In their swift rubber-stamping of changes to math and health curriculum standards Monday, the Board of Education Standards sided with Education Secretary Joe Graves and kept the vainglorious, anti-feminist, projective fundagelical frenzy over human trafficking out of the health standards:
As for the proposed health education standards, the board decided against adding human trafficking and care giving. Board member Kamp Meyer of Rapid City wanted them inserted, but Graves and several other board members spoke against doing that.
Graves said each school district decides how to adopt the standards into the local curriculum. Board member Greg Von Wald of Rapid City said there is too much variety among communities and schools only have so much time. “Something has to fall out when you put something else in,” Von Wald said [Bob Mercer, “South Dakota Says Goodbye to Common Core Math,” KELO-TV, updated 2026.05.05].
Right-wing hack and board president Steven Perkins still wants the state to push teachers to join the show-Christian crusade against sex trafficking:
Board president Perkins replied that the board’s work group on human trafficking, of which he’s a member, plans to recommend a letter be sent to school districts and plans to recommend that teachers be better trained in their responsibilities as mandatory reporters. He said that board’s human-trafficking initiative seems incongruent to not including human trafficking in the board’s standards. “It seems to me to be, why are you sending the letter?” Perkins said.
Perkins said he would still vote to adopt the health standards if human trafficking and care giving weren’t added. “I do have grave concerns that as we look at problems today, we have kind of whitewashed over them,” Perkins said. He said including human trafficking and care giving is like requiring that certain math and social studies be taught. “I think we’re missing the opportunity in this process,” Perkins added [Mercer, 2026.05.05].
But we all know from the Epstein files that crusaders like Perkins don’t really care about stopping powerful people from preying on children, so let’s be glad the Board of Education Standards has kept this pompous hypocrisy out of our already cluttered curriculum standards.
Its amazing how the individual thinkers are the same all over the country.
Republican former State Senator Lynne DiSanto has been raising awareness of the abuses committed by the Children’s Home Society that led up to the 2019 disappearance of Serenity Dennard.
CHS has been under the regulatory microscope before for violations of trust and one former executive director is none other than Republican former South Dakota Governor Denny Daugaard. Billionaire Republican Denny Sanford, an accused child pornographer, has given millions to the organization that owns a facility outside Rapid City, just for instance. As the story of Sanford’s pedophilia broke Carmel, Indiana-based private investigator Veracity I-I-R confirmed that they were hired by Serenity’s adoptive family to revisit the steps that led to her disappearance and explore likely outcomes.
Both of Serenity’s biological parents were sent to prison and as of March, 2019 her biological mother was reportedly still incarcerated. Serenity’s adoptive mother has admitted to suicide attempts because of all the Republican bungling so the SDGOP finger-pointing continues to the present day. Before her disappearance Serenity spent time in a dozen foster homes in a state where the industry is a pet project of Republican Daugaard’s wife. The federal center for Medicaid Services intervened in 2019 and excoriated the CHS for its indifference to client protection. It’s estimated that the United States foster care industry supplies some 88% of sex-trafficked children some of whom are raped for money at the annual Sturgis Rally.
I can believe that 88% were in foster care, but that they were “supplied” seems dubious.
“In 2017, NCMEC reported that of the nearly 25,000 children who ran away and were reported missing to them, 1 in 7 were likely victims of child sex trafficking. Of that specific group of likely victims, 88% were in the care of social services or foster care at the time they went missing.”
Educators are accused of teaching woke curriculum and told to stick to the 4 Rs. This topic is one I would have been assigned as a middle school social science instructor. And it’s one I would feel uncomfortable with.
Over the years, I was given units on STDs, staying celibate programs, say no to drugs lessons, and many others that I was not qualified to touch. Rural schools don’t have health programs anymore and the nurse services preK – 12.
With some mandatory programs, we would reach out to the community for help. And others, like sex trafficking, I’d have Social Services do the rounds and hit all the schools. But there again, is the public school a place to teach something like this?
$20 says nearly every high school student in South Dakota knows sex trafficking happens every year during the Rally and pheasant hunting season. Polygamy and pedophilia are apparently protected religious freedoms in South Dakota as far as Republicans are concerned. Recall the mother of Republican state legislator and former candidate for South Dakota Attorney General, Lance Russell sold property to the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) Church where minor girls were trafficked and raped. That they offered escape to Serenity Dennard is not impossible.
“Unsafe. Unacceptable. Hyper-masculine. Sexualized. Dirty.” That’s how the Aberdeen American News board and how women have described the legislative session in Pierre. The South Dakota Newspaper Association, teevee stations and local media have known about Pierre’s rape culture and culture of corruption for decades but simply concede to the twenty earth hater donors who run the state.
https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/business-journal/2018/11/16/south-dakota-pheasant-hunting-season-sex-trafficking-strip-clubs-frank-days/
But the foster care system isn’t “supplying” 88% of them anymore than 100% of parents are. These are kids who were vulnerable to abuse and running away before they got there. That doesn’t mean the system is great, but using that term makes it sound more sinister than it likely is.