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Right-Wing School Board Members Are Making Their Presence Felt

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In 2022, right wing groups continued their concerted effort to commandeer school board seats across the country. While results of these efforts were mixed, some boards are now seeing radical moves by new majorities.

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice was plain enough when she appeared on Steve Bannon’s show:

We're going to take over the school boards, but that's not enough. Once we replace the school boards, what we need to do is we need to have search firms, that are conservative search firms, that help us to find new educational leaders, because parents are going to get in there and they're going to want to fire everyone.

Moms for Liberty, the 1776 Project PAC, and a variety of other groups offered financial support. Moms for Liberty teamed up with the conservative Leadership Institute to provide training in campaign management. The movement has enjoyed enough success that we can now see clearly what happens when these folks get control of a board. Here are examples from just three states.

Texas

In Texas, Patriot Mobile (”America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider”) targeted four districts in the state. Patriot Mobile head Glenn Story talked to Steve Bannon at CPAC back in August:

Bannon asked story what he had done.

Story turned to the camera and said, “We went out and found 11 candidates last cycle and we supported them, and we won every seat. We took over four school boards.”

The effect was felt immediately. In Carroll Independent School District made news when an administrator suggested that readings about the Holocaust should represent both sides.

Reading rights restrictions have been common across the country, with many new board members calling for lists of books to be removed or restricted. Keller Independent School District, one of the Patriot Four, had already tossed books like the Bible, an Anne Frank adaptation, and others that had been previously recommended by a committee that included members of the public. But the new board created a stricter policy, and then this week decided it was not strict enough.

After Joni Shaw Smith, a Moms for Liberty-backed board member, expressed concerns about books on a new acquisition list, the board added to its guidelines for themes not allowed at any level, “discussion or depiction of gender fluidity.” The new rule does not specify depictions that include graphic sex or nudity, but forbids any mention of trans or non-binary persons at all.

Florida

In Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis openly backed right-wing school board candidates, the 1776 Project PAC bragged of flipping at least five Florida county school systems.

That included the Miami-Dade School Board, where a resolution to recognize LGBTQ History Month (which the district had done just last year) drew a crowd of opponents, including Moms for Liberty, the Christian Family Coalition, and the Proud Boys. The new majority on the board squashed the motion.

South Carolina

Flipped school boards have meant issues for school district leaders. In Colorado, a superintendent resigned after board members campaigned against his policy priorities. In Florida’s beleaguered Broward County district, a new majority appointed by Governor DeSantis passed a surprise motion to fire the current superintendent.

But perhaps the most stunning sign of how these new majorities may behave comes from South Carolina. As covered by Paul Bowers, one writer in attendance:

A hard-right faction took control of the 4th-largest school district in South Carolina last night and immediately got to work smashing anything that wasn’t nailed to the floor.

In Berkeley County, the new majority, on the same night they were sworn in, fired the superintendent, fired the district legal counsel, cut property taxes, banned “critical race theory,” and set up a committee to begin reviewing and removing books deemed inappropriate.

Deon Jackson had served as Berkeley County’s first Black superintendent for just over a year, after long-time employment in the district in other capacities. The board offered no explanation for their action, telling the press only, “We expect to be able to share our rationale in the future.”

Even in the face of the upheaval and debate of the past few years, Americans are used to thinking of school boards as quiet groups that can be depended on to keep the lights on and the wheels turning. But we’re seeing increasingly in this cycle that some citizens are not content to simply yell at boards, but plan to remake these groups in their own image. They see themselves as victors in a culture war, and they intend to gather the spoils.

School boards traditionally exist outside the political storms in this country. That’s a good idea, because public schools and the families they serve benefit from stability and not having the rules rewritten after every new election cycle sweeps in a new batch of activists intent on breaking things and moving fast. Voters imagine that they can leave their school board engagement on slumbering autopilot do so at their own peril, and at the peril of students.

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