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The Tudor Dixon Podcast: How Parents Can Take Back Control of Schools: Nicki Neily on DEI, Gender Policies, and the Fight for Education Transparency
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- [00:00]
Tudor Dixon
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:04]
Rodney Williams
I'm Rodney Williams.
- [00:06]
Travis Holloway
And I'm Travis Holloway. Welcome to the wealthbreak podcast, a real conversation about finance.
- [00:12]
Rodney Williams
Let's be honest, building wealth doesn't look the same for everyone.
- [00:16]
Tudor Dixon
I feel like sometimes being broke is a cycle and that we might have.
- [00:20]
Travis Holloway
To revisit that and we're not stopping at success stories.
- [00:24]
Commercial Narrator 1
What happens when it doesn't go right? How do you cope with it?
- [00:27]
Rodney Williams
Because wealth isn't just about money. It's about creating a life where you thrive and help others do the same.
- [00:33]
Travis Holloway
Listen to the Wealth Break podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
- [00:39]
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- [00:59]
Rodney Williams
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- [01:02]
Nikki Neely
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- [01:09]
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- [01:39]
Tudor Dixon
Hey everyone. You are listening to the Tutor Dixon podcast and I have one of my favorite people here with me today, Nikki Neely. She is the, the president and founder of Parents Defending Education. It's a group that is out there to empower parents, but also to weed out some of the bad things that are happening in our schools. And I think there's so many more bad things happening in our schools than you even know about. So that's why we wanted Nikki to come on today because she's going to give break it all down. The good, bad and the ugly. Nikki, thank you for being on here today.
- [02:13]
Nikki Neely
Thank you so much for having me.
- [02:15]
Tudor Dixon
Absolutely. So you have been a champion for parents for years. We were just talking about. We've known each other for a very long time. I've always appreciated your work. I love what you're doing. Now you had all of these parents sign on to this letter. Tell us a little bit about this because I, as a, as a parent who is in a state that continues to defy the federal government with dei. I think multiple states are doing this. And you are fighting back.
- [02:44]
Nikki Neely
Yes. So this actually was kicked off because of what had happened in Iowa a few weeks ago where the Des Moines superintendent was arrested. He was an illegal immigrant. He had weapons. There was like a variety of things. But as it turns out, he was just, I mean, essentially a DEI hire of the school district.
- [03:04]
Tudor Dixon
How do they not know? I mean, did they. Did they know he was not a legal citizen? I mean, is there background on that? Because I recognize that that can happen. People can lie. But did they know?
- [03:19]
Nikki Neely
Yeah, I think they're still trying to sort out whether they knew. But I mean, clearly due diligence, like right now the school district is pointing fingers at the search firm and vice versa. So clearly due diligence was dropped along the way somehow. But even, I mean, I think, you know, when you and I change jobs, you have to do like an i9, right? You have to submit forms to the federal government. There's E verify. There are any one of a number of checks and balances that were not followed in this sit. But as we actually had uncovered in February of this year, Iowa, despite being a red state, actually has affirmative action hiring laws on the books. And so this is the kind of thing where you thought, wow, if it's happening in Iowa, like, this has to be happening elsewhere. And so just what we did is we send letters to all 50 states, to the governors, to the heads of the legislatures, to the chiefs of the education departments, asking them what we think is a very reasonable request, which is just, can you please conduct an internal audit to make sure that your policy, policies and procedures and laws comply with federal anti discrimination law should be pretty reasonable. Frankly, if you receive a dollar or a penny from the federal government, you are supposed to be complying with that stuff anyway. But unfortunately, there are any one of a number of problems, be it hiring, be it funding, be it things like this, where we have seen school districts, universities across the country discriminate against teachers, students and families on the basis of race, sex and other immutable characteristics. And that just has to end, particularly as the federal government looks to send to the states. We want the states to get their houses in order.
- [04:48]
Tudor Dixon
It's interesting that you. That we struggle with this because if you're in a state where you have charter schools or there is any. Any funding that goes to something that is, I guess, a school that is defined outside of the traditional public school, the auditing is so tight and it's so easy to lose your funding in those schools that you would think that this is pretty standard. But the state is generally pretty lax when it comes to the public schools, I think, especially in blue states, because we know that the unions give a lot of money. And they may not give directly to the candidates, but they have a way of getting money to their Democrat candidates to then win. And then it's kind of like hands off.
