Bernie Scolaro is a retired school counselor, a past president of the Sioux City Education Association, and former Sioux City school board member.

Jackson Katz created a peer leadership program called Mentors in Violence Prevention in 1993. The concept was to empower bystanders to help prevent bullying, sexual harassment and gender-related violence. Some schools implemented Mentors in Violence Prevention strategies in 1997. Sioux City West High School implemented the training program while I was a school counselor there. Assistant Principal Al Heisterkamp took the lead. Philanthropist Cindy Waitt and the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention provided support and funding, which contributed to this program’s success nationwide. 

This program deserves its own recognition and deep dive, but here’s one key fact: its success was based on training peers to educate their peers in standing up for each other. Why did this model work? Because we tend to listen to people who are more like us; in this instance, those similar in age.

We are drawn to people like ourselves. Even counseling or support groups are made up of people sharing similar grief, problems, addictions. The idea of having educators and administrators look like the students in their school or district is not a ridiculous concept. The Washington Examiner reported on January 24,

Days before Donald Trump took office, the Biden Department of Education opened an application for $75 million worth of grant funding aimed at recruiting and retaining more nonwhite teachers, according to federal records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.

The program, dubbed Supporting Effective Educator Development, makes tens of millions of dollars available to eligible nonprofit groups to increase “educator diversity” and to support an existing “diverse educator workforce.” Among other things, the program’s description claims that some minority students won’t reach their full potential unless they’re taught by educators who share their racial or ethnic background. 

In May 2024, Governor Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 2435, an education appropriations bill that included a provision targeting DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) at Iowa’s state universities. Under the law, the Regents universities could not spend money on offices, staffing, or programs not required by state or federal law.

Reynolds wrote to the presidents of all three state universities on January 23, reminding them that President Donald Trump “issued an executive order titled Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” The governor reminded them that their universities must comply and eliminate all DEI offices, policies, and staff, or risk losing federal funding.

The Trump plan is to halt all DEI programs, without any analysis. It’s all or nothing. Reynolds is in full obedience, even if her position as a female governor could be construed as a DEI hire by her predecessor, Terry Branstad.

Pitting DEI against merit-based is a false forced choice. When I served on the Sioux City School Board, we discussed ways to recruit more diverse staff with our district’s Human Relations Director. We did not intend to eliminate qualifications and standards. We just knew that our district is in a very diverse community, and we could be better educators with diverse backgrounds to meet our students’ needs.

Eliminating diversity policies will not eliminate diversity. Nor should we, as Iowans and Americans, ever want to. 

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Top photo is by Luke Hoffman, taken at an Iowa Rivers Revival cleanup event in August 2023.