Saving school kids from the biggest bullies of all
Saving school kids from the biggest bullies of all
Racist parents and politicians
Welcome to a big Sunday edition of Progressives Everywhere!
I’d say we’re crawling out from a blizzard here in New York, but the truth is that for all the snow that poured down on the city, life hardly paused at all. Some of that is down to the way the city’s buildings and constant kinetic energy generate warmth and how its unceasing flow of traffic churns through any weather, but most of the credit belongs to the hard work and dedication of workers at the NYC Sanitation Department.
Its distribution of resources is hardly equitable across neighborhoods and boroughs, but even so, it’s always worth highlighting the herculean everyday accomplishments made possible by both labor and tax dollars, especially in an era of neoliberal privatization.
Public education also very much qualifies as a miracle of public good and foresight made possible by tax dollars. Education is under siege in this increasingly stupid reality in which we live, and in tonight’s edition of the newsletter, we’ll dive deep into the barrage of attacks on schools coming from the right-wing and speak with one candidate standing up for students amid it all.
Ending traditional public education has long been a north star goal for the American conservative movement. Now, in addition to trying to starve it to death with vouchers and for-profit charter institutes, extremist Republicans are seeking to poison students that do stay in public schools with dangerous lies and radical ideology.
Just look at what Ben Shapiro is up to:
Unfortunately, not all conservatives are as hilariously inept as Ben “Debate Me” Shapiro.
In fact, for a group of people so terrified and worked up about cancel culture, Republicans have really taken to banning a record number of books and policing speech.
Then again, ideological consistency has never really been their biggest concern.
Just a few years ago, “critical race theory” was a term used by academics to describe the study of the lingering systemic racism that is embedded into the structure of American society. A few misleading Fox News segments and Donald Trump executive orders were all it took for a warped version of CRT to become a right-wing obsession and red meat for Republican lawmakers.
Now, critical race theory functions as a catch-all term for anything deemed objectionable to white bigots, a bogeyman weaponized to justify a wide-ranging McCarthyist assault on American public education.
Fringe-right troll general Steve Bannon last year called for conservatives to swarm school board elections nationwide, and now they’re doing so at an alarming rate. These aggressive paranoiacs are injecting an unpopular and toxic ideology, along with their own narrow self-interests, into conversations that should be about helping children cope with what has been a uniquely difficult time to grow up.
Several fights playing out in Missouri right now underscore that grave imbalance, with one election in particular illustrating what’s at stake.
“It’s scaring people, but they don't even know what they're scared about.”
“They’re definitely trying to turn them into a jumping board for politics,” says Brandi VanAntwerp. “I think it is either to get people to just come out vote [in other elections] or to raise up the next generation of candidates for bigger offices.”
VanAntwerp ran for a seat on the Board of Education in Springfield, MO last spring. Since then, the largest school district in Missouri has been ground zero for the right-wing conservative attack on education led by Attorney General Eric Schmitt and the GOP legislative supermajority.
In November, Schmitt sued the Springfield district for refusing to send him years of records that he said proved that it trained teachers in critical race theory. The smoking gun, he insisted, was a module that promised to help teachers better understand “complex issues of systemic racism and xenophobia" and offer them “tools on how to become anti-racist.”
Springfield’s own Republican state legislator, Rep. Craig Fishel, also sued the district, asking for three years of records pertaining to alleged critical race theory indoctrination. The district told Schmitt that his request would cost $37,000 to fulfill, while Fishel got hit with a prospective $170,000 price tag to pay for the work required to produce so many documents. The lawmakers balked, and just as well, because the Springfield district had little interest in cooperating with the inquisitions.
“Ensuring our district is equitable and inclusive is our ethical responsibility to make SPS safe for all students and staff,” a district spokesman said back in November. “Any deliberate attempt to misrepresent this important work, especially for political purposes, is shameful indeed.”
Schmitt’s office was ordered by a court on Friday to amend and resubmit its lawsuit, which a judge ruled was too burdened by political ideology (which is putting it lightly). But regardless of what happens from here in that particular legal tussle, much broader damage has been done.
“People are very confused, and one of the most dangerous pieces of that whole conversation about CRT is that it means something different to everyone,” says VanAntwerp, who is running for school board once again. “It’s scaring people, but they don't even know what they're scared about.”
Springfield was also sued by six parents in November for requiring students to wear masks to protect themselves from Covid, and all throughout December, others protested the mask mandate outside school buildings. Classes have been conducted remotely over the past few weeks due to a gigantic Covid outbreak (surprised?), and after a commotion from angry parents, the current school board voted 4-3 to end the mandate.
The stakes continue to grow, and for VanAntwerp, this second campaign is about public good and personal connections, not professional ambitions.
Born to a teenage mother with few resources, VanAntwerp credits public schools for providing the opportunities that would have otherwise eluded her. Now, she works in the foster care system while her sister and brother-in-law both work as public school teachers.
