Right-Wing School Board Members Are Making Their Presence Felt
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.