When I saw the first, big money PAC ad promoting Amendment 2, the so-called “school choice” bill coming to your Kentucky ballot this November, it was no surprise to see preacher and former Anderson County Schools teacher, Randy Adams, in the starring role.
Do not be fooled.
Adams has been a chaos agent, sowing division and animosity about public education in Anderson County, where I live, for the last two years.
In the fall of 2022, just before the November midterms, Adams posted a (since deleted) manifesto on his Facebook page which led to a standing-room-only school board meeting. The vast majority of attendees in that meeting were not there to help; they were there to make fearmongering, religious statements against our public schools and/or applaud those who did.
I know because I attended this meeting; I noted the seemingly-odd-at-the-time attendance of David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation, a registered lobbying group that says it advocates for “policies based on Biblical principles.” I stayed for the public comments, which were so outrageous that our local newspaper’s front-page headline quoted one of the speakers, who said, “The devil is trying to destroy the family unit.”
A year later, during the fall election season of 2023, Adams was back at it. He was a preacher at Ballard Baptist Church at the time and invited Brad Briscoe, an Anderson County Schools parent, to come to the pulpit to share a story about his daughter and our public high school with the congregation. Adams then posted the video of that church meeting on Facebook, writing, “Share this message if you support the Briscoe family and want to protect children” with an edict to attend our next school board meeting with a list of what to say.
Hundreds of citizens showed up at that Anderson County school board meeting in what appeared to be an effort to oust a school counselor and the superintendent and, like the meeting a year earlier, quote Bible verses and toss a blowtorch into an otherwise peaceful community.
It is no exaggeration to say the Adams roadshow has worn out its welcome here. And yet, in a video posted on The Family Foundation’s Facebook page, Adams said, “Over the last couple years, how many Twitter or YouTube videos have you seen of parents going to school board meetings and giving impassioned speeches and there’s no reply? It’s like talking to a blank wall … I believe educational freedom is the solution.” He also claimed the guidelines he was given as a teacher meant “Christians aren’t welcome as public servants in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. We’ve got to really address that as a form of persecution.”
What a bunch of hooey.
There is zero proof that Kentucky Christians are being persecuted or are not welcome as public servants, a truly ludicrous statement. Many of us are active members in the churches in our towns, whether we’re talking about big Jefferson County or little rural Anderson County, and some of our fellow congregants are the teachers who teach our kids and grandkids in our public schools.
This basic fact, sadly, has not stopped Adams from working with The Family Foundation to spin a political message in an ad that’s paid for by a PAC bankrolled by Jeff Yass, a billionaire options trader and TikTok investor from Pennsylvania.
So when you see a smiling Adams in today’s expensive, political TV ads, hawking Amendment 2, know that you are not listening to some random, sweet teacher they just happened to come across and film in a classroom. You are being conned. You are being coerced by a man who has repeatedly created unnecessary chaos, turning neighbor against neighbor in a small, rural Kentucky county, seemingly for his own benefit and the benefit of a registered lobbyist.
Amendment 2 is not about school choice.
Amendment 2 is just the latest gizmo being sold by opportunists like Randy Adams to change the Kentucky Constitution today so that tomorrow they can use your tax dollars for their church schools — where there are no standards, no public accountability, and where they can handpick the kids they want to teach.
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