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Updated – December 6, 2022

Holly Davis — Chair of Moms for Liberty Westchester County — contacted Turning Point USA’s Schoolboard Watchlist to bring awareness to her organization’s battle against the ideologies of Daks Armstrong. 

Armstrong — who relocated from the Mount Vernon City School District to Yorktown Central School District (CSD) in 2020 — is an outspoken, anti-racist activist listed on the Yorktown High School Counseling and Guidance Center contact page. Prior to his appointment within CSD, Armstrong was exposed as having ties to Black Lives Matter (BLM), a Marxist organization that advocates defunding police departments and claims to work “for a world where Black lives are no longer systemically targeted for demise.”  

In 2021, Patch News reported on Davis who said she believed Armstrong was “trying to recruit kids” to the BLM movement. During that time, Armstrong was at the center of heated community debates over critical race theory (CRT) curricula in New York schools. 

At the July Yorktown CSD Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Ron Hattar commented on a letter he’d written to the district as well as a New York State education document that was circulated through several districts across the state. Hattar remarked,

“There’s a lot of confusion and misinformation that’s being circulated and I’d like to clarify…the Yorktown Central School District is not teaching critical race theory. Any suggestion to the contrary is false…” 

“We’re a school district of character. We’ve earned that because we offer outstanding programs to our students…We have a great relationship with law enforcement. They do an amazing job of keeping your children safe…”

Hattar did not identify Armstrong by name but said he wanted to address the “allegation of an employee in [the] school district who was sharing their political views with students.” Without providing further details, Hattar also said the district had experienced instances of racism and discrimination that he deemed to be “unacceptable.”

“In 2020, Armstrong attended a BLM rally where he declared the responsibility to reform neighborhoods, communities and school districts “belongs to white people.” He said,

“Me as a black man, it’s not my job anymore. I did what I had to do. I’m alive. I have a job and a degree and a career and I educate young people…The job is for white people, honestly. In a white town in Westchester, what are you going to do?”

He continued,

“What are you gonna’ usher in in this new year, in this new millennium? Are you going to usher in prejudice, bigotry, racism, Donald Trump? Or are you gonna’ usher in unity and love and oneness? When you go home today, what are you going to do?…Are you going to acknowledge your own personal bigotry?”

Armstrong also said, “My movement is done. I’m retiring,” and challenged white people to “use their privilege” to integrate their communities and workplaces.

Published – May 27, 2022

Complaints about several books in the school libraries were brought to the Board of Education by parents in fall 2021. The Board of Education formed a Book Review Committee to investigate the complaints. There were 69 people who expressed interest in being on the committee and 8 were chosen using a random number generator. Every member of the committee is required to read the book in question and then make recommendations that are added to a written report available on the district’s website.

Superintendent Ron Hattar recently announced that 4 of the books in question had been reviewed and that they would remain in the school libraries. The four books in question were: Gender Queer, Lawn Boy, The Hate U Give, and Looking For Alaska.

Gender Queer is a memoir about what it means to be nonbinary and asexual. It is written by Maia Kobabe who uses e/eir/em pronouns. Parent complaints about the book said that it is “geared toward incest, gender sexuality, and graphic pornography” and that “it is a comic book that shows graphic content of a male with another male.” The committee recommended that the book remain in the library and wrote in their report:

“The book is a memoir of the author’s quest to understand em gender and sexuality. The committee recognizes that some scenes and words may be jarring when taken out of context; however, the contextual experience of the author feeling out of place and struggling with where e fits in is necessary to understanding the overall themes of the text.” 

In the report for Lawn Boy, the committee states:

“The primary areas for concern regarding Lawn Boy that the committee noted were the usage of the “f-word” and other profanities, and three specific events in the book: the oral sex between fourth graders, the initial sex scene in the car, and Mike’s (the protagonist) sexual identity.” 

Despite this, the school board voted unanimously “that the book is valuable and appropriate for Yorktown” but added that the “concern was whether or not it was appropriate for middle school.” After considering several options, the school board’s recommendation that the Superintendent adopted was to keep Lawn Boy in the middle school library but put a YA sticker on it to show that it is for mature audiences.

Yorktown Central School District has 3,437 students enrolled in 5 schools.