Court win for parents who sued Charlotte Latin School | Hour 1

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to the peak calendar show.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. I want to start with bringing my next guest on. His name is Doug Turpin. And the story is that Doug and his wife, Nicole, enrolled their kids at a private school, Charlotte Latin. And this was back during the 2020-2021 academic year. And following the events of summer 2020, the school shifted its curriculum to emphasize, guess what? You'll never guess. In 2020, yes, Woke One was crazy, to quote AOC, to emphasize issues of race and gender identity. The parents grew a little concerned. They met with the board. The board then kind of shuffled them off to the leader of the school, and the school kicked the kids out of the school. So I think that's sort of the high-level general idea, and I want to welcome Doug to the program. We can get into some details. Doug, how are you, sir? I'm doing great. So did I get anything wrong? I know it was very, very brief detail, or no details there, but did I get the outline of the timeline correct? Yeah, so this is almost five years to the day. It was September 10th, 2021, when we were ambushed and expelled from my two children from the only school they'd ever known, despite the fact that the board promised us there'd be no retaliation allowed. The school's contract says there's no retaliation if you simply ask questions about health and welfare issues. or about what's being taught. They promised openness and transparency. And this was done, we think, unmistakably to send a message to all the other parents, because there were dozens and dozens of parents. There was an uproar in the school about what was going on. Hey, anybody else asking any questions we don't want to answer, then you're next. Once the kid's expelled. Yeah, I think your sense of that is exactly right. You take out one of the leaders, and I guess because you had created this group or you were part of this group called Refocus Latin, you put together a PowerPoint presentation, you showed it to the board, and then boom, your kids get kicked out. And that definitely sends a message to all of the other parents that If you want your kids to remain enrolled, you'll shut up about what we're doing now. And so let's get into some of the specifics of of what the school was actually doing. I know that. So the reason I'm talking to Doug today is because the. You sued Charlotte Latin. You had you had some defeats at the trial court level. Right. Then it went to the Court of Appeals, more defeats at the Court of Appeals. But then it goes to the Supreme Court of the state of North Carolina. And they overturn most of those items and send them back down. So you're not out of the woods yet. You still got to go to trial or you still got to make your case, I should say. But what are what were some of the things that your kids were being exposed to during 2020, 2021? Yeah, just real. Briefly to provide context there in North Carolina and in all states. The law is that if you properly state a claim, you get to move into court. But we had politically motivated reasoning where we had a trial judge ignore all the facts in the law and just make stuff up and say, well, they're a private school. They can do anything they want. They can breach their contract. They can commit fraud. They can slander and defame you. They can use unfair and deceptive practices, bring you into a meeting specifically promising there'll be no retaliation and retaliate. The schools were unaccountable. We had a Democrat panel on the Court of Appeals that issued such a histrionic, and it was full of vituperation, like it was a political polemic. And basically what happened was, they were ordered to redo it by the rest of the appeals panel. And so they just said the same thing more nicely. The Supreme Court ruled that the facts and the law actually matter. You can't do this. You can't just use politics. to go ahead and overturn the law. And so we're back where we should have been five years ago. Which is, just to restate that, you are now allowed to proceed with most of your claims in court because in order to allow, like, obviously there's a gatekeeping function at the superior court level, right? So just frivolous lawsuits, can't all go to trial and that sort of thing. And that was essentially what they were What Judge Lisa Bell did was to basically say, no, you're not going to succeed on the merits. And oh, no, you're there. A private school. You have a contract. You should have negotiated this when you got when you enrolled to get a better contract or something. And then and then they're like, you can't sue because they can do whatever they want. And the last part was because we had it dead to rights on the contract. They could not do what they did. That was a flagrant breach of their contract. They just didn't care. And so just to give your listeners an idea of what was going on in the school, just how far into woke one crazy they were, they had a picture of Jesus with his throat cut, black blood pooling down his shirt, with on his forehead, God is dead, hanging up in the hallways of the school. They had a burning Bible, the Bible on fire. as a picture. They had a gay sex manual that was basically showing pictures of a how-to to commit gay sex. And our point was, we didn't think that was appropriate, whether it was gay sex, heterosexual sex. We don't need the Kama Sutra in a school environment. We just said, this is inappropriate. They had a picture of a police officer represented as a pig with his head partially severed, blood pooling out, and all cops are bastards on there. I mean, it was just a horror show. And parents were just alarmed. They took the curriculum offline. They became very cold. It was during the COVID pandemic. So they just locked all parents out of the school. And we had things that were shocking us to