The Pandemic Begins: Fear, Chaos & The School Shutdown That Changed Everything

March 2020: The moment everything started unraveling 🧵

This is the real, unfiltered story of how the COVID-19 pandemic hit the education system—and how power, politics, and profit shaped the decisions that changed millions of lives.

• What really happened behind closed doors?
• Why did school leaders refuse to shut down—until they had no choice?
•Who was pulling the strings behind the scenes?

This is Season 2, Episode 1 of Unraveling Education, a deep dive into the chaos, corruption, and consequences of pandemic-era school decisions.

💬 Were you a student, teacher, or parent in early 2020? Drop your experience in the comments—I want to hear YOUR story.

#PandemicSchoolClosures #EducationCorruption

To start at the beginning of these "Storytimes", the linear re-telliing from my perspective, watch "Diary of a New School Board Trustee"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtFWanCqsEU&t=3s

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Transcript

Look, start taking down the notes of what's happening right now and let's look back on this five years from today. 

I heard you loud and cleared Dr. Young, 

future Trustee Ford of five years later, reporting for duty this season on unraveling education, a global pandemic, sinister agendas, money grabs, leaked emails, unhinged board meeting.

Evil superintendents failed leadership, community activism, amateur editing, way too many bad words, cats, and a whole lot of shit they never wanted you to know. The new season begins right now. Hello? Is this thing on?

I'm Danielle Ford, former trustee of the Clark County School District, the fifth largest in the country, where I spent four years pulling at loose threads and uncovering what was really happening behind the scenes. 

Now I'm a newly elected member of the Nevada Board of Education, which means that instead of just exposing dysfunction in one school district, I have a front row seat to how education policies are being made at the state level.

But don't get it twisted. This podcast is completely independent of my role on the state board. What I say here is based on my own experience, my own research, and my own perspective.

And if you think that Season one uncovered some shocking truths, just wait. Because what happened in 2020 wasn't just a crisis, it was an opportunity and certain people made sure to take full advantage of it. 

This season, we're going deep into the pandemic era. The school closures, the fear, the power grabs the policies that weren't about public health, but about control.

The players who made their moves, while the rest of us were distracted,

some of what I discovered back then didn't make sense to me at the time, but now the full picture is clear and once you see it, you can't unsee it.

The last story time episode left off in late 2019 after attending some conferences that on the surface were about school board governance, but what I saw was something else entirely. It was a network.

Superintendents, governance coaches think tanks all hitting the same message that elected school boards are a problem. The real power should be in the hands of the superintendent with as few checks and balances as possible.

At the time, I saw the pieces, but I didn't fully understand how they fit together. Then the pandemic hit and suddenly everything that they had been pushing for started happening right in front of me.

At the end of 2019, there was also another major event that happened. Uh, it was involving the allocation of half a billion dollars and the dismantling of a well loved successful school, global high school. Uh, but I'm going to skip that for now, and I'm gonna circle back, not because it's unimportant, but because it only fully made sense to me after seeing how things played out during Covid.

 We'll thoroughly cover those events in this episode, and the upcoming episodes, and then we are going to return to Global High School with all the necessary context.

 Unraveling Education is an independent podcast, which means that it's entirely funded by people like you who want to support this work.

If you want to help keep these episodes coming, please consider sponsoring at unravelingeducation.com slash sponsor. You can also support by subscribing on YouTube, apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. 

And if you want more people to hear this episode, uh, really quick, hit share and post it wherever you social media the most.

Okay. Before we get into it, I want to lay down a couple disclaimers because this era, these episodes, they're messy. 

First off, this is my story, not yours. Not someone else's mine. I am the protagonist here in some people's stories I'm the villain in some people's, I'm a side character or I don't exist at all. That's just how stories work. The cast of characters in my story is huge, especially when we get into the reopening plans and the community group, if you emailed me, you gave input, you helped behind the scenes or played any role in this, and if it feels like I'm not mentioning you, please don't think that I take that lightly or that I don't wanna give credit, it's because I really can only tell this story from my perspective. I can't tell your story for you.

I'm not going to assume intent. I won't speak for you because if I did, I couldn't guarantee that it would be true. And I want to be able to promise everybody that what I am telling here is true because it's my truth. My truth might not match yours. People remember things differently. People interpret things differently, and that's okay.

So what I'm getting at is if you lived through this, and you have your own story to tell about this timeframe, I encourage you to tell it whether that's in a journal, for an audience or in the YouTube comments of this episode, please just express it. Because one thing that I do know for sure is that everyone experienced some level of trauma during this time, and self-expression is the cure.

 Also, I'm not going to go too deep into the virus itself. I will share my opinions. I'll explain why I supported what I did at the time, and I still stand by every single stance that I took.

But this is not a story about the pandemic. This is a story about the response to the pandemic, the opportunist who took full advantage of the crisis and the lasting impact that it had on the education system. I'm not a virologist, but neither were most of the experts that we were supposed to be listening to.

We will get to that

by February, 2020. Other countries were shutting down. I knew that things were getting serious when Dr. Linda Young, who always attends the Olympics, was in disbelief that they canceled it. Her concern made me really start paying attention, and most people at that time were still joking about it.

By early March, the board had been getting barely any updates on COVID-19. It was extremely frustrating to have literally no answers for anyone while the entire world was panicking.

I was very worried that we were walking into a disaster and that nobody at the top seemed to care.

If you're wondering how Jara responded to the growing panic over a contagious and deadly virus, it was that he added a discussion item to the agenda of the already scheduled March 12th, 2020 board meeting. That's it. No emergency meeting, no special briefing. Um, just a regular board meeting where we would just talk about it.

By March 11th, uh, the day before that meeting, everything was moving very fast. Entire school districts and cities were shutting down countries that were just a couple weeks ahead of us, uh, in the outbreak were going into full lockdowns. No one really knew how the virus spread, but it was clear that waiting too long to act was going to be a disaster.

And yet, instead of making any real decisions, Jara was planning to pack the entire school board, his cabinet central administrators, public health officials, teachers from dozens of schools, parents media, and anyone from the public who wanted to speak into a single poorly ventilated room to discuss a deadly virus that we still didn't fully understand.

I emailed Jara immediately requesting that we cancel the in-person meeting and hold it virtually instead. I also included some key points that I felt we needed to discuss. Here's what my email said.

Superintendent Jara. I'd like to share my thoughts regarding the Covid to 19 issue. We should cancel our board meeting tomorrow night. I suggest setting it up for everyone to attend virtually and reschedule as soon as possible. I go into the fact that CCSD has a history of not reacting appropriately and preventatively, and instead, after it's too late reacting impulsively and excessively. I say that I want all the trustees to be included in all future discussions and planning around Covid 19. I say we need to remove any punishments for our employees for using sick leave and remove the rule that if teachers use more than five days, they lose their personal days. We need to start allowing parents to keep their kids home without consequences if they choose to.

And we need to think about supporting families during the transition time, if it happens that we have to close down schools, I suggest I say one idea is keeping some schools open and a safe key like style for students who aren't showing symptoms and whose parents still have to work. I say the wise thing to do is canceled tomorrow's meeting, but if it's still on, I will be participating via phone

and look regardless of opinions. At this point in time, we didn't know anything. Okay. And ignoring all the information that we had and just moving forward with barely any information was objectively reckless and stupid.

But reckless and stupid was very on brand for Jara and most of the board. So really nothing that unfolded during the pandemic or in these next episodes should come as a surprise to anybody. 

Here's what Jara had to say back. 

Good morning. Trustee Ford, the experts do not feel that canceling the board meeting is warranted at this time as superintendent. It is not within my role and responsibility to cancel publicly scheduled board meetings. That is the role of the president of the board, Ms.

Lola Brooks.

Then he goes on to say that he's been working around the clock with all the experts and blah, blah, blah, blah. to remind everybody, this is March 12th when everything was crazy and countries were closing and they just didn't think it was warranted to close. Okay.

