Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

A recent NPR report describes where we are today, a place where the son of a current school board president, who is a former teacher and Principal in the district she now leads, recommended she keep a baseball bat by her door for protection. The politicization of local school boards is the result of President Trump’s decision to make vaccinations and masks a political issue and the GOP’s decision to jump on the bandwagon to do the same. In all cases, even those where the GOP Governors mandated NO masks, the result is that local school board members are increasingly dealing with NATIONAL issues instead of LOCAL ones… and despite the fact that many local boards are authorized to make spending decisions (see my previous post), there is no amount of funding that can compensate for the political pressure local boards are facing. Here’s the reaction of an Ohio school board member: 

Many school board members like Charlie Wilson in Worthington, Ohio, question why public health officials are not making these decisions to protect school children in the middle of a resurging global pandemic.

Wilson says he is all for local control of schools, but the situation with the pandemic is different and it wouldn’t set precedence for federal or state institutions to step in.

“This is a situation where it’s outside of two things: it’s outside our area of expertise. And secondly, viruses do not confine themselves to a school district,” he says.

“I hope I don’t come across as a hypocrite, but I really believe this is one time where state governors, and frankly, the federal government needs to step up and decide what is in the best interests of either our state or the country.”

Wilson is the past president of the National School Boards Association and a school board member since 2007. He says the job has changed a lot. It’s become so partisan that any decision he takes is deemed political and that’s driving many people out.

“I’m just surprised at how many people I hear from, who have been board members for a long time, who said it’s not worth it, I’m going to either resign or not run again this fall,” he says.

Wilson, who is also a law professor, says school boards are made up of people who are largely volunteers or who get paid negligible amounts. They joined to do their civic duty — politics and ideology are not top of mind for most of them. But this seems to be changing.

Now, Wilson says, he sees more candidates than ever who are single-issue focused or openly partisan running for the coming school board elections across the country.

Wilson himself doesn’t plan to run for office again. He says he wants to spend more time with his grandchildren. And the past several months have made forgoing the position an easy decision.

Over the past year, he had trouble sleeping. He would sometimes dream of a student losing a parent or a grandparent from a virus they caught at school because of a decision Wilson took. Still, that’s not the worst part.

“Literally daily, getting hate emails and sometimes phone calls. And, frankly, occasionally people knocking on my door and threatening to do all kinds of things,” he says.

By driving out the Charlie Wilson’s of this world and replacing them with “single-issue focused or openly partisan” members, the GOP is on a course to destroy the last bastion of democracy.