Across the country, school boards have lost all sense of reality. They have established local monarchies where they claim complete control and deem parents, domestic terrorists. They are establishing policies and curriculum that parents abhor. They think it is their right to indoctrinate students as young as four in critical race theory and other agenda items of the radical left. They are telling parents to butt out. Their child’s education is none of their business. While most are sincerely dedicated to the education of the students in their respective districts, many have become unaccountable tyrants.
In Loudoun County, Virginia, the school board had the father of a teenage girl arrested in a story that has gained national attention. His crime? Pointing out at a board meeting the coverup of a sexual assault on his daughter in the transgender restroom by a boy wearing a skirt. This assault was covered up to protect the school board’s transgender and other leftist policies. Parental outrage, sparked by these actions and other tyrannical school board actions across Virginia, was primarily why Republicans swept the top three elected offices in Virginia for the first time in a decade.
A school board member for Broward County Public Schools in Florida, which is the sixth-largest school district in America, bragged on Facebook she was a chaperone for a field trip to Rosie’s Bar & Grill a well-known gay bar. These students were in elementary school.
Jodi Sapp is the chair of the board of a Minnesota local school board. Sapp was tiring of public comments, especially about failures in “her schools” and parents showing up at meetings objecting to mask mandates. She arbitrarily laid out new rules before an open forum at a school board meeting. These new rules were designed to limit criticism and intimidate those who spoke out against the board. The new rules included prohibiting residents from addressing individual school board members, district staff, and teachers by name. The rules also required that every speaker publicly state their home address. Break a rule, you are permanently banned from future meetings.
A California school board president was caught cursing on a microphone that she thought was off after a parent voiced concerns about imposing a mandatory mask mandate and COVID-19 vaccinations in a very respectful manner. A concerned parent explained that parents should be allowed the right to decide what is best for their children. In a recording of the school board meeting, she said, "We are vocal because we are our children’s biggest advocates." Parents attending the meeting on Oct. 26 applauded in agreement. Marlys Davidson, the Los Alamitos Unified school board president, can be heard uttering a swear word into the microphone after the parent finished speaking - basically, showing her total contempt for concerned parents.
As I have previously written, right here in Alabama several school boards have tried to implement critical race theory, including many appointed boards. A program entitled “No Place to Hate” was the tool they were using. It is a program that contains the basic tenants of Critical Race Theory just with a different name. Luckily, implementation has been stopped at this point.
Appointed local school boards are basically accountable to no one except the person or people who appoint them. If they go against their wishes, they risk getting unappointed. Parents and taxpayers are an afterthought. They operate as they see fit and most boards have no formal procedures for board member removal except for explicit criminal activity. Unpaid school boards are the exception. Most get paid. Expenditure of taxpayer funds demands accountability. The greatest level of accountability comes from elections of school boards with the ability to have recall elections.
Perry Hooper is a former Alabama Representative and currently president of Hooper and Associates in Montgomery. He was the Alabama Trump Victory Chairman in 2016 and an Alabama Trump Team Leader in 2020. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819News.com