I'm getting a million questions about it from everybody. So I posted an update about this on my Facebook page, when I say that the district was not communicating with the community, I mean it was zero, no updates, there was no clarity, just silence.

I didn't have all the answers either, but at the very least, I felt like I could keep people informed about what I was doing or what I was trying to do.

All right. March 12th, 2020. It's the meeting that everyone has been waiting for. The district was finally being forced to address covid. It is the most well attended board meeting I had ever seen at this point. If there was ever going to be a plan, this was the moment everyone was waiting for it. Everyone who was anyone was there.

Well, everyone except me while they packed into a poorly ventilated room to discuss a virus that we still didn't fully understand, I was eating Thai food from my bed.

If not for the, you know, deadly pandemic, I would've been living my best life. I called into the meeting, which by the way was always an option and common practice for board members to do, and I still cannot believe that I was the only one who thought it was a good idea at this point to call into this meeting.

So first, we are informed that earlier in the day, the governor declared a state of emergency. Everything is shifting by the hour. It's unpredictable. But despite that CCSD reassures us that the Southern Nevada Health District doesn't think it's emergence enough to close schools,

Jara references a handful of school districts that are still open. He insists that he won't shut down schools without a plan in place. 

And apparently before he makes that decision, he's going to need data proving that the virus can spread in schools, for example, he suggests studying how students interact at lunchtime by observing the cafeterias to determine risk. Yes, studying the cafeterias. Mm-hmm. Now here's a picture of a standard CCSD high school at lunch, by the way. 

If you are listening on an audio platform, kids are packed in like sardines. And now let me play for you what most of the board was focused on as their solution to the deadly pandemic hand washing and sanitation.

I take this very seriously, but the flu is very serious. The fact that many people are killed in car accidents every day are, is very serious, and there are things that individuals can do to make as many of those chances go away as possible. is your first defense on this, and it doesn't even need to be antimicrobial soap, just soap.

That and knowing how long and how to wash your hands. So it may be one of those things that if we have a very old, probably 1950s movie on hand washing, maybe we could utilize that for all of our classrooms. As a quick reminder for our staff and children, I find it to be, at this time, given the facts that we have to use the most.

Hygienic protocols that we can to continue to keep our schools a safe environment where we can control it, and also communicate with our parents to help them be educated on good hygiene practices and those basics that can be done cheaply and, um, often, and it, it, it, it's just good practice that will serve them throughout their life as far as being healthy.

Oh, and they say, since they know that a lot of CCSD schools don't even have soap, we could solve that by asking parents to donate whatever random cleaning supplies they have under their sinks.

And just for funsies, because this is hilarious, I have to show it to you. Here is teacher, Sarah Comroe's public comments and feelings about that. 

If one more person tells me to wash my hands. I am going to lose my mind completely.

 bro. When Sarah said that, I legit almost spit out my pineapple fried rice, 

of course, the only trustees, showing actual concern were me and the Lindas. Here are some things that they had to say.

First of all, this is an emergency. This is not to be taken lightly. I'm just saying to our people out there, you don't have to panic, but you do need to be diligent. This does spread, and it has no name other than, you know, COVID-19, but they don't know. I've been following this for eight weeks. As you, some of you may know, I, I'm an Olympic junkie planning on going to Tokyo for the.

2020 Olympic, we heard and canceled that out once I saw what was happening in Wuhan China. Okay? You need to give some space between you and other people because that's how this spreads. You all are doing a great job, but you don't know either. All the people at the state level and internationally, they don't know, so I'm not gonna even ask you those questions.

You just don't know, and nobody else does. I am gonna say that this is a learning opportunity. This is a opportunity for students and for staff and people to learn. I do feel we need to monitor this very carefully. I would be, and I'm very concerned about staff. I'm concerned about teachers in the classroom.

I'm concerned, and I am certainly concerned about, um, our substitute teachers who are trying to relieve, uh, teachers. We've gotta find a way I. To see what we can do to, um, expedite, make sure things are taken care of quickly. Uh, we, we can't lay back and wait until we kind of figure it all out. It's too late.

We've got to move this very quickly. And the, the, the vaccine is a year, a year to a year and a half out. Okay? This is not a short term process here. I don't think this is going to, um. Clean up in about two to three months. I don't, is my personal opinion, I think it will go, it will go underground a little bit during the summer and come back out with a full vengeance somewhere in September, October.

I truly do. That's my feeling about that. I'm even, I didn't even put my um, reservation in where I normally go to the Grand Cas for September. I didn't even put that in. I'm not getting on any planes. I'm not getting on planes, I'm not getting on buses. I'm not getting on any of those. I'm saying this is rather not to scare people.

Dangerous in all my experiences, it's very dangerous. My final comment is that, um, the sign of a good leader, and we hope we're good leaders. A sign of a good leader is how you respond in times of crisis. It's not so much of how you respond when things are going great, but how you respond in times of crisis.

This is a crisis. We're, we're, we're pulling it down a tad, but this is a major crisis. Uh, we are just at the tip of the iceberg on this, but if it goes all the way down, it's pretty broad.

 It sounds like What we are looking at, and that's what I wanna clarify, is that unless one of our students, our staff members, teachers gets infected. At that point is that then when they would then recommend to us that we close our schools? We dunno. So I don't, we don't know. So if I, if I can, if I can respond, I mean that's the conversation that we have with the Southern Department, Southern Health, Nevada Department of Health.

Um, in that conversation, when we look at. I would say one child in a school, when you really look at, and I'm, I'm glad you asked. Um, as I've had conversations with the five, the four or large school systems in the country, um, they have not, um, made it even close to make a decision to, to cancel schools for the various reasons that we've talked about here.

Mm-hmm. The normalcy of our children, the family, the impact to our, to our, our, our employees. Pay as well. So there's a whole comprehensive, um, look that we're, that we're taking into effect to make a decision. Mm-hmm. Schools were closed. How much notice would parents and the community be given? That's what I was gonna have.

Thank you. Do I have any kind, superintendent Jar timeline? Trustee CSOs? I mean, obviously once a decision is made, um, there's gonna, I'm gonna request that we have. Enough time to not only communicate to the community, but then also we share the plan in place that we have, not only in our policy, but then that we have enough time to respond, but then also to share the proper, um, communication to our families with a plan.

We don't have a timeline. Right. And I understand that, and that's why I preface that by saying, I don't know that you, I know you can't give a definitive line, but there's a lot of fear out there. And some of that fear is fed by not having the communication in an expeditious manner.

This meeting, I swear to you, I just, I honestly couldn't believe what I was hearing from most people. Nobody else could either. I was getting blown up with texts, like, what the fuck? Um, who is leading right now? Where are the grownups? What are we going to do? I kept waiting for somebody, anybody to take control of the conversation.

The health department Jara a district leader with some authority, but there was like literally nobody just silence. I had been obsessively following this for weeks, they should have been as well, but I figured, you know what?

Maybe they just need a little lesson about what is actually happening in the real world. So I give my whole spiel. I'm gonna play that clip for you. Um, and while you watch, go ahead and take a wild guess at how the superintendent and the majority of the board responded.

Trustee Ford, 

Thank you for the presentation that was given. Um, I do wish that there had been information included in the presentation about things like how this virus spreads, how it spread in other countries, and what we learned from other countries. The most important thing for us to do right now is to flatten the curve.

What that means is that the virus is going to touch every single person. People are saying it's just like the flu, you know, don't freak out. And that's relatively true because the virus itself is not the threat. The threat is everyone getting it at the same time. So Italy has completely closed down. Uh, doctors and nurses there are having to choose now who to save and who to let die.

And that is because they did not take appropriate measures quick enough to have a chance to flatten that curve. We can now learn from their mistakes. We've, you know, gotten a lot of information right now. I still, I don't feel like we have a set in stone plan. I don't think we're gonna get a set in stone plan in enough time, um, to make a difference.

