I'm always interested in stories about Presne Unified. I'm not sure why I don't have kids in Fresno Unified.
I don't know if kids in clothes unified.
Frankly, I think though it's an interesting kind of Petri Dish case study example whatever of a lot of bigger trends that are going on in California public education. I think it's problems, its struggles are emblematic of the problems that the state faces at large. It struggles with the union, it's liberalism, it's just problems with student instruction seem to me to reflect the broader problems that the state faces. And something kind of caught my eye the other day
and I did a little research on it. So Misty Hrr, who is the interim superintendent, and clearly I think is kind of trying to push for to get rid of that interim title. It seems like the school board is going to sort of they're going through like a board retreat process and they're refocusing and they're rethinking about what they want for their school superintendent. They're gonna have a nationwide search and blah blah blah blah blah. Well, it
seems as though Misty Hurr wants this job. I think the initial push was for her to be hired, and somehow that got steymied when people said, why are we only looking within the school district for a replacement for Bob Nelson. So while she's interim Misty her is doing and saying a lot of things that don't sound very interimy.
She's doing and saying a lot of things that sound like she's wanting to launch initiatives and programs and goals that sound very I want this job for the long haul, including a lot of stuff about wanting to improve student test scores by ten percent in math and reading comprehension, which right now President UNIFIEDES results are terrible, overwhelming majority of kids are not reading or doing math at grade level.
And one of the things she said, so the school year I think just started yesterday, and she has sort of this opening beginning of the school year press conference where she keeps emphasizing your kids need to be there. Every day counts, every minute counts. Now there's a part of me that's thinking, well, this is a little selfish on the school's part. She basically every day that a student's there is more money for the school, so they
get paid based on attendance. But it made me think about the question of chronic absince teaism, and I remembered reading some stories about it, and so I did a little digging. I went to the California Data Quest. This is produced by the California Department of Education, and it's this tool you can use from the California Department of Education to look at different kinds of statistics.
Statewide for all kinds of different issues.
So you can look at and one of the things that's been really tracking is chronic absenteeism. Okay, So chronic absenteeism basically it considers whether or not a student has missed ten percent or more of the days they were expected to attend. Okay, So that's a pretty good barometer of a kid who's missing way more school than is normal, right, ten percent or more of the days they are supposed to attend. So if you've got a kid who's chronically absent,
guess what, his odds of learning are pretty low. It leads to worse outcomes in general. And one of the things that's happened since the pandemic has been an enormous spike in student absenteeism and an enormous spike in student absenteeism in Fresno Unified. All right, so let me give you something to compare. Let's go to twenty eighteen twenty nineteen. So this is the last school year before COVID. The COVID school year was twenty nineteen to twenty twenty, so
the stats get all weird. This is the last pre COVID full school year that we have sort of a basis of comparison with. All right, So these are the chronic absentee rates among school children within Fresno Unified. And by the way, you can use this statewide tool, but it can break it down for you buy school district. So I'm looking at Fresno Unified chronic absenteeism twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, and they break it down by racial demographics.
I'm not sure why.
I feel like maybe socioeconomic demographics would be more helpful, but let's leave that where it is, all right, So, uh, chronic absenteeism in Fresno Unified. I'll go buy the largest racial demographics through the smallest racial demographics within Fresne Unified. Based on the twenty eighteen twenty nineteen numbers.
All right, So.
Hispanic and Latino kids seventeen point five percent of them were chronically absent in the twenty eighteen twenty nineteen school year seventeen let's say Asian kids seven point four percent. Only seven point four percent of Asian kids were absent during the twenty eighteen twenty nineteen school year. Seventeen point seven percent of white kids were absent Chronically absent during the school year African American kids twenty six percent of African American kids.
So, of the four major.
Ethnic demographics within President Unified, Hispanic Latinos by far the largest then Asian than White then African American. African Americans had the highest rate of chronic absenteeism at twenty six percent. Asians had the lowest, at seven point four percent, and Hispanics and whites were pretty much at the same level, about seventeen and a half percent seventeen point five percent
for Hispanics Latinos seventeen point seven percent among white kids. So, actually, white kids were slightly more often absent than Black kids, excuse me, than Latino kids. Let's now compare, shall we what is the state wide average right now. Okay, so those are the numbers in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. This is the state wide average right now. Though for chronic absenteeism,
thirty six percent of African American kids chronically absent. Asians didn't change that much ten percent, Filipinos thirteen point four percent, Hispanics, Latinos twenty eight point nine percent. That's the state wide average. Now, white kids nineteen percent didn't jump that much. Okay, so that's the state wide average today. I already gave you the fres No average presdent unified average twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen.
