It's been more than three years since COVID began to shake up the world with lockdowns, social distancing and other measures that seem like relics of the past. While many areas of life have returned to normal, school districts nationwide have yet to settle. What started as a rallying cry against mask mandates in schools has morphed into something else altogether.
"This is all a part of a bigger movement to take over local elections," says Shelly Clark, a county GOP precinct committee officer in Spokane Valley who is also married to Keith Clark, president of the Central Valley School District Board. "It's part of a nationwide trend of retaliation against mask mandates and other policies."
With mask mandates a thing of the past, this "bigger movement" has focused on other policies perceived to violate parental rights, such as the adoption of certain curriculum and policies — real or potential — like sexual education, LGBTQ+ inclusion and critical race theory. Without much power as a single citizen, folks have filed for election in droves to ensure things are run in what they consider the right way.
While this trend is evident nationwide — from Florida to California — it's also come to the Inland Northwest. Case in point: this November's CVSD board election.
School board races in Spokane County are generally uncontested, quiet affairs. But for the first time in more than 20 years, all three CVSD board races on November's ballot are contested.
Signs populate Spokane Valley proclaiming, "Time for Change," promoting the three candidates who hope to unseat incumbents. Their platforms focus on the incumbents' long tenures, a perceived lack of transparency and the district's low post-COVID test scores.
"It is time for our current board to pass the torch to the next generation, so we can move our district forward," says Anniece Barker, one of the challengers, who did not return phone calls but responded to questions in an email. "Tradition is hard to move beyond which is why it is important to let others bring new perspectives and ideas."
However, from the rights that parents have or don't have to curriculum and policy, many school board candidates misunderstand the scope of the seat they hope to fill, according to current school board members.
"Unless you're on a school board, you don't really realize what you can and cannot do," says Debra Long, vice president of the CVSD board. "People think they can run for school boards and make [state mandates] not happen."
Long has been on the school board since 2003. While she may not agree with certain federal or state regulations, she understands that her oath of office requires her to follow the rules and laws of the state.
Cindy McMullen, a CVSD board member from 1987 to 2011 and 2015 to present, agrees. To her, it felt like folks expected the school board to rebel against the governor's rules. Most on the board had unfavorable views of the pandemic lockdowns, but they refused to go against the rules of the state.
"When I was sworn-in, I agreed to follow the rules and the laws of the state," Long says.
Others disagree.
A petition to recall Long along with two other board members — Clark and McMullen — was filed in 2021 by Rob Linebarger, a leader in the county GOP. Linebarger alleged that Long didn't live in the district and that all three board members were guilty of malfeasance and dereliction of duty for not flouting the governor's mask mandate, according to Spokane Superior Court documents.
The recall attempt was declared factually and legally insufficient, and the court dismissed all charges with prejudice. Additionally, Linebarger was slapped with $30,000 in sanctions, otherwise known as court fines.
What's more, the school district spent more than $200,000 defending the board members, according to McMullen.
"That [$200,000] would have paid for two teachers that should have been in classrooms instead of used for a frivolous lawsuit," McMullen says.
Something similar happened in the Tri-Cities. Three Richland School Board directors were recalled and lost their seats in this month's primary election for the exact thing that some encouraged Central Valley to do: ignoring the state's COVID protocols.
In February 2022, the Richland School Board voted 3-2 to go against the state's indoor mask mandate. Board members Kari Williams, Audra Byrd and Semi Bird (who is running for governor in the 2024 race) all voted in favor of defying state rules. A citizen's group accused the three of violating Washington's Open Public Meetings Act, as well as the state law on masking and district policies and procedures, and led the successful recall effort.
Members of the Colville School Board also adopted a policy against the state's masking mandate, which was promptly overturned after the district was threatened with fines from the state Department of Labor and Industry that could have totaled $153,000 a day.
All three CVSD board members up for re-election this year point to these districts as examples of folks who didn't understand the scope of the school board taking control and wreaking havoc. Now, they hope to prevent the same thing happening in their district.
The three candidates who hope to become newly elected to the CVSD board — Barker, Jeff Brooks and Stephanie Jerdon — all criticize how communicative the board is with the public, generally, but also when it comes to the district's finances.
Citizens for CVSD Transparency, an independent political action committee, has endorsed all three candidates. According to the state Public Disclosure Commission, the PAC has spent more than $5,000 this year, most of it used for campaign signs and advertising. It also sent contributions of $250 to each of the challengers. (In total, Barker has raised $6,600; Brooks $3,400; and Jerdon $8,000.)