And there really is no perfect solution. Um, you know, if we keep the schools open, then we risk the virus spreading throughout all the schools. Um. Right now in that, in that room, there are employees of at least 10 different schools, uh, at that board meeting. And I'm really hoping that nobody is carrying the virus because it could be carried into schools throughout the entire city by tomorrow, and nobody would show symptoms for a week.

And they, they would continue to infect more people and we're gonna have a situation like Italy. Uh, I had a parent reach out to me today, and this is what she said. She said, I'm paraphrasing, but. My husband is a doctor and he is treating people with the coronavirus every day. Then he comes home and he spends time with my kids who go to school the next day.

I want to keep my kids home to be safe, but I don't want them to get punished for it. So if we keep, if we were to close school completely, then we risk the virus spreading through the community. If we don't give any options for childcare, for working parents, then it will spread from kids, mostly teenagers going out in public instead of being at school.

That's actually exactly what happened with H one N one and why it spread. A lot of parents will also need to rely on home daycare, group daycare and or older relative to help with childcare for the little ones, which is gonna impact, uh, our elderly and. Sick quicker. Right. So, you know, I, I believe that we need to take action soon.

Like right now, that is a middle ground between those two things. And to me, it seems like the first step would be to allow parents to keep their kids home if they choose without facing consequences like bad grades and truancy. We have enough information right now to decide to take immediate action, and the fact that schools don't have cleaning supplies to me is reason enough to take action.

The fact that our substitutes don't have health insurance is reason enough to take action, and I don't think that we have any time to wait on this. We do not have time to study our cafeteria. Our cafeterias are already packed out out the door, standing room only. Um. I honestly, at this point, I really don't care about any expert's recommendations.

They're not in our schools. The experts are the ones who understand student behavior and who are watching the kids cross on each other. Okay? I suggest that the experts who are, don't recommend taking any action yet, go to a school, grab a desk and make that their office until they figure it out. And I guarantee you at that point that we would have a recommendation probably very quickly.

Um. On top of that, I, I believe that at right now, our responsibilities shifts now, especially now that we're in a student of emergency, um, from educating students to keeping them healthy. And so we all need to agree that safety will come before everything else, before grades, before star ratings, before the interest of the casinos and the business community.

And that means that if we have not yet figured out how to get food to students who need it, then we do not yet work on digital learning until that is helped. Um, it's, we do know, we do know that healthy children and healthy adults can carry the virus and inspect other people. Uh, especially the immune compromised.

And we are going to need to come together as a community right now. Declare that we don't want to learn from other country's mistakes and take care of our students, staff, and families during this time. We need to ensure that nobody is spreading the virus, that all students who get their only daily meal from the cafeteria are still eating and that all of our staff gets paid, which includes.

Our substitutes, our long term subs, and our vacancy subs, as well as support staff and any teachers or staff who are regularly, um, relying on extra duty pay. So, you know, the, the solution, the things that we. Are thinking about like, how can we make kids stay two feet apart and how are we gonna get them to school?

Should we use public transit? These are the wrong questions. The right questions are, how can we ensure that everybody stays healthy or as healthy? And how can we ensure that this virus spreads as slowly as possible, knowing that it will, but how can we slow it down? And what is the immediate action that we can take that's gonna get us closer to that result?

So that's where I am with it. I might wanna chime in a little bit later after I hear some other trustees, but, um, I think that we need to be more responsible and work collectively in the best interest of everyone's health. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you Trustee Ford.

All right, so you caught that part that I said about the real risk being people dying from regular things, right? Like we all heard me say that, right?

Well, if you guessed that Jara and the board responded with, Hey, thanks for that insightful, empathetic, forward thinking and thoroughly researched comment, trustee Ford. Let's talk more about that. Then you lose five points. If you guessed that they rolled their eyes and accused me of fearmongering, 10 points for you.

This meeting was very long and exhausting. even for those of us participating from the comfort of our beds with Thai food. I am skipping a lot, but the key takeaway is that Jara made it clear that schools were not closing anytime soon. And if that changed, the public would get plenty of notice.

By the way, if anybody ever wants to do a deep dive on pandemic governance, this meeting should be a case study. Every CCSD board meeting is archived on eduvision, so you can just Google CCSD eduvision and the meeting date, March 12th, 2020 to get the full story. to see the whole thing. That's like six hours long.

Oh, and by the way, that meeting was a Thursday night.

Oh my gosh. All right. So here, okay, so here's what Friday looked like.

The day after the board meeting, by morning, more and more schools across the country were announcing closures. It had officially hit the tipping point. Parents, teachers, staff, and students were flooding our inboxes, desperate for answers. If I had to summarize every email and message in one sentence, it would be okay.

We know Jara wants to study cafeterias and collect data before making decisions, but come the fuck on. This is unrealistic. We all know it's just a matter of time. Can we get some direction here?

Jara was getting the same emails. He knew that everybody was panicked. 

His response. Uh, he doubled down on his comments from the night before about not closing down. He sent a district wide email blasting it out to all staff and parents, reassuring them that schools would absolutely remain open, not, might stay open, not. We are monitoring the situation. Please stand by not we are preparing for multiple possibilities.

Nope. He said directly that closing schools wasn't even a possibility. There was nothing to prepare for. See you Monday.

Meanwhile, on the ground, principals and teachers knew that school closures were inevitable. They wanted to prepare. They wanted to make sure that students had what they needed in case schools shut down over the weekend. Jara was not just keeping schools open. He was actively preventing them from preparing for closure.

Jara would tell his deputy, who then told the regionals, who told the associates, who told the principals, who told the educators and the staff, do not prepare.

No fear mongering, no. Taking materials home just in case. No. Sending books or Chromebooks home with students. No. Discussing what might happen. Everything was to remain business as usual. If a principal or a teacher did try to prepare, they were going to be in trouble. Monday was going to be a normal school day or else,

oh, and also, while Jara was forcing everybody else to keep working, he was canceling his own committee meetings and community events for the next several weeks. By Midday Friday, the emails and messages weren't stopping. They were getting worse and worse.

Teachers, staff and admin were contacting us, confidentially because they didn't feel safe speaking out. Parents were freaking out, Even the students saw through the bullshit, they knew the severity of what was happening. They had more empathy and more common sense than most of our district leadership. One student, a high schooler, I wish I knew, uh, his name so that I could give him credit. Made a video that summed up Jara's entire attitude in 30 seconds.

And obviously. You have to see it.

Hello there. I'm the superintendent, Jesus Jara here at CCSD. Safety is our number one priority to us. Not your kids personally. Fuck your kids. See, we will have meetings that we'll cancel 'cause of coronavirus. However, your school will be open. Why? Fuck you. That's why. Here at CCSD, our motto is, fuck these kids.

And hopefully we strive for that today. I appreciate you for your understanding. Thank you.

That kid, that kid's going places.

 At this point I was getting frequent updates behind the scenes. All of the trustees were. The problem is that we were being told not to share the information with the public. I was literally arguing with Jara saying, let teachers and staff stay home if they don't feel safe.

At least let parents make the choice for their kids to keep them home without repercussions. At the very least. Could you could CCSD issue some kind of update answer still, no, not the right move. That's not necessary yet. I disagreed. So I started posting,

I said. On March 13th, I'm choosing to keep my kids home from school starting on Monday. As a parent, I have a responsibility to do what's right for my family. As a citizen, I have a responsibility to do what's right for everyone else. I'm choosing to be proactive and be part of the solution instead of the problem.

And I'm not waiting on an okay from the school district, the state, the Wizard of Oz, or anyone else,

even the conservative parent groups, many of whom later were very opposed to distance learning. They were at that point thanking me for standing up for parents and parents' choice. Meanwhile, CCSD was pretending like nothing was even happening.

And this was still Friday. We were about to hit the weekend and shit was about to get even wilder.

