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On March 29, 2022, Greenwich Patriots cautioned about a Greenwich Public Schools Financial Report that revealed Superintendent Toni Jones had hired a Family and Community Engagement (FACE) consultant for the district.
The report indicated that the Superintendent spent $20k in 2022, and was planning to spend another $20k in FY23 and $25k in FY24 on FACE consulting.
The 2022-2027 Strategic Plan even identified “Increasing Family and Community Engagement” as one of the district's six strategic goals, so it appears the FACE effort must be really important to GPS.
It wasn’t clear in 2022 what exactly the FACE consultants would be doing, but the hunch was they had something to do with “equity” and that the effort was potentially tied to the "CASEL Wheel" used to teach transformative social-emotional learning.
The CASEL wheel, which is rooted in the tenets of critical race theory, references “Authentic Partnerships with Families, Caregivers & Aligned Learning Opportunities With Communities” as being among the important factors in social and emotional learning. The wheel was actually codified into board policy through GPS Regulation 6142R in May 2022.
Turns out, the initial hunch was right.
The National Association for Family School and Community Engagement recently released the Educator Preparation Framework for Family and Community Partnerships, in conjunction with several organizations, including the MAEC, whose entire mission is to turn “equity” into an “integrated and sustainable” practice, and the radical National Education Association (NEA) teachers union, which has a local presence in Greenwich through the Greenwich Education Association (GEA).
The 60-page report details a vision that would bring educators into your home in order to advance educational equity, to promote systemic conditions for supporting FACE initiatives, and to “co-lead alongside families” in order to engage in lifelong learning with families and to advocate with families for equitable systems change.
This grand vision to bring equity inside your home includes reimagining how teachers are taught in college, incorporating FACE concepts into professional licensing standards and accreditation systems, advocating for federal policies to support FACE initiatives, and much more.
"As our nation sets a path forward for education in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic and the reinvigorated movement for racial and social justice, this focus is more important than ever before to authentically support and engage students, strengthen educational systems, and advance equity."
- National Association for Family School and Community Engagement
What are some of the “promising methods” that will be used to help prepare educators for their anticipated “FACE” time?
Well, the “research” says that to prepare for family engagement, educators should participate in school based family events and experiences with families that focus on “collaborative” planning and problem solving. Educators are recommended to engage in “community” conversations, make home visits, conduct family interviews, take notes, and even mentor community members.
The FACE vision also details eight core competencies for engagement that read like something out of critical race theory 101.
For instance, competency #2 "Embrace Equity Throughout Family Engagement” requires teacher candidates to "recognize their own biases toward families and identify inequities and oppressive ideologies in educational and societal structures to achieve social justice.” Educators are then expected to employ family engagement practices to address “systemic inequities” that often go “unseen” by schools, and work actively to build new, equitable practices.
Another competency, #7 Take Part in Lifelong Learning, talks about how educators should use the data they compile on families “to assess, evaluate, and improve family engagement practices.” Who wants government school representatives evaluating their "family engagement" practices anyway?
More importantly, who else do you think is getting the extensive data that educators would be compiling on families?
Does Greenwich Superintendent Jones share the NEA's FACE vision to bring equity inside the home?
Did you know that the NEA is touting FACE as a way to “unite against extremists” — aka parents who argue in favor of parental rights? In fact, NEA previously called the “parents bill of rights” that was being debated in Congress “a toxic vision of parent engagement” because, among other things, the bill vowed to end woke indoctrination in schools.
Of course, reasonable people recognize that the real extremists are the ones who want to promote the radical tenets of critical race theory inside your own home, and then subsequently track your FACE compliance and social justice efforts.