- [05:30]
Nikki Neely
No, you're totally right. After the Janus decision, unions made a very conscious and public decision just to run sympath either members or sympathetic individuals in school board races, clearly also in state legislatures. But we have over the past several years, been filing civil rights complaints against school districts and universities that have been discriminating on the basis of race. One that we did in February of this year was against Chicago Public Schools, where I'm from originally, because they had what they call a black student achievement plan, where only black students would be eligible for additional tutoring, additional funding, additional programming. And it's interesting, when I started to look through CPS's own documents, their numbers. Their own numbers show that Hispanic students actually perform worse and struggle more than black students. And when we filed this complaint, CPS's response was, well, this is a state law. We had to do it. And like, well, the state law is unconstitutional. Guys, what are you doing? And so things like this, you know, this is like. This feels. This is like World War II, like, just following orders. Like, no, you cannot follow orders. You must follow the Constitution. Full stop.
- [06:33]
Tudor Dixon
This, this is the type. What you are doing right now, I want people to understand. We talk all the time about what's happening with our public schools. How can we. How can we make sure there's not indoctrin, not discrimination? All of these things are not happening. It's organizations like yours that get it done. Because you know the law. You're able to go in there with a team, you're able to review what they're doing. And I think that people go, oh, it's another nonprofit, but you need. It's like a watchdog group. And if we don't have that, like I said, there is no control because it's the. The fox watching, the hen house. You've got the. The union leaders just giving money right back to the people in charge to look the other way. But this gets dangerous. At point, we were talking before we got on, a lot of people don't know this. I just learned this probably within the last 10 years, and it was stunning to me. So if you haven't heard this. I think it's probably going to be stunning to you if you understand how predators work. When it comes to child predators, you know that they look for jobs around kids. So too often people become teachers that are child predators. I'm not saying that teachers are child predators. I'm saying child predators look for jobs around children. And sometimes that can be teaching. But when they are discovered in the line of teaching, in the field of teaching, the unions protect them. Explain what happens.
- [07:59]
Nikki Neely
Yes, this is a really, it's a horrifying phenomena. You're right. If a school, here's an allegation that a child has been abused, they clearly they have to conduct an investigation. All school employees are what's called mandatory reporters. So if they hear, you know, that a child is being beaten, is being raped, if they, if they have reason to believe that they must report it. Just under every state child protective laws, if a school opened an investigation into a teacher, but the investigation is not closed out, if the teacher quits, transfers, resigns before the investigation is concluded, there is no paper trail. And so very often when, if an investigation is opened, the teacher will just move. This actually happens so frequently that the term for it is called passing the trash. And so we watch this happen where, yeah, educators will move from school to school. This also unfortunately happened in Virginia a couple years ago when a student had assaulted another student. The case of Scott Smith in Loudoun county, rather than actually adjudicating that case properly, the district just moved that offending student to another, to another high school where he went on to assault another student in a bathroom. And so this is, this happens very.
- [09:11]
Tudor Dixon
Similar situation in Michigan. Actually. Someone who is a, I believe that the child's parent was a clerk. And the allegedly this clerk went to as a, has political power in the Democrat party and went to the, the higher ups and said, I want see this. In this particular case, this child was choiced into this school. We have school of choice in the state of Michigan. You could choice into other public schools or charter schools. And he was choiced into the school. He allegedly attacked this one of the girls there. And I mean there was a court case and everything. So I guess at a certain point it was proven out that this happened. And the story goes that he was able to stay at the school even though this poor girl had been attacked by him. I mean, these are the things that need to be audited. How can a girl have to go to school with her attacker every day?
- [10:16]
Nikki Neely
No, and that's what I mean There are laws in the books, right? There are title nine. There are things like this where school officials are just not upholding their responsibilities under the law. And I think particularly with the, with the case of these, you know, predator teachers, what really frightens me is when you have a situation like that and a union that is going to back them up and demand, you know, due process, et cetera. But then the overlay of that against bad school policies like parental exclusion policies. This is something we've been tracking since 2023, where we have identified about 1200 districts and counting that have school policies ratified by elected school board officials that say you as a parent don't have a right to know your child's gender at school. And so in the course of sex ed lessons, etc, students are told keep secrets from mom and dad. The problem with that, of course, is that it's not just the gay students that hear that, it's everybody. A couple years ago, we had sued a school district in Iowa over their parental exclusion policy. They said, from seventh grade on, you have no right. Seventh grade is about 13, right? So when kids hit puberty, that district had had, I want to say, five incidents of teach on student sexual relations over the previous several years. And so, you know, you as, you know, you and I as parents, we tell our kids, you never keep a secret from mom and dad, and if somebody tells you to do that, they're a dangerous person and you stay away from them. But for our children to be told those lessons with our tax dollars behind our back and then to put them at the mercy of these people who have ill intentions is truly insult to injury.