the core coming home. All the classics removed. You know, my son was reading from a book called Woke, A Young Poet's Guide to Justice. And this was supposed to be an apolitical classical education school, measured children on merit, taught them Judeo-Christian values. Never taking a political stance was what they said. You should never know what way the teachers lean or the school doesn't lean anything. We teach children, you know, how to think, not what to think. And they switched it around. They were teaching the children... what they needed to think, and threatening retribution if you didn't get in line. So all of us were simply, the lawsuit was about one central issue. It wasn't about the crazy stuff they were doing. To us, it's can you expel your children from a school simply because you respectfully ask questions about what they're being taught or their health and welfare? Because if you can, then... terrible things can go on in a private school. Parents will be afraid to ask questions if their children may be in danger or they may have a dangerous situation of any sort from a school employee. It could be some wealthy alumni's children. It could be whatever the issue is. They'll be too afraid to even raise the issue because the schools claim they had the unfettered right to declare that you've made the situation impossible just by asking questions. Ours was worse. They specifically invited us to come in and explain what we were concerned about within a written promise that there would be no retaliation. I got a note back that said that there would be no blowback when I approached the school after this board meeting And I told him, my son's telling me that he's got a teacher that says that you won't let him drink water or go to the bathroom and is telling him all Republicans are white supremacists. And he's telling me he feels like there's something wrong with him because he's white. And he asked me, he says, during story time, he said, Dad, I'm a boy, right? And I'm like, you do? Wait, what? Why are you asking me that? He goes, well, at school they tell me that if you like hanging out with other boys, you might be gay, and you should think about that. Am I gay? And is there something wrong with me because I'm white? And I'm like, oh my God, this is horrible. And this was a diversion from what the education was when you first enrolled your kids. Yeah, this was never happening before. We had The school was really everything they promised until the new headmaster, Chuck Baldecki, came in. And then he began a crusade to turn it into the woke school that cancels children in an indoctrination center from the way we looked at it. they were all about political indoctrination. And all of the parents were asking him, please, just explain to us what you intend to do with this school. You've taken the curriculum offline. When we asked him questions, they said, it's the same school. It always was. There's no changes. And if you don't quit asking these questions, maybe this isn't the right school for you. So we were being gaslit. And we just wanted them to be honest and tell us so we could make the decisions on our own whether we wanted to continue being at the school in the next year. A lot of parents don't realize if you get kicked out during the middle of the year, there isn't another just waiting school to go to. You have the public school system, which isn't really top-notch in Charlotte. now, or you have private schools, so you have to wait a year. They knew this. They knew that it would be exceptionally painful to ambush a parent. And so when I approached them with this, an email asking for a conversation, they said, they won't talk to me about it. They're not going to talk to me about my son's concerns. Instead, they're going to go straight to the teacher that my son said was making him feel so very uncomfortable and and mistreating them. That's a health and safety issue. If you're not allowed to drink water or go to the bathroom, you know, then that's an alarming scenario. I think any parent would reach out and just say, can we talk about this? Yeah, Doug, let me pause you there because I have to go to a break, but we'll bring you back on after the break. My guest is Doug Turpin. He and his wife sued Charlotte Lattin over what we've been describing here in the ability to Ask questions about the curriculum and the state Supreme Court is now has now ruled that they can proceed with that lawsuit. All right. For over a year now, you've heard me talking about create a video. Great local company in Mint Hill that has helped more than two million families preserve their memories by turning old photos. VHS tapes, film reels, and slides into lasting keepsakes. Now, Creative Video is helping families and groups create brand new memories while they're traveling. Introducing group travel videos, perfect for family reunions, church mission trips, group vacations, destination weddings, student trips, senior adult groups, sports teams. I mean, really any gathering of people that you care about that's traveling together. 