So then that night I get an invitation to a meeting with the Clark County Commissioners, the health department, and other key decision makers, which was scheduled for the next day on Saturday. I email Jara immediately.

I say, I would like to participate in the meeting tomorrow about COVID-19, but I do not feel comfortable attending the meeting in person. I really don't see how corralling over a dozen district leaders and health experts into a small room during a deadly virus outbreak to discuss, said deadly virus outbreak.

Sounds like a good idea to anyone, but I digress. I would like to call in or video to participate in real time. Does the location have conferencing abilities? If so, I'd like to utilize that. If not, I'd like someone to bring their laptop so I can participate via Zoom. I can set up the virtual meeting if needed.

If no one can bring their laptop, a cell phone will work. If recording is a concern, I'm happy to sign something saying I will not record. Please let me know if these accommodations can be made so that I can participate and represent my constituents, who elected me to be their voice in situations like this.

feel like I gave a lot of options there. Right. Okay. He does not respond. Um, the next morning, I text him and I say, did you receive my email about attending? Virtually his response no, there is not a possibility to attend virtually. Then I say, of course. Okay, I'm gonna remember that next week when all of our leaders who refuse to practice social distancing are all under quarantine.

Here's an article to share with the health experts. And then I sent him a Diane Ravitch, , article that had actual data and science in it.

So after that meeting, Jara calls me with an update and I document everything he says verbatim. The second that we hang up, I grab my phone and I call Channel 13. At this point, I'm thinking more people than just my Facebook followers need to hear what Jara just told me. And honestly, I should not even be doing this.

Like, I was already juggling my role as a trustee, trying to engage with my constituents, trying to inform the public as much as possible, trying to communicate what's happening inside CCSD.

Like all these things that are not my job, but somehow I'm the only one doing them.

So anyway, I call the news, and I'm thinking like, if I have information that impacts the entire community, I'm not just gonna bury it on my personal or trustee Facebook page. We do the interview, I say exactly what I wanna say. I'm thinking like, cool, I said it. They're gonna do their job of letting everyone know the update.

I tell people on Facebook, you know, there's something important to watch the news for at 11 o'clock. I'm like wiping my hands of it. I sit down to watch it. And of course, none of the important things that I said made it into the final cut. They clipped out a tiny segment of what I said and threw it into a very generic COVID-19 local response package.

This was not the first time that happened, and it would not be the last time that the news let me down. It is why I still do news interviews, but I don't trust some of these news networks farther than I could throw them. So I think, fine, I'll post it myself. Uh, since the news completely failed me, I posted the full conversation that I had with Jara that night, like at midnight and I went to bed.

Okay. So what was that conversation? First of all, every conversation that Jara has would always begin with. This was confidential. Whether there was actually any legal reason for anything to be confidential, I was not sure, but I was also trying to toe the line and avoid legal issues. 

But also by this point in time, I was just like so frustrated, just like whole ass infuriated. I was not about to play games with wording. I wasn't gonna try to explain, you know, what he said in a vague way. 

I'm gonna read that conversation for you.

This is literally verbatim. Okay. Little cat, you wanna come up here? I wanna sit right here? Mm-hmm. My little cat. Okay. You sit right? Okay. Okay. Goodbye.

She just wanted to disrupt me. Okay. Here's literally what he said to me, literally word for word in that conversation. Jara says, we had meetings all day and schools will remain open because the health experts think the virus is low risk and there's no reason to close schools right now. It's contained.

And the chief health doctor assures me that there's no threat of healthy students getting it or carrying it. I say, that's crap, but that's not true. Jara says, I'm following his opinion. I didn't go to medical school. I say, obviously neither did that guy. Healthy people absolutely can spread it. Jara says, well, that's who advice I'm listening to.

I say, what's his name again? Jara says, Dr. Lageun, he's the chief of the Southern Nevada Health District and the CEO of UMC was there too. And he agrees with him. I say, so we are all waiting on this one person to decide that schools aren't safe before closing. He says, yes. I say, can't the governor override that guy's opinion and close the schools?

what does Sisolak think about this? Jara says, Sisolak is not going to make any recommendations to close schools. And he's following my lead. I say, so the governor is following your lead and you're following Dr. Lageun's lead, which means that the person, everyone should put pressure on is him. I say, okay, well this is stupid and I'm going to call the news and give an interview. And Jara says, okay. Then he continues, we're still working on a plan to ensure that test scores are, and then I cut him off. Oh my God, I don't care about test scores at all.

Test scores don't matter at right now. Seriously, are you s Oh my God, I actually am so frustrated and I don't even wanna talk to you right now, like at all. I'm just, I don't even wanna talk to you. I'm so, I don't wanna talk to you. Goodbye. That was our conversation.

first thing in the morning after I had posted that conversation. My phone rings.

It's a number that I don't recognize. And normally I never answer unknown numbers, but these were drastic times. I say Hello. It's a representative from Governor Steve Sisolak's office.

They tell me that they saw my Facebook post, and the governor wants to confirm that what I posted was true. 

And listen, I swear to you that I did not try to stir up the drama between Jara and the governor, but once I realized I was holding the spoon, I may have stirred just a little bit faster.

So they tell me before Governor Sisolak takes any action, he wants to confirm with you that what Jara said is actually true, that the governor is waiting on Ja

I'm like, oh, he sure did. He sure did. I'm like, I wrote it down exactly as he was saying it. I swear on my life, I swear on my dog. I would not just make that up. I would never swear on my dog. he can FaceTime me right now if he wants to.

I will tell the governor to his face that it's true. The person on the other end pauses for a second and he goes, okay, that is all that we needed to hear. I'm like, wait, so like, what are you gonna do? They respond. They're keeping calm to the point. The governor is prepared to handle the situation and we will be calling a press conference soon. I'm like, oh, snap, okay. Jara's gonna be so pissed.

I am impatiently waiting for what is about to go down.

Sisolak's office puts out a quick, press release, which is hilarious once you know the backstory. It's a seemingly standard note and then a final line that says, superintendent Jara will also be in attendance. Like it might have, well as ended with, 'cause I'm the boss. 

Sisolak holds the press conference. And now everybody knows that schools, all Nevada schools are officially closed.

March 17th, 2020, a Tuesday. 

Jara's had some time, you know, to reflect, to process, to really think through any mistakes that may have been made. receive an email that has an attachment, which is a official memo, an official CCSD memo on official CCSD letterhead. oh, fancy. What did I do to deserve this red carpet treatment?

Let's take a peek. Oh, shock of all shocks. Jara blames me for causing chaos. Yeah, it's me. Hi. I'm the problem. It's me, Not the guy who, uh, absolutely refused to prepare for closures, not the guy telling principals that they would be in trouble for planning ahead. Not the guy who literally said the governor was waiting on his direction. Nope, it's me. I'm the bad guy for saying out loud the bad things that Jara was actually doing.

So we're gonna read that entire memo together as well as my response to Jara, because fuck him very much.

Okay. You ready for this? This is an official superintendent interoffice memorandum directed to me as Superintendent of schools in Clark County and Chief Executive Officer. I am responsible for the management and care of 320,000 students and 42,000 employees in our organization. Since my arrival, I have worked hard to build a collaborative relationship with the Board of Trustees in order to improve student achievement for all of our students.

The past 10 days have been very intense in Clark County, dealing with a worldwide unprecedented virus as superintendent. I serve as the education member of the regional policy group representing the interests of our students, employees, and families. This group is also responsible for the health and welfare of the entire community, representing over 2 million citizens in Clark County.

My duty to keep trustees informed and maintain a professional and collaborative relationship is critical for the success of our students. Unfortunately, in the last five days in the performance of your official duties, you decided to act on your own and govern via social media, Twitter, and Facebook during one of the most difficult and trying times in our country, in a time when community leaders are needed to demonstrate calm and professional leadership.