- [11:44]
Tudor Dixon
I think oftentimes we've heard this story of the child that gets trans behind mom and dad's back. Happened recently in Michigan. Within the last few months, this was exposed in the state of Michigan that this happened. But I think oftentimes parents say, okay, well, I, I'm not concerned about that happening to my child. I, I've talked to them regularly. I know what's going on. But you make a great point. If the school is telling kids in general, there are things that happen at school that are not supposed to go home that does open a roadway for predators to take advantage of your kid. And your kid is grooming is very manipulative. It changes a child's mind. There are su. There are such big dangers around this. If this is the policy of your school, but you don't know.
- [12:31]
Nikki Neely
You don't know.
- [12:32]
Tudor Dixon
Yeah.
- [12:32]
Nikki Neely
And you know, it could be, it's sex. It could Also be drug usage. We have seen lots of school districts that don't tell parents when there has been a drug overdose in the bathroom. They say, well, there's student privacy issues, you know, at stake. Well, what about my right as a parent to tell my kid, hey, guess what? Don't go in the bathroom and take pills from somebody who you don't. I just, you're not able to protect or immunize your child against danger if you don't even know what the danger is.
- [12:56]
Tudor Dixon
How do you find this stuff out?
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Nikki Neely
Families and schools is so fragmented and frayed right now.
- [13:01]
Tudor Dixon
How does your organization find these things out and, and help or, or do people come to you? Because I think that that's where we as parents are right now. If we see something, who do we call? Who do we talk to? We don't feel like we have a team on our side.
- [13:15]
Nikki Neely
Yeah, we, we have a tip line. We have since our launch in 2021 been receiving 50 to 200 tips a week from across the country through everything. You know, we, we want people to send us proof if they have it, a screenshot, a hyperlink, a PDF. But if they don't, we love to file public records requests. You'd be surprised what a lot of school leaders put in writing when they, because they don't think of themselves as public officials. So we have asked for copies of policies, copies of contracts on all different things, on race, on gender, on union issues, on. I mean, I live in a district where they regularly ask us to pass nine figure bonds because they're constantly running out of money. What are you spending the money on? There are fewer students in school right now. Achievement is not going well. Where is the accountability? Like if I run out of money, I can't just ask the taxpayers to pick up the tab yet again.
- [14:03]
Tudor Dixon
That's another thing that, yeah, I think people haven't seen. And that's something that, so one of the, the people that I worked with a few years ago used to run an organization that did something similar and he was shocked by what you would find. You would find that these local districts would send their superintendents or their, their administration on a retreat to Hawaii for five days. And this would be cost a hundred thousand dollars or $250,000 to send 10 administrators to Hawaii at one of the nicest hotels and they're there for five days learning about how to be an administrator. I mean this is, this was spending money just to spend money. It was like a little cash cow for these people to take vacations and I mean all these bizarre things where they have, they have healthcare that covers facelifts and boob jobs and everything else.
- [15:01]
Nikki Neely
Yeah. I mean, and even you think about something as basic as when there's a teacher in service day for professional development. You know, when that happens, you and I have to find a babysitter for our kids for a day. You know, it's hard to take a day off work. But what are they learning? Are they learning how to teach phonics better or are they learning how to make our children do privilege walks and to hide secrets? Right. It's, you know, who are the outside vendors that some of these school districts are partnering with with our tax dollars? You know, are they being responsible stewards of public funds or not?
- [15:28]
Tudor Dixon
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- [16:49]
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- [17:50]
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- [18:10]
Nikki Neely
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- [18:19]
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- [19:20]
Tudor Dixon
Are you regularly auditing this? Do you have people in different states? I mean, because I do think that we want to know. We're. I mean in, in the state of Michigan, we're in a interesting situation where we have a massive amount of administration so to go through it because we have too many school districts. So I think it's like over 500. So if you were to go try to do that, I mean that almost helps to hide everything because if you have so many districts in one state, it's very hard to Chase this stuff down.
