What's all this I hear about the unhorsed?

Just as renaming the War Department the Department of Defense in 1947 ensured world peace, this school member has an ingenious plan for ending homelessness:

A California school board member became "personally offended" when a speaker said "homeless," saying she preferred the speaker say "unhoused" instead.

"I have a lot to say and I will speak plainly. And you may not like it. I am personally offended by what was presented. On so many different levels," Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board Vice President Joy Flynn said during a Jan. 14 meeting. 

The comments were made after Michael Berman, the assistant superintendent of educational services, presented a "Report on Student Achievement" which, at some point during the presentation, referred to a population of students as "homeless."

After a public comment period ended, Flynn made her remarks.

"One thing I would like to see updated is the word homeless to unhoused," Flynn said.

…. "I'm just making a statement, and I'd like to have my time to finish. …. Flynn explained further, "And it is just because that's the way that everybody else does it doesn't mean that's the way we need to do it. It's a respectful term to speak about our community."

Release the unhorsed carriages.

And this part’s fun, too:

Berman presented the "Report on Student Achievement" using the California School Dashboard to track progress across various demographics, including foster youth and students with disabilities. The data covered metrics such as graduation rates, chronic absenteeism, and suspension levels.

The report highlighted that Black students had the highest suspension rates, marked in red to indicate a "very high" status. Although the district is over 85% Hispanic and 13% White, Black students account for less than 1% of the population.

"One thing I want to call out is we see only one group in red, and it's our Black and African-American students. This is a big problem. You may have noticed that this is the first time we've seen our Black students in any of these indicators," Berman said.

He explained that there were not enough Black students to register as "statistically significant" as a group to appear in the indicators under the other state measures such as the graduation rates and "college and career" categories.

In response, Flynn said that Blacks are "statistically enough" regardless of the number enrolled in the district. 

"I recognize that in this report that I think that something was said was there aren't enough Black students to have statistical significance. I'm personally offended by that. If we have one Black student, that student is statistically significant enough to be on the report."

Especially if that one student is a one-man crime wave — I agree, Joy.

Miss Flynn has no difficulty stereotyping other minorities, as she demonstrated last April:

During the April 16 meeting, board member Joy Flynn used her time to discuss Jewish "economic power."

"It has been something that I’ve discovered, or that I’ve been a little taken aback by is the lack of acknowledgment of economic power historically held by the Jewish community, that Black and Brown people don’t have," Flynn said.

Fellow board member Gabriel Medina piled on:

"I don’t see you people at protests for immigration. I don’t see you at protest where people are being taken away right now. I don’t see you advocating to bring back Abrego Garcia or Mahmoud Khalil. You only show up to meetings when it’s beneficial for you so you can tell Brown people who they are, but guess what, we’re telling our own stories now."

Sounds like a lovely place.