In my opinion, you chose to act inappropriately by publicizing our sensitive private conversations on social media without my knowledge or consent. This is a clear violation of trust and demonstrates unprofessionalism as an elected official because of your conduct, and in an effort to maintain a professional working relationship with you effective immediately.

I am communicating with you as follows, via email to conduct official Clark County School District Business. Our one-on-one meetings will be in person and include either the board president or board counsel to serve as a witness. My assistant will make the necessary arrangements. Please do not hesitate to contact my office if you have questions.

Cc Lola Brooks, president Board of Trustees, Maryanne Miller, board Counsel. 

Hmm. So fancy. This is the fanciest thing Jara ever gave me. Okay, 

here's my response to Superintendent Jara. Superintendent Jara. I'm writing you as an individual trustee, an elected official, and one of your seven bosses.

I think your idea to have us communicate only with an eyewitness is a fabulous idea. In fact, if you recall, it was originally proposed by me. There have been several He said. She said, situations that have occurred since coming onto the board and have continued to happen. In my submission for your evaluation, I cited that you have continually lied to the trustees you seem to only share information that is pertinent to furthering your agenda regardless on the effects of others.

There have been many instances over the past year that led me to requesting a board liaison or a witness present during our one-on-one meetings. You declined stating that you would not allow it. I'm happy you figured out a way to make this happen. I'll be sure to keep this in mind during your upcoming evaluation onto the current situation.

I feel that your lack of action put our 320,000 students, 42,000 employees, and all 2 million residents of Clark County and the city of Las Vegas at risk. I have no regrets with the actions I took, and I will continue to keep the public informed as much as I can if I think their health and safety is being jeopardized.

I feel the group trusted to make decisions was not acting timely nor in the best interest of public health. Furthermore, I believe if I did not take the actions I took, that same group of people, including yourself, would have allowed our schools to remain open longer, thus exposing not only our students, but all of Clark County and Las Vegas to COVID-19.

If there's an obvious pattern here, you make poor decisions and then accuse others of acting unprofessionally. You may recall these instances. Open Schools, open doors, the termination of the dean's position. Title one changes questionable use of taxpayer funds for your personal wellness, the snow day and presently, the handling of close of closing schools related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A decision that literally risks the lives of my constituents in the future. Don't call out my perceived wrongdoing in a memo unless you first address your behavior. That's called gaslighting. In conclusion, thank you for going forward with the solution that I presented months ago, late in usual fashion.

There are other topics that I suggested in the past that would've been helpful in this situation had they not been ignored completely, including. Or what, where was I? I've offered many times to help CCSD communicate better and be more transparent through the use of social media. I requested an agenda item over a year ago to find options to hold virtual meetings and get public comments submitted via video, which was turned down.

These appear to be common sense now and should be revisited at our next one-on-one meeting with our liaison present. Regarding the liaison. I feel it should not be a member of the board as that would be irresponsible with respect to the open meeting law.

On a separate note, I'm not sure where you found the time to write a memo while we're in the middle of a deadly virus outbreak. Get back to work. Danielle Ford Clerk, board of school trustees cc, the president of board of Trustees, board council and social media. Obviously I CC'd all of social media. Do you guys even know me at all?

So I posted that on my Facebook page. Like I said, fuck him very much. So this became a recurring theme for Jara. Just continued to, it's why I created the Jara Chronicles separately and linearly so that no matter. What point in time that we are at in these story time episodes, we can always look back and reference his nonsense that was coinciding.

And trust me, there was much more nonsense to come.

So now schools are officially closed and because of Jara's refusal to let anyone prepare, teachers did not have their materials. Kids left their Chromebooks and supplies at school and no one had a plan to stay in contact with students or parents. Now we had 70,000 students who were completely unreachable.

It was heartbreaking. Everybody in the community was scrambling trying to figure out how to help. Meanwhile, I kept on pointing out the obvious. Jara did this. He was the one who actively blocked preparations.

He was the one who told principals not to plan ahead. He was the reason that so many students and families were now left in limbo. And I kept saying, shouldn't he be held accountable for that? Shouldn't we at least ask whether he was capable of leading us through this? But nobody, at least not with influence, wanted to have that conversation. In fact, the business community still had his back and they used their networks to paint him as the superintendent who was doing everything that he could for kids.

But hey, on the bright side. There had been a bracket being passed around as to which district would be the last to close, and we won. Yay. 

CCSD took first place for being the largest district in the country to still be open. New York City, one of the biggest covid epicenters in the world came in second. I remember staring at that bracket thinking there's a common thread here.

I already had a suspicion about what it was. See at the same time that all of this was unfolding, I was in deep research mode trying to figure out if Jara was part of a large network of superintendents. I had some theories, we will get into that in the next story time episode, 

all right. Back to, you know, the, uh, global pandemic that was happening, uh, while Jara was still stuck on, oh, we'll be back to normal and schools are gonna reopen as quickly as possible. Everything is normal. Nothing to see here. I was doing my own research. I was talking to peers, clients and contacts in other countries, watching how they're handling things.

I had already been working fully virtual for years, so I was, I was ahead of the curve on remote work, but even I could see that this shutdown was not going to be over anytime soon.

The school board was getting weekly updates, sometimes with emergency closed sessions in between them. Every time that we had a closed session, you know, I would tell them what was happening in other countries and they seriously did not know.

They would just, they, they weren't look, they weren't researching, they weren't doing anything. they're living in like a, I don't even know. It's crazy. At first, I would just share what I was seeing. You know, I'd say, Hey, Israel is doing this, New Zealand is doing this, and their response was always the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we are listening to the experts. We're listening to the health professionals. So then I switched strategies and instead of just telling them what was happening, I started calling them out. I would say like, what are your thoughts on what's happening in Italy? Silence because they did not know. And instead of saying, we don't know, do you know? Or even maybe we should research that they would just respond with fear mongering isn't helpful.

O and BTWs, uh, when I say they, I mean the majority of the board in Jara, I'm not referring to any of Jara's staff, from day one, Jara's staff was not allowed to have their own opinions. They had to follow the exact talking points that Jara gave them. I knew this. It's just what it is, what it, what it was.

Meanwhile, the Lindas and I were fully aligned. We were pushing back as hard as we could. and this was when Danielle and the Lindas, which is what, you know, I would've named us if we were in a girl band, really began to form and we were about to drop some absolute bangers.

Okay, so I'm gonna share an event from this time that haunts me to this day. Um,

It's one of those things that just like randomly pops in my head and just wrecks me,

Like I legit wake up in the middle of the night over this, filled with shame, replaying this over and over again, and listen, I don't have a lot of these moments. Okay

ADHD is basically a built-in defense mechanism. Normally. Normally I either forget that something happened or I just don't care. But this one, this one has stuck. It happened during a virtual meeting with a bunch of CCSD staff.

Um, this was back when nobody knew how covid spread This was like, the questions were is it airborne? Is it on surfaces? Can it be transmitted through paper? We don't know. Nobody had any answers. And then I went full. Danielle knows it all mode, you know the mode in my mind, I was about to impress them with my tech skills, with my ahead of the curve virtual expertise, my elite introverting abilities. 

First, I explained that I have been running my business and teaching marketing virtually for years. I offered to help them, um, to set up Zoom or teach them Google Hangouts. 

 Then I casually mention that I have been using this really cool new app called Instacart for months. and it was at that time very new and cool then. And then I dropped my big flex I said, and I've even been getting my mail delivered. They laughed, But they didn't laugh in the like, oh, whoa, that's so cool. Way that I expected, it was more like a nervous laughter.

It it And I must have looked confused because suddenly the energy got weird. Like very awkward, very uncomfortable, weird. In my head I was like, okay. That was strange, hours later, I'm just, you know, tinkering around the house and then it hits me.

Did I brag about getting my mail delivered?

What I meant to say? was that I had been getting my mail delivered virtually.

like I had a service that scanned and digitized my physical mail, emailed it to me, and then alerted me if anything urgent came in.

