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My name is Gabe Woolley.
I am a 28-year-old Tulsa Public School teacher, as well as an alumnus of City Year Tulsa. I have been associated with City Year Tulsa for two years.
In view of the issues now before Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) regarding City Year Tulsa, it is now incumbent upon me to make public my own background.
City Year is an educational nonprofit currently in 29 cities and 21 states. City Year Tulsa (CYT) partners with Tulsa Public Schools in an effort to address the student drop out crisis. It places young adults, aged 17 to 25, into the classroom as assistants to the certified teacher. The at-risk youth are tutored and mentored by these young adults to help them understand the importance of school attendance, behavior and academics.
I personally had a good experience with this organization. It is, in part, why I am a teacher today.
However, through my conversations with its staff as well as my own research, I have now come to realize that City Year promotes a political agenda. Its publicly stated goals hides its aggressive and destructive purposes.
I am a former member of the LGBTQIA+ community and have struggled with same sex attraction for as long as I can remember. My experience directly feeds into my motivation for bringing this issue to light.
During the time in my life that I embraced gay culture, I lived in the center of its community. The gay lifestyle is a very sexual and promiscuous one. Sex is at the core of just about every interaction. My experience with gay and bisexual men in this community has revealed to me that sex is the essence of the culture and nature of many community interactions.
Because I know the paths connected with the gay culture, I have concerns for anyone involved. It is not a path that has led me or many others to true fulfillment in life.
What I found were many short-term fulfillments linked to long-term anxiety and displacement.
I have no desire to interfere with decisions made by adults regarding how they live their lives.
I do put my foot down and speak up for rights of youth who are being influenced by authority figures representing the government to contemplate a journey which for many has led to anxiety and ultimate emptiness.
For me to testify that my life in the gay community was positive would not be true. The time I suffered in the gay community is irreconcilable with my desire to marry and raise children in truth.
I have grown to love the people who have struggled and question their sexual or gender identity. How can a person truly suffer with purpose and understanding and not come to a place of love? I do not know. If someone says they can, I question their comprehension of love. Love seeks to understand and pull out the true identity and value of any human being. Love is truth. Love holds a standard. And, yes, love goes to war, and fights to death, for its children.
So, when I express my concerns, it comes from a place of both love of hurting people and war against institutions who foster that painful lifestyle.
We are in a worldwide identity crisis. When a person’s true identity can be stolen, perverted, or hidden, society breeds weak and needy followers and not strong, well-adjusted leaders.
My concerns with Tulsa Public Schools partnership with City Year:
City Year is a far-left nation-wide organization that, in Tulsa, represents an organizational brand with strategic political ideology.
Its public face reflects important basic issues plaguing our nation. Hidden in the underlying culture is an organization with an agenda too blatantly destructive for me to remain silent.
There is a diversity agenda, that I worry can cause discrimination, as well as promote the alternative and destructive sexual lifestyles of the gay community to children. The expressions of many City Year individuals is politically charged.
City Year Tulsa has a public Instagram (social media) page that students have been encouraged, by City Year corps members, to follow and interact with. In June of 2023, City Year Tulsa posted an advertisement for Pride Month reading suggestions with nine different LGBTQIA+ books titled as follows:
Kind Like Marsha, Hearing from LGBTQ+ Leaders, by Sarah Prager
This Is Our Rainbow, by 14 different collaborative authors.
This Book Is Gay, by Juno Dawson
Some Girls Do, by Jennifer Dugan
Beyond Magenta, Transgender Teen Speaks Out, by Susan Kuklin
Melissa, by Alex Gino
Star Fish, by Lisa Fipps
PRIDE, The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag, by Rob Sanders
Sparkle Boy, by Leslie Newman
Here is an excerpt from the book, This Book Is Gay, which was promoted on City Year Tulsa’s Instagram page:
“If you’re THAT HORNY that you want to do a “sex meet”, meet the “trick” in a public place for a drink first. That way you can assess if you fancy them in the flesh/they are not a twitchy-eyed freakazoid letting them into your house…”
“You can ALWAYS say NO. If someone from a sex app turns up and you don’t like the look of them, don’t be scared to turn them away at the door (of the safe, public venue you choose to meet at). Awkward, yes, but better than awkward sex.”
I will stop quoting there, but there is much more including instructions on how to use gay sex hookup apps such as the LGBTQIA+ app, Grindr.
At a board meeting on 7-10-23, Tulsa Public Schools superintendent, Deborah Gist expressed that this Instagram post was shared to the public, not to students.
This is simply not true.
I have personally witnessed City Year Tulsa Corps members encourage students to follow this Instagram public page. Delivering something to someone in a roundabout way is still delivering it to them.
No doubt, the administrative leadership of both the Tulsa Public Schools and the Oklahoma City schools know that they do not need to insert sexuality into their own curriculum, so long as they have a partner in City Year Tulsa who will do it for them.
Children are extremely susceptible to emotional and spiritual influence. It is our job as parents and educators to protect and foster them into their greatest potential.
Our education system is failing in this nation and to be partnering with organizations that have concerning agendas and values at heart, is a huge step in the wrong direction. We need to get back to the basics of reading, writing, math, history, and science in the classroom and develop students that value and understand their potential and hopefully can still have a sense of pride in their nation and state.
Additional Opinions on City Year:
Tulsa Public Schools Board Member, E’lena Ashley stated:
It is a disservice to the public to not ask any questions and just robotically say yes to just about everything on the school board agenda.
Every citizen should know that these books are being suggested by City Year to our students and the public. I never mentioned that these books were a requirement, but they certainly were a suggestion from City Year. We are paying this organization to mentor our children. This issue is about Tulsa’s parents and the public citizens making an informed decision about what is being presented as acceptable in our Tulsa public schools. City Year is an organization that has suggested these books and it needs to be known. These books being broadcasted to children are inappropriate and is a form of grooming.
I want the citizens, taxpayers, and parents to be made aware of this. As a concerned parent in the community, I would want to be made aware that TPS is endorsing this organization.
Janice Danforth, with Mom for Liberty, Tulsa stated:
City Year Tulsa has stated on their social media platform that social justice is a core value. This is a concern when the core value within education should be on academics.
So, my question is why does TPS want to spend almost $1.7 Mil on a contract with an organization with social justice as the focus?
TPS proficiency rates in reading, science, and math sit in the single digits at many of the schools City Year Tulsa is already involved with.
Academics has to be at the forefront of our public schools if we want our children to succeed and that starts with our school board members voting no to organizations like City Year Tulsa.
~Gabe Woolley
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