Here is the Fresno unified average right now. African American students. Remember, in Fresney unified, African American students had before COVID at twenty six percent chronic APPS and T rate. The statewide average is thirty six percent. In presdent unified, it's forty five percent. Forty five percent of African American students in fresnent unified are chronically absent.
Asian children.
Remember, in Fresne unified Asian children were chronically absent, only about seven percent of them were chronically absent before COVID. Now twenty one percent of them. It's a huge jump Hispanic and Latino kids. This is the most significant jump I think within Fresne Unified because basically they're almost ten times more Hispanic Latino kids than any other.
In vidual racial demographic.
Maybe more like okay, maybe more like seven times more. There's about fifty thousand Hispanic kids in Present Unified. The next biggest racial group are Asians, with seven five hundred kids. Hispanic chronic absenteeism thirty six point six percent. Before COVID it was seventeen point five percent, thirty six point six percent White kids. It used to be about seventeen and a half percent before COVID, now thirty three percent in
Present Unified. These are massive jumps across all racial demographics. Asian kids, huge increase in the percentage of chronic absenteeism, African Americans, large increase in the percentage of absentee kids about a twenty percent increase.
And Hispanic kids.
That's probably the most significant for President Unified because again, far more Hispanic kids within President Unified than any other racial demographic that has jumped from It's basically doubled the chronic APPS and T rate has more than doubled.
What has happened.
I really think we need to examine the I think we still don't really have a solid grasp on the full weight of COVID's impact on the culture, especially when it comes to something as simple as going to school.
I think so many families got used.
To just not having kids go to school or keeping kids home for the flimsiest of reasons, that it's basically resulted in this huge change. Oh and by the way, let's compare while we're at it, Fresno Unified versus Clovis Unified. Clovis Unified has somewhat gotten back to sort of the pre COVID level according to the most up to date stats. So again, largest racial demographic in Clothes Unified are Hispanic kids. Twenty one percent of Hispanic kids in Clovis Unified are
chronically absent, thirty four percent within FRESNOE Unified. Sixteen percent of white kids are chronically absent in Clovis Unified. Much higher again with Fresne Unified. Well, actually it's not which one was this. It's not that much higher. It's about
nineteen percent within Fresno Unified. But the real difference is Close Unified's Latino population versus Fresno unified Its Latino population, both of which are the largest racial demographics within their Within their district, there's much better attendance among Hispanic and Latino students within Clovis Unified than within Fresno Unified. So I don't know what has happened. I don't know if it is a cultural thing. I don't know if it's just a socioeconomic thing that or what it is that
people have just sort of decided. I suspect it's a socioeconomic thing. Fresnent Unified tends to be sort of at a not as high socioeconomic status as far as the
average student who goes there than Clovis Unified. I guess I just don't understand and that this culture that's come about because of COVID that makes it just so common for kids to be chronically absent, And it just seems like one of these things again where it should be a ten alarm fire and every teachers, you know, teacher union whatever, should be all running around like with their hair on fire, trying to get kids to actually go
to school. But again, I think so much of what we hear from in education news is about adults jobs because so much of it is driven by union priorities, union needs, union contracts, negotiating the district, negotiating with the union. That's something this simple just seems like it's it almost seems like an afterthought. But this is such a fundamental thing.
You obviously cannot instruct students if they're not there. And since COVID, I don't know that we've yet arrived at a point where our post COVID numbers are, we still haven't arrived back at our pre COVID numbers when we return. My PSA for conservative parents, don't let your kids do sex ed in public schools. Next on the John Girardi Show, I want to periodically do this little PSA for you all, just to remind you that all of you folks sending your kids to public schools up and down the.
Great San Joaquin Valley.
Here, many of you probably sending your kids to close unified public school and you might be thinking, you close unified parents. I know you kind of know how you think. Maybe you sang or unified parents. Maybe you think something along these lines too, or maybe some of you folks in more rural school districts up and down the San
Joaquin Valley. You think, yeah, I know, I read these stories about crazy left wing things that California does through public schools, and yeah, I know the state legislature's crazy, and.
Yeah, you know, I know I get it. But but not our public school.
My Clovis Unified school district, guided by the wise spirit of Doc sat Doc Buchanan watching over us, the agis of his protection, overshadowing us.
May he rain all over a sunbevc Torrius, God save the Doc.
