Democracy and Education

Florida is the birthplace of Moms for Liberty. It is also the state where the governor has spent millions of dollars to elect extremist members of school boards around the state who have banned books, fired superintendents, and in general wreaked havoc on local school systems.In the face of that, communities around the state have come together to elect pro-public education school board members.In this episode, Karin Chenoweth talks with three who won in 2024.·      Stephanie Vanos, who defeated a Moms for Liberty candidate in Orange County;·      Liz Barker, who also defeated a Moms for Liberty candidate in Sarasota County; and·      Rebecca Thompson, who defeated an incumbent who had been appointed by Governor DiSantis in Broward County.They talk about how they won—what strategies they employed and what they hope to accomplish.A few notes:Liz Barker’s internet connection was a bit wonky, so her sound isn’t great but the wisdom she shared is worth putting up with a little glitchiness. Also, at one point Karin talked over her so you might not hear the amount she raised for her race. It was $200,000.Guests made a couple of references to “Sunshine.” Florida’s Sunshine law is its open meetings law. Among other things, school board members are forbidden to privately discuss matters that come up before the board. The idea is to ensure that the public is able to hear all substantive discussions.A couple of other references made during the show included·      Ruth’s List, which is a political action committee that supports women candidates in Florida·      Educated We Stand, which is a PAC that supports pro-public education school board candidates based in Florida and started by a former school board member in Brevard County, Jennifer Jenkins.·      Help Out Public Education (HOPE), a state-wide organization to support pro-public education school board candidates in Florida. Their web site is under construction but will be up soon.Please like, subscribe, and recommend this podcast to your friends and colleagues. And consider joining Democracy and Education, which provides information and community to school board candidates, particularly those facing extremism. The only requirement for membership is that you support public education and democracy, and we have a vibrant community of school board members, former members, candidates, and folks who work on school board campaigns. To join, just fill out the form on the Connect page of the web site.

In this episode of Democracy and Education, Bobby Omari, who lost his bid for a school board seat in California’s Chino Valley United School District, shares the lessons he learned and the lessons he thinks others can learned from his campaign.Among other things, he thinks he underestimated the political sway a Christian Nationalist mega-church has in local politics, including in “harvesting” thousands of votes of its parishioners—that is, gathering mail-in votes and delivering them to the election board.Although Omari and his volunteers knocked thousands of doors, he also thinks he didn’t reach out enough to Independents and Republicans.Since the election he has worked with others to expand an existing group into the Concerned Parents and Citizens of CVUSD which has been reporting on what the school board has been doing. He’s not sure he’ll run again but he will be very involved and help other candidates and they will take the lessons from 2024 into the 2026 elections.  

When education researcher and parent Jamie Martin first heard NBC’s podcast about the Southlake Families, the group that had taken the majority of the school board in the Carroll School District in Texas proclaiming their allegiance to “parental rights,” she noticed that their web site looked remarkably like that of Francis Howell Families in her Missouri district. It had the same branding and the same language attacking critical race theory, transgender children, and teachers.That started her down the path of researching the influence of national organizations on local school board races.And what she found was that there is a network of well-established groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute that are working with newer groups like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education to sow distrust in local public schools and undermine support for public education.In this podcast episode, Jamie talks with host Karin Chenoweth about her research as well as her work with a counter group, Francis Howell Forward, that is working to regain the majority of the school board through its practice of what she calls “bold civility.”Some of the things mentioned during the episode include:·      Jamie Martin’s group, Francis Howell Forward.·      The Francis Howell Families web site. (The Southlake Families website seems to be inactive, but see here for a side-by-side comparison.)·      NBC’s podcast about the Carroll School District in Southlake Texas.·      Christopher Rufo’s speech to Hillsdale College where he said that the path to universal school choice is through universal school distrust.·      An interview with Christopher Rufo where he talks about using critical race theory for political purposes.·      An article by Benjamin Foster-Welles in The New Yorker about how Christopher Rufo “invented” the conflict over critical race theory.·      The Texas Observer’s map of organizations backing and funding the effort to take over school boards.·      Demographics of Francis Howell district, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, is 86 percent White, 4 percent Black, 3 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent Asian/Pacific Islander.·      James Davidson Hunter’s book, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America

