School Board Races will be at Center of the Culture Wars in 2022

While many voters will be paying to Gubernatorial, State, Congressional and Legislative electoral contests in 2022, there is another set of non-partisan races that could determine how children are educated and protected in schools in Arizona and across the country.

These are the races for school board seats on district governing boards.

Designed to be a non-partisan body, school boards and their elected non-partisan members have recently become the center of many intense gatherings in recent years as parental and educational activist groups (from both political extremes but mostly from the  fringe right) have dominated these meetings with their attacks on equity programs, protecting children from the Coronavirus, and the now fictitious illusion of critical race theory (which really stands for attacking the accurate depiction of what happened in history.)

Fringe attendees at these meetings have resorted to harassing school board members outside these events. They are also putting up candidates for seats on these boards and, in some cases, they are winning when they run unopposed or their message is not effectively countered.

Background

School Boards have historically had occasional contentious meetings over varying issues. Often, these affairs have mostly centered on the agenda items of:

• Dress Code.
• Code of Conduct Expectations.
• School and classroom literature choices.
• Curriculum templates in subjects that mostly concerns parent’s belief systems like in the areas of science (especially evolution and climate change,) history (or more specifically what history should be taught,) and sex education (whether children should get a sanitized Father and Mother knows best version or a course more substantive.)

Unfortunately, the intensity of these school board meetings has grown increasingly virulent over the last several years. This has coincided, to a large extent, with the growth in strength of the extreme right.

There have been right wing zealots like Kelly Townsend making a stand against sex education at the Arizona State Board for Education.

Last summer, the Scottsdale Unified School District Governing Board had to cancel its May meeting because anti-vaxxer protestors would not listen to instructions from the Board chair on where to sit. Many children who were at the event to receive recognition for their academic and extracurricular achievements were denied the opportunity because these protestors acted more like children then they did.

There are reactionary elements in school board meetings and state legislatures across the country increasing their calls to ban certain books from school libraries. Apparently these individuals and groups did not learn from Nazi Germany that this is not a wise educational strategy to pursue.

Finally, as AZ Central has recently reported, many other board meetings (like those in Chandler and Litchfield Park) have become so toxic inside and outside the events that governing board members have decided to resign like Dr. Tara Armstead in the Litchfield Elementary District. She received threats and harassment from the crowd and a like-minded fringe board member.

A Chandler school board member, Lindsay Love, has faced so much harassment from extreme right figures in her district (including attacks on her appearance,) that she has decided not to run for reelection to the Chandler Board when her term is up.

Lindsay Love discusses her experience on the Chandler Unified Board and calls on the Sane Members of the Community to come out and be heard.

Interviewed by Blog for Arizona, Ms. Love commented on the dangers of this growing fringe movement taking over local school board meetings, stating:

“I think that this fringe movement is dangerous for a number of reasons…I think it’s the erasure of our marginalized students and their needs. We hear this echoing that all students matter but when we go through and we review data like our AZ Merit to data with language arts and math scores. We know that there are significant disparities in our district and statewide between white and Asian students, and then our Latin X, Indigenous Pacific Islander black students who are coming in at the very bottom. And so, when we try to have conversations about, okay, but why are these students falling so far behind that gets disrupted by this movement and then you’re called the real racist because you’re focusing on marginalized, like historically marginalized students. But it’s really about just trying to figure out like why these students were falling so far behind them and why they’re slipping through the cracks.

 So, it disrupts a lot of those conversations that we can’t help those students. Another thing that I’m noticing is the attack on social, emotional learning. When I was elected into the district the year prior. We had a number of teen suicides. I think it was something ridiculous, like 30 within that year. And as a result of that, we saw a lot of fulfills being proposed for suicide prevention, increases in social workers and counselors, social, emotional learning. But we’re seeing these groups show up and they don’t want us doing suicide assessments because they believe erroneously so that talking about suicide causes suicide. They (the right-wing fringe) don’t want us doing social, emotional learning because they believe that’s liberal indoctrination and I am afraid that these groups, as we’ve seen, and like we’ve seen districts roll back things and our legislature create laws to support these groups. And our students are going to get lost in this and our students really need this help, especially after COVID.”

Ms. Love commented further in the interview that these fringe groups are dangerous to the financial stability of public school districts, saying:

“…We had several bonds and override elections that took place this year. And we’ve seen these groups go around to different school board meetings to try to take these elections right because they don’t feel like schools need any more money. But they’re giving these messages in terms of we support teachers. But, like policies and if these measures don’t pass. That means that districts are faced with the difficult decision of cutting further from public education. And unfortunately cutting teachers in the midst of a teacher shortage. Which is figure for two, as a teacher crisis. And so, these groups are trying to do everything humanly possible to strip money from public education. Even down to the support of schools losing money for following CDC guidelines and recommendations, to keep all students safe. And so, this is creating a dangerous situation where talking to parents on the other side, they’re having to make some difficult decisions and potentially pulling their children and homeschooling in certain cases, which means we lose more students from public education and more public education dollars.”

