Two groups made a big impact in New Prague in 2023

There’s little doubt 2023 was a good year in New Prague. The community is continuing to grow and, arguably, prosper. Its school children display their talents on many stages on a regular basis. The community has many reasons to look forward with great enthusiasm for its future.

Of the many organizations operating in the community, regardless of their size, two made a significant impact in New Prague. They are among many working to shape New Prague in ways they deem to be better. Did they succeed? Ultimately, that’s a decision you get to make. In a world where people are oftentimes too busy, or disinterested, to know what’s happening outside their own sphere of awareness or interest, these two groups have and likely will continue, we suspect, to continue to make an impact on the community.

The POPS committee New Prague is a community with a strong tradition of support for the performing arts. Sadly, there is no permanent outdoor performance venue to enjoy the arts while the weather is tolerable.

In 2023, a group of dedicated community members went to work to raise money to create the Praha Outdoor Performance Stage (POPS). The group has raised about $830,000 of the $1 million needed to make the facility a reality.

The committee is working with the city to find a suitable site to comprehensibly and properly welcome a first-class venue without detracting from the site itself. Fundraising is seldom easy, even when the cause is righteous. We applaud the efforts of the many members of the POPS committee and its working groups. People are busy. They have lives. At a time when many would rather write a check than give their time and talents, committee members are working behind the scenes to make a fine community better. To the private citizens and business folks who have donated, your generosity and willingness to help make New Prague a better place to live, raise a family, work and play is appreciated, too.

In a time when the country, and even this community, is deeply divided over issues of education, city spending, politics, a woman’s right to choose regarding health and more, these folks are working to put families and the importance of fine arts first in the community. This is both a mental and physical bonanza for people.

With the failed education vote initiative and enough rancor to go around the community a hundred times, isn’t it great the community has seen that a project like this can bring us together?

Protect our Girls New Prague Known via its presence on social media and New Prague Area School District board meetings, the group seems to primarily led by a small group of people of strong conviction. There is no doubt the group can muster a large following of active and vocal residents raising concerns aiming to shape public policy over, at least for now, the rights the courts and school board members have afforded to transgender students enrolled in the New Prague School District.

Protect Our Girls New Prague is concerned the courts are seemingly allowing transgender students to utilize the restroom and locker room facilities of their gender identity rather than the gender they entered this world with. There is no known evidence of transgender students in NP schools primarily boys in transition to becoming girls – using girls’ restrooms and locker facilities with impure and/ or evil intent. While nobody would deny the rights of parents to protect their child, there is a line of demarcation between protecting a child and denying another person’s rights to live in peace.

Unable to change the position on gender identity, Protect Our Girls New Prague raised reasonable questions and concerns on district spending decisions. Those concerns, along with the inability to change the current school board’s position on transgender students and the facilities they are allowed to utilize, prompted Protect Our Girls New Prague to use social media to take an opposition stance on the district’s levy campaign this past fall. Its leaders declined a request to address the opposition. Some of the opposition was based on misleading or inaccurate information. Was the misinformation enough to create the 36 votes the levy request failed by? You decide.

The group continues to post misleading referendum results on its Facebook page. Misinformation reduces the credibility of a group genuinely concerned for the welfare of children.