Democracy and EducationEpisode 9Rejecting Extremism Alarmed by the allegations made by Libs for TikTok and Moms for Liberty, Courtney Gore ran for school board in her home town of Granbury Texas in 2021. Once on the board, she searched for the evidence of indoctrination and the sexualization of children she had been warned of. When she found none, she went back to her community to tell them the good news. But they didn’t want to hear it and cut ties with her.Now she realizes that she had unwittingly been part of a campaign to sow distrust in public schools in order to undermine them and pave the way for vouchers.In this conversation with Karin Chenoweth, Courtney Gore lays out how she did something that is very difficult—she changed her mind. In the process she lost friends and lost one community. But she held true to her essential principle of being accountable to voters and her responsibility to provide an “amazing” education to all the children of Granbury. And she gained a new community of people who appreciated her openness to facts and evidence.Thanks to Jason Schwartz of ProPublica for first publishing the story of how Courtney Gore changed her mind.She Campaigned for a Texas School Board Seat as a GOP Hard-Liner. Now She’s Rejecting Her Party’s Extremism.

When Sara Bitter ran for school board in a suburban district in Cincinnati, it was after she had already run twice for the state legislature. She knew how to run a contested campaign.But she thought running for the non-partisan school board seat would be different—less contentious, less political. After all, she says, most people just want school board members who will be a good steward of tax dollars and ensure that the children of the community are educated.Then outside money flooded into her district, funding her opponents who used the same kinds of political and ideological attacks that groups around the country have used elsewhere against pro-public education school board candidates. The attacks were libelous and hurtful, because her neighbors and her neighbors’ children saw them.So she went back to her old campaign playbook. This wasn’t a matter of just putting up some lawn signs and answering questions at forums. She needed to decide her win number, figure out how many doors to knock, put together campaign literature, and recruit volunteers to help her canvas and fundraise. To figure out which doors to knock, she went to the local Board of Elections and looked up which voters had consistently voted in school board elections—a much smaller number than voters who vote in other elections. And then she concentrated on reaching them through doorknocking.Once you have gone to someone’s door, written them a letter, talked to them and their families, Bitter says, they are less likely to believe whatever libelous accusations might be made.She shares this and other wisdom about campaigning for school board in Episode 8 of Democracy and Education.If you are interested in joining a community of school board members, former members, school board candidates, and folks working on school board campaigns, consider joining Democracy and Education. No dues. No fundraising. All you need to join is a commitment to strengthening public education and democracy. We have monthly national zoom calls and a members-only forum where you can ask questions, make observations, and share your expertise. Just fill out the form on the Connect page and watch for an email from Karin Chenoweth. (Check your spam filter if you don’t hear within a day or so.)