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Group travel videos.com group travel videos from old memories to new adventures, preserving life's moments for a lifetime. Uh, we're talking with Doug Turpin. He is one of the parents who sued, uh, Charlotte Latin after the school kicked his kids out after he raised questions about their, uh, their new found woke curriculum back in 2020. The, uh, That was the height of the fiery but mostly peaceful protesting and such, and the quote-unquote reckoning, as we all recall it. Doug, you mentioned this was during COVID. Was this stuff made apparent to you because your kids were learning from home? Like, were they at home on the computers, and that's where you saw what they were being taught? Or were they still in school, in class instruction, and you saw this stuff in the school itself? Or both. It was a mix of all of that. There were so many parents that were alarmed that they began to talk to each other. Most of the groups, because there were dozens and dozens of families, that organically began to communicate together to form a movement because none of us could get any answers. They all just kept being gaslit. When we would reach out and ask questions, we were told there was nothing different, nothing new going on, nothing to see here. And so that was the reason why we began to organize. And we decided that since Chuck Baldecki and his administration were just gaslighting us, then maybe we could talk to the board. So the board said, we guarantee there'll be no retaliation. That's crazy talk. I mean, it would be so obvious we were doing that. We will not allow anyone to retaliate. Come in and express your concerns. Create a presentation. This presentation, your listeners can see on www.honoraboveall.org. And Honor Above All was the motto of that Charlotte Latin had and used to uphold. But that was the reason why we named it honoraboveall.org. And you can see the images for yourself at honoraboveall.org slash culture. And these horrifying things that were in the school, we wanted people to be able to see for yourself because it's just difficult to believe. They conceived that something like this would happen in your backyard. So you go– yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say when we civilly and respectfully gave our feedback– The board said, essentially, thank you for sharing. We're not going to answer your questions. Denny O'Leary, the board chair, said, you know, thank you for giving this. It's so nice and wonderful for you to share your thoughts, but we're not going to engage with you. We're not going to answer your questions. But you can just go to the administration. There'll be no retaliation. Just go to the administration. They'll have more conversations. We were directed by the board, promised no retaliation. Your son tells you about these types of things going on in his class and how he's feeling. What parent wouldn't reach out? and ask for a conversation. The contract says you can't be retaliated if you do that, and it just common sense says you're going to engage in a conversation with a parent. So you show up with the administration, and that's when you're told that your kids are kicked out, got to be out by the end of the day. Yeah, it was worse than that. All right, hang on. We got to go to news. All right, but you said you can hang on for another segment? I absolutely can. Okay, hang on. Doug Turpin, we'll have more with him, and we'll talk about what happened at that second meeting in a moment. All right, Doug Turpin is with me still. Thank you for hanging on, Doug. I know we only agreed to two segments, but if you want, I can take you all the way to the top of the hour because we got a lot of stuff still to cover. Yeah, that'd be fantastic. All right, so I. Read through the Court of Appeals ruling, I read through the Supreme Court ruling, and I forget where we left off. What was the... Yeah, go ahead. It was right around the meeting. Yes, the second meeting. And why we claim fraud and unfair and deceptive trade practices. So for your listeners, fraud is when there's a misrepresentation and somebody relies on it. And then, you know, somebody takes the action that they said they wouldn't. So Latin promised all of us there'd be no retaliation for their feedback providing it. They invited it. They asked us to. And then we began to be retaliated against. The headmaster, Chuck Baldecki, you can see on our website, launched into a just an all-out attack on the character of the parents at the school. And he said that we were awful. and that we were ripping apart the fabric of the school and, you know, basically painted all of us, of course, as if we were racist and, you know, that we were, you know, that we were the ones who were trying to change the culture of the school when it was them doing it. So then, you know, almost immediately after, at the end of that, he said, bring any parents that are raising any issues or concerns from these refocused Latin folks to me, and I will deal with them. So he directed all of the people to take that action. So Todd Balaban, the middle school principal, when I asked him in an email for a conversation about what was going on with my son, I never imagined what would happen. He said no. And he was going to take two days to investigate everything, but he wouldn't even hear from me. He wouldn't have a conversation. How do you investigate something when you won't talk to the parent? And so that was baffling. And I expressed my concern about being retaliated against even more because it was evident that this teacher was angry. Angry. My son was telling him that he could feel the anger coming at him because of the refocused Latin presentation. So he emailed me back and said, I guarantee there'll be no blowback. And he invited me to a private meeting with the headmaster. Well, you don't do that. You know, you would just have a conversation with the parents. You don't take an everyday thing to a headmaster. So I was suspicious. And I agreed to come because of their representation, which turned out to be fraud and an unfair and deceptive practice. Because I walk into an expulsion meeting where they were angry and pulled out the enrollment agreements. Didn't want to have any real conversations about what was supposed to be the topic of the meeting. What was going on with my son? And so he told me I was plotting against the school, plotting against all of their changes. I had even met with other parents to discuss my concerns at their houses. Uh-oh. You couldn't do something like that. I thought it was American. Yeah, I wasn't aware that the agreement surrenders your rights of freedom of assembly. Yes, or speech or anything else, but they wanted pure ideological conformity in all your actions. This literally means the