‘I dealt with the aftermath’…

By Kim Keaton
Reader Contributor

I spent 15 years as the Sandpoint Middle School principal. I retired proud of what we built. Our students felt safe and parents trusted us to look after their kids.

One day after the school ended, Steve Herndon’s group positioned themselves outside our school with large graphic signs displaying dismembered fetal images. 

I spent many hours on the phone with my parents that afternoon. They were calling because their 12- and 13-year-old children had walked past those signs on the way out of school and were frightened and confused. I had no good answer for them. I had not chosen this for our students. 

I contacted the appropriate people about the graphic displays. The response from Herndon’s side was not concerned. It was a reminder that they had legal rights and intended to use them on the public sidewalks leading out from our school.

I want to be clear about something. I am not making a political argument about abortion. I am telling you what I witnessed as a school administrator: A man deliberately chose the entrance of a middle school as the location for graphic imagery designed, by his own admission, to elicit reactions. He called the disruption necessary. 

Our school staff and the parents of these children spend countless hours working with our children on an age-appropriate education. We don’t want them exposed to graphic pictures of things that they don’t understand. Most parents want childhood to be an age of innocence. Many people who move here want that also. Growing up in Sandpoint, I had that opportunity. I still want that for my young grandsons.

That man is now running for the Idaho Senate for the fourth time. He is asking District 1 to trust his judgment and his character.

I watched Scott Herndon exercise both his judgement and his character outside my school. I am voting for Jim Woodward on May 19 — truly a person of character and decency. 

God bless our troops and those that spend every day protecting our children.

Kim Keaton is a retired principal in the Lake Pend Oreille School District.