For years, school boards have enjoyed unconditional trust from the parents and the public in general. In fact, most were uninformed about school boards (composed of local elected officials) or understood the direct impact they have on our daily lives. Consequently, school board elections have drawn little interest or attention in many communities and attendance at school board meetings typically are sparsely attended. However, that has all changed recently with the pandemic and the social unrest that has roiled the country. The public now realizes that our local school boards have in fact a great impact on our lives and the well-being of our communities.
Left unchecked, many of these entities have imposed rules, regulations, and curricula on the schools with no regard to the wishes of the communities they serve. They have acted with little transparency, disregarding the values of their constituencies to foist their own on the students, all the while minimizing the primary role of parents in their children’s education. It became apparent that for the most parts, school boards are beholden to the teacher unions rather that to the community they supposed to serve.
Because many school boards have not been open and truthful about their actions and their intentions, parents have been forced to exercise their rights as taxpayers to demand this information through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other legal means. These maneuvers can be very costly. Nonetheless, school boards continue to obstruct these efforts and deny parents their right to know what their children are being exposed to during the school day.