School board meetings and school board elections are becoming frontline battlefields for the nation’s political division. School board decisions directly impact three of our most precious resources — our children, our public schools, and our money. School boards not only determine policy, they are also the community’s educational watchdog and, in rural districts, they may be overseers of the largest employer in the area.
To a considerable extent, school boards also determine the level of difficulty for parents and citizens to navigate their local public school system and find a seat at the decision-making table itself. This is where politicization can sit and hit closest to home and, quite possibly for the first time in the lives of some families, involve significant decisions made by adults other than trusted clergy or medical professionals.
Even for those of us who grew up going to public schools, much has changed. Each of us experiences school in our own unique way, and each family approaches educating their child from their own perspective. And, let’s face it, we all know how easy it is for our emotions to run high whenever our children are involved.
Politicization happens when candidates connected with deep pockets use hardline partisanship and, often, religion to incite fear about decisions affecting our children. When copious amounts of money are pouring into a county or city school board race, that’s a sure sign that outside groups are involved. And, when outside groups are involved, that’s a sure sign that something other than what’s best for our children and our local community is not the ultimate goal.
A recent edition of Parents for Public Schools (PPS) Clearinghouse pulled together a collection of resources to help folks see the big picture of recent events and the players involved to understand how something as commonplace and local as a school board election could be seen as the epicenter for national political control.
One of those resources, Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica’s investigative newsroom, has covered contentious school board races in several states involving print ads from right-leaning groups pushing white Christian Nationalism, creating “school board watchlists,”
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