Call to Action
Educate yourself about your upcoming local School Board election. Research the candidates. Learn their positions on mask mandates, COVID vaccinations, and if they support the accurate teaching of U.S. history.
Identify, fund and campaign for candidates who are committed to insuring safe schooling during the pandemic and the accurate and honest teaching of U.S. history.
Educate your friends and neighbors about your choices - campaign locally and personally reach out to people you know and those you don’t. Write a School Board election letter that you send to everyone in your networks.
Throughout the country, right wing groups are recruiting candidates, initiating recall campaigns and disrupting school boards and classrooms. The founders of My Weekly Resistance are K-12 educators. We have experienced the painful experience of working in schools where a small anti-education minority captured the School Board in a low-turnout election. Don’t let this happen in your community ! School Boards are uniquely vulnerable to attacks by hyper partisan activists with reactionary agendas. These efforts must be defeated.
School Board elections generally have low voter turnout, get little press attention and, because most are non-partisan, they lack the usual information that party affiliation provides. Today, the important concerns of class size and taxes are being overtaken by anti-mask, anti-vax misinformation about COVID and the ongoing culture war conspiracies surrounding the teaching about race and identity in American history and society.
There are two main issues across the nation in School Board elections this year.
In every community social media driven anti-masking, anti-vaccination conspiracy proponents seek to eliminate mask and vaccine requirements and other common sense health guidelines. This is a direct assault on the health of our children and educators.
At both the local and state levels there is a coordinated campaign by conservatives to prevent the accurate teaching of U.S. history. You may know about the national campaign to “prevent the teaching of Critical Race Theory” in public schools. The goal is to stop teachers from teaching and students from learning the complicated story of our country that includes important truths about the Founding Fathers, the slaughter and displacement of Native Americans, the history of slavery, the Civil War and subsequent systemic anti-Black racism, as well as the history of the oppression of women, Latino/as, Asian Pacific Islander Americans and LGBTQ+ people.
Now is the time to learn about the views and goals of your local School Board candidates. Read their position statements, attend their public events and forums, and quiz them about their positions. Make sure they clearly state how they will vote on mask mandates, vaccination requirements, and the accurate teaching of our nation’s history. If their answers are vague or wishy-washy, make your position clear to the candidate and ask for a yes or no response. A candidate who won’t make a clear statement in favor of the health of children or the honest teaching of history will not be a good School Board member.
Even if you don’t have children in school, it is important to vote in support of the community’s children. Back your preferred candidates with money and volunteer time. Use every opportunity, especially through your social networks, to spread the word to friends and neighbors. Many otherwise informed voters are unaware of the stakes of their School Board election. This is a fabulous opportunity to stretch and strengthen your electoral muscles in preparation for the 2022 election.