Texas may be waking up

 

Full thread here.

Rare story of facts overshadowing feelings

Weeks after winning a school board seat in her deeply red Texas county, Courtney Gore immersed herself in the district’s curriculum, spending her nights and weekends poring over hundreds of pages of lesson plans [...] searching for evidence of the sweeping national movement she had warned on the campaign trail was indoctrinating schoolchildren.

[...]

Gore, the co-host of a far-right online talk show, had promised that she would be a strong Republican voice on the nonpartisan school board. Citing “small town, conservative Christian values,” she pledged to inspect educational materials for inappropriate messages about sexuality and race and remove them from every campus in the 7,700-student Granbury Independent School District, an hour southwest of Fort Worth.

[...]

But after taking office and examining hundreds of pages of curriculum, Gore was shocked by what she found — and didn’t find.

The pervasive indoctrination she had railed against simply did not exist. Children were not being sexualized, and she could find no examples of critical race theory, an advanced academic concept that examines systemic racism. She’d examined curriculum related to social-emotional learning, which has come under attack by Christian conservatives who say it encourages children to question gender roles and prioritizes feelings over biblical teachings. Instead, Gore found the materials taught children “how to be a good friend, a good human.”

Gore rushed to share the news with the hard-liners who had encouraged her to run for the seat. She expected them to be as relieved and excited as she had been. But she said they were indifferent, even dismissive, because “it didn’t fit the narrative that they were trying to push.”

  Texas Tribune

I hope she wasn't surprised.

So, in the spring of 2022, Gore went public with a series of Facebook posts.

[...]

“I’m over the political agenda, hypocrisy bs,” Gore wrote. “I took part in it myself. I refuse to participate in it any longer. It’s not serving our party. We have to do better.”

[...]

Gore said she feels that she was unwittingly part of a statewide effort to weaken local support of public schools and lay the groundwork for a voucher system.

[...]

[S]he wrote in a June 8 Facebook post. “I refuse to be told what to do, what to say or how to vote. I refuse to participate in any agenda that will dismantle or abolish public education.”

[...]

Gore and other disillusioned local Republicans have formed a group pushing against an “ultra-right” faction of the party that it says has become obsessed with “administering purity tests” and stoking divisive politics.

She won't be on the board long.

Gore is facing backlash from the same people who supported her race. She has been threatened at raucous school board meetings and shunned by people she once considered friends.

School marshals escort her and her fellow board members to their cars to ensure no one accosts them.

When things get particularly heated, a fellow trustee follows her in his car to make sure she gets home safely.

Jesus wept.

But maybe there really is some hope.

[T]he November election delivered a setback to those [hardliners] who wanted to take over the school board. The two candidates supported by hard-line conservatives lost by wide margins, denying the county’s far-right faction the majority on the board. Among the winners in that election was Nancy Alana, the school board member whom Gore ousted two years earlier. This time around Gore endorsed Alana, and the two former opponents have since become friends and allies.

“She let everybody know that she had been misled and that she has seen for herself the good things that are happening in our school district,” Alana said. “That the school board can be trusted. That the administrators can be trusted. And she has spoken out on that. And that has made a big difference. And she is very well thought of in our community because of her willingness to step up and say, ‘I was wrong.’”

This is a long story about the insane lengths far-right activism has gone in the Texas school system. Continue reading here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A little bit of hope

Scores of rightwing extremists were defeated in school board elections in April, in a victory for the left in the US and what Democrats hope could prove to be a playbook for running against Republicans in the year ahead.

In Illinois, Democrats said more than 70% of the school board candidates it had endorsed won their races, often defeating the kind of anti-LGBTQ+ culture warrior candidates who have taken control of school boards across the country.

[...]

Teachers unions, including the Illinois Education Association, endorsed candidates in school board elections around the state. The IEA backed candidates in about 100 races, and around 90% of those candidates won.

[...]

Republican-backed candidates in Wisconsin also fared poorly. Moms for Liberty, a rightwing group linked to wealthy Republican donors which has been behind book-banning campaigns in the US, said only eight of its endorsed candidates won election to school boards, and other conservative groups also reported disappointing performances.

[...]

The 1776 Project, a political action committee which received funding from Richard Uihlein, a billionaire GOP donor, said only a third of the 63 candidates it had backed in Illinois and Wisconsin had won their races.

  Guardian

All the book banning, LGBTQ bashing, and curbs on teaching racial history must be taking a toll.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Welcome to the resistance

New Hampshire’s 2022 school board elections were supposed to be proving grounds for conservative frustrations around school policies, from spending to COVID-19-related restrictions to teachings about racial justice and diversity.

Instead, Tuesday’s local elections appeared to deliver broad victories for progressive public school advocates, who argued against what they characterized as threats to traditional public schools from the right. In total, 29 candidates designated by progressive organizers as “pro-public education” won Tuesday night, many in traditionally conservative towns like Brookline and Londonderry.

[...]

Hanging over many of the local races this year were debates with national or statewide themes. Two years of intermittent periods of remote learning and mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic helped fuel a “parental choice” effort on the right, voiced by angry parents at school board meetings and championed by many conservative school board candidates.

Opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion policies at public schools from some right-leaning activists – and accusations that administrators have applied concepts of “critical race theory” in K-12 schools – made a mark on some New Hampshire campaigns and ballot initiatives.

And a statewide school choice movement among Republicans that has led to the creation of an “education freedom account” program to allow public education funding to help pay for private school tuition for eligible families appeared to play a role, too.

[...]

That combination of issues has worked for conservatives in other states’ elections in recent years, drawing in parents and voters anxious over pandemic-related restrictions. But in New Hampshire, even amid higher than usual turnout Tuesday, the approach appeared to fall short.

[...]

“Tonight’s results prove that when young people run, they win, and that a little bit of encouragement and focused investment go a long way in building the next generation of leadership,” said Tim Peltier, the leadership development director for 603 Forward, a progressive group focused on electing young candidates in the state.

Rice Hawkins agreed.

“This is really the first time Granite State voters have had an opportunity to weigh in here,” she said, noting that the school elections came after a recent spate of laws and bills that would penalize teachers who teach banned concepts around race or oppression. “Part of the reason our organization is so excited is we knew that the public was in a very different place than some of the politicians on this, and that is turning out to be true.”

  New Hampshire Bulletin