Critical race theory and sexual material in schools were among the matters addressed during the public participation portion of the regular Columbia County Board of Education meeting on Tuesday.
Eric Feldkamp spoke before the board about Panorama, an education software service, at one point intended for use by the district. Feldkamp said he appreciated that school superintendent Steven Flynt indicated no intention to move back to use of Panorama. He also said that he reviewed Panorama’s terms of service and was concerned students’ anonymized data might become deanonymized via algorithms after being shared with third parties.
“If we’re providing potentially sensitive student information, even though we have the reassurance that it’s anonymized, the fact that it’s shared with third parties nowadays means that we can no longer be certain that that information is protected,” said Feldkamp. “As we’re moving forward in any agreements with service providers, I think the school board and Dr. Flynt would be well advised to take that into consideration.”
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Janet Duggan spoke before the board regarding social emotional learning, an education practice in use in the district. She voiced concern that the SEL program supported critical race theory. Before addressing the board Duggan distributed a packet of information documenting her research on the matter.
“The purpose of me speaking is to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, to the board and to the superintendent that the new SEL programs are indeed a component of critical pedagogy and thus has no place in our schools,” said Duggan. “It would be important for you, our board of education, to be open-minded to the fact that SEL was transformed from its beginning and is no longer what it once was. At one time this was good, but things have changed.”
Katie Allen cited Georgia obscenity laws in her presentation before the school board. She noted the state requirement to notify parents about sexual education courses.
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“I do understand and appreciate that you all have a tough job trying to figure out what’s acceptable and not acceptable,” said Allen. “But I feel like these are some really great laws, and I feel like if we could just all have that reassurance that we all agree on the spirit of the law, even if the letter of the law does not include all these circumstances, I think we would all feel a lot better about moving forward.”
Flynt announced that COVID-19 cases continued to decline during his superintendent report, noting that whereas the district’s peak was at 619 positive cases recorded in the third week of school, 57 were recorded two weeks ago and 62 at the end of the previous week.
“We obviously will expect some fluctuations from week to week,” said Flynt. “But overall, we can say we’re experiencing the lowest levels of spread since we started in August.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering Columbia County with The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
