It rained on NIC parade

Jolie Wenglikowski sat in her office with a note of exasperation hiding under her breath. The director of the Children’s Center at North Idaho College was too busy preparing the next day’s curriculum to fully focus on the question at hand.

“OK,” she said, “here’s what happened: Last Halloween, it rained.”

Her answer was an unusual response to the question, “Are these the values of North Idaho?”

That question was posed in a Nov. 8 Coeur d’Alene Press op-ed by David Mitchell, who criticized the long-running center for canceling the annual Halloween children’s parade. In an email blast, a college newsletter, NIC Now, said the decision to discontinue the inclusion of calendar holidays from its curriculum centered around issues of cultural relevance, diversity and inclusion.

“Since not all families share the same cultural interest in calendar holidays,” the email said, “the Center is no longer including these into our programming. We will continue to look for fun ways to engage with our campus community ...”

Mitchell wrote in his opinion piece that the decision to cancel a Halloween parade and remove calendar holidays was atrocious and misguided. He later blamed the decision on a new culture from leftists bent on eradicating traditional American culture.

These were the issues that confronted Wenglikowski Wednesday when she was asked by The Press what prompted the Center to shut down the traditional Halloween parade.

“Last Halloween, it rained,” she said. “It was cold and raining, and we decided not to have the parade that Halloween. We stayed inside that year. This year, because of the anti-bias curriculum we’ve been developing, we felt it was the right time to end [the parade].”

After the decision was announced in the NIC Now email, some recipients expressed anger, saying the Center was promoting a weak, leftist agenda. Wenglikowski said the anti-bias curriculum is far from abstract.

“This isn’t about promoting an agenda,” she told The Press. “[This is not] about including some children at the expense of others. There are plenty of kids here who simply can’t participate, and it has nothing to do with politics. It’s about whether or not some parents can afford costumes. It’s about some parents’ religious beliefs. It’s about some parents working so much, they simply don’t have the time to put together costumes. Some parents were keeping their kids home that day. Some days, it was too cold, and some days, it rained.”

Wenglikowski emphasized that the kids’ traditional Halloween parade was the only canceled event on the calendar. In a new NIC Now email released Wednesday, the Children’s Center correction laments the wording that declared calendar holidays would no longer be celebrated. The corrected email explains the thinking behind the cancellation of the traditional parade.

“Our curriculum adapts, with some guiding parameters, to follow the lead of the children and invests in their interests and explorations, allowing each child to express, celebrate and share their holidays and traditions,” it reads. “This philosophy is what guides us at the Children’s Center. The Halloween parade was an event at the Center that was still excluding children and families for a wide variety of reasons that reach beyond belief systems. What did occur at the Center on Halloween? Children expressed themselves, and those who chose to, wore costumes. What didn’t occur was a structured Halloween parade.

“And as we enter the winter holidays,” the email newsletter continues, “you will find children at the Center creating Thanksgiving art, spinning dreidels, making Christmas cards, creating play dough birthday cakes to celebrate one another ... as the children so choose. Children and their families often bring in items and share about what makes them special to their family traditions. We will continue to provide the same high quality, developmentally appropriate, relevant and responsive programming to our children birth through age five.”

“Holidays don’t drive curriculum,” Wenglikowski said. “Holidays are embedded in our curriculum. We’re still going to celebrate these traditions; we’re just not going to force it at the child’s expense.”

Still, canceling the Halloween parade haunted the staff at the Children’s Center, including its director.

“It was a very hard decision,” she admitted. “We had a lot of dialogue about it here, and it was a hard choice. The parade was one of our traditions here ... It was a tradition that we’ve had on campus for a while. When [traditions change], though, that elicits emotion.”

Ultimately, she said, the well-being and inclusiveness of all the children takes precedence.

“We have no agenda here,” she said, “but for kids to grow up in an inclusive, welcoming environment.”