It’s Groundhog Day in Chapel Hill.

Publicly funded Chapel Hill Public Library will host a panel on “Teaching Diversity to Children” on July 8th featuring former Effland Cheek’s 3rd grade teacher, Omar Currie.

From the Chapel Hill Library website announcing the event:

The first discussion will be about how diversity is taught to school-aged children and will feature Omar Currie, former teacher at Efland Cheeks Elementary School, reading the picture book King and King. Library Director Susan Brown will moderate the public talk, which will be on Wednesday, July 8th from 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. in Meeting Room B at the library.

Mr. Currie was at the center of a recent debate over the appropriateness of reading the book, which features a romantic relationship between two men, to his third-grade classroom in Efland. He has since resigned.

Give me a break!  

How many more tax dollars will be used so we can hear Omar Currie talk about how he knows what our young children should and shouldn’t learn about charged topics like sexuality?

No Parental Consent & The Bullying Incident That Wasn’t
This past Spring, Currie read a homosexual themed fable to his 3rd grade class without consulting his student’s parents or giving any advance warning to them.

Currie claimed that he read the fable to combat ‘bullying’ as a result of an incident between two students in his class. Currie changed his story on that incident between his students no less than three times.

Students who were involved in an argument on the day in question have a totally different version of events that contradict Currie’s excuse of ‘bullying’ for reading the book.

One child is reported to have objected to the book and that child stated they were uncomfortable.

Orange County Schools spokesperson Seth Stephens told me that no report of bullying was filed for Mr. Currie’s classroom. In fact, no reports of bullying were filed by any 3rd grade classroom for the whole year at Efland Cheeks.

Currie and Goodhand are LGBT Activists First, Educators Second
Mr. Currie and his assistant principal, Meg Goodhand, are both homosexuals and LGBT activists.

They both are  affiliated with Safe Schools NC, which is an LGBT group that works with students. They served on the board together up until just recently when a new one was elected.

To support Safe Schools NC, Currie and Goodhand going to appear at The Regulator Book shop in Durham on August 9th to read and help promote the sale of King and King.

Proceeds of this event at The Regulator will go to “promote awareness and a diverse inclusive curriculum“.

Both of them attended a LGBT conference in Asheville just a week prior to the alleged ‘bullying’ incident which prompted Currie’s reading of King and King.

The two of them gave a presentation at the conference that was aimed at “Disrupting Heteronormative School Cultures”. 

The presentation included how to, “collaborate on ways school leaders and teachers can confront homophobic language/actions/curricula within the schools” .

Goodhand provided Currie with this book, King and King.  Why that book?

Because it’s in your Safe Schools NC resources? Resources which are almost 100% provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s offshoot called Teaching Tolerance?

If parents missed my 5 part series on Teaching Tolerance, now is the time to get caught up.

Resignation or Did They Plan To Leave… in March?
Mr. Currie and Ms. Goodhand likely didn’t just up and resign over this.

I’ve been told by various parties associated by the school that Currie filed paperwork back in March of this year which stated his intention not to return to Efland Cheeks. It is a good bed Goodhand did too. Attempts to obtain a comment from Mr. Currie to verify or deny this have gone unanswered.

Conclusion: The whole thing looks concocted
If this wasn’t a planned event by these two, then this is all a Hell of a coincidence.

Folks can draw their own conclusions. One conclusion is that Currie and Goodhand saw a chance to put their social activism into play in the classroom and went for it. Given Currie’s own statements, he clearly didn’t give a damn about violating the rights of the parents of his students.

Whatever you want to believe, Currie clearly thinks he has done no wrong here. He has demonstrated zero regard for the rights of the parents and thinks this is all about him. Meanwhile, no one seems to wonder about the kids or parents who were upset by his actions.

Omar Currie and Meg Goodhand violated the trust and parental rights of the parents of Efland Cheeks.

The LGBT community regards what they did as heroic.  That’s not heroic. That’s called bullying.

 
UPDATE 7-9-15 – Gee, Omar Currie has a teaching position this fall. In Virginia. To date, no media outlet has investigated his claim of bullying, spoken to the parents about the complaints they filed. Nothing. Zip. Apparently, it’s A-OK for a public school teacher to read a book about homosexuality to 8 and 9 year-olds so long as they sell some song and dance about ‘bullying’.

Oh, Omar Currie heads to teach in Alexandria VA this Fall @WRAL? That was fast for someone "forced to resign" http://t.co/vN30ZOLcVn

— A.P. Dillon – LL1885 (@LadyLiberty1885) July 9, 2015

Related Reading:

• Teacher Omar Currie Knows What’s Best For Your Child
• ABC11: Teacher Omar Currie Thinking of Resigning Over Book ‘Backlash’
• About Teacher Omar Currie’s Claim About Bullying…(Updated)
• Teacher Omar Currie Just Doesn’t Get That Controversy Isn’t About HIM (Video)

Common Core Aligned: Teaching Tolerance Series:

• Common Core Aligned: Southern Poverty Law Ctr’s ‘Teaching Tolerance’
• Common Core Aligned: “Teaching Tolerance” – PT 2
• Common Core Aligned: “Teaching Tolerance” – PT 3
• Common Core Aligned: “Teaching Tolerance” – PT 4
• Common Core Aligned: ‘Teaching Tolerance’ – PT 5