 During the interview, Ms. Love conveyed that her and some other members have received harassing treatment outside these meetings like having their home addresses posted online or making outlandish accusations about their backgrounds, families, and positions on the issues.

She noted that “it (the harassment) seems to be targeted and levied heavier at black women. I think that a lot of this is intentional to just drown out my voice, which if you think about it, I am the only person of color, only black woman on our school board. And our district is not predominantly white anymore. Our district is predominantly Hispanic, Black right now …. And so, if this is happening to me on a public level where talking about the needs of our most marginalized students is a problem, and I’m being silenced and targeted imagining you know what it is like to be a student of color in our district as well.”

 Ms. Love also relayed that is long past time for the majority of the Chandler community, (the non-fringe members) to attend these board meetings and be heard responding to the rantings of the right wing on issues of COVID vaccination and Critical Race Theory. She said:

“I think that the community has to start responding to these groups. Right? Because these groups are coming in and saying that they’re speaking on behalf of all families, and that’s not the case. Like I get my inbox flooded with families who are like, no, we don’t support this. Like we need to do something, but I am from a marginalized group and in the minority on my board.

 And so, my one voice isn’t going to make as much of an impact. Unity coming in and challenging some of the things that are going on in our meeting, right? Like we have these groups who are getting up and they are saying pretty bigoted statements about LGBTQ groups, about our Jewish families and Jewish communities.

 About a bunch of different groups that, we see with these very bigoted, micro and macro aggressions, right? Nobody’s there to challenge them. And the board is not in the position necessarily to challenge public comments because of how those laws (open meeting) work. We need community members to show up and strongly challenge these things and say, hey, you don’t represent us. We’re okay with equity and inclusion, we know that this district is not teaching critical race theory. And if they were. So, it’s not a threatening thing. We need those groups to step up and challenge that. More people need to show up. And I think that action needs to take place outside of emailing the board.”

 At the end of the interview, Ms. Love went further on the last point, stating:

“I think, if I can just emphasize.  We really need people to show up. If you don’t like some of the bigoted narratives that go on in our school board meetings, or you feel like this is taking away from students, there’s a good saying: one other thing closed mouths don’t get fed.

So, when we don’t hear from community members who were like, no, we don’t support these anti-equity and TCRT parents, or these parents who want to remove some book from like the library, because it’s offensive and it talks about gender identity. If those are things that you were appalled by sitting at home, it’s incumbent upon you to show up and voice that and show up in strong numbers.

 These groups are very organized and when people don’t show up, they make an impact. They go to the ledge, they pause past. And we’re going to see that in the next legislative session. But we need people to show up and get active just because Joe Biden was elected the president. It doesn’t mean that there’s not more work and more fight.”

Sunnyslope Unified Governing Board Member Consuelo Hernandez discusses the fringe right disrupting school board meetings in Pima County.

The fringe right is just not interfering with school board meetings in Maricopa County. They are disrupting meetings at school board meetings in Pima County as well. Even when they are virtual.

Responding to a request to comment for Blog for Arizona, Sunnyside Unified School District Governing Board Member Consuelo Hernandez (the sister of State Representatives Alma and Daniel Hernandez) commented:

 

“My school district Sunnyside Unified has its fair share of people trying to disrupt our school board meetings but, thankfully we have had things under control. I have had conversations with other board members in different school districts in Pima County and, although some have continued to have virtual meetings, the fringe right is still organized and show up for public comments. The public comments range from personal attacks and, spread of misinformation. I think it’s important we give everyone the opportunity to speak during board meetings even if we disagree but, most of the people who show up to my meetings don’t live in my district. We normally hear from the same small group of individuals who come and gives us handouts. As a Jewish woman the most disturbing and worrisome was one of the far right folks who was comparing the Holocaust to the mask mandate and vaccine promotion we have. The most common comments are when the group cites YouTube videos as a reason masks and vaccines are not safe. We are luckier in the sense the group is small but, the amount of hate the individuals bottled up is not something to take lightly and distracts us from the issues at hand. I think it’s also important to note the attacks don’t stop at the end of board meetings but, continue online. I have never seen so much division and, dismay over our board following CDC guidelines.”

Ne’Lexia Galloway starts a new program at the Maricopa County Democratic Party to Recruit Diverse School Board Candidates.