- [19:53]
Nikki Neely
Yeah, we work with a network of about 375 parent groups across the country, varying levels of, you know, size sophistication. But we also try and teach people how to do this. You know, with the collapse of the local news industry, I grew up with a local paper where they would go to the school board meeting and the city council meeting and report on that. Clearly that's not happening anymore either at the local, state or federal level. So it's, it's really kind of incumbent on all of us. I think for so many parents, it was a real wake up call during COVID that the gatekeepers, the people who we thought had our children's best interested heart clearly didn't, you know, the decisions that they were being made, even, you know, with regards to school closures or how funds were being spent at the federal level, Esser funding. When they passed the $190 million, I think a lot of us thought, oh, they're going to buy air purifiers and hand sanitizers and our kids will get back in classrooms. I mean, we saw in California and Illinois programs like that. You know, schools didn't open and then the money was just spent on DEI initiatives that made our children worse off, hate each other and not any smarter, and not make up any learning loss. And so it is almost, you know, that trying to teach parents how to be that voice and that, that investigator because there is nobody else keeping an eye on these things.
- [21:00]
Tudor Dixon
Well, and I have heard we've had some people on the show who have said, you know, in order to pay for anti racism, you need racism. So essentially you're going into these schools and to have a reason to have dei, you need people to be bigoted in some way. And so you're almost teaching that to create an issue where you have to fund an entire agency that prevents what you're teaching.
- [21:24]
Nikki Neely
Yes. Years ago I at the University of Michigan when I ran a campus free speech group and this was one of the things that came up the university's DEI department, their sort of definition of what bias and hate was, was a unconstitutional, but it was basically anytime somebody's feelings were hurt. How do you triangulate around that? As a student, if I don't know what is going to upset you, then out of an abundance of caution, I'm just not going to say anything at all because I don't want to possibly get in trouble and be hauled into a star chamber hearing. So things like that where when there are no clear lines and there is Nobody saying, I don't know if this is the right, you know, problem. We should be prosecuting Michigan's bias response team. Actually one of the things that they had a list of all the different complaints people had made. One of them was that somebody had built a phallic shaped snow sculpture. I mean, is that like a microaggression? Is that a hate crime or is that just an 18 year old boy being a little bit immature? But when you start to look at the numbers, right, if this bureaucracy says, well, we had twice as many hate incidents as we did the year before, we need more money, we need more programming, we need more staffers, it does become this self perpetuating machine. It's, you know, it's like the Reagan saying, the closest thing to eternal life is a, is a government program. They will never say, mission accomplished, let's shut it down.
- [22:38]
Tudor Dixon
You brought up the speech that I think it was University of Michigan, where it was like somebody was overheard saying something and someone else was offended. The idea of these microaggressions, I think, like how is that even a term? People say that. I'm like, I don't even know the word that you're talking about. I'm not even sure what you're, what you're saying. You know, it's like, it's, this is insane. But this is when we leave the high school and we as parents have much less control. We are sending our kids to universities where suddenly they get overheard on campus and they get called into a hearing. That also was stunning to me. I'm nervous enough about sending my kids away and having whatever happens on a college campus happen and whatever professors are telling them. But to think that they could be overheard talking to a friend, walking through campus and then called in for a hearing that they are afraid will go on truly a permanent record that will go to employers.
- [23:32]
Nikki Neely
Yes, absolutely. And so it is. You know, that's sort of the interesting. One of the reasons that we had expanded into higher ed in April of this year is the policies on campus are not staying on campus. A lot of them are metastasizing down to k to 12. So bias response teams where students are encouraged to anonymously report on others we now see in K12 settings. But also at the same time, a lot of the illiberal behaviors that we're seeing taught in the K to 12 system are manifesting on college campuses. Clearly, students don't have any civic understanding when they get to college, which is why they think it is, is appropriate. And just to punch another Student in the face. If they disagree with their speech or if they've never been disciplined for anything in their entire life, then they think, of course I can create an encampment and terrorize my fellow students.
- [24:14]
Tudor Dixon
And where did we just see the teaching assistant that was fired for turning over the Turning Point table?
- [24:22]
Nikki Neely
Right.
