Democrats picked up some key school board positions earlier this month after right-leaning candidates managed to win these positions amid conflict over the material school districts are teaching children.
Politico published a report suggesting that, in some areas, voters are rejecting Republican school board officials who came into power because of an outswelling of outrage against the infusion of progressive ideology in the classroom.
From Texas to Pennsylvania to Ohio, Democrat-backed candidates ran successful campaigns in some of the nation’s largest school systems and in political battlegrounds. They emphasized test scores and bus safety over debates about which bathrooms transgender students use and banning books from school libraries. The result was a set of election results at the local level that accentuated the punishment meted out against Republicans by swing voters earlier this month. Those results were accentuated by Democrats’ strong showing across the nation, as Americans issued a stinging repudiation of the party in power.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats flipped at least two dozen school board seats, per an ongoing tally from progressive recruitment group Pipeline Fund. The under-the-radar trend was enabled by voters’ increasing weariness with the culture wars that helped the MAGA movement engineer school board takeovers and generate hyper-local interest in politics as the Covid-19 pandemic raged.
In addition to Texas, Republicans lost seats in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, and the national battleground of Pennsylvania — the result of well-funded campaigns orchestrated by local leaders. School board races are typically nonpartisan, but candidates receive endorsements and financial backing from partisan groups.
“Folks just want their school boards to be boring again,” said Lesley Guilmart, one of the newly elected members in Cypress-Fairbanks. “They want normalcy. Once the board was taken over by a super partisan extremist majority, folks across the political spectrum were dismayed.”
The Cato Institute published an analysis showing a significant decline in the culture war related to education last year. It noted that there was a record high in culture war conflicts in 2023 in government-run schools. Much of the debate centered on schools pushing far-leftist ideology on issues like race, gender, and sexuality.
The issue rose to prominence while the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing. Since students were forced to attend classes remotely, parents got a closer view at what their schools were teaching their children. What they found wasn’t pretty.
Parents discovered a wholesale effort to influence young minds into embracing radical leftist ideas — without their parents’ knowledge. This kicked off an immense backlash across the country, with irate parents expressing their views during school board and city council meetings.
The controversy also propelled many Republican candidates into school board positions.
However, last year “saw a 42 percent reduction in conflicts,” according to The Cato Institute. Several factors have contributed to this cooling-down period, including focus on the presidential election and general fatigue over these battles, which were featured prominently on the airwaves and interwebs.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, told Politico that Americans “don’t want this divisive political climate.”
However, Ryan Girdusky, founder of the 1776 Project, cited historical trends as the driving factor, noting that in most off-cycle races, voters typically back the party that is not in power. He noted that “there was a complete difference when it comes to overall turnout” in states that did not have gubernatorial elections. He pointed out that “Democrats are very ginned up about showing up, and Republicans didn’t know there was an election in a lot of places, and that had something to do with it.”
Still, it’s worth noting that in many areas where Democrats won school board seats, significant reforms were brought about by the culture war over recent years. Texas enacted some of the nation’s most aggressive reforms to prevent progressives from using government-run schools to advance a political agenda.
The state legislature passed a slew of measures restricting how teachers can discuss race and gender. It banned the teaching of concepts related to critical race theory and limited instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.
In Pennsylvania, the Central Bucks School District also enacted policies to combat the indoctrination efforts. It banned books featuring LGBTQ characters, banned pride flags in classrooms, and required teachers to use students’ legal names and pronouns.
A Democratic pushback against these reforms was to be expected. However, the fact remains that most parents are not on board with the progressive agenda in schools. So even if Democrats are dominating more school boards, reversing this progress might not be easy — especially if people remain vigilant.
Sure, they are still intent on using government-run schools to push their politics on young minds. But if parents are paying closer attention to what is happening in their schools, they can prevent this from happening.