The Republican plan to take over school boards may be backfiring

[RandySF]

Tuesday night’s school board elections in Pennsylvania and Oregon again showed how classrooms continue to be a front in the Republican Party’s broader culture war, a battle it has pursued in states across the country with mixed results.

In an Oregon school district in the predominantly rural Clackamas County, where students have protested a recent onslaught of book bans, several “parental rights” candidates lost their bids for the school board. However, GOP-backed school board candidates in southern Pennsylvania who backed book bans and policies targeting trans students survived primary challenges and will advance to the November elections.

The races are part of Republicans’ national push to politicize once-sleepy school board races, using them as a vehicle to curb discussion of race and gender issues in the classroom and give parents more power over curriculums. Across the country, school board members backed by the GOP have banned seminal works of literature, from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, but not without backlash.

Nationally, parents have become increasingly worried about the GOP’s book-banning push and have cooled somewhat on the curriculum concerns that dominate Republicans’ education platform. An April Fox News poll found that 77 percent of parents are extremely or very concerned about local school board book bans, an 11-point increase since May 2022. Though 73 percent of those polled remained anxious about what is taught in public schools, that’s 7 points lower than last year. Other polls conducted in recent months show similar results. Actual election results also cast doubt on Republicans’ school-focused strategy: In Illinois and Wisconsin, a key swing state, school board candidates who ran on culture war issues largely failed in April.





https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/17/23727262/republican-book-bans-school-boards

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Yes, it's ripe for backfiring but let's not overlook the hard work of local Dems and progressives

I am hearing and seeing energy, fear, motivation on the local level. It does pay off. But someone local has to put themselves out there, accept the uncertainty of being vocal, and organize and manage and develop. It's not organic "backfiring". It is work!!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. +1. . . nt

[gatomedianoche]

2. Right wing infiltration of school boards

It was the John Birch Society that began encouraging like minded people to become active in local school boards to fight communist ideology. Birchers did not succeed then. MAGA fascists have taken the Birchers torch, this time to advanced their radical extremist ideology. They overplayed their hand. It was the indefatigable organizing of Democrats that has succeeded in thwarting MAGA fascists efforts, but much remains to be done.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. +1. "indefatigable organizing of Democrats that has succeeded in thwarting MAGA fascists" . . . nt

[no_hypocrisy]

3. I hope that students become activists over their curriculums.

Students' Rights should trump "Parents' Rights".

All students deserve a curriculum that prepares them for college or life, in general. And they deserve to learn how to think.

[tanyev]

6. Funny how you don't hear them talk about homeschooling anymore.

Apparently having complete control over their own children's curriculum just wasn't enough.

[Pacifist Patriot]

7. I'm old enough to remember this was very much a thing in the 1980s as well.

I definitely remember the GOP focusing on school board races, even the non-partisan ones, leaving everyone else scratching their heads wondering why Republicans cared so much. A generation later, it became pretty obvious.