- [24:23]
Tudor Dixon
That was just at a university campus. This is happening. I went to a Turning Point campus probably four weeks ago and the, the student who started up this Turning Point chapter was tabling and that means he's out on campus with his table and had a professor pour a hot coffee over his head. I mean, if you are a student who sees a professor do that, then you think that that kind of. And that is violent. That's violence. When you are pouring hot coffee over someone's head. This is not speech. This is violence. And it seems to be conflated. People are not understanding the difference these days.
- [25:01]
Nikki Neely
Race. Yes, it's, it's absolutely wild. And it's been so funny in the response to a lot of what had been, you know, the encampments and everything. In October 7, all of the people who wanted nothing more than to shut down and silence. Conservatives over the past, you know, decade are now claiming that they have free speech rights. And as you said, no, physical violence doesn't count as free speech. Like there are some very clear lines and you can't have it both ways. But of course, you know, the intention of these policies as well as the behavior of the students and professors is that, that they want, they, they want people just to self censor. They just want to shut you up. It's that I don't have to punch everyone in the face, but if I punch Tutor, then everyone is going, everyone who thinks like her is going to keep their mouth shut going forward.
- [25:45]
Tudor Dixon
Well, I mean, obviously that's what we saw with Charlie. You know, if I silence one, I can stop this from happening. And I do think that there is a lot of division going on and there, there's a lot of, it's pushing this, this idea that you have a lot of people saying speech is violence. It changes the narrative then to if speech is violence, you can respond with violence. There's a confusion among our young people. I will say that there's a push right now in K through 12, and I've seen this from Republicans as well. We've got to get more mental health treatment. We've got to get more mental health treatment. It's got to be in our, in our schools. But I have to tell you, the idea of someone counseling my child without me there. And in my state, once my kid hits 12, I don't get to see their medical records unless they sign it off for me to see. So that could very easily mean that there is a medical professional in the school treating them for a mental health issue that I don't know about. I am uncomfortable with that, and absolutely you should be.
- [26:53]
Nikki Neely
And you're right. I mean, the medical age of consent in so many of these states is appallingly low. A lot of the state 90s, it was when, you know, it was a push for birth control in schools. If, you know, mommy's Catholic and she doesn't want you to have birth control, let's, you know, let's get that to you. And then the definition of, you know, healthcare services has just expanded. And so even. Right. Reproductive care in 1995 was, was, you know, birth control. Now it's transgender hormones. And so just again, to sort of watch these little fiefdoms expand. And to your point about the mental health screenings, I mean, yeah, there are the surveys that take place, but it's the even, you know, the information that they gather and what ideas are they putting into students heads when you, when you poll a student over and over again. Are you suicidal? Are you suicidal? It starts to actually put that idea in and normalize it. Well, I wasn't. But is everybody. Am I the only one who isn't? Maybe I'm weird. Maybe I should be. And then to cut parents out of that loop, I mean, you know, you and I have to sign permission slips for our kids to have sunscreen and Advil, you know, and, but you can go on and that, you know, and then have somebody who is not even necessarily a licensed mental health professional perhaps. Like, maybe it's a guidance counselor who generally is like, are you going to Michigan or Michigan State? Right. Like, they're the person who is having these very, very high stakes decisions with them. Yeah.
- [28:10]
Tudor Dixon
That changes from Michigan to Michigan State to are you a woman or a man? You're probably not what you were born. You know, I mean, this is crazy.
- [28:18]
Nikki Neely
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:20]
Tudor Dixon
And we also have, I mean, I, I say that at, at the same time where I feel like girls are really struggling in school to prove that they shouldn't have to share a locker room with someone who is in that situation. Well, this is what I think. You have a lot of these counselors who are pushing kids into this. You're probably the wrong gender. It tends to be male to female that we're seeing going into sports and they are going into the locker room with women and they're changing and they're watching girls change and they're taking over their sports. And it is like today there are people on the left who think you are insane for saying that is not okay. And I, I can't even believe it.
- [29:04]
Nikki Neely
Yeah, but again, this is one of those like fundamental things that we tell our children as parents. Right. If you have a bad feeling, if you feel unsafe. Right. Listen to your body and follow it. But we now have our girls in schools. If they are uncomfortable and they say, I don't really want to get naked in front of that guy, then they are told by school administrators, you're a bad person and you're a bigot. And again, so it's, it's causing all of these students, all of these children to second guess themselves. And that is really dangerous.
