Parent Activism, Partisan Politics and the Battle for Public Education
Many public schools have become the focus of far-right attacks that are more about politics than education, so parent involvement at this time needs to not only involve volunteering in the classroom- it requires some organizing to protect our public schools.
In the book, School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics and the Battle for Public Education, education journalist Laura Pappano shows how extremist challenges facing public schools have come and gone throughout history.
According to Pappano, recent efforts to make public schools more responsive and inclusive, along with the challenges of educating students during the pandemic, have given politicians on the extreme right an opening to sway parents frustrated by education disruptions.
With help from wealthy donors, political action committees, and conservative networks that bring national campaign strategists and dark money to local school board races, the extreme right is executing an agenda to use our public schools to gain political power and to instill Christian Fundamentalist values in our public-school districts.
Gerrymandered politicians in Ohio are passing anti-LGBTQ+ laws, “parental rights” legislation, and policies preventing the teaching of so-called divisive concepts to disrupt the professional selection of classroom materials and to make teachers afraid of doing their jobs.
Groups like the Leadership Institute, Moms for Liberty, Parents Rights in Education, and Protect Ohio Children (and others) are attacking history curricula they label “CRT,” banning books, and making outrageous claims that schools are “indoctrinating” students with Marxist ideologies.
These professionally organized groups are run by trained political operatives armed with ample funding and well-resourced websites, which share tips on how to make public records requests, guides for describing each of their objectionable acronyms (BLM, CRT, DEI, SEL), and easy-to-use links for reporting perceived examples of “indoctrination.” Protect Ohio Children even has an explanation of their “tsunami strategy,” a method for swamping school board meetings with written propaganda downloaded from its website.
Education historian Dr. Diane Ravitch said it best: 
These fake grassroots “parent” groups also make teachers fearful of doing their jobs.
Citizen Advocates for Public Education (CAPE-Ohio) and Public Education Partners (PEP-Ohio) recently hosted a panel discussion of the far-right’s attack on public education and the parent activist battle to control the future of public education, which focused on the book “School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics and the Battle for Public Education,” by Laura Pappano.
The expert panel was selected to provide varied perspectives on the issues brought up in the book, and it included Stephanie Harless, Worthington Schools Board of Education; Antoinette Miranda, State Board of Education of Ohio and Chair of the Department of Teaching & Learning at the Ohio State University; David Stewart, Hilliard City Schools Superintendent; and Susan Yutzey, retired public school librarian and past president of the Ohio Educational Library Media Association (OELMA.)
The panel members were knowledgeable, articulate, and passionate about public education, and their shared thoughts and insights encouraged the audience to think more deeply about current issues surrounding public education in Ohio.
CAPE-Ohio and PEP-Ohio also invited a public-school teacher to share an educator’s perspective on this education panel, and here is the anonymous educator’s response:
Dear CAPE-Ohio and PEP-Ohio,
Thank you for inviting me to sit on your panel regarding School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education. This is an important and urgent topic, and it’s a sad state of affairs that in 2024 we need to expend our time and energy shielding our students from bigotry.
It is sad that as a society we have become less accepting, less empathetic, less caring, and less loving.
As much as I would like to contribute to your panel, I must decline.
The group of indoctrinated parents in my district who lead these inane charges are mostly stay-at-home-moms who have nothing better to do than dig through years of past social media posts and submit endless public information requests to the district. They are looking for a boogeyman that only exists in their distorted reality without regard for the consequences of their baseless accusations.
At this time, I cannot become a target for their hostility.
Thank you for speaking up for our students, communities, and for the greater good. You are on the right side of history.
With respect and appreciation,
Anonymous Teacher
It is encouraging to know that pro-public education citizen groups are organizing on Facebook, meeting in neighborhood coffee shops, and recruiting school board candidates to counter the attacks from extremists.
Red, Wine & Blue, a national community of nearly half a million diverse women working together to defeat right-wing extremism, has started a movement called “Freedom to Parent,” a group of mainstream parents who are standing up for our freedom to decide what is best for our kids, ensure their safety, and set them up for success.
We are finally beginning to see moms, dads, grandparents, and other citizens around the country who are saying, “We care about our public schools, and we care about public education- they are the foundation of our democracy. And we are going to make sure that the public is informed enough to vote for candidates who share our values.”
Ordinary parents around the country, who have made themselves experts in school board policy, library science, state legislation, campaign finance, and who have even recruited or run for school board seats themselves, have become our public education heroes.
It is time for all of us to join them in this fight for the future of public education.
Our children deserve no less.
“We are many. There is power in our numbers. Together we will save PUBLIC EDUCATION.”
~Diane Ravitch
