I am sick and tired of the hypocrisy of Duncan Koler and his puppets on the school board. His oft-repeated reasons for eliminating the IB program and further attempts to eliminate the PYP program are nothing more than a smokescreen hiding the real reasons he managed to get the school board to thumb its upturned nose at the public vote establishing IB.

Mr. Koler cites all sorts of figures about enrollment and costs, but one needs only to look at his earliest philosophical disagreements with IB to learn that these figures were gathered long after the fact to support a prior prejudice. And school board trustee Tom Hamilton’s very public and very telling remarks about his Judeo-Christian values are even more illuminating.

The truth is that the taxpayers voted in a program that Mr. Koler did not like, so he worked to get pushy people of like mind elected to the school board, which promptly abandoned the already purchased materials and training that taxpayers had funded for the IB program. The further truth is that Mr. Koler, who claimed in his Sept. 26 tirade against Press Editor Mike Patrick, “School should be neutral ground in the culture war of our time” really wants nothing of the sort. In fact, he wants a district that teaches what Tom Hamilton wants taught not only for his kids but for everyone else’s kids, too. There is absolutely nothing neutral about it, and it would be refreshing to hear him come right out and admit it. At least then I could call him a misguided manipulator instead of a hypocrite.

MIKE RUSKOVICH

Blanchard