Taking Back Your Community: School Boards

Sadly but truly, "everything is political." The first steps toward stopping and rolling back the Left in the culture war they have been waging for decades can be taken at the local level, and elected school boards are a great place to start. 

Take back from whom? From the left-liberals with a mission, the activists and 'community organizers' who run for every available elective office at the lowest level. They embed themselves in every governing and regulatory body in your town, county, and state, because they give a damn. They know better than the rest of us what needs to be done, how we should live – and how our children should be raised and taught, so they can complete the 'transformation' of America once their ignorant, racist, reactionary parents finally shuffle off this mortal coil.

By contrast, conservatives, libertarians, and that vanishing endangered species, the "socially liberal" moderates – lack the fire in the belly to stand up to this project, call it out for what it is, and take time away from their jobs, homes, and bass boats to involve themselves in politics. They cede one battlefield after another, without a fight, because they don't care enough to get involved. After all, it's unthinkable that such foolish ideas could ever get traction, that time-honored traditions and the fundamental assumptions of civil life in a constitutional republic would ever be overturned.

Wyoming School Boards

The mostly untrustworthy "trustees" who make up school boards are too often examples of the first type. Not always, by any means. Out of the 48 school districts in Wyoming, the majority have trustees who truly represent the traditional values of their communities, or at least have enough of them to contest the 'progressive' project that has its standard-bearers in every district and community. In the more populous cities and towns of the state, the balance tilts heavily toward the left.

These trustee positions are literally the lowest-level elected offices in Wyoming (and most other states as well), and with a few admirable exceptions are filled by political neophytes, activists with hidden agendas, and sometimes just locals seeking a position of power over others that they cannot attain through accomplishments and ability. They are unpaid positions, only compensated for travel expenses when they leave their local area for seminars and conferences. Performed faithfully, their responsibilities are substantial and time-consuming, but they are rightfully restricted to managing the district's budget, maintaining and updating district policies and ensuring compliance with them, and overseeing the district's administration. The latter mostly consists of hiring and firing the district superintendent. They have no business meddling in administrative detail, but too often they do, despite most trustees having little or no experience managing anything bigger than a household budget, family business, or classroom. Few have managed large work forces or critical operations of any sort (those with that sort of experience do not often run for school boards), but is there a more "critical operation" in our society than the education of our youth? As often as not, trustees are elected on the basis of prior experience as educators (which leaves the fox guarding the chicken coop), on their connections in their local community, and on their ability to portray themselves as safe, non-confrontational bulwarks of the status quo.

The Education Mafia

Everywhere, the loudest and most consistent voice on all educational issues comes from the educators themselves – teachers and administrators – and their union, the Wyoming Education Association, which is indistinguishable from the National Education Association and hardly a voice for traditional values. Again, a broad-brush treatment is not entirely fair, as there are smart, principled people working in our schools who deserve recognition and support. Just don't recognize them too loudly, or you'll put targets on their backs; they mostly try to keep a low profile, as if their livelihood depends upon it. Which it does.

In 2021, the oldest educators in the system, those on the cusp of retirement, are of the 'Baby Boomer' generation, themselves educated in the 1960s and 1970s, a time of turmoil when the leftist war on traditional American culture was just heating up. If you are of that generation, or your parents were, you've witnessed how many of that age group were turned by formative experiences in their younger years to idealize socialism, see ever-larger government as the solution to every social problem, and exaggerate every failure and imperfection in our nation and its history. Many of that cohort were drawn to careers in education.

Since then, the people teaching your children, and most of those who hire, fire, promote, and discipline them were for the most part educated in the leftwing mill of higher education. They are almost entirely graduates of four-year teacher's colleges, earning a bachelor's degree in education, which teaches them how to navigate the statist bureaucracy of the modern educational system, "teach to the test" that determines how they are evaluated and promoted, and deliver curriculum in the classroom via teacher's guides that dictate every minute of their teaching day.

That reliance on teacher's guides – thoughtfully provided by all the major publishers to accompany their textbooks and online resources – is a virtual necessity, because many of them have so little knowledge and expertise in the subjects they teach. Four years of education in "education" usually includes no more than an undergraduate minor or a handful of electives in the actual subject matter they will present to students in their own classrooms, and they need prescriptive guides that tell them what to say, how to say it, and how to elicit, shape, control, and reward or punish students' responses.

This was demonstrated in more than one Wyoming district in recent years, when parents raised questions regarding curriculum resources proposed for purchase or already in use in their children's schools. Challenges to flagrant factual errors or obvious political bias in the materials were overwhelmingly rejected by committees appointed by the school boards and dominated by educators, and usually for one of two reasons. Either the educators had been raised on the same bias and agreed with it explicitly, or agreed implicitly because they, despite all the buzz about "critical thinking", they were unable to see anything wrong with it. Or on historical issues, they were simply ignorant of history they'd never properly learned, and defaulted to unquestioning acceptance of what the publishers provided to cover the gaps in their own knowledge.

