, speaking, and appealing to the courts and other federal agencies. With a corrupt DOJ, and a partisan Office of Civil Rights, Forsyth County was compelled to enter an agreement in 2023, meant to serve as a punishment by process for daring to curate our library collections to be age and topic appropriate.

This agreement included imposing de facto racial quotas on authors and topics, in the name of "diversity". Rather than providing a patriotic, American perspective, we were admonished to provide a "global" perspective. Children were also to be encouraged to submit formal complaints if they felt they had any "concerns" about any curation of books, and an entire set of reporting requirements were drafted to track these frivolous, feckless tantrums.

Even worse, our school district was mandated to assume that our children were sexist, and racist, and survey them with that frame regarding "harassment". Instead of talking about preventing bullying in general, and focusing on teaching children to treat each other with kindness, the agreement insisted that we must assume sex and race were the root causes, rather than culture and maturity.

But today, is a new day. Sanity and common sense have returned to our federal government, and the tyrants of the leftist deep state that sought to micro manage our schools are being routed. All complaints made to the feds against Forsyth County have been ended, and all imposed agreements are now null and void.

I would like to thank the Board and the school district for navigating these challenges and burdens imposed from DC for the past two years, and would ask you to keep the following principles in mind when going forward with removing the toxic DEI ideology from our schools.

age-inappropriate materials are not a civil right;
boys cannot become girls, and girls cannot become boys;
true diversity comes naturally, not through demographic manipulation;
and we cannot pursue excellence if we are focused on equity.

To those who may fear this return to common sense, please understand, we all share the same ultimate goal - to build resilient, patriotic, skilled, and healthy children. This may mean that we help children overcome their mental illnesses, rather than indulge in them. This may mean that we treat people as individuals, rather than as avatars for arbitrary groups. But this is done with love and compassion, not bitterness or resentment. Our goal is not to seek revenge for the abuse done in the name of "social justice", but to simply end that abuse, once and for all.

And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to buy lunch for anyone who disagrees with me.