During my interview with Ms. Love, she saluted Future Leaders of Arizona, the new program created by the Maricopa County Democratic Party to recruit between 28 to 36 diverse school board candidates to run in the 2022 election cycle.

The brainchild of new Maricopa County Democratic Party Executive Director Ne’Lexia Galloway, this program strives to build the next generation of local forward- thinking leaders at the school board level where they will gain valuable experience and use that in running for other electoral offices.

Interviewed by Blog for Arizona, Ms. Galloway discussed the goals and aims of the Future Leaders program.

When asked about what is currently going on with the fringe right at some school board meetings across Maricopa County, Ms. Galloway commented:

“I think that is unacceptable and it’s not reflective of where we are, in American history and what we should actually be doing. And so, it’s easy for us to be divisive. And so, we need to identify a common ground in order to move forward, um, for the sake of our children, because our children are depending on us to be successful and we’re not doing a great job of that.”

On the goals for Future Leaders of Arizona with regards to school boards (which include K-12 and Maricopa County Community College,) Ms. Galloway relayed:

“We definitely want to, recruit more women and more people of color, to run for school boards because we do have a lot of people that are on the school boards, but they’re not really reflective of the demographic that they represent. For instance, if I look at Laveen School Board and the Laveen School District has a very diverse population. But their school board, the governing board is not. And so, I would love for our governing boards to reflect the communities that they represent. And therefore, we may find a more inclusive governing boards.”

 “…And we talked about bottoms up. So, with this focusing on bottoms up school board is at the bottom of my ballot in tandem with what we’re doing at the county, which is building from the bottom up. And so, for us, forward is at the bottom. So, we can’t focus on anything else, but the bottom of our ballot…

On the 28 to 36 school board candidates that Ms. Galloway is looking to recruit, she conveyed that

“(We are) making sure that they’re tied into our communities so that our communities can support them. Because we are limited on the democratic side of what we can do when it comes to non-partisan races.”

  “…And so, for me, it’s ensuring that our community is reflected in the governing board members, because the thing is we’re not choosing them. We’re just showing them that there’s an avenue to being successful with, um, helping out with our children.”

 “Average people (should be) running for school board, whether you have kids or whether you don’t have kids, you can be a school bus driver. You can be an aunt, you can be a cousin, you can be anything. We just want people that care about children that are going to fight like hell to protect our children, ensure that they have the education that they deserve.”

Ms. Galloway pointed out during the interview that they have so far recruited 20 candidates for the Future Leaders of Arizona program. She also indicated that they would be targeting particular districts like Laveen, Chandler, Scottsdale, Litchfield Park, Peoria, and possibly Mesa.

On the issues these candidates would run on, Ms. Galloway emphasized the need to message on equity, transparency, and communicating stating:

“…Those are the three basic principles, you know? So, we need to, we need to talk about equity, but we also need to be transparent.”

“Like there are a lot of things that are going on in our school boards. Like when it comes to vendor contracts, when it comes to superintendent salaries, um, when it comes to curriculum and policy, those conversations need to be transparent. And then we won’t have things like CRT being successful in national news because there is clear communication that’s going on in the grassroots as well.”

 On responding to fake issues like Critical Race Theory, Ms. Galloway stressed:

“I tell my team all the time that when we respond to things that are untrue, then we’re fanning the flames. Right? So what is our message?…Equity, communication, transparency. You know, those are things that we have to respond to.”

 “…I don’t want them responding to CRT because CRT is a manufactured crisis… And so, I think my favorite thing is that I always talked about, um, when Senator McCain, when he got the question from that. And the ladies asked them, she was like, well, how do you feel? Are you going to ask for Obama’s birth certificate?”

 “And his response was no, no, no. We’re not going to do that. We’re not going to do that. He’s a citizen. And he just walked away. She didn’t do any of that. And so for me, taking Senator McCain’s approach on, like, we’re not going to address these things that are not true, like I’m not going to allow you to carry this rumor because it does not do anything for American democracy.”

Moving Forward

Lindsay Love and Consuelo Hernandez are right to alert people about the increasing chaos, the ignorance, and the racist-violent overtones emanating from the extreme right at school board meetings in Arizona.

Ne’Lexia Galloway is right to launch Future Leaders of Arizona. Where the fringe right is organizing to take over local school boards and other community organs like election canvassing boards, Democrats need to treat all electoral races: national, state, county, and local, including school board contests, with an equal sense of urgency and effort.

Lindsay Love is also right on her recommended call to action to local residents. The predominant members of the community need to consistently attend these school board meetings and make their voices, the views of the majority, known to these governing bodies and overcome the rantings of the reactionary fringe right.

That is what Democracy is supposed to be about.

Turn out and vote for the school board members that will move your children and education forward in 2022.