That's what I was trying to flex about. But no, what I actually said to a group of overwhelmed educators in the middle of a crisis, a pandemic, was that I was receiving mail like every other single person was proudly. So when I realized that, I just was like. You know what? No, I'm not going to think about that. I am not gonna think about that for one more second. I know my brain, it is going to just like forget it, just like it does with everything else that I don't intentionally try to store That strategy failed me. To this day. I think about that instance more than I think about the things that I should be thinking about.

I remember exactly what was said. I remember exactly how I said it. I can remember expressions, but I can only remember like a couple of faces in that meeting. And there were a lot of people.

and then after that, anytime that I like talked to anybody from CCSD Central for like years, I'd be internally screaming like, were you there? Are you one of them? Do you remember me saying that?

So if anybody from that call happens to be watching or listening to this, I want you to know that I, I do not think that I'm important because I get my mail delivered. I really, I just, I need you to know that.

All of these internal CCSD meetings felt like crazy land. It was like I was living in two different, two completely different realities. In one world reality, the information was clear. Schools were shutting down for an extended period. Other places were already preparing long-term, rolling out distance learning initiatives, setting up food and supply distribution plans, and adapting for the inevitable.

And then there was CCSD land in CCSD land. Any mention of schools possibly not reopening was met with blank stares or just completely ignored CCSD land was the land where Jara and all of the health experts in the health district absolutely refused to acknowledge the possibility of any long-term closure.

At this point. We still did not know enough about what we were dealing with, so logically. we should have been planning, at least at a minimum, for every single possibility that might arise.

But that was not happening. It was very clear to me that this group had a reason for wanting schools to open as soon as possible.

Now, to be fair, there are valid reasons for wanting schools to open, don't get me wrong here.

many families rely on schools as childcare. Students need socialization. Schools provide meals for kids who don't have any food at home. educators are often the first to notice signs of child abuse.

Also, academics are important, you know, like all of these things are real and important concerns,

gonna save you the trouble right now of trying to figure this out as we go through these episodes, okay? because those valid reasons, those reasons are not the reasons that we're driving the decisions.

The people who were making all the calls would often cite those reasons, but they were just using them as a shield because they knew that if they said anything about the wellbeing of children, that they would get public support, 

The real reason is that they don't want their contracts and their deals disrupted.

Anything that isn't business as usual is a threat to them. And I know a lot of people throw around the word them and then move on to the next thing without explaining who they are or who them is. Well, there are a lot of thems, let's break it down.

some of the thems are education companies, corporations, , and consultants with huge contracts with CCSD for instance, testing companies that have made hundreds of millions of dollars off of CCSD companies, whose biggest threat is educators actually evaluating and grading students on their own. Because think about it. If teachers were able to assess student learning, then why would we need to buy all of their assessments? There's the gas companies that rely on CCSD spending millions in fuel for school buses, vendors that supply everyday products and services to keep schools running.

if schools shut down or stay shut down, then they lose a lot of money

and in Las Vegas where the entire economy is built on tourism, the hotels and big businesses depend on their employees to keep the operations running. And those employees rely on schools for childcare. and I don't mean small businesses, small businesses, I believe could have adapted if they were given the opportunity to like work with their employees and figure out alternative education solutions during the pandemic.

Communities will work together. Right? But big businesses, they don't adapt. They control.

And to be very, very clear, big business only pretends to be on the same side as small business. They're not.

 And this is where things really started to make sense for me

because this whole time, while we were all waiting, always waiting, waiting for the next update, whatever, for the Southern Nevada Health Authority to give us direction. Should we close schools? Should we open schools? Should we stay closed? Should we rush opening while we're waiting for leadership and direction?

I learned something very interesting. Most of the people that were on the board of the Southern Nevada Health Authority were also the CEOs and executives from the hotel industry and Tourism Authority and the leaders of the local Chamber of Commerce. So yeah. the same exact people who needed schools to be open to keep their businesses running were the same ones that we were waiting on to tell us whether it was safe to open or not.

Look, I'm gonna say it. Okay. Regardless of personal opinions on school closures, shutdowns, reopening, whatever, whatever, there's one cold, hard fact that cannot be ignored. The Las Vegas business sector's obsession with keeping schools open and reopening never had anything to do with kids. It was purely about money.

And over the next few episodes, I'm going to prove it to you.

So by mid-April, uh, things had started to settle into the new We were doing distance learning, they called it, but yet a lot of our kids were not connected. There was no real plan. oh, and by the way, Jara told all educators and principals not to teach any new information. He called it equity. He said that if some kids weren't getting education, then our, the other kids that are connected shouldn't get it. Either. That is not equity. We will have more conversations about that in the future.

There's just so many things Jara failed at that. It's just, it's really hard to keep track of it all. But we're gonna, okay,

so anyway, we're in the new normal, schools are closed. The community was doing its best to adapt. And nationwide. The general sentiment was teachers are heroes. Please take my kids back. We are so sorry we didn't appreciate you

but while the public was adjusting and praising educators behind the scenes, something else was happening. This was when they first started to use the crisis as an opportunity.

I mean by outright attempting to steal authority without discussion, without transparency, and just hoping that nobody would notice until it was too late. Let me explain. On the April 16th CCSD Board of Trustees meeting agenda, among other items was a proposal that if passed, would have given superintendent Jara, uh, unilateral emergency powers to make all decisions, spending decisions without board approval.

Basically, it would've completely stripped the board of all of its oversight authority. If it sounds familiar and you don't live in Nevada, it might be because they did this in a lot of school districts. The same exact playbook was used in other large districts across the country.

I. It was like someone somewhere sent out a memo to superintendents nationwide. Use this emergency to consolidate power, push it through under the radar if anyone resists, say it's for safety, 

please understand that although it was the new normal, this was not normal. Even the format that the resolution used was weird,

It completely lacked the standard, header and formatting and date that would always come with a typical board resolution, there were lines for all seven trustees signatures to be included, even though that was completely unnecessary. Normally only the board president and the clerk sign official documents per NRS and contracts.

I was the clerk at that time. There was never anything that needed all seven signatures ever.

At the meeting, uh, president Brooks, who her name was on it, and who it appeared to be, brought from.

When asked about it, she admitted that she had never seen it before.

So if it didn't come from Lola, where did it come from? If it wasn't formatted for CCSD, who, who wrote it and formatted it, it sure as hell didn't come from the normal channels. The logical conclusion is that Jara was behind it. Once I realized that, I started thinking, if they're doing this in CCSD, they're doing it in other places.

This was not just a CCSD problem. This was a coordinated effort.

but here's where things didn't go according to plan for them, despite how they tried to slide this in quietly, uh, people noticed and people fought back. 

The community was outraged. Everyone was flooding the board with emails, comments, and calls. Specifically the unions were upset because part of it would give, Jara complete control of all negotiations without board approval. they ended up removing that portion of it when the meeting started, but then they wanted still, you know, Lola and Jara and our attorney wanted still the board to give complete purchasing power and decision making power to Jara during the crisis because it was a crisis.

They said,

and this ended up not passing, I'm gonna tell you what happened, for it to not pass, but even though it didn't pass, they kept trying things like this the entire time. We'll talk more about that because we're just at the very beginning right now. But this was not the first attempt to take away the board's power.

This was only their first practice try

over the next several months. They would re-strategize, reword, and attempt multiple times to strip power away from the board and the public, and then in some cases they succeeded.

this was like a professional. Handling. this was like masterminding But let me be clear. not everybody who was making these shady moves was operating at that same level of thinking. Some were strategic, some were opportunistic, and some were Trustee Deanna Wright, 

deanna Wright is one of those people that after meeting and talking to her, you think, wow, that lady could hide her own Easter eggs. 

