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A new campaign aims to support over 200 progressive school board candidates with financial resources and training.
For decades, conservatives have used local school boards as a stepping stone for their political bench, and as a way to implement their ideas at the local level. More recently, the right wing has used public education to stoke fears about liberal indoctrination of children for political advantage. The right’s antidote is a war on public education, with the takeover of school boards across the country part of the agenda to cripple it from within.
There hasn’t been much of a counteroffensive to this strategy to date. But a new campaign from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) seeks to fill this gap. PCCC has launched the “Save Our School Boards” campaign, to give progressive candidates the tools they need to not only stand up to right-wing extremism, but also to learn how to run successful campaigns and implement a progressive agenda.
The campaign, which was launched this morning, aims to support over 200 school board candidates with financial resources and training. The PCCC “aims to raise $450,000 for the program, which will guide first-time school board candidates through gathering petition signatures, creating a campaign plan, budgeting, and building a grassroots army,” according to its press release. The campaign is set to run through 2024.
“School board policy is impacting people’s lives now, curriculums are changing now, and the way that children are experiencing school is changing now,” Hannah Riddle, director of candidate services for PCCC, told the Prospect. “We are trying to be proactive about providing support to candidates who are actively fighting right-wing extremism in their local communities.”
Book bans, anti-trans policies, and critical race theory backlash all trace their origins to a rise in the right targeting education as a whole. A particular group, Moms for Liberty, has gotten significant media attention, and was recently labeled an extremist organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center. But Moms for Liberty is a symptom of rising far-right hate: Older organizations such as Moms for America have held similar aims.
In addition, conservative PACs such as the 1776 Project PAC have spent millions of dollars on school board campaigns, according to the Associated Press.
As far back as 1996, Christian conservative Ralph Reed, who saw education politics as a way to hold off the liberalization of culture, famously said, “I would rather have a thousand school board members than one president and no school board members.” Topics like sex education, school prayer, and even the Pledge of Allegiance have been hot-button issues for decades.
Book bans, anti-trans policies, and critical race theory backlash all trace their origins to a rise in the right targeting education as a whole.
Schools have long been a center for a political fight. But the issue became particularly loud during the worst throes of the pandemic, when some parents began to protest mask mandates and school shutdowns. The issue may have stemmed from the legitimate stress parents and children were facing (and still are facing), and the impact that can be seen in continued reports of declining test scores. But things have clearly evolved from there. Notably, the far right is attempting to impose their vision of what’s acceptable to teach in American schools, even as they claim to be trying to prevent liberals from doing the same.
Generally, the issue has been framed by the right as one of “parents’ rights.” Others, such as the SPLC, have taken to calling the far-right efforts “anti-student inclusion.” Neither truly grasps the situation: Far-right actors are attempting not only to exclude children from having a say in their own education, but also to set back decades of changes in the classroom.
“Save Our School Boards” is focused on how school boards can prevent this. The campaign hopes to build off the organization’s early successes in this arena. Karl Frisch, a Fairfax, Virginia, school board member, is running for re-election in November, with PCCC’s support.
“When somebody decides to run for office, it is an enormous undertaking,” Frisch told the Prospect. “[PCCC’s] candidate training really helped flesh out what to do, and [how] to run an effective campaign that gets my message in front of the voters I need to win.”
Missy Zombor, a recently elected member at-large of the Milwaukee Public Schools Board of School Directors, also sees PCCC’s campaign as critical. “The right wing is terrified of public schools that teach students how to think critically about the world they live in and about history,” Zombor told the Prospect. “They are terrified because they know that together we have the power to change a highly corrupt political system that allows a small percentage of individuals to amass enormous amounts of wealth and power at the expense of the working class.”
PCCC shares this ambition. Riddle told the Prospect that the ultimate goal is to build a “long-term progressive infrastructure all over the country,” and that school boards are a way to cement these ideals at the local level. PCCC currently has the most members in Pennsylvania and Virginia, with hopes to expand into battleground states.
PCCC is not alone in the push against far-right ideals in school boards and educational systems. Support Our Schools, a nonprofit organization based out of Florida, has also been doing this work.