- [29:32]
Tudor Dixon
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon Podcast.
- [29:38]
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- [30:38]
iHeart Advertising Representative
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- [31:40]
Tudor Dixon
Most parents of girls are very concerned about it right now. I was telling my girls the other day, they said they don't do this anymore and they were shocked that we did this. So when I was in high school, which was a million years ago, at mid, we had to shower after gym every single day. And there was a gym teacher in the shower to make sure you showered, which is even creepier now that you think about it. And we had these towels that were two feet. It didn't wrap all the way around you. It was the craziest thing. And I hadn't thought about it in a million years. And I was like, oh, when we were kids we had to shower in front of all of our friends and like you were forced to shower and if you didn't shower you were in trouble. They watched you to make sure you showered. But I think about. And it wasn't like horrifying. I mean it was gross, but it wasn't horrifying. But what if a boy were in there? I would have been horrified.
- [32:28]
Nikki Neely
No, I, I live in Northern Virginia and there have been a number of horrible incidents along these lines. Recently there was a sex offender, registered sex offender that was in the locker room of a high school and he, he was exposing himself to small children. I was at an event with Secretary McMahon a few weeks ago and one woman said my nine year old daughter was hiding, cowering in a bathroom stall waiting for him to go away. And they didn't do anything on it because he identified as a woman. And so they felt that they had to let him in. They didn't run IDs, they didn't check, you know, so they didn't check against a sex offender registry. But then also conversely, in another district in Loudoun county, there was a girl that went into the boys bathroom. She identified as a male. She was recording the boys in there as they were changing. And the boys complained and they are now under investigation on Title IX charges because they are considered sexually harassing and discriminating on the basis of gender. So it is, we're through the looking glass on so many of these issues.
- [33:25]
Tudor Dixon
That's a whole new level too. The recording, the constant recording that kids are going through. And I know that that's something parents have been fighting to get cell phones off of school campuses. And I really do believe that cell phones should not be allowed on the campus. You either come in, you have to lock them up and get them at the end of the day. But just think about the number of things. I mean, all the schools. So for parents who don't have kids in high school, schools all have their own. Somebody. Our school has this, an Instagram page where, like, a senior, we don't know who. Every year, a senior is running the Instagram page, and it passes from senior to senior, and they figure out the next senior, they pass it down. And it is just to make fun of kids at the school. So they find old pictures or they take videos. And every day, people are so afraid of ending up on this Instagram page because. Yes. And I think this is happening. I mean, my daughter, my niece, they totally different states, they have this same situation. So I think that people need to understand that our kids have a really different life than what we had. And this idea that you can mix genders, that everybody's the same, all this stuff, it's going to lead to abuse and it's going to lead to real mental harm. Yeah.
- [34:45]
Nikki Neely
I mean, the cyber bullying is terrifying. And then there is also just the element of, you know, youthful indiscretion and kids changing their mind. I certainly don't have the same political opinions I did when I was 14. Um, you know, some. Many of us have done stupid things, right. You know, but it's. There is this element of personal growth. I feel like over the past couple years, we've seen stories of even fellow students that have held or kept or saved videos of people and then used it years later to destroy somebody's life who they didn't like. Oh, you know, I just got this girl's offer pulled from her college because I showed that she, you know, said something awful four years ago. And, you know, where is that, like, we do, there is an element of, you know, we should want to bestow Christian grace on others and forgiveness and allow people to learn from their mistakes and evolve. But everything online lives forever, and it really. It denies that opportunity to people.
- [35:33]
Tudor Dixon
You know, it's interesting. I'll just say this is a total aside, but my girls, they had phones in middle school, which parents go crazy. You know, there's this idea like, keep your kids away from phones. And they had phones in middle school, and it was kind of like a came from my parents thing, and we just dealt with it. But it's also the technology that are going to live with the rest of their lives and they learned and we monitored very closely. But their, some other friends, their parents said, well, you're not getting it until you turn 16 or until you, you get into high school. And they're like, mom, this is something I had never considered. They're like, mom, you know how you go through that really cringy phase of taking videos of yourself? And I'm like, no, because that was not a thing. So genuinely no. I have no, no knowledge of this. And they're like, oh, our friends that get their cell phones in high school, they're going through their cringy phase then and there's horrible videos of them. And I'm like, things I hadn't thought about. And then you end up. Those are your permanent. People know that of you in high school. There's just so much as parents, we don't know how this technology is going to affect our kids.