The teachers' union and school administrators boast about (and financially reward) the advanced degrees held by a significant fraction of classroom teachers. These are overwhelmingly master's degrees in – you guessed it – "education." Not history, social studies, linguistics, science, math, or engineering. George Bernard Shaw once said, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." Granted, it was never entirely true. Many who "can" are competent practitioners in their field, but lousy when it comes to passing on their skills or knowledge; and some have a gift for teaching even things they haven't spent a career practicing. In any case, it's an old aphorism, off-script and "cancelled" from modern discourse: enter that saying in any internet search engine, you'll find diametrically opposed platitudes celebrating the superior intelligence and wisdom of teachers, such as "Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach." That one is attributed to Aristotle, who ironically is not known to have done anything in his life except teach.

Standing up to the educational establishment

From time to time, parents and community members who are not raised or inclined to be rebellious activists do take time out of their lives to question educational content and philosophy in their local schools. All of them have standing, because even those without kids presently in the schools pay the taxes that fund education, and the quality of education that is delivered will affect their communities and their future.

The common response from the educational establishment – administrators and school boards – is "Trust the teachers." Trust the teachers who unquestioningly accept, support, and defend texts and teacher's guides that, in once case we've heard of, falsely claimed the communist U.S.S.R. was an Allied power in 1939 (when it was in league with Adolf Hitler in the brutal conquest and dismemberment of Poland), or that the U.S. internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two was the equivalent of Nazi genocide. Trust the teachers, who are themselves almost invariably supported and defended by school board trustees elected by their constituents to oversee the quality and delivery of education according to community standards.

Challenges to curriculum and classroom presentations, to the propriety of library books, to irrational and oppressive rules and mandates, to irresponsible financial decisions, or to any other aspect of the day-to-day conduct of business in a district's schools, are commonly either ignored and dismissed, or if the challenges are allowed on the basis of school board "community relations" policies, they are referred to and adjudicated by committees appointed by the school board. The trustees prefer to push these issues, the time and effort required to address them, and the responsibility for decisions off their own plate and down to their beholden subordinates. Then they can endorse those committee's decisions, because, well, "Trust the teachers."

If you've read Standing Tall's discussion of the history of state sovereignty and states' rights, you'll see a parallel in how all court cases that challenge the supremacy of federal law and regulations are decided in federal courts by appointed federal judges.

No matter how we wish it were not so, as Thomas Mann said, "Everything is political." Or as Bertolt Brecht said, a little more harshly:

"The worst illiterate is the political illiterate. He hears nothing, sees nothing, takes no part in political life. He doesn't seem to know that the cost of living, the price of beans, of flour, of rent, of medicines all depend on political decisions. He even prides himself on his political ignorance, sticks out his chest and says he hates politics. He doesn't know, the imbecile, that from his political non-participation comes the prostitute, the abandoned child, the robber and, worst of all, corrupt officials. . ."

There are, however, few other means of confronting the educational establishment. Neither elected trustees nor contracted educators can be removed from their positions by community action or influence, or by anything short of conviction of an egregious violation of criminal law. As with all elected positions in Wyoming, there is no legal process for recall of a trustee who has lost the trust of his or her constituents.

Civil action is always an option, in our litigious society, but school boards control the district's budget, to include the selection and pay of attorneys who represent the district in court, using taxpayer funds as necessary to oppose the taxpayers' will when the board's policies or actions are challenged. Against that structural advantage, it is extremely hard to mobilize concern in most of our communities. From supporting legal actions where warranted, to simply showing up and standing up in board meetings or even writing emails or making phone calls, most parents and citizens are not willing to organize, or to sustain the time and effort to fight a school board or administration that almost invariably closes ranks to defend its own against outside criticism. Those who do initiate such actions could learn from the reams of guidance on 'community organizing' and 'grass roots activism' that are well known and constantly and effectively applied by the political left.

One tactic that disciplined critics can employ is to challenge actions and decisions on the basis of the school district's own policies, policies of the Wyoming Department of Education that they are somewhat governed by, and state statutes such as the Administrative Procedures Act that dictate in very detailed fashion how policies must be written, exposed to public scrutiny, and voted upon.

The most fundamental way to take back our schools is to pay attention to the actions of our school boards, know the trustees, and know the candidates for those positions. Our ballots, every two years, are crowded with candidates and initiatives. How often have you been asked, "Who should I vote for?" by friends or neighbors unwilling to do their own research, or to go past the campaign scripts and slogans. In the social media era, almost everyone has left a trail of actions and statements by which they define themselves before they ever decide to run for office, at which point they reinvent themselves to please (or at least anesthetize) enough voters to win.

In most Wyoming school districts, even those with 5-10,000 voters, it doesn't take more than a few hundred votes to win a school board seat because too many voters don't care, don't know, and leave those boxes unchecked. A cadre of parent activists, a coffee klatch, fellow sports boosters, educators who identify and organize to promote a protector of their status quo – that is enough. A year later (if that long), one year into their four-year terms, the good parents and citizens of the district are bewailing the composition of their school board, but have no one but themselves to blame.

Pay attention. Speak up. Be an informed voter, or run for the school board yourself and understand the politics involved. Stand Tall, and do not surrender our children and our future.