Writing for Huffington Post, Nathalie Baptiste looks at three states where right wing candidates are coming for the public schools. For instance, North Carolina.
There is perhaps no state where more is on the line for public education than North Carolina. Some of the largest school districts in the state could end up with an ultraconservative majority, and the Republican candidate for the top statewide educational role attended the Jan. 6, 2021, rally at the U.S. Capitol and has no experience in education.
The Wake County school board, the state’s largest school system, is at the epicenter of the fight for North Carolina’s schools. Five of the board’s nine seats are up for grabs.
This isn’t the first time right-wingers have tried to influence Wake County schools. In 2009, after a Tea Party takeover of the school board led to the erosion of long-term integration policies, the Democrats took action and have managed to keep the school board liberal for the last decade and a half.
But now, Republicans in Wake County are trying to make inroads in the schools again. Conservative activists have tried banning books in the county and recently ginned up a moral panic about sexually explicit content in schools after a high school student claimed a book she read in class was inappropriate. (The book in question was “Tomorrow Is Too Far” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which depicts a relationship between cousins and has the line “he tried to fit what you both called his banana into what you both called your tomato.”)
To Democrats, the GOP vision is clear. “Their goal is to make public schools go away,” Kevyn Creech, the chair of the Wake County Democrats, told HuffPost. “They want to get rid of the Department of Education, make everything religious, and privatize it all.”
Democratic leaders are particularly worried because a Republican win for state superintendent, coupled with GOP victories at the county level, could create the perfect storm.
The state superintendent for public instruction oversees more than 2,500 schools in North Carolina and an $11 billion budget. The race is between Democrat Mo Green, the former superintendent of Guilford County schools, and Republican Michele Morrow, who homeschooled her own children.
After defeating the Republican incumbent in March, Morrow made headlines when CNN discovered that she had attended the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection with her children. (There is no evidence that she entered the Capitol building or committed any crimes.) She has also called for the execution of prominent Democrats and made a video saying former President Donald Trump should use the U.S. military to stay in power after he lost the election in 2020.
Morrow ran for school board in Wake County in 2022 and lost by 20 points. As a candidate for superintendent, she has lobbed homophobic and transphobic attacks at Green and vowed to rid the state’s schools of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and censor what teachers can say in the classroom.
The article also covers South Carolina and Maryland. Read the full piece here.
