Dear Editor,
The English teachers had their say – as well as their heads up their union.
At Tuesday night’s (4/22/25) CCUSD Board meeting, several English teachers—including the department chair—attempted a defense of the ‘de-tracking’ of Honors English 9 & 10 (fact-check: these courses have been parent/student opt-in for over a decade at CCHS). What followed was less a defense than a sermon: a stream of emotionally charged declarations, rhetorical gatekeeping, ad hominem attacks, and appeals to authority that would make even Fauci blush.
Union boss Ray Long set the tone, protecting his flock as they dutifully filed to the microphone.
First up was Felicia Cordell, a longtime English teacher, who sorted opponents of ‘de-tracking’ into three neat boxes: the misinformed, the elitist, or the bully. That’s not argument—it’s tribal sorting. Disagreement becomes heresy, public comment a catechism. She closed with a sanctimonious flourish: “Please don’t let the bullies have the keys to the kingdom.” School as a kingdom—a telling metaphor from someone supposedly devoted to democratic values.
Such absolutism is all the more jarring coming from educators supposedly trained in the Socratic method—the very art of welcoming dissent, questioning assumptions, and challenging received wisdom. The irony practically writes itself.
In order of the evening’s most sanctimonious nonsense:
Paige Shakeri invoked a 1941 pro-segregation thesis to argue against academic tracking and Honors English. That’s not just a logical fallacy—it’s an insult to the intelligence of the audience. Worse, it trivializes real historical oppression by weaponizing it as a rhetorical cudgel.
Katie Pappert and Ryan Lewis both argue, in effect, that only teachers should set educational policy—not parents, not voters, not taxpayers. “The teachers have spoken,” Lewis proclaims. But this isn’t a union contract—it’s a public institution, accountable to the community it serves.
Check-mate your privilege. Sunreal Kolluri, a UC Riverside professor, claims tracking serves only “a few elite kids” and that de-tracking is needed to fight “segregation.” Yet he concedes his own child might benefit from honors. Suicidal empathy? Selective altruism? Either way, it’s political tribalism masquerading as principle.
I know not all CCHS educators share these views—but we don’t hear from them nearly enough. I wish they’d speak up. Because if those who spoke last night become the gatekeepers of critical thinking, we won’t be raising thinkers—we’ll be raising the faithful.
When the law of the classroom becomes “no one is more special than anyone else,” we’re not looking at justice—we’re looking at a ripped poop-bag of mediocrity leaking platitudes. For all their volume and sanctimony, their arguments amount to what Macbeth warned us about: sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Pedro Frigola