Facts are Stubborn Things

BY: Philip Derrow

Good evening and welcome to our first School Board meeting of 2023. While we may disagree with each other, I welcome community engagement and fully support your First Amendment right to “Petition the government for a redress of grievances”. I am also committed to being civil in public discussions. I hope everyone will do likewise.

Most importantly, I want to make clear that I, along with the rest of our Board as per our unanimous approval of our Values Statement, believe every student in our district, and indeed every child, deserves to be treated with kindness, dignity, and respect. I’m sure every parent can agree that sometimes those values require us to say no.

I’m glad some of you chose to bring up a similar meeting that occurred a year and 4 months ago as it provides me an opportunity to revisit it again as well. At that meeting, I chose to place the interest of trying to bring peace to these proceedings and our district ahead of defending the facts. Peace is valuable, but not at the expense of objective fact, especially in a place devoted to teaching and learning.

One of you mentioned John Adams’ famous quote, “Facts are stubborn things”. The next phrase of that quote is: “and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence:” We must learn to become comfortable confronting facts in a civil way, especially when those facts might be in conflict with our passions, prior beliefs, or the opinions of supposed experts.

To that very point, the facts are clear: every one of my policy positions regarding masks, school closures, quarantines, and mask and Covid vaccine mandates was supported by the evidence then and even more so 16 months later. Virtually everything most public health and government officials did to kids was either useless or harmful and an entire generation will likely pay the price for decades to come.

It is a human tragedy for which those political and PH officials should be ashamed. Sadly, few are.

Those are the facts and as per that famous quote, facts are stubborn things.

I could go on but the point of tonight’s meeting isn’t vindication of my positions during Covid and the fact that those positions resulted in policies that kept our kids in school more than any other Central Ohio public school district. Rather, the point of tonight’s meeting is claims, like those of the Covid extremists the past 3 years, that the evidence, or rather The Science™, is clear regarding the best policies for the support and care of children with gender confusion, non-conformity, or dysphoria. It isn’t.

What is clear, is that the policy disagreement here is actually pretty simple. Should our public school personnel actively hide potential life altering or life threatening information regarding minor children from their parents or legal guardians? Our policies and guidelines clearly stipulate we should not, while a small group of activists has loudly and persistently demanded otherwise. Unable to make a convincing argument for us to reverse those policies and guidelines, they have chosen instead to attack me personally.

Personal attacks on me won’t stop me from defending the rights of New Albany parents and the safety of New Albany children.

As some of you are lawyers, surely you’re aware of the old saying that when the facts are on your side, pound the facts; when the law is on your side, pound the law; when neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table. Or, in this case, pound the man. It won’t work because facts — and kids — matter and I’m willing to take the pounding to defend them.

Those are the facts and facts are stubborn things.

Let’s look at some facts informing my position in the current matter:

Several speakers have insisted that we “educate ourselves.” I couldn’t agree more and I have. I will continue to do so. I am retired and have both the time and genuine curiosity to understand the world around me. I’ve done all the suggested reading and a lot more.  I read the survey results from the Trevor Project (and thank you to the two people who donated to that organization in my name). I’ve read the recommendations of WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health as well as many of the original source research papers associated with those perspectives. Because I don’t believe anyone or any group has a claim to absolute truth, especially regarding matters of science and health, I’ve also read critiques and contrary points of view from other experts as well as their original research citations. You’d be hard pressed to find another layperson or public official who’s done more to educate themselves than I have.

The result of all of this reading, study, and numerous conversations with physicians and members of the LGBTQ community is that the evidence is anything but certain and that humility, rather than certainty is warranted. I am glad our society is becoming more accepting of the vast range of human diversity and expression as we all benefit when each of us can be comfortable in our own skin. I want every one of our students to feel safe, supported, and connected at school. But especially as it relates to minor children, caution, patience, and extensive professional assessment, rather than unquestioned affirmation by strangers are warranted. Neither the Board nor school personnel are in any position to provide those resources or to judge the choices individual students and their families make in these matters as they are beyond our role or expertise.

That’s precisely why excluding parents from these matters as it relates to their minor children can only be justified in those rarest of cases where the proper authorities have proven the parents to be a bonafide threat to them. The only things I’d bet we can agree on for children is that parents should love them unconditionally and the school should do it’s best to keep them safe while they are in our charge.

That is exactly my perspective and it is unambiguously the basis of our Board’s unanimous approval of the policy changes related to these issues.

Those are the facts, and facts are stubborn things.

Over the coming weeks and months I will be writing and speaking publicly about my policy positions and the evidence that supports them. These remarks, and all of the future things I’ll be posting can be found at PhilipDerrow.com.

Thank you.

[This is a transcript of comments made by Philip Derrow at a School Board meeting in answer to community comments.]