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This confused, abused boy was running for West Linn High student body president, pretending to be a girl.
In the early 1990s, on our 45-house street alone, there were 100 children, most under age 10. Now, there are fewer than 20. Indeed, there are so few children in the West Linn-Wilsonville School District^ that the school board wants to close three of their ten elementary schools, two of which are located in West Linn. No doubt, there are a number of reasons why so few little kids reside in the school district now, compared to 35 years ago, including demographic and economic changes. However, there is one obvious reason young families no longer want to live in West Linn: The schools have changed from education centers to indoctrination centers. During our years there, 1988-2020, we watched the change. A lovely family with three toddlers moved onto our street a decade ago. They removed their kids from the public grade school in 2017 and left the state in 2021.
FROM HIGHEST RATED SCHOOLS TO INDOCTRINATION CENTERS
In the 1980s and 1990s, young families moved into West Linn because the schools were the highest-rated in the state. With the second highest property taxes in Oregon, some parents made significant financial sacrifice to give their kids the best education possible. As we were preparing our house for sale in 2020, I recall looking at our $8,000-odd property tax statement: over $7,000 for schools and less than $300 for police & fire.
By 2001 we were hearing about the Leftist indoctrination that was replacing real education in our school district. Immediately after Islamic terrorists slaughtered 2,997 in New York City, Washington DC and Shanksville, PA, West Linn’s middle schools and high school were bringing in Muslims with foreign accents to lecture why the slaughter was justified. The assignments for their English term papers was something like: name five reasons why Islam hates America and five things America can change to please Islam.
Long before Trump arrived on the political scene, “conservative” thoughts could not be expressed in the classroom or in homework assignments. After his arrival it got much worse. A positive remark about President Trump or one of his policies could get you kicked out of class, or an F on your paper. By the 2016-2017 school year, they were transgendering little kids as young as kindergarten age without parental knowledge or permission.
When my neighbor discovered her three little girls were being told they might be boys, she went first to their teachers, then to the principal asking that her daughters be excused from such lessons. “Not your call,” she was told. So, she removed them from the school two blocks from their home, and drove them to a Christian school ten miles away each day. Although this young family was paying some of the highest property taxes in Oregon, they could not use the neighborhood school. Parents receive little respect from teachers and principals in the West Linn-Wilsonville School District.
FAMILIES FLEEING
Since my law office was in West Linn from 2000 to 2020, I noticed the decline of reading, writing & math abilities among my younger clients, including those who went all the way through “the best school district in Oregon.” The most bizarre thing I personally witnessed was the “abilities” of the student editor of the West Linn High School newspaper. She struggled to write a coherent sentence that the reader could understand, but she was fully versed in both profanity and Leftist ideology.
Long before career criminal George Floyd died of a Fentanyl overdose in Minneapolis, students were being taught Black Lives Matter propaganda. NOTE: According to the Black Lives Matter website they were “founded in 2013” in response to the acquittal of the man who was charged with manslaughter for defending himself against Trayvon Martin’s assault. By May 2020, West Linn students of all ages were primed to join the protests and riots as though they were personal friends of poor ole George. They drove around West Linn that summer screaming “die, whitey, die” and other profanity at pedestrians, along with throwing rocks and other hard objects at them.
Now, young families are leaving West Linn, to provide their kids will quality education AND to protect them from damaging indoctrination, such as Critical Race Theory & transgendering.
Between 2019 and 2022 many young families we knew left West Linn and the State of Oregon to get away from the hatred & violence, and to find schools which would educate, not indoctrinate, their kids. In December 2020, we fled due to the Democrat-promoted riots and the fact that we were paying for police protection which we weren’t getting because the BLM rioters had more rights than residents. The secondary reason we moved was the fact that our property taxes were being used to abuse schoolchildren, that is: transgendering them and teaching them that skin color made them either oppressors or victims, et al.
WHAT HAPPENED?
This writer doesn’t have the means to do an in-depth study of why West Linn is losing young families. However, since we lived there for 32 years and since I practiced law there for 20 years, I do have anecdotal evidence of how & when the schools changed, as discussed above. The following anecdote still has me rattled.
By 2000, Leftist indoctrination had taken up enough classroom time that it was starting to show in the students’ test scores. That was the year I met with a West Linn High School history teacher who had just retired. At that time, I had just moved my law office from downtown Portland to West Linn, and he wanted to discuss estate planning. This man told me that he had started teaching in 1973. I don’t recall anything about our consultation except the following, which I will paraphrase here: “The average high school graduate today (in 2000) has the skills and education of the average 8th grade graduate when I started teaching (in 1973).”
A whole generation’s worth of students has attended West Linn-Wilsonville schools since I met with this teacher, such as the BLM want-to-be thugs mentioned above, and the indoctrination has only gotten worse.
Closing The Department Of Education
Mar 12
^During the 2025-2026 school year, the district has 9,015 students across 16 schools educating pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade. This includes ten primary schools (K-5), four middle schools (6-8), and two high schools (9-12), one in West Linn and one in Wilsonville. The school district includes the towns of West Linn and Wilsonville, and a rural area of Clackamas County and covers 42 square miles southeast of Portland, Oregon.
The author, Diane L. Gruber, is a First Amendment advocate who writes for Substack. She calls her Substack newsletter America First Re-Ignited.
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