My name is Mary Kass, married and a full time working mother of three. I was concerned about the direction of our country and wondered if my children will ever know the meaning of true freedom? Or even what kind of government they will inherit? I spent the last 4 years studying history from the Founding Fathers to the Progressive Movement, networking with other conservative groups and Tea Party leaders. I am the Co-Founder and President of The Greater New Orleans Tea Party. As of today, I have presided over the Tea Party with 330 meetings that include seminars, workshops, freedom picnics and my favorite—RALLIES. My number one issue today is the Common Core State Standards. I believe this is the fundamental transformation of our Education system. It will dismantle our form of government, eliminate parental rights and destroy our state sovereignty. I have no intention of retiring from the Tea Party, for I believe to be free one must be vigilant. The Tea Party mindset is here to stay. My Common Core journey began with this posting on my Tea Party Meetup site May 12, 2009:

Although we are late to the game, we have picked up speed in the battle against Common Core faster than we ever imagined. Many of us had been hearing about Common Core for a long time but, like most, thought it all sounded so great. I had tried to approach FreedomWorks over two years ago about Agenda 21 and how it will affect education. I thought FreedomWorks would be interested in helping with my national Agenda 21 group from the perspective of education. I knew there was a plan put in place from the Clinton years to circumvent our education system and then again with the No Child Left Behind Act, but did not connect Common Core because of the lack of details and information. I first became involved when people in my national Agenda 21 coalition started telling me about CSCOPE in Texas. In December 2012 I started reaching out to others in Tennessee and some were coming to me about Common Core. I then, as did many others, started a crash course in Common Core. I created a presentation, set up a website (Tennessee Against Common Core) and started talking to my national Agenda 21 group about Common Core. Another member of our team set up a Facebook page (Stop Common Core in Tennessee). What really opened my eyes to Common Core was an article I read about Bill Ayers and his involvement with Common Core. That was the point that I said there must be more to this than we are being told. And boy was I right.

I am currently a teacher in a smaller school district in Wyoming. I attended a Wyoming Department of Education training for the ELA Common Core Standards in July, prior to starting the 2012/2013 school year. I came to this training knowing only that Wyoming, along with 45 others states were choosing to adopt the standards fully by 2015. The Wyoming Department of Education presenters were suggesting we use some of the methods I had been trained to use in Utah, and had previously used when I taught there. Since our state and district benchmarks would not be fully aligned with textbooks, curriculum, and testing until 2015, I wanted to get a head start.