schools, the Charlotte Latin and the private associations that rallied around them, they're all woke, and they basically think, we can control you. You have to toe the line. or else we'll expel your children. We don't maybe like where you work. We don't like what you say. We don't like your church. We don't like your employer. We don't like your relatives. We can expel your children because you made the relationship impossible. That's why we sued. Tell me about the defamation part of this lawsuit as well. Yeah, so after expelling our kids that day and marching them out like they were perps, they had the security guard drag them out and expel the kids that day in the most humiliating way possible. And then two days later, the board sent out an email, two business days later, and basically had to smear us as implying that we were racist. They said that we had claimed that that the school was hiring teachers, the minority teachers that didn't deserve their place, and then bringing children in there that didn't deserve their place. Problem was, we never said anything like that. We didn't make that statement. They knew that. But the whole point is, let's expel the Turpin kids, and then let's go ahead and smear them and all the other refocused Latin parents. Let's paint them out there, the racist, the bigots, the white supremacists, you know, all of these kinds of things to raise a culture of fear. And to us, that's intolerable. You know, we can't have a culture of fear where parents are unable to ask what's being taught. Wait a minute, I'm concerned about my health and safety issues for my child. If you have to risk being expelled because of something like that, That's why we sued. I'm fortunate enough to be able to do this for myself, but what about all the other parents out there that may not have the resources? So I formed a nonprofit called the Coalition for Liberty. Your listeners can look at it at coalitionforliberty.com, and we're fighting cancel culture. If something like this happens to a family, they get fired because somebody's lying about them, somebody's destroying their reputation, they're kicking their kids out of school for no reason in breach of their contracts. I want someone to come to their rescue, the everyday American, so they don't need to be afraid anymore. Then you can see all the lawsuits we filed, the publicity we're generating. We intend to put a stake in the heart of cancel culture. and deter people from doing it, because these people are bullies. The defamation part of the Supreme Court, so the Republicans ruled in your favor on the Supreme Court. The Democrats did not. Alison Riggs and Anita Earls, they wanted the. Whole thing tossed out, and for you guys to just go about your business and go on your way. One of their response as this dissent was written by Alison Riggs. Allegations of racism, she says, like many subjective viewpoints are in the eye of the beholder and do not squarely fit into the falsity test. How could a plaintiff prove that a statement alleging he expressed a particular viewpoint is false? How can a defendant prove that it is true? Well, I thought it was pretty clear. You had the PowerPoint presentation. It didn't say the things that the school says you said in that PowerPoint presentation. And what the justices are arguing here is that, well, that's the way that Charlotte Lattin interpreted what you said. Your opposition to DEI, critical race theory, like your opposition to that is was racist. And that's their opinion. And they're free to express their opinion to every single parent on the distribution list at Charlotte Latin, which is absurd to me. Yeah, it was crazy. I mean, it's obvious they were framing us in a completely false statement. It never happened. We never made that statement and they knew it. But the whole point was it doesn't matter what's true. It just matters. That's what cancel culture is. We're going to say lies about people to destroy them. Their character will make you so afraid you won't say anything. You won't resist us for fear. We want to break that fear. We wanted parents to know, yes, you can sue. And it's not about their culture or their curriculum or the other things. You know, private schools can be as woke as they want to be. They ought to be honest. But they can't just simply, if a parent asks a question about health and safety or a question about what's being taught, they can't just say, well, you just made the relationship impossible. We're expelling your kids that day, especially if you've promised parents that you won't retaliate against. So that's what we sued about. It was about protecting the children of North Carolina and the parents themselves. to say, well, you can have your own culture and enrollment policies and curriculum, but you can't go ahead and retaliate against parents and just make everybody so afraid that in their whole life they have to kowtow to whatever woke craziness you are pushing. So we did that, and then we formed Coalition for Liberty. to protect people all across the country. All right, Doug. Yeah. Hang on the line, hang on the line here. We're going to put you on hold and take our last break here. All right, Doug Turpin. Thanks again for hanging on two extra segments. I know we only booked you for the first half hour, Doug, but thanks for your time. I do appreciate it. It's an intriguing case. And so now, you know, Your path ahead is that you are now going to be able to litigate. Right. You're going to be able to go to court, go to superior court on this case, make your arguments. But I think more importantly, get discovery. Right. You're going to be able to to get access to stuff now that you may not have had access to before. Yeah, we're going to discover and depose. There are 24 board members we sued. We sued the headmaster, Chuck Baldecki. We sued Todd Balaban, who was the middle school principal and is now a principal at another private school here in