Once-sleepy school board meetings have grown combative over pandemic safety measures and social justice issues, writes katiemacreilly
by the National School Boards Association found that board members ranked student achievement, school funding and teacher quality atop the list of “extremely urgent” issues; social issues—including gender, identity and equality—was the category most ranked “somewhat urgent” or “not urgent at all.”
The 1776 Project PAC was launched by Ryan Girdusky in May 2021 with the goal of combating critical race theory in schools and is aiming to support 300 conservative candidates for school board this year. Girdusky, a 34-year-old conservative political consultant and commentator, says he doesn’t like the “current trajectory of public education.
“What really took me over the edge was when I started hearing this rhetoric around critical race theory and how just teaching the accurate depiction of U.S. history is now used as an emotional tactic to try to get people in an uproar,” says Childs, an attorney who previously taught reading and U.S. history in Houston public schools.
The backlash over critical race theory might be new, but it’s not the first time school boards have turned into a battleground for cultural issues. The issues that led to heated protests at recent school board meetings have often reflected broader social and cultural changes. Many school districts that removed school resource officers in 2020 or enacted racial equity policies, for example, did so in response to mass demands for racial justiceAnd for anyone who objects to such changes, school board meetings offer a far more accessible venue for protest than corporate offices or the halls of Congress.