Steve Grappe says Arkansans are trying to take back political power through “direct democracy.”Grappe, who lives in Rosebud Arkansas on Forevermost Farms, is the former head of the Rural Caucus, former head of the Citizens for Arkansas Public Education and Students (CAPES), and is the new head of Stand Up Arkansas.In a wide-ranging discussion, Grappe describes how he and others throughout the state are working to re-engage Arkansans in civic and political life. Far too many Arkansans, he says, say that their vote and their views don’t count and because of civic disengagement, far too few are even registered to vote and many local elections—including school board—go uncontested.But right now, several petition drives are underway that, if they gain 90,000 signatures by July 1, would put on the November ballot measures that have been popular elsewhere in the country and would wrest power from what he says is an unrepresentative legislature. The process of organizing communities and collecting signatures, he says, is engaging citizens all over the state.One petition would guarantee the right to an abortion up through the 18th week of a pregnancy; one would require that legislative and executive decisions be made in a transparent way; and one, which he talks about at length in this podcast episode, would write into the Arkansas constitution several provisions related to education.Building on a major 2004 case in which the Arkansas  Supreme Court found that Arkansas’s system of funding public schools was unconstitutional, the education petition calls for a constitutional amendment that would explicitly require Arkansas schools to fund students—including, specifically, students with disabilities—sufficiently to prepare them to function and compete both academically and in the job market and to  fully participate in civic life (known as the Rose Standards). In addition, it would:·      Require that any school that takes public money be subject to the same accountability requirements of public schools;·      Require that all public schools provide schooling for all 3- and 4-year-olds;·      Require that any community within 200 percent of the federal poverty line have wrap around community services.·      All schools must offer summer and after-school programs.All four of those items have the support of vast majorities of Arkansans according to polls done by the Arkansas Policy Institute, Grappe says—including people who identify themselves as conservatives and Republicans.The education petition is being supported by the NAACP, the Arkansas Education Association, the National Education Association, the Arkansas Retired Teachers Association, and Citizens First Congress.“What we’re trying to do is bring collectively together these large social groups and get them involved, even at the school board level.”And, Grappe says, that will all lead to more people running for school board and end the far too common phenomenon of school board elections going uncontested.To join Democracy and Education, fill out the form on the connect page of www.democracy-education.org. We welcome all who support public schools and democracy.

After dozens of extremists funded and trained by people outside her home state of Minnesota won school board races in 2022, long-time political campaign worker Kyrstin Schuette said, “Someone needs to do something.” She decided that extremists were able to win in part because school board candidates who support public education didn’t have access to the knowledge and expertise that other candidates have. So she started the School Board Integrity Project in order to provide school board candidates with the kind of practical help she had provided to statehouse, congressional, and presidential candidates: Help figuring out their message, raising the money necessary to run a campaign, and reaching the voters they need to reach. She worked with more than 80 candidates in races races across Minnesota in 2023, almost all of whom won their races. “It was beautifully overwhelming,” she says. Candidates she works with must live up to the values she has laid out as important: integrity, belonging, trust, excellence, and respect. If those are your values, she said, “you’re one of our candidates whether you know it or not.” Most people, she says, want school board members who live up to the principles she has laid out, so the job of the candidates she works with is to make sure voters understand the stakes and the issues involved in school board races.They need, among other things, to point out that the extremists who are coming in with money and training from outside local communities are looking to divide communities rather than unite them and are working to undermine public schools, not improve them.In Episode 6 of Democracy and Education, Kyrstin talks with Karin Chenoweth about how she got involved in politics to begin with, how she thinks about school board races, and how she’s hoping to take her projects to other states in the next election cycle.

In 2021 Nicole Cole was elected to the Spotsylvania Virginia school board at the same time as two others who, together with existing members of the board, formed a majority that immediately tried to fire the superintendent and ban books. The board president even said he wanted to burn books that were in the school library. The new superintendent they hired banned 37 books, including Toni Morrisson’s The Bluest Eye.Together with a core group of community members, Cole formed a PAC—Support Spotsylvania Public Schools—and got to work to recruit and support candidates who would challenge the majority. And in November of 2023 all four candidates supported by SSPS won their election.They immediately un-banned the books and got them back on the shelves and are now working to undo the damage done by their extremist predecessors.In this podcast episode, Cole talks with Karin Chenoweth about the need for people to pay attention to local races and not be afraid to be political.“Politics is about the people. You absolutely have to be political. These people, you know, they are making decisions for you and they're imposing these decisions on you, your families and your kids,” she says. “They are absolutely putting politics in the school board.”Cole, who was viciously attacked during the 2023 campaign season, says, “We have to be fearless with our purpose when we know our purpose is good.”This episode will help others around the country understand what it takes to ensure that extremists who do not support public education are kept from positions of authority over the schools.This podcast is brought to you by Democracy and Education, and you can find out more information about us at www.assistdemocracy.org.

