School board battle zone: How Critical Race Theory, masks became front lines in NC culture wars
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School Board Battle
School board meetings used to be a pretty quiet affair with few people in attendance and little conflict. Now, meetings across the country are seeing protest outbreaks and arguments over topics like Critical Race Theory, masks in school and the COVID vaccine. Here’s The News & Observer’s series on the school board battle.
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School board battle zone: How Critical Race Theory, masks became front lines in NC culture wars
From North Carolina to Florida, protesters have disrupted school board meetings over masks, CRT
What is Critical Race Theory and is it taught in NC? Answers to common questions.
What do you think about masking and vaccinations in NC schools? Take our survey.
‘The Daily Show’ comes to Johnston County rally and finds acne, Satan and mask ‘funk’
School board meetings in North Carolina and across the nation used to be pretty quiet affairs. Few people attended and there was little conflict unless a hot-button issue like reassigning students or sex education was on the agenda.
Not so anymore.
Most any time a board meets now, there are arguments and protests. Over masks in schools. Over Critical Race Theory. Over the COVID-19 vaccine.
What’s happening at school board meetings shows how the hyper-partisan nature of national politics has filtered down to the local level, according to David McLennan, a political science professor at Meredith College in Raleigh.
“The issues — like mask policies or school curriculum — are proxies for the larger cultural war being waged on a national level,” McLennan said in an interview. “These cultural issues have played themselves out at the national level for the last few decades. And now elected officials like school board members are expected to be part of this fight.
“As a result, average citizens now see school board meetings and school board members in the same way they see the president or members of Congress. They will attack school board members and meetings about an issue like mask mandates because that is how they approach all politics.”
In a comedy segment last week on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” correspondent Jordan Klepper interviewed protesters at a Johnston County school board meeting and said school boards have become “America’s new Thunderdome.”
Disrespect or passion?
Attending a school board meeting in North Carolina now could mean being scanned by a handheld metal detector and sitting in a room guarded by armed law enforcement officers.
Part of the reason for the large turnouts is a new state law that requires school boards to vote monthly on their masking policies. Currently, nearly all of the state’s 115 school districts require face masks to be worn. But to keep that mandate in place, they have to vote on it each month.
Amy Churchill, a member of the Buncombe County school board in the North Carolina mountains, is surprised by recent threats the board has received.
“None of us are on the board to make a political career out of it,” Churchill said in an interview. “It’s a lot of work. You’re dealing with people’s children, so a lot of stress can come from it normally.
“But what shouldn’t come with that is threats and the level of disrespect that we’ve seen.”
However, what some may see as being disrespectful is viewed by others as passionate parents lobbying for the rights of their children.
“I’m inspired by the passion I’m seeing from our parents,” Kelly Mann, a Raleigh parent and founder of Children First Wake County, said in an interview. “I want it to be all positive. I want it to be constructive. I think it’s great that parents have become so interested in their children’s education.”
Mann founded the Facebook group, which now has thousands of members, during the pandemic. She’s also worked with other groups in the state who have fought to reopen schools for in-person instruction and now oppose mandating masks or COVID vaccinations.
Many protesters support conservative views
Mann said parents like her were motivated to act more than a year ago because of the negative impact of their children not getting in-person instruction. She said a lack of transparency in how school boards operate caused her to pull two of her three children out of public schools.
“I am for parental authority, and I’m for our choice, and I’m against our school board usurping our authority,” said Mann, a former teacher in the Wake school system. “I want to teach my daughter morals and values. That’s not what my daughter’s English language arts teacher should be doing.”
Mann doesn’t call her group conservative. But she says providing parental choice and transparency in how schools operate are considered conservative now.
A vocal contingent of those who have spoken against masking, the COVID-19 vaccine and Critical Race Theory at school board meetings across the nation are expressing views that border on far-right conspiracy theories.
“I was in D.C. on Jan. 6th. I watched all of it, OK,” Dennis Bland, a parent, said at the Wake County school board meeting on Aug. 17. “There is a big thing going on. This has nothing to do with masks. It has nothing to do with a vaccine. It has everything to do with taking America over.”
‘Inappropriate’ behavior at meetings
The Buncombe County school board declared a recess at its meeting on Aug. 5 after audience members kept yelling out that the board should re-vote on its decision to require masks. During the recess, some protesters took over the meeting stage and declared themselves to be the new “acting school board” before “voting” to make face masks optional.
“It was comical in a way,” said Churchill, the school board member. “I just found it really surreal. And you have to laugh because obviously, this was not anything that was legally binding, and these individuals truly felt that it was.”