the area. All of them personally for defamation. And then we sued the school for breach of contract, fraud, and fair and deceptive trade practices, and a variety of claims that are wrapped around that. Slander as well. So for us, we're going to be able to do a deposition that's wide-ranging discovery and ask them, how did you handle every other case? instance of anybody asking questions. Did you just expel all their kids immediately just because they asked questions? Let's go back through all the records in this history for everything that you've ever done for as far back as we can go for records about those things, about all of the things they're teaching, about whether or not maybe they're in violation of the law, considering the recent Trump administration rulings about how you handle race and race discrimination, and are you, in fact, practicing some of those kinds of things that have been ruled illegal by the Supreme Court. We'll be able to discover all of those kinds of things. So they have something to consider. You know, for us, what we would love to see the school do is to say, you know, we made a mistake. we had no reason to expel the Turpin children. That was wrong. We should not have done that. And we shouldn't have slandered and defamed all of those parents. They never said what we said. And that was just wrong. And we're going to change our enrollment agreement. We are no longer going to claim that we have the unlimited right to expel children just at any time we determine in our sole discretion that, you know, you've made the relationship impossible by asking those questions. That's their current stance. We can expel you anytime we want. Well, and that was this. Their stance was supported by the Democrats on the courts, both the Court of Appeals, the Superior Court, as well as the two Democrats on the Supreme Court. They agreed with the school's belief that all they have to do is say, in our opinion and our opinion alone, you've made this relationship impossible, untenable, and so we get to kick your kids out. Yeah, and so we want them to repudiate that and protect the parents. and the children that are at that school. That should be an easy ask. They should not conduct themselves this way. One of the things, I see a lot of this stuff as credentialism, right? I mean, you send your kids to Charlotte Latin, right, because it's a, quote, good school, and that will help them get better education, yes, but also better job opportunities and such. You get a network. There's a certain prestige that comes from that credential. And it seems like a lot of the schools that offer that kind of high credential, they've abused that privilege and have not been actually delivering on the education side. And so at what point does the credential become not as valuable any longer? Yeah. And, you know, they're damaged the reputation of a school that was really arguably the finest education. in the state of North Carolina and maybe just around the country. It was everything they promised, and now they've turned it into an organization obsessed with politics, with indoctrination, and turned it into the woke school that cancels children. I mean, that's the reputation of the school now. We're on the Megyn Kelly show, the Joe Bruno show. We're getting show after show, American Thinker articles. Everything is It's erupting to describe them as what they really are. That's what they didn't want to happen. We're going to expel the Turpin children. Everything will get washed under the rug. Nobody will be— we' ll be able to do everything we want without any opposition. Well, they've been exposed now, and so this should— get them to rethink, is it really worth it to go ahead and maintain this stance? Yeah, and keep in mind, they were flexing their muscle at the height of their power. This woke movement, this agenda, the adherence to critical theory, they were at their apex of power in 2020, 2021. They thought that they were in charge and would be in charge. That's why they more than likely, behaved the way they behaved to silence, you know, you guys make an example of you, and then just keep, you know, plowing along, creating the next generation of activists and revolutionaries. That's my view on it. I agree with you. You hit it dead on. They believed they could, and they were so arrogant. They had woke judges that basically said, Well, we're just going to ignore the facts and the law, and we're going to kick this out. So they'll never see the light of day. They'll never be discovery and depositions. They'll never bring all of these things to light. Well, now they are. Yeah, well, and they almost got away with it, too, to quote every villain in Scooby-Doo. They almost got away, except. For, well, your kids and you and your wife. They would have gotten away with it. And luckily, we've got a Supreme Court, though, that said, no, let's actually let these guys go to trial. You can't. You're going to have to make your case. You're going to have to, you know, produce evidence and all of that. But, Doug, keep us posted on how it goes. Folks can check out more at coalitionforliberty.com. And the original PowerPoint presentation is at honoreboveall.org. Doug, thanks so much. I appreciate your time. Thank you for letting me be on your show. Absolutely, sir. Take care. So, yeah, Doug and Nicole Turpin. By the way, the two judges on that Court of Appeals, Carolyn Thompson, appointed by Roy Cooper. John Arrowood, also appointed by Roy Cooper. They were the two Democrats that ruled against the Turpins initially. The dissent Republican, Julie Flood. And in 2022, she got on to this case because the case has taken five years. She beat the other judge, Carolyn Jennings Thompson, for that seat. So there you go. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support. and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to ThePeteCalenderShow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.