In this first episode of 2024, Democracy and Education is revamped to a new, shorter and more frequent interview format featuring Karin Chenoweth talking with school board candidates and people working on school board campaigns. Throughout the year we will talk about what strategies and tactics are successful and which are unsuccessful, as well as the political environment in which those campaigns operate.To kick the year off, Karin checks in with Kris Amundson. Kris is a former school board member, a former member of the Virginia General Assembly, and former head of the National Association of State Boards of Education, and she has wise words for anyone working on a school board campaign.And there are a lot of people working on school board campaigns!More than 21,000 school board seats are up for election in 2024.Those elections will veer wildly from being political afterthoughts to being highly contested and consequential. Some of them will feature people who want to ban books, limit the history children can learn in school, and—in some cases—dismantle public schools entirely.And because school board races are such low-information races, some of those extremists will be elected if the voters aren’t aware of the stakes of the election.Which means that pro-public education candidates need to run real campaigns, and Karin and Kris talk about what’s involved in that.For those who want to dig deeper, Karin and Kris produced a five-episode podcast, “So You Want to Run for School Board” that covers all the major aspects of a campaign, from fundraising to organizing a field operation—and some of the minor ones as well, such as placement of lawn signs. To find it, go to www.assistdemocracy.org/podcast.In the meantime, subscribe so that you can hear whenever we have another episode talking with smart people around the country who care about kids, public education, and democracy.   

In the spring of 2023 in Plano Texas a slate of pro-public education, common-sense candidates won their races for school board. This, despite the fact that extremists had supported a competing slate with expert communications and strategy help.In this episode, we hear from Michael Cook, Tarrah Lantz, and Katherine Chan Goodwin, who joined together on a slate formed by a local non-partisan organization, Keep Plano #1.Keep Plano #1 had been formed to support the “best candidate,” not party labels, according to Steve Lavine, the president. And he urged the three to run together to have the best possible chances of defeating the three candidates who were backed by extremists--as well as three other candidates who could have been spoilers.Katherine Chan Goodwin had run and lost in 2021, and she had spent the intervening two years getting better known in the community. Tarrah Lantz was known as “Ms. PTA” for the years of working as a PTA mom. Michael was propelled into the race after he and his wife—among the only African Americans in the audience—were heckled and insulted at an anti-critical race theory forum led by a sitting school board member (called trustees in Texas). The Dallas Morning News ran a front page story about the incident.Michael had a lot to learn about schools and education and about running for office. To prepare, he met with every school board member and city council member who would meet with him and participated in the Dallas-based Leadership ISD. He thought deeply about the message he would convey—that he was running to improve student achievement—and the kind of campaign he would run. He spoke to any group that would have him, including some groups that were initially hostile. But his list of issues won over some who initially thought him too “liberal.” (To hear Michael’s message, listen to 14:03-19:27)All three were worried about the extremist threat to Plano’s school board.Extremists had taken the majority in nearby Southlake Carroll and in Frisco, and were causing division and banning books.Tarrah Lantz even warned voters about it in her first mailer in a gray box above the address.By the time they got to the last 30 days of the campaign the coordination of the three campaigns paid off—together with their volunteers, the three candidates were able to knock on thousands of doors, leaving doorhangers with all of their names. And they were able to cover every polling place throughout the voting period.They all won, and Michael won a majority—a real triumph in a three-person race. 

