Call To Action
Get involved in upcoming School Board Elections in your community. Find and encourage quality candidates to run and actively support their efforts.
National Politics Matter at the Local School Board Level
The framers of the Constitution left matters of public education to the states and local communities and so, state and local school boards control the education of our children.While many Democrats, ourselves included, have been focused on Congress and state legislatures, right wing organizations are engaged in a concerted effort across the country to elect radical candidates for these local school boards who will:
Restrict or ban teaching about LGBTQ+ and trans members of our community.
Severely restrict what is taught about the history of slavery, oppression, and racism in courses throughout the curriculum.
Ban a wide variety of books from school libraries if they contain information about LGBTQ+, diversity, inequality, racism, inclusion or other ideas that social conservatives call “woke.”.
Censor or fire teachers who teach these “uncomfortable” topics or who permit students to raise the controversial ideas in class. This creates a climate of fear among teachers about what they can teach and how they can interact with students.
This movement to shape public education into a force for rightwing indoctrination is in full swing in Florida, Texas, Virginia and many other states. We must organize and FIGHT BACK!
What To Do?
The first step is to recognize that schools have become a major political battleground in the right’s efforts to maintain traditional racial, gender and elite privileges. Then, make a commitment to get involved in your local school board elections.
Local school board elections don’t always coincide with the usual state and national cycles of even-year November elections. Learn about the primary and election dates in your community. Often, conservative and/or reactionary candidates end up running un-opposed and it is only after they are elected that fellow citizens come to understand the radical changes these agenda driven candidates hope to accomplish. If high quality candidates who support the principles of public education, inclusion and the full story of American history are not already in the race then you need to get more involved. Either step up and run for an open seat yourself or work with your friends, family and neighbors to find and support other competent candidates.
An important source of information and strategy can be local teacher organizations affiliated with either the National Education Association or the American Federation of Teachers. These professional organizations usually have the staff to follow local and state politics, support teachers’ professionalism and oppose the imposition of reactionary political constraints. At the very least, anyone interested in public education should engage teachers and their professional organizations. Many on the right have declared that teachers are the enemy. This is just plain wrong. It is always true that public policy can be made better and schools can be improved. But whatever the local situation, teachers are the frontline workers in the classroom. We will all get better results by working with them, rather than micromanaging their every action and censoring their lessons.
Finally, the right-wing strategy has been to use school board elections not only to impose their agenda on schools but to use school boards and other local elections to build a bench of conservative politicians who can run for state offices and, eventually, national seats in Congress. It is a time-honored strategy. We need to take a page from that playbook to safeguard public education and to go toe to toe with them in all elections up and down the ballot.