Long Island school board battles go awry

When a movement of activist parents furious at how children were being taught first began to gather momentum a decade ago, the anger was often encouraged by teachers and unions.

Now, 10 years after Common Core sparked outrage, a similar energy has some parents leveling accusations that the same teachers they'd embraced as allies are "indoctrinating" their children.

It's not true. Children on Long Island are not indoctrinated to believe white people are terrible by virtue of their whiteness. Students are not groomed to become gay or transgender. And kids are not taught that the United States’ complicated history is one of brutality and racism uninterrupted by virtue.

But on Tuesday, those accusations will influence some voters in school board races more hotly contested than ever before.    

School board battles on Long Island have been the front lines of cultural fights before. After all, the landmark 1962 Supreme Court decision that found encouraging public school students to recite a prayer written by the state Board of Regents was unconstitutional began in New Hyde Park when a group of parents sued the school board president. Until recently, however, school board wars were mostly about taxes and spending, not ideology.

These new shoots of grassroots activism arose from the introduction of Common Core learning standards and New York’s implementation of performance-based teacher evaluations. The standards and the teaching methods adopted in response discomfited both parents and educators. So did a haphazard rollout, and lackluster support from the state.

But it was standardized testing, and the fact that students’ annual progress on those tests could factor into poor teacher evaluations, or even eventual terminations, that were explosive.

COMMON CORE BACKLASH

The Stop Common Core Party was formed. Teachers warned that under the new rules, they’d do nothing but “teach to the test.” Parents began speaking out at school board meetings, holding rallies to push for change, and keeping their children home when math and English state tests were administered to children in grades 3-8. 

Common Core was eventually rebranded. Judging teachers partially on standardized test results was postponed, then canceled.

The opt-outs, though, never ended. Last year, rates of participation in grades 3-8 were below 50% on Long Island.

When COVID-19 hit in March 2020, every issue became a hot button to parents. In-person and remote. Synchronous and asynchronous. Masks. Cleaning. Vaccines. Athletics.

These issues became political, then partisan, and so did school board meetings. Communities that had barely discussed school governance now featured neighbor screaming at neighbor, and social-media savagery after the meetings. 

Last year gave Long Island a taste of what might come next, as activist school board slates demanding “transparency” and “parental control” scored wins in a few districts. This year, candidates espousing the same sentiments could nab a lot more. Some of that is fostered by conservative organizations and politicians who want to degrade public education and push school vouchers and home schooling under the banner of smaller government. But much of the energy truly is grassroots, empowered by social media.

Numerous states are considering or have passed laws to list the party affiliation of school board candidates on ballots. That’s a terrifying politicization of what ought to be our least divisive process.

WHAT YOU'RE VOTING FOR

So what are voters for school board members really choosing on Tuesday? School boards hire superintendents, and set the tone for a district and community. They decide how much to spend and tax, how much excellence to strive for, and how to balance the two. They decide how well to fund reading, math, the arts, and special education, weighed against athletics and extracurriculars. They fund safety initiatives and approve borrowing for new construction.

To some extent, they can decide how much to value and represent diversity in courses, curricula, library collections and hiring.

But all this must adhere to state law, state standards, and federal civil rights protections. And none of it ought to be very controversial.

What should be taught in history classes is simply the truth of how the United States pioneered an evolving democracy and built tremendous prosperity, but also enslaved Blacks, slaughtered Native Americans, and repressed women.

What ought to be taught about diversity is that everyone deserves equal rights, and that being treated with dignity and kindness and tolerance and acceptance cannot be based on skin color or sexuality or gender or ableness.

Different communities have always made different decisions about schools, and have a right to, within state law. But the panic now, and of the past decade, is misguided. Common Core was never evil or harmful. Teachers were not going to be rated poorly because of testing unless they also did poorly on classroom evaluations. Pandemic rules around masks, remote schooling, distancing, athletics and vaccines, while imperfect, have never been malevolent.

And schools are not grooming kids, or devaluing them for whiteness or straightness.

This is Long Island. This is a region built on love of our teachers and schools and districts.

Tuesday, however we vote, we need to remember that nothing has happened that ought to change that.