SCHOOL BOARDS UNDER FIRE

Some school boards around the country need to learn humility. You get more with sugar than salt is more that just a cliché. Its reality. Being elected onto a local the school board is not only a honor and elected privilege, but it is also a position of parental trust.

Parents trusting an elected official to guide the school or schools their kids attend. Parenting is basic and parents tend to love basic learning for their kids. Parents generally tend to give less weight to wild or “out there” ideologies or peculiar learnings. Sticking with the basics is what is on the majority of parent’s minds.

Instead of old school basics, some school boards are creeping towards or hurling towards “out there” and peculiar ideological "agenda" driving learnings. New wave Wokism, LGBT, Language alterations for pro nouns, etc., etc. In some places, these peculiar ideologies are taking precedence over normal basic instruction.  Or they are being woven subtly into or to replace the basic fabric of proper schooling.  That has provoked a huge political storm that many school boards under intense fire.  Clearly, they did not expect or come equipped to handle the parental backlash.

The storm has a name. The Mamma and Papa Bears.  Some on the Extreme Left call them the "Karens", as if being a white female in and of itself is a racist problem. However, the Mamma and Papa Bears is the new moniker that many parents have latched onto to name this new anti-progressive movement. Make no mistake, this movement is real and is as bottom grass roots as it gets.

Books in schools are being ferreted out by these parents. Books that the kids can read in school promoting pedophilia, homosexuality, transgenderism, and other porn hedonisms are all being called onto the carpet of public scrutiny. All that and adding into this ideological mix is the growing trepidation of Critical Race Theory or CRT as it has become known in the national media.

What is being taught, how it is being taught, and what is not being taught is at the fundamental point that this parental movement is all about. During home schooling or what is now called “remote learning” during the Covid 19 crisis, far too many parents learned what their kids were being taught and they became very alarmed.

What were they alarmed about? They quickly learned about the failure of the basic teaching and learning of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. Parents during Covid learned that basic learning, including science and math were taking a deep back seat to political ideology and new CRT programing, whether it is an in your face teaching or subtly hidden program.

Parents who started to question many of these School Boards suddenly found themselves targeted by so called anti-racist groups that was made up of school board members and several attorneys. Even their kids were targeted on social media and in class by socialist minded teachers. Think of it – Parents, kids, and some instructors were now made out to be the community bad guys, and being specially targeted by far left progressives who were in favor of the 1519 project (a deliberate Progressive created false History of the United States), the Lincoln Project (an anti-conservative entity), and anyone else who favors Critical Race Theory.

Yes, the wake up call during Covid 19 and home schooling was and still is a serious business and surely will drive votes all the way into 2024 and perhaps beyond. Ideologies clashing in school board meetings all around the nation are not going to stop. It is local  and it is now national and the clashes going to continue.  And the various teacher unions are also coming under serious scrutiny for their support of these progressive and socialist ideologies.

Who will win out? Who really knows? Many point to the Virginia Governors Election as a bell-weather against CRT. But that does not quiet the local clash between school officials and parents. It is a ground floor battle that sees some claiming that the school and government will see to the education of the school kids against those who point our that it’s the parents who decide what is taught to their kids.

Very different approaches and it remains who will win out. School Board Members, however, must always remember that it is they who are elected to serve the community, by the community (parents), and not appointed by the government.

In the main, it is the Election of the school board members that will ultimately decide this important issue. And there are a host of parents that are now running for those school board positions.

So what does it all mean? Don’t mess with the Momma and Papa Bears.  Far too much salt has been rubbed into the argument and it has left a bad taste and sting in far too many parents.  This clash is not going to go away soon.