LETTER: Is Columbus Day Really The Biggest Problem For Wilmington Public Schools?

Dear Editor,

I was surprised, but not shocked when I saw a previous letter to the editor that the School Committee is looking to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Day. How on earth did we get to this head shaking point?

As a father of three, I do have a bit of insight into our schools. You would think our schools are in the top tier performance in the state given the amount of time being spent on this Columbus Day question. USNews ranks Wilmington Public Schools as 136 out of 302 School Districts in the state. We have a Middle School that has such a bad reputation whether rightly so or not, that families are jumping ship because they don’t want their children enduring the never-ending bullying and other very well known problems in that school. We have some of our youngest children being housed in the various schools and busses that have students mixed in age from super young to “swearing age.” How startling as a parent to hear your youngest child come home from school to show off the new four letter word they learned on the bus from the older kids. But yea, Columbus Day is the problem.

I think we can all agree that Columbus did not “Discover” a new world. However the creation of Columbus Day’s intent was to honor the Italians that literally built our country into what it is today. Italians in American History were disparaged, beaten, even wrongly put to death based solely on their lineage (See Michael Dukakis on Saco and Vanzetti 1977) by our government. To remake this holiday into something else is an insult to all Italians. There are a few facts those that those few people that are organizing the effort to get rid of this day are over looking. First of all, not one of them was alive at the time, so there is no positive proof any of their allegations are true. I refuse to believe our country has adopted a new guilty before being proven innocent form of jurors prudence. Second, every person that will speak out in support of eliminating the holiday lives on land that was taken from natives. Wilmington was land occupied by the Wampanoag Tribe and who suffered great losses in wars with the colonists. Not one of these folks has offered their homes and their land back to the tribe as a reparation for what happened hundreds of years ago, they haven’t even wrote a letter apologizing for owning that piece of what was once theirs!

While your reading this letter think about your families heritage, are you Irish? If these minority of progressive thinkers are successful at destroying the Italians day, just wait until you see what they have in store for the most famous Irish guy St Patrick. CNN has already planted that seed with an article accusing St Patrick of selling slaves to pay his way to Ireland.

In the end, it’s the school committees decision to abandon the important issues faced by the schools and those of us with a semblance of common sense know where this will ultimately go. My guess is, the School Committee will vote with the minority because that incorporates their woke, DEI agenda. I just hope that come the next school committee election, voters look at how each committee member votes on this issue and vote accordingly. In the meantime, my children will continue to call it Columbus Day and will continue to have pride in their heritage while the perpetual victims continue their onslaught to rid our society of its history.

Rob Fasulo