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MISHAWAKA, Ind. — A fake news story regarding the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer position at Penn Harris Madison Schools has been making its rounds following false statements by the head of a grassroots PHM parents’ group known as Strengthen Our Schools (SOS). During a St. Joseph County GOP meeting on Saturday morning, SOS leader, Ashley Leader, made a false announcement that the DEI position had been eliminated. *NOTE* The statement was recorded by a person at the meeting and sent to RNM to use in this story. RNM’s Clifton French was in attendance at the meeting as he is a member of the GOP, but RNM did not make any recordings of the discussions.
“I was just notified of this incredible feat that we were able to accomplish.” Leader stated to the group. “Strengthen Our Schools is a parent group at PHM and we’ve been on the front lines at all the school board meetings in the past three years, exposing CRT, Covid, all of that stuff… the exciting news is they created a resolution a few years ago that they were going to be activating and getting rid of any kind of racism which led to all of this CRT stuff. And, they created a position DEI position and his name is Derrick White. He’s a six figure employee. That position has been eliminated.”
PHM School Board Member Matt Chaffee was sitting just feet away from Leader as she made the announcement. He nodded along with her remarks and made no attempt at correcting the record.
The false story was then picked up by one local news outlet two days later, essentially regurgitating the announcement made by Leader at Saturday’s meeting.
While RNM was hopeful the story was true and that PHM was in fact eliminating the DEI position, we quickly learned the announcement was bogus. The DEI position has not been eliminated. In fact, in order to eliminate the position, the school board has to put it on the agenda and then vote to get rid of it. That has not happened and, according to sources, there are no plans to eliminate it. Further, it is hard to imagine the current board members who put their names on the line when they created the position in 2020 are now willing to scrap it.
FACTS:
PHM’s DEI Officer, Derrick White, has been moved to head up the school district’s alternative school program known as Pennway. The reason for the move is because the previous head of Pennway was recently made the Interim Director of Human Resources.
According to sources, White was the obvious choice to work with the difficult student population at Pennway because of his previous work dealing with challenging children while he was employed as the Assistant Principal at Riley High School in the South Bend Community School Corporation. Further, the DEI role is less important than other administrative roles — meaning a vacancy in the DEI position is much easier to handle than a vacancy elsewhere.
According to a high ranking source at PHM, there are no plans to eliminate the DEI position. However, there are no “immediate” plans to fill the role.
SOS BLEEDING MEMBERS
Support and involvement in the Strengthen Our Schools group has been dwindling for several months. While at its peak there were dozens of parents and community members involved, only a handful of people are currently active. The SOS group recently purged dozens of people from its online forum, claiming there was a “spy” in the group.
Most of the problems can be traced back to leadership of the group getting involved in issues outside of schools and sowing division in current GOP primary races.
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