Sleepy school board races wake up

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The Blue Valley School District in Johnson County, Kansas has some of the best public high schools in the state. In general, candidates for the school board sail to victory with no dissenting votes, while the turnout is just a meager single-digit percentage of all eligible voters.

“Very sleepy, very calm,” said Andrew Van Der Laan, who is running for one of three controversial seats on the school board in the November 2nd election.

But in recent months, a school council meeting went virtual for security reasons after reported threats were issued as dozens of people gathered to oppose the district’s masking policies. One group, Mask Choice 4 Kids, has held rallies encouraging children to wear support t-shirts and pull down their masks in coordinated protest to “peacefully disrupt the education system … wear a mask at school.”

This year’s school board race is heating up in Kansas’ most populous county – and across the country.

School board meetings have become ideological battlegrounds during the pandemic, sparking public comments and complaints about the enforcement of masks and other Covid-related learning needs. They have also become a forum for struggles to convey critical racial theory after the protests against racial justice in 2020. And school authority recalls are ongoing in several states, including Louisiana, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

But this election cycle has shifted in a different way: outside of special interest groups and political action committees, non-partisan races, which otherwise might attract little interest even from the locals, have quite a bit of school boards, candidates and academics.

“It is significant that the perception of where decisions are made is changing,” said Van Der Laan, a father of three and a self-employed business consultant and executive coach who has never run for office. “You used to see presidential races, senate races, and gubernatorial races that had that influence.

In August called a group called The 1776 PAC project said it was favorable the list of Blue Valley candidates running against Van Der Laan and two other candidates with common interests. The advocates are among the more than 50 the PAC has put out to support candidates for school boards in Colorado, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, and elsewhere.

The group, which has a New York mailing address, says they oppose the “divisive philosophy” of critical racial theory and the “The 1619 Project,” launched by the New York Times to study the effects of slavery and contributions investigate black Americans. The group claims that such programs “are taught in classrooms in almost every state in the country.”

Despite some recent efforts by GOP-controlled state houses to ban the use of Critical Race Theory in schools, an academic study that suggests looking at US history through a lens of systemic racism found a June poll by the impartial Association of American Educators said that more than 96 percent of teachers in K-12 schools said they were not required to teach the theory.

Supporters of the theory and “their positions are incredibly hostile to whites, western civilization, classical liberalism, the Enlightenment, the founding of America and capitalism,” according to The 1776 Project PAC.

The group raised more than $ 437,880 in donations, according to federal campaign funding data from April through September.

The Blue Valley School District, which has nearly 22,000 students and is 70 percent white, says critical racial theory is not part of its district-approved curriculum.

Still, parent groups within the community say they are confused as to why there is an interest in supporting local candidates. The 1776 PAC project didn’t respond to a request for comment, but an organizer told Axios in May that its goal was to promote school board candidates nationwide.

Mask Choice 4 Kids leader Tana Goertz said the group plans to support school board candidates this week.

Goertz – who was a finalist in the third season of NBC’s “The Apprentice” and who campaigned for former President Donald Trump, the show’s former host in her home state – is not from Johnson County. But she got involved in the group after a college student from the county that started her abruptly resigned last month while researching his father’s role as CEO in the healthcare industry.

“The group grew into something much larger than a college student could handle,” Goertz said in an email. “I’m not shocked or amazed that people who disagree with our stance on this issue have been quick to point out that this group has an agenda other than being patriots, advocating our freedom, our beliefs and our families step in. “

State Sen. Cindy Holscher, a Johnson County Democrat, said the school committee meetings had become a “bastion of harassment” against members trying to uphold the nationwide recommendation on the mask mandate for kindergarten through sixth grade children – the im The summer when the Delta variant was launched soared, and public health officials confirmed that wearing masks can help slow the spread of the coronavirus. The Blue Valley School District masking requirement now covers all grades through high school.

The school board races “feel more like what we saw in these state parliament campaigns in relation to boots on the ground,” said Holscher. “There are a lot of marketing and fear tactics to whip people up.”

At a Blue Valley candidate forum last week, topics related to critical racial theory; Diversity, equality and inclusion; and the district’s mask policy and Covid-related protocols took center stage.

“The difference is that there is now a political action committee in our community. Two cities away, the governor of our state is in an election.”

Member of the SAID school board Monic Behnken

Ideological arguments over school board issues are not new, said Vladimir Kogan, associate professor of political science at Ohio State University. Schools have debated the teaching of evolution and intelligent design, sex education, and the common core, an educational tool that has been despised by Republicans for the past decade.

If candidates motivated by politically charged issues land in the local elections this November, it could attract more PACs, extremists and political activists to target school authorities, he added.

“There are adults who basically argue about national partisan problems because they are angry about it,” said Kogan. “But one has to ask: will the children be the collateral damage of these polarizing debates?”

Monic Behnken, who sits on the school board in Ames, Iowa, north of Des Moines, has decided not to run for re-election this November after having been a member since 2017. Although she already knew she only wanted to stay for a single time, the ever-changing policies surrounding the pandemic and the aftermath of the racial justice protests in the region only thorns the situation.

Usually she said, “Our job is to pay for the lighting on the tennis court? Do we want to hire this DJ for the prom?”

But in February, during Black History Month, the school district came under fire for a week-long Black Lives Matter at School event, which Republican lawmakers, conservative groups, and some parishioners described as an abuse of resources and morally objectionable or one-sided.

Over the summer, a PAC, Ames Deserves Better, was formed by parents in response, and said on its website that “accepting diversity means appreciating the choice each family makes for themselves.”

In Ankeny, another suburb of Des Moines, a school committee race caught attention after Republican Governor of Iowa Kim Reynolds made an unusual appearance by attending a candidate’s campaign start and openly supporting her in the election.

Behnken, who is black and the only black person on the board of the Ames Community School District, said that while there is an advantage in having more people interested in the board’s work, there is also more at stake on more general issues like classrooms and learning equality for all students.

“The difference is that there is now a political action committee in our community. Two cities away, the governor of our state is going to an election,” she added. “These are unprecedented things in this community.”

School board races have also caught social media groups accusing opposing sides and supporters of the candidates.

Erica Massman, a parent on the steering committee of a non-partisan community organization, Stand Up Blue Valley, said it once felt like anyone, regardless of their political allegiance, could agree to join the district’s public schools wanted to protect – the “golden goose” that upholds property value and attracts businesses and jobs, she added – from underfunding or the loss of senior teachers.

However, she fears that “dark money” and outside influences may try to undermine this by supporting school board candidates with a different agenda.

Stand Up Blue Valley supports Van Der Laan and two other candidates who have expressed their support for masking initiatives that follow recommendations from health authorities.

On the opposing slate, one candidate declined to comment on NBC News and the other did not respond to a request for comment. A third candidate dropped out of the school election campaign in September, although her name remains on the ballot.

A Facebook group has accused Stand Up Blue Valley of being a “non-partisan PAC” and selecting “ultra-progressive candidates”.

Massman, a Republican, said she laughs when she hears about posts like this.

“I just found out that I am a radical liberal,” she said. “My neighbors enjoy it.”

Van Der Laan said potential voters were polite as he campaigned in his district, which spanned 91 square miles outside of Kansas City, Missouri.

On Facebook, however, the language of the people is “combative,” he said. He shrugs.

He recently received an anonymous phone call from someone he thought he wanted to speak about his candidacy. But the question, it seemed at first, had nothing to do with: Which political party are you registered with?

Van Der Laan replied that he was a Democrat. The person said, “OK, thanks” and then hung up.


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