By MARK SARDELLA
Thank you, Dr. Julie Kukenberger.
Thank you for confirming what many of us have long known is going on in public school systems everywhere behind the dual curtains of “equity” and “inclusion.”
Dr. Kukenberger is the Superintendent of Schools in neighboring Melrose, a community not unlike Wakefield. The communities are so compatible that they even share the same Health Department.
That’s not all that these neighboring New England hamlets have in common. Just as Wakefield got rid of its “racist” Warrior logo, the Melrose Schools recently dispatched their “offensive” “Red Raider” to the Happy Hunting Grounds. They’re now the “Red Hawks.”
In connection with that process, a group called the Melrose Transparency Initiative submitted a freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all related emails.
It turned out that Melrose School officials had been less than truthful about the origins of the effort to eliminate the Red Raider. It wasn’t the high school principal’s idea, as the community had been let to believe.
The FOIA request revealed that email exchanges about changing the Red Raider name had taken place months earlier between the School Committee Chair and a Melrose High teacher, as well as correspondence between Dr. Kukenberger and a student who originated the move to get rid of Red Raider.
In a similar fashion, during Wakefield’s logo controversy, a convenient confusion was cultivated concerning where the impetus for eliminating Wakefield High’s Warrior logo originated.
“It came from the Student Council,” was the oft-repeated and seldom-questioned narrative. “The Student Council brought it to the School Committee. The students at the school wanted it changed.”
It was said so often that many came to believe it. It became a talking point. It was even repeated by a candidate in last week’s School Committee debate.
Except that’s not what happened. The WMHS Student Council did not come up with the idea to eliminate the Warrior logo and they most certainly never brought any such proposal to the School Committee.
The group that brought it to the School Committee was something called the “Youth Council,” which is appointed by the Town Council and is not affiliated with Wakefield High School. Its members are not all Wakefield High students. In fact, during the effort to change the Wakefield High School logo, the Youth Council chairman was a student from St. John’s Prep in Danvers.
Of course, throughout the whole process and right up until now, none of those who favored getting rid of the Warrior logo ever bothered to correct the false narrative. It served their purpose to let the public believe that the idea came from the WMHS Student Council.
But the deliberate deception went further. It wasn’t even the Youth Council’s idea to eliminate the logo. It came from the Wakefield Human Rights Commission, who planted the seed and egged on the impressionable Youth Council until the kids brought the idea to the School Committee.
Meanwhile, back in Melrose, things went from bad to worse. In the aforementioned email exchange between a student and Dr. Kukenberger, the 10th grader told the superintendent, “I have decided to explore a campaign to change the name of the school from the Red Raiders to something else.”
Dr. Kukenberger’s reply was encouraging and supportive.
“I am excited to learn you are interested in pursuing this important project beyond your course requirements.” Dr. K wrote. “I would value the opportunity to meet with you and discuss your project and what you have learned so far. I am also thinking a lot about the naming of our elementary schools after white, male Presidents.”
So, Dr. Kukenberger has a problem with Melrose schools named after white, male presidents like Roosevelt, Lincoln and Hoover. Ben Franklin and John Winthrop never became president, but they share the same icky skin-color and gender as the other three, so presumably the Franklin and Winthrop schools would be “problematic” as well.
Please remember this the next time a public school official indignantly insists that they are not teaching Critical Race Theory in the schools. Does Dr. Kukenberger, who has a problem with schools named after white, male presidents, sound like the kind of school administrator you could trust to hold the line against CRT?
Next, you have to ask yourself, “How typical is Dr. Kukenberger?” Did the Melrose School Committee hire a total fringe radical to lead their school district?
If the answer is yes, why? If the answer is “no,” it means that Dr. K is no outlier and is more the norm than the exception among public school administrators. It’s one way or the other.
Either way, the prospects are frightening.