Multiple media outlets reported that the Iredell-Statesville school board meeting on Sept. 15 was punctuated with a shattered glass door and multiple interruptions by anti-mask protesters.
After the Johnston County school board voted in August to require face masks, some board members received threatening communications. Deputies spoke with the person who sent the message. While it was concerning, Capt. Jeff Caldwell of the Johnston County Sheriff’s Office said, it didn’t rise to the level to file charges.
But people who attended a Johnston school board meeting on Sept. 14 were screened for weapons by a hand-held metal detector. The screenings are rarely done, but a large crowd was expected because of an anti-mask protest led by U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn.
McLennan, the Meredith College professor, said the problem is that some people have confused freedom of speech with freedom to do whatever they want.
“It’s wrong to say that all the inappropriateness is on the right,” McLennan said. “There is contentiousness on the left too. But these issues, from the pandemic and social justice, tend to bring people out on the right.”
In 2010 and 2011, protesters opposing plans to end busing for diversity were arrested at several Wake County school board meetings. But the protests were limited to one district and ended after a new school board majority was elected.
Brian Groesser, a Holly Springs parent, became an outspoken advocate in Wake County for reopening schools for face-to-face instruction. But Groesser says he’s been willing to accept things such as masking as a way to keep schools open, something he says not enough parents are willing to do.
“What we’ve lost in America is the ability to have an open forum, to have an open debate for an exchange of views to a better society,” Groesser said in an interview. “But we’ve become so entrenched.”
Politicians back school protesters
The anti-mask, anti-vaccine and anti-CRT speakers have been backed by some Republican politicians and political candidates.
Cawthorn traveled more than 300 miles from his Western North Carolina congressional district to lead the protest against Johnston County’s school mask mandate. The protest turned into a political rally to urge attendees to vote for Republicans at the national, state and local level.
“It is time that we stop sending these cookie-cutter politicians to school boards and Washington D.C. and to the General Assembly,” Cawthorn told the crowd. “These people with pleated pants and tasseled loafers who just like seeing their name in the paper every other week.”
Cawthorn was joined at the rally by GOP candidates from North Carolina and Tennessee who he called his “lions” who are “bringing reinforcements” to him in Congress.
Rene Borghese, an Orange County Republican who plans to run against North Carolina Democratic Congressman David Price in 2022, drew applause when she called President Joe Biden “a 78-year-old dementia patient” and said his administration was “Satan.”
“You guys are standing up today to fight for the children,” Borghese said. “I would encourage you to keep this momentum going because we’ve got to take back the House, and we’ve got to take back the Senate because everything depends on 2022.”
North Carolina State Senate leader Phil Berger and Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson have cited the complaints from these school board protesters as a reason why they’re trying to pass legislation restricting the use of Critical Race Theory in schools.
Critical Race Theory holds that systemic racism has been a part of the nation’s history since its founding. Schools deny the theory is being taught in North Carolina schools, but Berger and Robinson still argue that liberal teachers are trying to indoctrinate students.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who supports requiring masks in schools and vetoed the Critical Race Theory bill, has called for an end to “bullying” at school board meetings, The News & Observer previously reported. Cooper said there are concerns about the “fevered pitch that many school board meetings have reached in recent weeks.”
He called those who oppose masks “a very small, vocal minority.”
Could meetings get more heated?
Renee Sekel, a Cary parent and supporter of requiring masking in schools, says she fears that a U.S. Capitol-style insurrection could happen at school board meetings.
“I’m really worried at some point someone is going to bring a gun and we’re going to have a legitimate worry about our safety,” Sekel said in an interview. “I think we’ve got a group that’s increasingly out of touch with reality.”
But Mann downplays the prospect of violence happening, especially at Wake County school board meetings.
“I would be extremely disappointed if something like that occurred,” Mann said. “This is supposed to be adults for children.
“When things like that occur, when there are clashes, it becomes more of an adult versus adult battle. Then you lose sight of what you’re there for. I don’t want that to happen.”
The end of the pandemic won’t mean the end of parental involvement, Mann said.
“Even when we’re through COVID and fully out of the pandemic, I think there will be issues that parents are engaged in,” Mann said.
Still, Churchill, the Buncombe school board member, said she fears what all these protests could be leading to politically.
“I think there is a movement across this country to try to get more individuals in local political positions like school board that have some extreme agendas and know that a lot of times school board races are ones that people don’t really follow,” Churchill said.
“So if they can kick up a little dust and ruffle the feathers of community members and parents, it makes it easier to slip in a candidate who may be there for an extreme agenda versus what’s really good for the people in our community.”
This story was originally published September 29, 2021 at 6:00 AM with the headline "School board battle zone: How Critical Race Theory, masks became front lines in NC culture wars."
