Fixing Public Oversight of Classroom Lessons and Content

Fixing Stillwater Schools (FSS) as an organization grew from the need resist changes by the Stillwater Board of Education to its rules (600-series Policies) regarding curriculum and academic program development, public oversight, and parental, guardian, and public challenges to academic decisions and the availability of alternatives.

Improving and reforming these issues is still central to our purpose. Read more about FSS.

The 600-series of Board Policies underwent anti-democratic changes in November 2022-January 2023, hundreds of community members joined our campaign to urge the Board to stop these changes. They reduced public oversight and the ability of the public and parents to review, challenge, and seek alternatives to questionable or problematic material or teaching.

Education Standards of America (ESA) has worked with Fixing Stillwater Schools since December of 2022 to pioneer awareness of statewide issues in these matters. As many districts implement shared suggested policy changes, the issues in Stillwater have been relevant to problems statewide. We have led the way.

There remains scant public knowledge and awareness of problems and the way districts' function. Even where written policy may be the same, a given district's administration may operate the policy reasonably or capriciously--sometimes with discrimination.

Learn About Fixing ISD No 834

Moving Decisions to Committees
People tend to suppose that school boards make the decisions governing the school systems--in the sense of actually make substantive decisions in meetings, debating the rightness of decisions in public view. This is the way it should be. Unfortunately, districts have been encouraged by bureaucrats to make decisions that are merely given final decision at meetings, without debate. Another issue is having committees formulate decisions, such as academic policy direction, with the actual board merely ratifying the committee's decisions.

Many Boards wrongly suggest that by moving the board's business to committees that public oversight of the board's business no longer applies, this generally wrong and ESA would assist any community in prosecution of necessary reforms and corrections, including as may including legal.
Non-Parent Community Oversight Rights
School Districts are a unit of local government, just like a city council. Local community members have taxpayer rights and rights as subjects of the governed.

We can and do exercise those rights regarding how we are governed in the name of us, the public. Our actionable rights including the right to observe the governmental business and to petition for the redress of grievances.

It is essential to understand that school oversight is not restricted to those who have a child in a particular school or class, but that the community be respected for its interests in the orderly and excellent operation of the local schools. Tax payers in Minnesota are recognized by the courts for their actionable interests in that which is conducted with their funds.
What is Policy 606
Policy 606 was the primary focus of our concern and objections in the January 2023 changes by the board.

It is the policy governing curriculum inspection rights and curriculum challenge.
Click here to read our letter discussing and opposing the Policy 606 changes passed by the Board in January of 2023
Other Academic Policies Worsened in 2023
601

603

604
Current State of Curriculum Opt-out
Using "alternative" curriculum successfully requires knowing what you would like to avoid, identifying where and when your student would have it put upon them, making the request, and finding alternative curriculum, if necessary, and winning district approval of such curriculum as an alternative.

The difficulty or ease in ISD No. 834 may vary. Other districts have more generous language about the role and duty of the district to accommodate alternatives.
Click to email us about your concerns or effort to opt-out or use an alternative instructional material. Include "alternative curriculum" in the subject line to be sure we receive your message/request.
Public Notice of Board Committee Meetings
The board denied certain committee meetings were public meetings, only to recant this position with respect to four of said committees.

Any committee that convenes to deliberate the substantive decisions to be promulgated by the Board, by nature of the Board's duties as policymaker of the District, must operate as an open meeting.

Accordingly, the District has confessed that [4] are open meetings, per Minn. Stat. 13D. Unfortunately, the District is not operating according with the requirements of the statute. An obvious example of this is the failure to publish meeting minutes (let alone to conduct the meeting in a fashion of recorded decision and deliberation or to capture the minutes, at all, that need to be published).
Current State of Curriculum "Challenge"

Click, here, to view Mike McCarthy's letter to the board on behalf of Fixing Stillwater Schools

Click, here, to download Mike McCarthy's letter to the board on behalf of Fixing Stillwater Schools

Click, here, to download a two-page summary of referenced materials re: the 600 series policies

Click, here, to view the proposed policy 606, which directly walls off theory & curriculum decisions