 You see what happened is all of the board members thankfully had concerns with the resolution and said, we don't, we don't want to do this. There's no reason for this. But then Trustee Deanna Wright chimed in. Explained that yes, she also had some concerns with the resolution as presented, but, uh, she had a suggestion for a fix.

Her brilliant fix was instead of outright giving Jara full authority as, I can't even say it without, I can't even keep a straight face, it's so fucking stupid. 

Her Brilliant fix was that instead of outright saying that we give Jara full authority, what we can do is she suggests that we tweak the wording Jara would automatically be given full authority. Only if four or more trustees became incapacitated at the same time. Ma'am, I quickly chimed in to say, and I quote myself. Um, that doesn't make me feel much better.

If we did that, if we agreed that Jara can have full authority, only if four of us are incapacitated, I would be sleeping with one eye open. Thankfully, that didn't pass. My goodness. 

Now, at that moment, teachers were still being praised. Parents and communities were still grateful for the work that they're doing. People were saying, educators are heroes.

we should have appreciated them more. We will never, ever take teachers for granted again. 

I actually had hope at this time. You guys, like I did. If you look back on my Facebook, there's a lot of hopeful memes. you know, I was thinking this could be a turning point. Education might finally start being valued. Maybe teachers will finally get the respect and the support that they deserve.

 We all know by now that I was wrong. It did not take long at all for the narrative to shift 

for the people that everybody was calling heroes, to suddenly become expendable and villainized to witness the way that teachers are being treated now is just beyond disappointing. I don't really have any more words for it. Just disappointing. 

I'm going to play for you, um, my comments from that April 16th meeting so that you can see how hopeful I was. And in the next story time episode, you'll witness me, basically have my hopes crushed.

I hope that when we plan for a new normal of teaching and learning that we can remember what mattered when everything was on fire, that we remember that it was our support staff who kept the district afloat, who maintained our investments in our building, who kept our students fed, um, that our teachers and our principals rose to the occasion, and they were able to push through a very steep technological learning curve and successfully make contact with over 250,000 students.

They had very, very little instruction, very little support, um, and they had to be creative and innovative to make this happen. So I really, I really, really hope that we remember later on when we're trying to figure out how to recover from this and how to support our students and our staff mentally, and how to close those achievement gaps that will be even larger, that we remember that we have the talent.

I hope that we can put more trust in our employees and that we open up seats at the table for anybody who wants to be part of that conversation. And I think that we should start including those people in the brainstorming and planning process for, you know, the new normal. We start including them like right now.

 First off? Do you remember what I had said over a month before in that March meeting about the threat not being the virus, but the real threat being, um, the strain on hospitals and the medical professionals, which could lead to people dying of non covid related things like not receiving their regular medical treatments?

Right. We, I said that sometimes it's not fun to be right. Um, it just so happens that a few days after this April meeting that we just talked about, where Superintendent Jara attempted to take the full authority from the board. My lifelong best friend since we were eight years old, died 

cause she was not able to get the medical treatment that she required to stay alive 

I could say many things about Courtney, but since, since we're going through this linearly, I think it makes sense that I will share, I guess, in Memorial. Um, what I wrote about her at that time in my Facebook post, 

fuck man. Okay.

She was my first business partner. Instead of using our hard-earned bare bucks to shop every year, we rented space for creative crafts at our elementary schools. Going to town day we were 10, and both planning to marry Jonathan Taylor Thomas. When we got into an argument to enact my revenge, I wrote Courtney Loves Corey, the boy that she hated, but who loved her on her JTT poster, and she punched me in the face and broke my glasses.

We made up five minutes later, she sometimes stayed the weekend with me at my grandma's house. When we got older, Courtney told me that one of her favorite childhood memories was my grandma serving us, Pepsi and Oreos in bed.

The release of Clueless was a real game changer for us. Knee Socks became our go-to style for every activity, including bowling. We were 15, had just got our driving permits and decided that two permits equals one license. I'll just cut to the end of this story, which was us in her mom's car, who was outta town stalled on a busy street because neither of us could actually drive a stick shift.

Freshman year, we didn't have dates to the homecoming dance, so we went as a triple with our friend Richard, very progressive. We both took theater and usually ended up in the same class. She could have made it as an actress, she had it, whatever it is. She lit up her environment, whether it was a room or a stage.

me and her were the only two grown ass women who knew the words to every single weird Al Yankovich song because we obsessed over every album that he released. Speaking of Weird Al, I used to go into the bar she worked at and fill the jukebox with enough parodies to last her entire shift and then leave.

Speaking of the bar that she worked at. It was right by my house, so it wasn't unusual to get a call an hour after her shift had ended to come pick her up, and she would only leave once the jukebox played and she gave a full performance to Cherry Pie as an April Fools Day joke, I listed her dog free to a good home on Craigslist. Later that day when I went to leave the house, my car was on cinder blocks and my tires were nowhere to be found. I maintain my stance that those two pranks are not on the same level.

I never knew a Courtney that wasn't sick. She fought lupus her entire life, and while it did slow down her body, it never slowed down her spirit. I don't know the right thing to write about her because she's bigger than any words could explain. She was a collision of trouble and kindness and beauty and pain and humor and strength, and she was shit, ah, so close.

She was too good for this world, and she's finally at peace. Yeah, that's that. Okay. I don't even know if I'll include that or not. We'll see.

Okay, so since this episode has become part a retelling of the beginning of the pandemic and part Danielle's therapy session, I'm just gonna keep rolling with that because I have a couple more things to say. and I'm doing this to frame the next few episodes.

Which I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to include any personal stuff like this in, uh, the next episodes. Thinking, thinking through the outline.

I don't think so. 

But I promised at the beginning of season one that these story times would be an explanation for my perspective. Like, I may have been right or wrong or indifferent, but it's, this is the story that happened and I want to be able to give my thinking, my rationale and everything, all the reasons for my decisions and my actions throughout the, my term on the board.

So I always take, um, being elected and acting in the best interest of the community and the public. Seriously. Okay, that's my baseline. Like it is. I, and I go hard. I have zero chill. 

I always try to take my personal opinions out of things. Um, my feelings, I try. I just, I try to separate those things all the time. sometimes it's very hard to do. Sometimes I fail at it. 

You know, I'm a human. I have my own opinions and biases and emotions, and sometimes shit happens or whatever. But I, I do aim to stay in a very non-emotional nonpartisan, uh, space while I'm in my role as an elected official in my friend groups, in my personal work, in my podcast, not always so much, okay. but when I am there acting, making decisions, speaking in the public, in that role, that's always what I'm aiming for, just like take me out of it and be logical as much as possible 

So a lot of people don't know that before, even before the pandemic hit, I was already deep into therapy for a series of traumatic events.

I was also really sick from toxic mold exposure. I also had many personal issues going on with my family and my children.

And I had months before been officially diagnosed with dissociation. I was barely starting to learn about dissociation and beginning to work through it when the pandemic hit. Looking back now being on the other side of dissociation, um, not completely recovered, but out of what I can only describe as your mind being trapped in a mason jar, separated from everything and everything is just kind of faint and unclear.

Everything besides your thoughts. Um, if anyone knows dissociation, I think this would make sense to you. I don't really know, but it's like. Like, your thoughts are clear, but they're hard to hold onto because they're just like jammed in this jar with you and they're the only things that you can access.

But they're just like everywhere and like you're drowning in them. and then like everything else is outside of the jar, including your emotions. And it's like, you know that those emotions are there. You can see them, you're like, oh, sadness, happiness, whatever. Like you can see them, but you can't access them.

You can't touch them, you can't feel them. it's not even like you don't have a choice. It's like your brain is like holding the top of the mason jar down it's like, nope, you cannot come in. You're not allowed in. it's like being the bouncer. 

And then you're on the other side of it. Like, it's okay, you can come in but your brain just won't allow it. Your brain's like tightening the lid on the jar. dissociation it causes you to run on logic only 'cause it's the only thing you can access.