VanAntwerp and her husband have two children, both of whom are enrolled in Springfield public schools, as is one of the foster children they host. The toll the last few years have taken weigh heavy on her mind. She’s careful to keep her responses non-partisan, not as a way to eliminate the inherent politics that come with acknowledging the reality of a country still rife with systemic inequities. Similarly, her focus is on helping kids catch up and be put in a position to grow and thrive.
“I think everybody wants our kids to be in the classroom and have that social interaction with one another, to allow our children the opportunity to develop their brains and develop those skills,” VanAntwerp says. “So I think it really will go back to additional mental health support for our students, and then figuring out what does that look like and how do we integrate that into a student's day without interrupting the curriculum?”
One of VanAntwerp’s sons takes advanced classes but has experienced some behavioral delays, which have required a close partnership with teachers and school administrators to navigate. As many politicians attack teachers, VanAntwerp has made it a point to marvel at their dedication.
“I sat alongside principals and vice-principals, counselors and teachers for my son, and they really cared,” she says. “They gave us the opportunity to help him get a 504 plan. So I just like sitting around the table with educators, you can just see how much passion seeps out of them.”
VanAntwerp exudes the same kind of passion. More than one time, she mentions the burnout kids are experiencing from the pandemic and new programs she’s helping to roll out to combat it in the foster program. In Springfield, she wants to expand programs currently offered in some of the high schools, so that they can “engage kids in ways that keep them from losing interest in school, continue to see a high graduation rate, and have kids be successful when they go out into the world.”
Whereas getting on the board on this kind of platform would have been something of a cakewalk in years past, it’ll be an all-out battle this spring. Five candidates qualified for an election in which the top two vote-getters will win seats, and two candidates running campaigns on the right-wing anti-CRT platform with generous financing from Back on Track America, a far-right dark money group that aims to “restore biblical values” to public education.
A nationwide epidemic
Missouri’s legislature is right now debating a ban on critical race theory, which, distressingly, puts them behind several other states.
In Virginia, new Gov. Glenn Youngkin has turned his coded campaign promise of “parents’ choice” and a ban on critical race theory into an immediate reign of terror. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order that mischaracterized CRT and put out a blanket prohibition on “inherently divisive concepts” in schools across the state.
To enforce the ban, he’s deputized weird right-wing parents to act as paranoid snitches, providing them a “tip line” to report any lessons that might make white kids uncomfortable. As schools prepare for Black History Month, many teachers are “scared to death” to even decorate bulletin boards with historically accurate facts about slavery and the civil rights movement.
In Florida, Ron DeSantis’s proposed “anti-woke” bill has been taken to the next level by State House legislators that are rushing through a ban on any classroom lessons that might make white kids feel uncomfortable or guilty over historic injustices. Parents would be empowered to report and file lawsuits whenever they disagree with even objectively accurate descriptions of, say, slavery or Jim Crow laws. Another proposed bill would in essence make it illegal for teachers to acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott got ahead of the game by signing a CRT ban last summer that, among other things, compels teachers to “give deference to both sides” when discussing current events. That provided the impetus for the now-infamous “both sides of the Holocaust” incident in South Lake, where the school board also reprimanded a fourth-grade teacher for — and this is not a joke — displaying an Oprah-approved book called This Book Is Anti-Racist on her classroom shelf.
Last week, the teacher was vindicated and the reprimand was rescinded when it was revealed that two of the three board members that voted for the disciplinary action received campaign contributions from the parent that complained about the book — which, again, was called This Book Is Anti-Racist.
One of those members was elected to the Carroll ISD board in a heated special election last spring on a platform that leaned heavily on the same buzzwords and bigoted dog whistles employed by the Republican governors that “banned” CRT and lawmakers pushing even more extreme bills.
Both Florida and Texas are among the states that play host to school board elections this year — if you know any candidates worth supporting in any of those races, please let me know!
Wait, Before You Leave!
Progressives Everywhere has raised over $6.3 million dollars raised for progressive Democratic candidates and causes. Isn’t that cool?
That said, none of that money goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out there. Not a dime! In fact, it costs me money to do this. So to make this sustainable and to ensure that I can continue to spotlight important candidates/organizations and pay a new freelancer, I need your help.
I’m offering very low-cost premium subscriptions that offer a lot of goodies. If you become a member of Progressives Everywhere, you’ll get:
Premium member-only emails featuring analysis, insight, and local & national news coverage you won’t read elsewhere.
Exclusive updates from candidates and interviews with other progressive leaders.
Coverage of voting rights, healthcare, labor rights, and progressive activism.
The satisfaction of financing new projects and paying freelance contributors
A new best friend (me).
You can also make a one-time donation to Progressives Everywhere’s GoFundMe campaign — doing so will earn you a shout-out in an upcoming edition of the big newsletter!