Okay, sorry, uh so not in my school district. Though our school district is more conservative. Our teachers are more conservative our school district. You know, I know mister Johnson, the science teacher, teaches biology, and he's a Christian, he's a republic He voted for George W.
Bush when I was in high school.
And by gum by golly, he's not gonna what are they gonna teach my kids?
That's so bad.
And I just want to remind you all that a lot of the bad super liberal cultural stuff. That's especially the stuff that's part of the sex aid curriculum, the stuff where we are educ they are mandated by state law to educate your kids about abortion as a method of birth control, where kids can go for local resources for abortion, what their rights are with regard to getting abortion, i e. Getting an abortion without you knowing about it?
Do I need to remind you? Within Fresdent Unified and Clothes Unified, they have agreements with the Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission which can take kids during the school day drive them off of your nice, safe, pristine little Clothes Unified campus to a family planning clinic in downtown Fresno where they can give your kid an IUD without you knowing, Where they can give your kid the morning after pill without you knowing, where they can give your kid birth control,
all kinds of stuff without you knowing, and even refer your kid for an abortion without you knowing.
And a driver. Will it be a stranger you don't know.
Who's probably that didn't fingerprinted by Fresne Economic Opportunities Commission, so maybe it's not totally dangerous, but still someone you don't know, someone you didn't say yes, please drive my daughter around. Please drive my fourteen year old around today rather than have her or you know, go to class at Clark Intermediate School or freshman year at close high or whatever. Please drive my daughter around to get reproductive
health care without me knowing about it. Oh, she has an STD and the school's just not gonna tell me that is happening. Okay, that legally happens. And the sexad stuff where we're telling your kids about their rights to get abortions without your knowing. The sex ad stuff where we're talking to kids about abortion as a method of birth control, positively talking about it. In some school districts, we're bringing planned parenthood in to teach.
Your kids about this.
A lot of that is mandated by state law. State law that applies Doc Buchanan's ghost or no. So here's my one bit of practice advice. I understand the twenty years ago, if your parents had pulled you out of sex said, you would have been embarrassed. I understand that maybe twenty years ago you'd.
Be, oh, well, you know, the sex said.
Sex said is embarrassing, but it is not that bad, and you know, kids need to learn their biology. And you look, No, the sex said today is much different and much worse than the sex said when you were in high school twenty years ago.
Thirty years ago.
It's much worse. It's much different. It is much more ideologically focused on making sure your kids can get abortions without you knowing about it, get abortions without you knowing about it, get contraception without you knowing about it, Try to deal with an STD without you knowing about it.
California law wants to facilitate this. Why because California law basically things that if your minor child is pregnant and you don't want them to get an abortion, that you are a monster, and that therefore they should almost step in to allow your kid to do this without you. They should step in to allow your kid to do this without you, without your knowledge, without your consent, and of course though with you having to pick up the
pieces after your kid makes that decision. So my advice to you parents is precisely this, just don't We've always just sort of accepted this incredibly controversial notion that public school teachers who are strangers to us, not someone you know, not someone from your church, not someone who's whom you've sort of vetted to see, do they really align with what I believe about marriage and sexuality, and that we outsource teaching our children about the core aspects of some
of the most important relationships they will ever have in their lives.
Sexuality.
We outsource that to strangers whose ethics we maybe just don't share, and we never stop to think, why are we outsourcing this? Shouldn't parents control this completely. I've never understood the wide societal acceptance of the idea, Oh.
Yeah, well, we let teachers teach our kids about marriage, sex and intimacy. Now, some parents have their head screwed on, right, and they say, well, no, I'm gonna I will form my kids also, maybe they'll learn this in school, or we take the idea of well, Jimmy will be made fun of if he's not in the sex ed class,
so I'll allow him to be in the sex head class. No, you guys, you parents need to grow a spine and just say we're going to completely control what our kid learns about sex, as far as what they are learning, the context in which they aren't learning it, and the ethics involved that surround this incredibly profoundly important aspect of relationship. We are going to control this, not the school, not some teacher whom we didn't vet for what they believe.
I genuinely just think it is One, unnecessary for you to have the school teach your.
Kids about this.
It's not like this is you know, It's not like the teachers have some access to numinus knowledge that you could never possibly find.
And two, they probably don't believe all.
The same things you believe, and the state mandates them to teach things that are obviously you know, if you like this show, the state is mandating that they teach things you don't believe. Also, you got to remember, you gotta affirmatively opt your kid out. If you don't do anything, your kid is automatically opted in. You gotta affirmatively opt out. You might have to do something, send an email, make a phone call, do something to opt your kid out.