The PAC alleges that the school district is rife with liberal ideology and indoctrination — a claim that current school board members reject. All curriculum taught in the district can be seen on its website, and parents have the right to opt their children out of content that some see as ideological, like sexual education.
McMullen says much of the misinformation on transparency has come from this PAC and others like it. However, she hasn't heard any of these claims personally from parents with students in the district.
"I think that these people think the government operates behind closed doors, and they think that school boards and school districts do too," McMullen says. "That's totally not the case."
Another point that these three candidates unite under is fiscal transparency. The school district is legally required to post its budget each year — which it does— but Jerdon says the budget is confusing.
"You almost have to be an accountant to understand it," she says.
It's true: The 200-plus pages of the 2022-23, $259 million budget, which was approved this week, is cumbersome and filled with economic jargon. But it's not the only fiscal information provided to the public. Each year a budget overview is also given as a PowerPoint presentation with easily digestible graphs and line items, which McMullen says is presented at a board meeting each August. Both the big budget and the overview are posted on the district website.
"If you only go to one meeting you may think we're not [transparent], but if you were to attend all meetings you would see that we always ask our community and parents for input," Long says.
Regardless of meeting attendance, Jerdon says the district can do better with its communication to the public. If elected, she says she'd like to see an updated, streamlined CVSD website, a citizen advisory committee and an influx of personal one-on-one meetings with district families.
"There's always room to improve," says Keith Clark.
Across the country, some parents are fighting to control what is taught in the classroom. The people fighting for the three R's — reading, writing and 'rithmetic — in their child's classrooms are pushing against anything they deem as ideological indoctrination.
While the right's larger fight now is against certain LGBTQ+ policies and updated curriculum like critical race theory — an academic framework that deals with the idea that racism is systemic in American institutions and that those institutions maintain the dominance of white people, and which is not part of the CVSD curriculum — parents' involvement in school systems runs throughout history, according to Vladimir Kogan, a political science professor at the Ohio State University.
Kogan, whose research focuses on the intersection of politics and public policy in education, says bouts of intense interest in education aren't new. In the late 1900s, the nation saw the expulsion of creation science from schools and the inclusion of phonics, both of which saw intense opposition from some parents. This phenomenon goes back to the 1600s with the passing of the Old Deluder Satan Act in Massachusetts, which laid a foundation for today's public education system with a push to increase literacy so more could read and interpret the Bible.
Now we're seeing the same thing with today's political trends.
"Voters are following the leader, and we're seeing the effect of that now," Kogan says.
Kogan says there isn't an answer for when this increased interest, catalyzed by COVID, might subside. Another pandemic, recession or national emergency could happen and totally shift the focus nationally.
"As long as you have public schools, you're going to have adult activists trying to spread what they view as a just society," he says.
The process of curriculum adoption isn't something that school board members can simply change. Decisions are made at the state level and handed down to school districts to make decisions on what parts of the curriculum will be best for the district's area.
For example, McMullen says the sexual education curriculum her board adopted in Central Valley is very conservative and basically includes the bare minimum of what the state requires. Of the more than 14,000 students in the district, she says fewer than 250 students opted out in the last school year.
However, this could change with enough legislative support. In 2022, Idaho adopted the District Curricular Adoption Committees law that requires parental involvement. These district committees review and recommend certain texts and materials, and by law more than 50 percent of each such committee's members must be non-educators and parents.
McMullen says she sees most of the "parental rights" outrage aimed against the state's recent law preventing schools from informing parents if a student wishes to change their pronouns or go by a different name. This doesn't mean that parents don't have the right to know this information. It only means that the school isn't allowed to be the one to start that conversation. Parents, as always, have the right to request their child's protected information, which includes pronouns or name changes.
McMullen isn't quite sure why some people are so focused on parental rights, or where it came from as an issue, but she sees it as an attempt to impose certain belief systems on all students. She says they don't just want the right to guide their child's education, but to impose those rights and beliefs on everyone else.
"Our students are not pawns," she says. "I see all of this as not being good for students, and I actually think of that as being harmful."
Voters in Spokane Valley will have a chance to make their voice known in the Nov. 7 general election. If all three challengers receive enough votes to win, the entire school board will be made up of political newcomers. Some worry that this could affect the district moving forward.
"I can live with whatever the voters choose," Shelly Clark says. "What I can't live with is knowing the voters were not given the opportunity to make an informed decision." ♦