It’s Time to Politicize School Board Elections

by Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris | Jan 4, 2022 | Education, Elections, Politics @ America Out Loud

A prominent bright spot in today’s political scene is the movement to take the education of our children out of the hands of the influential school boards operating with little input from parents. It’s time that parents know the political desires of these candidates. The secrecy behind party affiliation on school boards must end.

Andrew Atterbury and Juan Perez Jr. writing at Politico news, say Republicans across America are pressing local jurisdictions and state lawmakers to make typically sleepy school board races into politicized, partisan elections in an attempt to gain more statewide control and swing them to victory in the 2022 midterm elections.

Tennessee lawmakers, last October, approved a measure allowing school board candidates to list their party affiliation on the ballot. Arizona, Florida, and Missouri legislators are weighing a similar measure. It is likely to spread to other states and increase voter turnout. Kenneth Marcus, the Education Department Civil Rights Chief under former Secretary of Education Betsy Devos, has called for school board elections to be part of an effort to “end critical race theory in schools.”

This latest effort to thrust school board elections into partisan affairs come as education was a primary issue in the significant upset election of Glenn Youngkin as Governor of Virginia. He campaigned on the promise to give parents more say in their children’s education, including classroom lessons in history and race.

Republicans are openly embracing parental rights as a key factor shaping policy in DC and many statehouses. There has been a significant underestimation of parental frustration with their leftist school systems.

Including political party labels in school board elections seems like a common-sense reform, say, Atterbury and Perez Jr., that would give voters more information and likely enhance voter participation and local accountability. While all of this is good news, the Democrats are mounting a greater effort to literally destroy the democracy we have known here for almost 250 years.

The Democrat Party has challenged the legitimacy of every presidential election in this century. They blamed a corrupt Supreme Court for their 2000 year defeat, they blamed crooked voting machines in 2004 and Russian interference in 2016. Left-wing news outlets such as NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others lie to Americans that democracy is under siege when in fact it is under siege by them.

These people embrace a dark view of the American people, which is not unique in our history. J. Peder Zone writing in RealClearPolitics (12/29/21), said the Democrat Party’s 19th-century roots show Southern planters and Northern political machines ran them. Today their current status is as the party of global elites. The Democrat Party has long been a hierarchical outfit where those at the top promised to act in the best interest of those below them.

The Democrat Party has kept votes in line by playing on the fears of the population. Today it should be obvious to everyone that they are playing the climate change card and the pandemic card most effectively.

In the years following World War II, the Democrats gradually changed the groups they pretended to speak for, says Zone. Working-class whites were out once marginalized groups were in, but their DNA remained the same.

“They continued their uneasy relationship with the give and take of American democracy; convinced that their policies were unassailable, they argued that moral failings-stupidity, racism, and greed explained why we have two parties.” It should be obvious now that they are doing everything to be the only party as they have hoped to stack the Supreme Court and pass legislation to take all state voting under the control of Washington DC through now dormant HR 4.

We admit that Republicans have not always performed admirably, but their constant embrace of limited government power always restrained any impulse to run every aspect of our lives. The gigantic falsehood of the Democrat Party that Republicans dislike Black Americans is belied by the GOPs strong support for racial justice and the fact that America is by every measure less racist than it has ever been despite the outrageous claim the Marxist Democrats promoting Critical Race Theory, Black Lives Matter, the 1619 project and Wokism in general.

It should be evident that in the Democrats’ quest for power, they have no qualms about destroying the country as it was originally founded. These topics, along with our position in International relations, will be discussed in our weekend radio program The Other Side of The Story on America Out Loud Talk Radio on January 8 and 9 at both 11 am and 8 pm with Robert Kasten, former two-term Senator from Wisconsin who worked closely with Ronald Reagan during his years as President.

Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

Dr. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute. He is an internationally renowned scientist, author, and speaker who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on environmental issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the national government and many foreign countries. After graduating from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological Engineering, he received the nation’s first Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition, and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute. He has 40 years experience as a mechanical engineer/project manager, science and technology communications professional, technical trainer, and S&T advisor to a former Opposition Senior Environment Critic in Canada’s Parliament.