And I really think you should. When we return the bizarre biblical nature of the DNC next on The John Gardy Show, I've been kind of keeping half an eye on the DNC. I mean, frankly, I'm watching about as much of it as I watched the RNC, which is to say, not very much at all. I hate political speeches and political conventions. I hate speeches that get interrupted by applause every two minutes, which make things really long.
It was funny hearing after the fact that yesterday, I guess Joe Biden just got bumped and bumped and bumped by prior speakers going long so much that he basically was talking like at you know, I think he started his address around eleven thirty at night.
In fact, my.
Wife and I, my wife and I were sitting around watching TV and we we wanted to turn on anti This is what old what an old man I am, and what an old couple me and Holly are in spite of just being in our thirties. I was like, I'm just bored, let's just watch Antiques road Show. And so we turned on tried to. So we tried to turn on you know, PBS and into Antiques Roadshow. And in our comcast thing it has, you know, the description underneath like the channel guide thing, it says Antiques Roadshow.
We turn it on and it was still broadcasting the DNC. So it says on the bottom of the screen Antiques road Show. And look who's speaking at the DNC. None other than Joe Biden. So I've got this great picture on my TV that we took of the TV. It's saying, you know, Antiques road Show. All along the bottom, and here's Joe Biden speaking a more perfect encapsulation of poor Joe's predicament you couldn't find. And basically, poor Joe was pushed. They bumped the President of the United States at his
own parties, at his own party's convention. What was supposed to be this big love fest for Joe Biden, and instead he's you know, pushed until after you know, most of the East Coast has already gone to bed, probably much of Central Time.
Now I'm going to talk a little bit about.
The DNC though, stuff that's around it, and maybe I'm just reading too much Old Testament history and I'm relating everything.
I see to this. So the last several.
Months, really since June, my kind of daily prayer routine is I use this book. It's basically like a Catholic version of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. Okay, so the Book of Common Prayer is sort of the normative sort of prayer and liturgical text for Episcopalians and Anglicans, and there was this big group of Anglicans and Episcopalians who wanted to convert sort of wholesale into the Catholic Church,
and so PO Benedict the sixteenth. Around two thousand and nine or twenty ten, I believe set up a structure for former Anglicans and other members of the Anglican Communion like Episcopalians, a structure for them to convert to Catholicism, but to bring with them some of their liturgical and prayer traditions, many of which actually have their roots in sort of pre Reformation English Catholicism.
That sort of.
Thomas Cranmer tookook and made into the Book of Common Prayer as he was devising it a lot of older Latin language Catholic prayer sources that he translated into English and adapted and made into the Book of Common Prayer. So that's my kind of daily prayer routine, and it
basically centers around morning prayer and evening prayer. And at morning prayer and evening prayer, you pray a selection of the psalms, and then you have reading from the Old Testament, some biblical canticle or verse, a reading from the New Testament, and another biblical canticle.
Hymn.
So every day I'm reading a big chunk of the Old I'm reading two big chunks of the Old Testament, and two big chunks of the New Testament every day, about about a full chapter of the Old Testament, about two full chapters of the Old Testament, two full chapters
of the New Testament, more or less. The last several months, I've been reading through selections of and according to the kind of the schedule that's laid out for this prayer book, I've been reading through First and Second Samuel and some stuff from first and second Kings, and it goes through basically, I've read through the biblical history that's given for the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, so starting with King David, David taking over the kingdom from starting with King Saul
actually Saul, and then David taking over the kingdom from Saul Solomon, and then Solomon's descendants as his kingdom was divided into two kingdoms, Judah in the south, Israel in the north. And the constant theme of these books of the Old these sort of historical books about the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The constant theme the barometer by which they judge every single king of Israel and Judah. It was their approach to paganism.
Did they.
Suppress and refuse to participate in the worship of Ball. Now, ball seems to be kind of a catch all name for some of the pagan worship that was practiced within by some of the Canaanite people, some of the people's in the Levant, Ball was sort of attached to various different kinds of maybe local deities, so there were different different kinds of balls, but ball was sort of the
catch all term used in the Bible. Ball and then Asherah, which was a name sort of applied to a female goddess of fertility, So you had Ball was kind of a male goddess of fertility.
Astra kind of a female god fertility.
And the authors of these books of the Old Testament, they were constantly judging the kings of Israel and Judah based on their attitudes towards paganism. Were they like King Josiah, who was a very good king who completely suppressed the worship of Baal and Astra and promoted the true religion in the Temple in Jerusalem, Or did they not as good? You know, they didn't worship Ball and Ashra, but they didn't they still allowed the sites for their worship to
remain without you know, suppressing them. Or did they actively promote and participate in the worship of ball and Ashra, and.
