Hillsborough County School Board Meeting: CAIR in our classrooms

At Tuesday evening’s Hillsborough County School Board Meeting, over sixty concerned citizens were present to express their concerns after learning about the presence of Hassan Shibly, Executive Director of the Florida Council on American Islamic Relations at Tampa (CAIR), in several Hillsborough County High Schools in the past year.

This was discovered through a CAIR news alert on its Face Book page in December, announcing that CAIR – Tampa had spoken to five hundred high school students about Islam, stating:

“The Council on American-Islamic Relations of Florida, Tampa chapter (CAIR-Tampa), gave seven presentations on Islam this week to over a dozen different AP world history and world religions public high school classes in the Tampa area. The presentations covered topic such as basic Muslim beliefs, Islamic history, Islam and human rights, religious tolerance and diversity, and popular misconceptions about Islam.”

Pamela Geller, of Atlas Shrugs and Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA) reported on Shibly’s presence in our high schools and reached out to parents for more information. A mother responded and related that after an innocuous comment related to the Middle East, or Islam, her daughter revealed that her Steinbrenner High School history class had a guest who spoke to the students about Islam. This parent spoke to the principal of the school and the teacher, Kelly Miliziano, revealed that she regularly had Mr. Shibly come and speak to the class about the tenets and beliefs of the Muslim faith, as a part of the unit on the history of religion.

The concern of this parent, and other parents, is that Mr. Shibly is not an Imam and is not qualified to speak about the Muslim faith.  The concern is his affiliation with CAIR, an organization with which the FBI severed its relationship until it determines “whether there continues to be a connection between” CAIR leadership and Hamas terrorists. Although Ms. Miliziano assured the mother that representatives of other religions had been invited and were also going to speak to her daughter’s class, when she asked her daughter if other speakers had come to make presentations, she was told that no other speakers had addressed her class.

It should be of great concern that no parents were advised prior to this class that a representative of CAIR would be addressing their children in this way.

At the school board meeting, board member Dr. Stacy White (District 4) proposed that they have a workshop to look into ways to investigate speakers who are invited to present to our children and to verify their scholarly credentials before allowing them to come into our classrooms. After much back and forth, this motion came to a vote.  Dr. Stacy White and Susan Valdez (District 1) voted in support of a workshop.  Dr. White stated that he when he ran for the school board position, he committed to listening to the people and he will continue to listen to them and address their concerns, which drew applause from the audience.  The board members who voted against a workshop were Jack Lamb (District 3), April Griffin (District 6), Carol Kurdell (District 7), Candy Olson (District 2), and Dorethea Edgecomb (District 5).

Upon further investigation, parents should be aware that Kelly Miliziano, the history class teacher at Steinbrenner High School, is the UNA-USA Tampa Bay Chapter President of Global Classrooms Tampa Bay. The website states: “Now in its 10th year, Global Classrooms: Tampa Bay has over 75 teachers who teach the curriculum to more than 3,500 students in 89 schools.” This organization holds a model United Nations Conference annually and is affiliated with the United Nations Association of Tampa, with links to the United Nations and its global governance ideology, similar to the International Baccalaureate program covered in a previous article.

The indoctrination of our children is occurring in our public schools under the watchful, but apparently un-concerned, eyes of the School Board of Hillsborough County.