Most people do not realize that they're dissociated, by the way. It can happen from a single traumatic event or it can sneak up on you.

I already knew that I had complex PTSD. That was old news. I've been in therapy my whole life. It's why my dog is a service animal, not my ADHD, from my complex. PTSD. 

In short, unaddressed trauma can lead to PTSD. Unaddressed. PTSD can lead to dissociation, and it's rare to realize that you are dissociated on your own. It's like the frog that doesn't realize the water is boiling until it's too late.

So at this point, knowing that I was dissociated and taking, being a publicly elected official, seriously. I really forced myself to consider whether or not I should be in that role at such a crucial time. While I was technically mentally ill, I thoroughly considered resigning, 

I was very aware that my brain just was not operating properly or at least what it I was used to. I was deep in it. I call it the big 

And at the time I didn't have the language to define it. I would just be like, it's just, it's broken. Like my brain's broken. It's, it's just, it's not, it's not going, it's, it's, it's broken. I don't know. but at the same time, I felt like I had a strong grasp on what was going on in CCSD and with our governance and the corruption happening and the pandemic.

And even though I wasn't feeling my own emotions, I could see that I had the emotions, but I could also fully understand everyone else's emotions because I wasn't affected by my own emotions.

Like I was able to empathize even more and on a large scale by not having my own emotions in the mix. It's really hard to explain and I know that I'm also kind of describing sociopathic behavior, 

I don't want you to think I'm like a, I was a machine or monster or something. many things would happen, would spark sadness or anger or fear. But because of the jar I wasn't able to like internalize it. Because I wasn't able to internalize it, I wasn't able to act on those emotions like other people would normally do without thinking.

So throughout the course of the pandemic, basically not, not once did I yell, or cry. or curl up into the fetal position. Not once my mind would logically be like, oh, we are angry. Yes. Oh, hmm hmm. We are angry at that.

but then it would just flip through like all the things we need to do. Like, we are angry. We are angry now we do this, this, this, this, this. We're gonna do this, we're gonna do that. We're gonna get that motherfucker and we're gonna call that person out. And then we're also gonna do this and we're gonna write a note about that in five years, we're gonna talk about it.

Pretty much. That's exactly what happened. I was just like, so logical. Was so hard to explain. 

And by the way, back to what I said about possibly resigning, that experience made me really think that it should be common practice for public officials to resign if they feel unfit to do the role or if they feel like somebody else would do it better.

And then it should be accepted by constituents and not condemned. Like right now, if someone resigned and then ran later, it would be thrown in their face. I would personally have no problem voting for a person who resigned in the past you know, out of the best interest for the public, and then came back later and they were like, I'm gonna run again.

I worked through the, whatever I had to work through personally, I'd be like, that's cool, but that's not what society would do.

But we honestly, like, we need to let people do that. Because another thing I witnessed during all this, and we'll speak about that later, is that I've seen a lot of people hold onto their seats when they shouldn't have. Continue to vote while they were dealing with personal issues and they were not giving proper attention to the role that they were elected for.

That is just a sidebar thing that I just wanted to put out there. So obviously I didn't talk about any of this then, because that would be silly. I know the stigmas around mental health and, at the time when I was thinking about resigning and I was researching like dissociation and if you're able to, you know, do work well or whatever, I actually came across a lot of stories. it's kind of like a phenomenon 

a lot of people who had been dissociated and then later on they're telling a story similar to what I'm telling and they're saying that they could remember feeling the way that I felt and that they were able to do important work at that time. Even better than before they were dissociated.

 And they were also saying that, in reflecting back that the work that they did at the time when they were dissociated was some of their best work. And they cited that they felt like it was the only thing at the time that they could keep a grasp on. And, um, the only thing that kept them like anchored down to reality.

that's exactly how I was feeling at the time. again, All I could access were the things in the jar that I was trapped with, which were my thoughts. 

And like I just have to keep on sorting them like I have to. Keep on figuring it out and figuring it out and working with what is with me in this jar. And I don't even know, it was kind of like playing like thought Tetris Like it's all, all these things are coming at me swirling around and it's just chaos and I'm trapped here like rethinking it. But now it just seems nuts. So I know, it was just like, if I don't do this, I'm going to be crushed.

Like there's only two options. Like I either have to just hold onto logic and know that I am functioning in this way and keep moving through it and kind of keep building it and putting these together and stepping up a little bit, a little bit. And if I don't, it's gonna kill me.

So that's just kind of what I did. I would just like have all this information and just think, like, just keep putting it together and just keep on stepping the next one, the next one.

eventually I'm gonna get to the top of the jar and I'm gonna pop that lid off. I'm gonna hop out. I'm gonna be like, what's up guys? that was exhausting, but here I am. And then I'm gonna point out the jar and I'm gonna say, Hey, look what I built in that fucking jar while I was in there.

And that's kind of what you're seeing now.

So as we go into more story times throughout this entire season, keep in mind that I was in the jar 

If it seems like I just did not give a fuck about anything, it's because I didn't. 

Everything was just logical. I saw the emotions and then I, I led with the emotions, but it was all because it was the right thing to do. 

I made friends, I built really important relationships. I brought the community together. It was, it was beautiful. We'll talk about that in more episodes, you know, and not because of the lovey-dovey aspect or because I wanted any type of recognition or whatever. It was just. This was what had to be done logically.

This is what's what we need to do. This is the solution. Okay? 

I got into fights. I. Pissed off lots of people. I ruined my reputation in at least eight different ways. I named influential people who prefer to stay in the shadows and do their business. Behind the scenes, I had targets put on my back. I filed ethics complaints against trustees and the superintendent.

I was sued by the superintendent. I was slut shamed by union leaders. I had multiple news networks running hit pieces against me and. When I tell you that I did not give a fuck. I mean that 100%.

I wasn't doing it to be disruptive or to be a rebel. Those things were just what had to get done. It was, the solution, at least in my mind, okay, nothing mattered. Not the praise when things went right. Not the criticism when it went wrong. Not fear, not pride, not joy, nothing.

The phrase no fucks given, literally applied to me. Literally, I told you earlier, I have no regrets, right? 

Like I hope that right now I'm in better mental health. I hope that if the same thing went down, that I would do the same thing. It's hard to say, you know, you just never know how you're gonna react, in crisis or whatever. But, um, I legit have no regrets. Fuck them. Like, do not care.

the last thing I'll say is that although I would not wish dissociation or the big D on anybody, um, in hindsight, I think it was a blessing.

 If there's, ever a time for your brain to go into overprotective drive and, guard you from the harsh realities of the world and your own emotions, that would probably kill you if you could feel them, that's the time for that to happen.

So, while I don't ever want. To experience the Big D again, at least not dissociation. Hmm. at the time it was my superpower.

Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's dissociation. Either way, it got the job done. The next story time episode is when things really start unraveling.

We will go deeper into the agendas, behind the educational decisions. During the pandemic reopening plans, national networks, money grabs, missed opportunities, and the failures of leadership that left an entire district running on fear.

But this isn't just my story. We all have an early pandemic story. Drop yours in the comments if you feel like it. I would really love to hear it.

If you're getting value from this podcast and you wanna help keep the stories coming, you can become a sponsor at unravelingeducation.com. It really helps to speed up production. Thank you so much. Everything helps. another easy way to help is to share the episode on social media wherever you social media, the hardest Subscribe on YouTube, apple Podcasts and Spotify.

You're gonna wanna do that because the next one, the next one is really gonna connect some dots that you are not going to want to miss.

I hope you enjoyed the episode. I look forward to the rest of the season, and I thank you for being part of my story.

RosaBelle LeeAnn Ford. You say hello right now. You say hello to your fans. Say hello. Hello fans. That's a good wave. I love you too. 

 My little baby.

That was a long one. That was a long and a hard one. There's a lot of D jokes in there. I don't know. We're gonna have to do some major editing here. Okay.