Some of the stuff that.
Was associated with their worship included human sacrifice and sometimes the sacrifice of infants, and it talks about that in the Bible. There was one king of I forget if it was a king of Israel and Judah who actually offered his own child in human sacrifice, burned his child to death in sacrifice to.
The god Moloch. No so Moloch or Molac was.
Another one of these deities that was being worshiped in this time that was sort of affiliated with these sort of in the levant pagan religions that sort of surrounded the Jewish people. And I've often thought of it, like why was this so tempting to the Jewish people? I
just couldn't understand it. Like, and people would say to I, remember, you know, hearing priests or someone say, you know, yeah, the Jews, they they worshiped idols, But we worship idols just the same way we worship money and we worship you know, power, and we worship this.
I was like, okay, yeah, but that doesn't sound very satisfying to me.
I don't understand what's so tempting about starting up another religion or participating in another relig Why is that tempting. I can understand why money is tempting. I can understand why sex is tempting. I just don't understand why these other pagan religions were so tempting to the Jewish people of that time. And over time I've sort of learned
more about pagan attitudes towards people who were weak. One of the great revolutions of Judaism and then Christianity is the idea of caring for people who are weak, giving a sense of human respect and dignity to people who are weak and can't take care of themselves, the idea that there is a sort of baseline standard of intrinsic human value that exists whether or not you are powerful or important.
And you could see this.
As soon as Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, a lot of stuff changed. Gladiator fights became suppressed where they were like, hey, we can't have murder for sport. That violates basic principles of human dignity. We're not gonna have gladiator fights where people are murdering each
other anymore. The very common Roman practice also of infanticide. Basically, if you were a Roman, you had a kid you didn't want, maybe the kid was a girl, maybe you had the kid with a slave, whatever, you would just leave the child to die. They were like designated crossroads or designated points where people could leave their children, either to die or maybe to be picked up by some other family and be raised as their household slave, or maybe to be raised to eventually one day become a
proper institute. Prostitution is also a widespread thing and archaeological evidence regarding places that were brothels, they often find the skeletons the remains of infants. Basically, inconvenient human beings were cast aside. And I think what was happening in the Old Testament with the worship of Baal was it provided the human sacrifice elements of those religious practices provided an
opportunity to get rid of inconvenient children. The ritual prostitution that would take place in the temples in the areas associated with Ashra provided an opportunity at temptation literally for the Jewish people to get away from the more strict sexual and marriage mores of the Jewish religion to engage in sexual activity with prostitutes, people taken advantage of people whose human dignity being violated outside of the dictates again
of marriage in the Jewish context. I think that's what's tempting, and it deeply troubles me that the Democratic Party proudly pronounces that they've got a mobile van, that a partnership that DNC itself set up with Planned Parenthood, a mobile van for handing out the abortion pills, the abortion pill, not the morning after pill, the abortion pill, something to induce a miscarriage up to ten weeks into a pregnancy. There's something weirdly religious about it. There's something weirdly pagan
about it. Tying this whole movement, branding this whole movement towards the killing of little ones because they are weak and inconvenient, because they are inconvenient, because they are burdens. There's something just biblically terrifying to me about the whole thing.
When we return my envy at the Democrat platform next on the John Girardi Show, I've taken a bit of flack from people with my frustration over the Republican platform, and it's not mentioning abortion much at all, and being very, very weak on the abortion question where it did address it, and basically not calling for the things that the Republican platform has always called for when it comes to abortion, amending the US Constitution for a Human Life Protection Amendment,
all the policy things that we want the new Executive branch to do when it comes to cutting off abortion funding. Almost none of that is in the new Republican platform, which is only fifteen pages long. Obviously a totally different approach to the platform. But when it does address abortion, it does it in a really weak way, and I get blowback saying, well.
John, yoh, no, no, you don't understand it. Trump's just got to get elected here.
Trump's got to get elected here, and you know You've got to be you know, you gotta be careful here, you know, then then you'll.
Okay, consider this.
Though the Democrats release their platform, it's eighty pages long. It details every single thing they want to do with abortion, all the crazy, insane ways that they want to fund abortion. And yes, I understand that what I think about abortion is not where the party, where the country is. The hardcore Democrat position on how abortion should be treated in this country is also not where the country is, and they're not afraid to say what they want, they're not
afraid to push for it. So I'm just saying we should have a little more backbone.
That'll do it. John dirolready show see next time on Power Talk