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This is the first of three episodes about the unusual steps school leaders in Middletown, Ohio took to defuse tensions over race issues and health policies. These tensions could have led to a full-blown culture war - the kind of knock-down, drag out clashes that have pitted educators, parents, and even students against one another in a growing number of school districts across the country.  

In this episode you will hear why police had been called in to maintain order at a pivotal school board meeting in 2021. You’ll hear the voices of angry parents accusing Marlon Styles, the district’s first Black superintendent, of promoting racist practices in the district’s schools. And, you’ll hear others condemn the school board for violating students’ rights with their mandatory mask policy. 

In the second episode, you will learn about Superintendent Styles’ unusual response to the allegations. Instead of fighting back, he listened to his critics, asked for help, and rallied the city’s “quiet majority.” These counterintuitive steps defused the smoldering culture war, enabling the district to focus on other serious challenges affecting student learning.

In the third episode, you will hear from Middletown’s community leaders and several outside observers who reflect on the tangible lessons this story teaches and the “credible” hope it offers to school and community leaders across the country. One of these observers is Amanda Ripley, author of the New York Times bestselling book, High Conflict - Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, who said, “I love the story because we desperately need examples of how people and communities manage to get out of dysfunctional conflict…The only way to learn is by finding these outliers of ‘positive deviance,’ communities that managed to not implode in conflict and learn from what they did.”