The news media and political pundits are heavily focused on the next “big” election – November 2024, when we will decide who occupies the Oval Office for the next four-year term. Will it be Joe Biden or Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley or some other Republican?
Without question, this is a tremendously important question, as is the question of which party will control the House and Senate. But what many overlook is that there is an election every November, including this year. These “off-year” elections don’t attract anywhere near the same amount of press and political party attention, and, hence, voter turnout. But that is a big mistake; these “off year” elections have tremendous consequences, especially for public education.
In the last such elections, in numerous Colorado school districts – e.g., Douglas County, Woodland Park, Colorado Springs, Montezuma-Cortez, Grand Junction and Garfield RE-2 – a group of far-right conservative candidates took over the majorities of those Boards of Education. These individuals sought those positions not because they are committed, genuinely, to improving the quality of public education. Instead, they are part of a political movement, launched in the wake of Glenn Youngkin’s defeat of Terry McAuliffe to become governor of Virginia that demonizes the supposed “indoctrination” of public school students by exposing them to “woke” concepts like equity and inclusion. (In his first day in office, Youngkin suspended all Virginia public schools’ policies on equity and inclusion).
Youngkin campaigned on a pledge to end the teaching of “critical race theory” in Virginia’s K-12 public schools – despite the fact that not a single K-12 public school in that state – or in any state – has ever offered lessons in that graduate-level academic theory.
And that’s the point. These right-wing activists don’t care about actual facts. Climate change. Systemic racism. Gender fluidity and non-binary sexual orientation. A global pandemic that killed millions, many of those deaths (over 220,000 in the U.S. alone) could have been averted had people not been conned into believing that life-saving vaccines were the sinister plot of “the deep state” to monitor their movements and/or control their internal thoughts.
Like Youngkin, these political advocates are using our public schools as pawns in the national culture war. “Government-run schools” as they are disparagingly referred to, are symbols employed to advance these partisans’ false narrative that all forms government have been commandeered by college-educated “elites” hell-bent on dismantling the idyllic status quo of yesteryear, when straight white men occupied all of society’s power centers.
Consider the damage done in Douglas County schools. Since gaining office in an off-year election, these crusaders have dismantled the district’s former policy that committed its public schools to be welcoming places for schoolchildren from all backgrounds, ethnicities and color. Never mind that one African American boy was harassed with racial slurs, threats and harassment to the point of leaving the district.
The four newly elected DougCo board members also fired the much-beloved superintendent, Corey Wise, who had devoted 26 years to improving education in that district because he was implementing the equity policy duly adopted by the previous board. They made that decision privately among themselves without notifying the public or their three colleagues on the district’s Board of Education.
And so it is in Woodland Park, Mesa County Valley and Garfield R-2: Secret meetings. Books banned. Decisions made behind closed doors. Dismantled policies promoting equity and tolerance of people’s differences. And they’ve hired attorneys of like mind and political persuasion to aid and abet them in carrying out their extremist agenda, including counseling them on how to skirt our state’s sunshine laws.
No doubt, like DeSantis’ efforts in Florida, there will be efforts to re-write history, both literally and pedagogically, to gloss over hundreds of years of slavery and racism, up to the present. These reformers argue public schools should not “confront” white kids with any historical truth that might make them (or, more accurately, their parents) uncomfortable.
If, like me, you don’t believe our public education system should be so undermined to advance an extremist reactionary political agenda, then it’s up to you to challenge this dangerous trend. Pay attention to what your local Board of Education is doing. Speak up in opposition to plans to dismantle equity and inclusion policies, prevent accurate history teaching or to ban books. And, this coming November, don’t allow the vocal minority to dictate education policy for the rest of us. Get out and vote. It’s not merely your right; it’s your civic duty.
Steve Zansberg is a First Amendment attorney in Denver and president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. Zansberg has represented The Durango Herald and The Journal.
