Teachers’ union leaders from 6 area school districts, including the Hamilton Southeastern Education Association President Abby Taylor, are calling on Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita to “take down the ‘Eyes on Education’ portal immediately.”
Rokita claims Eyes on Education aims to stop “objectionable curricula, policies, or programs affecting children.” It features a submission form where people can report school material that they believe violates Indiana law.
Union leaders from HSE, Noblesville, Westfield, Hamilton Heights, Mount Vernon and Frankfort all signed the letter. They argue the portal is filled with posts that have no verification or context. They also say the portal is a violation of teachers’ right to privacy.
The letter calls on Governor Eric Holcomb and the General Assembly to “denounce this attack on public education.”
Below is the full text of the letter, posted on social media Sunday.
The community needs to get to work to get it shut down: here is how other states did this.
In March of 2023, the Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey launched a website for reporting gender affirming care clinics. Within a month, the website was taken down after being flooded with the “Bee Movie” script after young activists spread the URL for the website on TikTok and Twitter. Like the Indiana form, the Missouri form lacked a CAPTCHA at first, though even the addition did not help.
Similarly, in 2022, Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia launched a tip line to report teachers for using “divisive” teaching practices. The tip line ultimately received very few legitimate reports, alongside many prank emails from “GenZ for Change” activists. The website was quietly shut down at the year’s end. When journalists filed Freedom of Information Act requests, Youngkin initially refused but relented after a lawsuit, releasing a batch of 350 emails. Among them were accusations such as “sympathy to immigrants” and dissatisfaction with the epic poem “Beowulf.”
So……., Erika, does this mean you are in favor of “objectionable curricula, programs, or programs affecting children?”
I’m not concerned about the great teachers in our community nor the appropriate course work that they teach. I never saw any issues as our kids went through HSE school district. The only issue appears to be a political agenda being pushed and we do not need career politicians, misplaced religious views, discrimination, nor teachers under scrutiny for a book they select for the class nor for having empathy or respect for their students. Rules are already in place within the schools and I have full confidence in the teachers.
This is not a serious question. Perhaps if you were interested in defending the premise of the portal, you could put together a better defense. But it doesn’t help anyone to post absurd fallacy arguments anonymously.
Maybe you have children in school. If you do, you certainly know the mountains of information that are available to parents concerning the education of their kids. The fear mongering of “socialist indoctrination” in public schools isn’t rooted in reality, and the overtly political actions of the AG isn’t helping anything.