- [36:39]
Nikki Neely
Yeah, no, it's really scary. My children are smaller. They're 10 and 12. They don't have phones yet. But it is, is watching my friends and my peers and sort of trying to figure out how to navigate that and keep them from being excluded in the one. You know, the two weird kids who don't have phones and can't talk to.
- [36:53]
Tudor Dixon
People who go through their cringy phase in college, in high school. Yeah, no, it's hard. I mean that's what I, that's why I think your organization is so great. Because I think as parents we are dealing with so many things that we weren't expo. I never, my parents never had to deal with any of this stuff. I mean there wasn't this kind of thing happening at schools. There weren't kids that were meowing in the hallways ways and there weren't cell phones and there, there wasn't roadblocks. I mean you think about what we deal with as parents so much different than what our parents had to deal with. My mom says it all the time. I'm, I'm not envious of you raising kids today. And I think every generation says that. But the, I think the biggest change was the technology between my childhood and my kids childhood. So I do believe we are having a, a harder time doing this. And your organization is one that we need so desperately to be and be in contact with. So can you tell people how they can look everything up and find you guys?
- [37:53]
Nikki Neely
Yeah. Our website is defendinged.org we're on all of the social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. Um, but we have a tip line. People can say they they can submit things to us anonymously, so we will never have anybody's names involved. We don't want, you know, I think people credibly fear, retaliate, and both against themselves as well as their children. And so we will always be the bad guys and take the hate mail. Um, but we also, yeah, we love to investigate things. And then just to pull together are lots of the anecdotes that we see. When we see a handout that's been in, like, 15 schools, like the Gender Unicorn or something, we think, where is this coming from? Who is putting this out? Who is funding this? How is this getting its. You know, making its way across the country and then getting all that information into the hands of policymakers so we can actually affect real change at the local, state, and federal level.
- [38:34]
Tudor Dixon
I love that because I do oftentimes get messages from people like our school sent, I think, just because I'm known in the state. So people will send me private messages on Facebook or Twitter and. And say, you know, this. I got this letter home from my school today. This scary. I'm gonna start sending those to you.
- [38:51]
Nikki Neely
Just because I think it's good to.
- [38:53]
Tudor Dixon
Have a record of all the schools that are doing it.
- [38:55]
Nikki Neely
No, and we want to work with people. You know, everybody getting to. Yes. And getting to a good resolution is different for everybody. Some people are just like, you know, I don't want that handout ever again. Or some people are like, I want a new superintendent. And so, you know, we are happy to work with people, have private conversations, and then also just give general tips on how to get engaged. You know, so many parents were not politically active until Covid happened. And so we have guides on questions to ask your teacher about different topics, readings to get smart, how to file a civil rights complaint, how to write a press release, you know, how to write a letter to the editor. Just, you know, ways where people can just be a little bit more involved, because at the end of the day, it's really only us that have our children's best interests at heart. It's not the policymakers. It's not the, you know, the administrators. It's. It's us as parents.
- [39:38]
Tudor Dixon
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you for what you do, and thank you, Nikki Neely, for coming on the podcast today.
- [39:44]
Nikki Neely
Thank you for having me.
- [39:46]
Tudor Dixon
Absolutely. And thank you all for listening to the Tudor Dixon podcast. For this episode and others, you can go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also watch it on Rumble or YouTube uterdixon. But make sure you join us next time and have a blessed day.
- [40:04]
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- [40:57]
Rodney Williams
I'm Rodney Williams.
- [40:58]
Travis Holloway
And I'm Travis Holloway. Welcome to the wealthbreak podcast, a real conversation about finance.
- [41:04]
Rodney Williams
Let's be honest, building wealth doesn't look the same for everyone.
- [41:09]
Tudor Dixon
I feel like sometimes being broke is a cycle and that we might have.
- [41:12]
Travis Holloway
To revisit that and we're not stopping at success stories.
- [41:16]
Commercial Narrator 1
What happens when it doesn't go go right? How do you cope with it?
- [41:19]
Rodney Williams
Because wealth isn't just about money, it's about creating a life where you thrive and help others do the same.
- [41:25]
Travis Holloway
Listen to the Wealth Break podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
- [41:30]
iHeart Holiday Advertiser
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- [42:01]
Tudor Dixon
This is an iheart podcast.