In Carmel Clay School District in Indiana, the fairly new superintendent pledged he would do something to address the fact that many students and parents of color had experienced racist incidents or racist assumptions. He hired a diversity, equity, and inclusion coordinator. That prompted a backlash from a group of people, many of whom had no children in the schools and some of whom didn’t even live in the school district. People from neighboring towns flooded school board meetings, yelling and disrupting the meetings. They said Carmel had no problem with racism and complained not only about the DEI coordinator and the superintendent but about LGBTQ children and the social emotional learning program in the district.All of this was leading up to the 2022 school board race, where groups like Moms for Liberty and Purple for Parents Indiana put up candidates for the three seats that were contested that year who claimed that Carmel Clay schools were no longer focused on academic achievement.Residents who were concerned about the attacks on their schools started a Facebook group that quickly gained thousands of followers, but they knew that wasn’t going to be sufficient to counter the flood of outside money that paid for signs, mailers, ads, and even a banner flown by an airplane over a high school football game.So Nicky McNally and Carmella Sparrow started a PAC—Support CCS (Carmel Clay Schools). The PAC vetted candidates and created a slate of three. McNally convinced many potential candidates to instead support the slate and avoid splitting the ticket. She says in many ways that was the “best thing” the PAC did. They developed a message with six basic pillars that most people could understand and support:·       Academic Excellence·       School Safety·       Global Preparedness·       Mental Well-Being·       Parent Partnership·       Supporting TeachersThey let it be known that if the other side won, they would fire the DEI coordinator and probably the superintendent, and teachers would probably start leaving.The PAC raised $40,000 and paid for signs, mailers, T-shirts, and ads. At the suggestion of fellow activist Todd Crosby, they held dozens of “driveway parties” where hosts introduced their neighbors and friends to the school board candidates. They texted and knocked on doors. They carried endorsements by dozens of parents—and a former superintendent and principal—of the PAC’s slate. By the election, it was near impossible to be a resident and not be aware that there was a contested school board election. In what is considered a Republican stronghold, the Republican Party openly campaigned for the other side, even though school boards are non-partisan in Indiana. The Support CCS PAC remained non-partisan.And they won two of the three seats, losing the third very narrowly. This has meant, McNally says, that the majority are still committed to supporting public education.Meanwhile, the same phenomenon was happening in nearby Hamilton Southeastern. A similar Facebook group had attracted even more people than in Fishers, but the same kind of effective PAC was never formed and the community didn’t mobilized to support candidates to counter extremism. The candidates supported by Moms4Liberty won the majority of the school board. Their first action was to try to reject a $5 million federal grant to address mental health issues in the schools. A public uproar and legal limitations kept them from succeeding, but they have since cancelled a student survey, costing the districts thousands of dollars. And the PAC behind them, Fishers One, has made it clear that firing the superintendent—the district’s first Black woman superintendent—is a priority. Even though many in the district are horrified, they are stuck until the next election.The fact that they have such a cautionary tale in a neighboring district may be a spur to residents in Carmel Clay as they gear up for the next election.To hear lot more about what folks in both Carmel Clay and Hamilton Southeastern are doing, listen to “Standing Up to Extremism in Carmel Indiana.” If you prefer to read the transcript, click here.Below are links to news stories and web sites that help explain the story even more fully. CARMEL-CLAY The history of Carmel, The Carmel Historical Society The History of Hate in Indiana: How the Ku Klux Klan took over Indiana's halls of power By Jordan Fischer, WRTV Indianapolis, October 19, 20211920s KKK membership records from HamCo open to public at the Indiana Historical Society, by John Tuohy, Indy Star, July 15, 2020 Carmel has a negative reputation regarding race. Here's why. By Kaitlin Lange, Indy Star, July 13, 2020A viral high school tour underscores the haves and have-nots in America's schools, by Claretta Bellamy, NBC News, February 25, 2023 Parents criticize Carmel Clay Schools diversity work, calling it divisive and political, by M J Slaby, Indianapolis Star, April 27, 2021Answers and information regarding education standards required by Indiana law, Indiana Department of Education media releasePurple for Parents web siteMoms for Liberty Hamilton County web siteParents happy with Carmel public schools help launch Support CCS PAC by Ann Marie Shambaugh, Current, November 22, 2021The outside group trying to influence Central Indiana School Board elections - NewsBreak by Cornelius Hocker, WRTV, October 21, 2022Anti-CRT, other PACs back school board candidates. Here's why you should care. By Caroline Beck, Indy Star, October 22, 2022Dianne Hannah’s Twitter threads:  Carmel Unites Against "Unify Carmel" has the links about Unify Carmel, the group that attacked the schoolsPart I: Why CCS needed DEI and How it's Going. Part II: BacklashPart III: Decoding

How a local community took back its school board from extremists.