Just a warning. This episode contains some explicit language that's important to the story of what happened in South Lake.

We don't want you to be caught off guard. Thanks for listening.

One afternoon this March, South Lake resident Jennifer Huff found what looked like a new local newspaper, stuffed inside her mailbox.

She told me about it over the phone. I was just like seriously this is where we're at and the words South Lake families news volume one were plastered across the top of the newspaper and underneath it in huge bold face type.

The lead headlines screamed a question is Carol ISD in crisis. Jennifer a white mom of two dragon students scanned the page until her eyes landed on the fine print at the bottom.

political advertisement paid for by South Lake families pack South Lake families pack. The new conservative political action committee in town had raised nearly 200,000 dollars in its fight to stop the diversity plan mostly from local donors.

And now it's spent a chunk of that money creating this eight page political mailer.

It's like they're trying to make it seem like it was a legit news organization that put this out and not a political action committee.

Every household in South Lake got at least one copy some got to the paper was filled with headlines and articles about the school district's cultural competence action plan.

Describing the C cap as an attempt to quote indoctrinate children according to extremely liberal beliefs and characterizing the plan's cost which averages out to about $280,000 per year over five years as quote radically irresponsible.

One headline warned that the plan would discriminate against Christian student clubs by forcing them to comply with diversity audits.

And underneath that you start going into the criminal investigation where they've accused board members and it is trying to explain what C cap is and I guess there is.

Jennifer believed this political mailer disguised as a newspaper was probably aimed at people like her.

White Christian South Lake moms who want to protect their kids. But her views on race and politics no longer aligned with many of her neighbors.

A shift that really took off in 2016 after her daughter came home talking about kids in her fifth grade class chanting build the wall.

Then after the viral n-word video in 2018 and after hearing accounts of black and gay students who said they'd been bullied at school Jennifer got even more involved.

Even helping start a new local nonprofit dignity for all Texas students to support the diversity plan.

Jennifer was having an emotional reaction to the South Lake families pack newspaper but probably not the one the group was going for.

And then I was starting to read it and see the things in it that weren't true and the fear of wandering that was in it.

On page two there's a headline claiming that plans for a diversity and inclusion week at Carol would amount to a school sponsored celebration of Black Lives Matter.

And on page three near an article about the dangers of tracking and disciplining students for microaggressions.

There's what looks like a stock photo of a white child in handcuffs under the headline student criminalization.

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