How Virginia school boards are being weaponized to help elect a GOP governor

[Nevilledog]

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Judd Legum
@JuddLegum
1. The "grassroots" parent uprising in Virginia is supported by dark money groups connected to the Koch political network and integrated into Republican Glenn Youngkin's campaign for governor

Follow along for the details

How Virginia school boards are being weaponized to help elect a GOP governor
"I am a concerned parent. I am not a plant. I am not an activist. And as anyone who knows me, I've always been identified as a Democrat," Virginia resident Harry Jackson said on an October 14...
popular.info
5:28 AM · Oct 18, 2021

https://popular.info/p/how-virginia-school-boards-are-being

"I am a concerned parent. I am not a plant. I am not an activist. And as anyone who knows me, I've always been identified as a Democrat," Virginia resident Harry Jackson said on an October 14 appearance on Fox News. Jackson has been outspoken at school board meetings in Northern Virginia's Fairfax County, which is a key battleground in Virginia's upcoming gubernatorial election.

Jackson is a parent. He was recently elected president of the Thomas Jefferson High School Parent Teacher Student Association. But that is not the full story.

Jackson is also part of the "Leadership Team" of Parents Defending Education (PDE), a dark money group created earlier this year. In its first tweet, PDE said its intention was to "build a grassroots army to begin reclaiming our K-12 schools."

Parents Defending Education
@DefendingEd
THREAD: We are delighted to announce the public launch today of Parents Defending Education, a national, nonpartisan group that will build a grassroots army of parents to begin reclaiming our K-12 schools from political activists and extremists. 1/
March 30th 2021

While PDE claims to be non-partisan, it has deep ties to the right-wing Koch political operation. The president of PDE is Nicole Neily, who also serves as the president of Speech First, another self-proclaimed "grassroots" organization that targets college campuses. Neily has refused to disclose Speech First's donors but its board includes "a former head of a Koch-backed trust and two conservative attorneys from Koch-funded programs." Neily previously worked at the Independent Women's Forum, another dark money group funded by the Charles Koch Institute, and Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which Columbia Journalism Review reported in 2013 was "the Kochs’ leading media investment to date.”

*snip*

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. The Wall Street Journal.: Virginia Dad Takes On the School Board

Surely this article in The Wall Street Journal. is the source for that article. It's not behind a paywall either.

OPINION | MAIN STREET

Virginia Dad Takes On the School Board

Harry Jackson learns that educators don’t care what parents have to say.

By William McGurn
https://twitter.com/wjmcgurn
Oct. 11, 2021 6:29 pm ET

Harry Jackson left the Fairfax County School Board meeting Thursday night feeling frustrated. The father of a Thomas Jefferson High School sophomore, he had signed up to address the board about sexually explicit material in the school library, including work he and other parents say normalizes pedophilia. But the list of speakers ended right before his two minutes at the mic.

A student who did speak that evening defended the contested material, saying “there is nothing that is inappropriate unless you go looking for it.” Mr. Jackson takes it as a backhanded admission. “I am glad to see we agree there’s pornographic material in the library,” he says.

Thomas Jefferson isn’t just any public school—U.S. News & World Report ranks it No. 1 in the nation—and Mr. Jackson isn’t just any parent. Earlier this year, he was elected president of the school’s Parent Teacher Student Association, or PTSA. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a retired naval intelligence officer, he’s one of thousands of American parents taking on their school boards across the country.

Like many of those rallying outside Thursday night’s meeting, Mr. Jackson wore a T-shirt saying "Parents are not ‘domestic terrorists.' " It’s a reference to a Sept. 29 National School Boards Association letter asking President Biden to investigate threats or disruptions at school board meetings as a possible form of “domestic terrorism.” In response, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. attorneys to look into the threats.

All this has transformed once-dull school board meetings into increasingly raucous encounters between parents and officials. On so many of the hot-button issues of the day—from mask mandates and lockdowns to critical race theory, transgender policy and racial preferences for admissions—the public schools have become the vanguard for today’s progressive agenda. But parents such as Mr. Jackson aren’t taking it any more, and they show no sign of relenting.

“Did the NSBA really think through what it was saying?” Mr. Jackson asks. “Because you don’t negotiate with terrorists. You hit them with a drone strike, or ship them off to Guantanamo.”

{snip}

Write to [e-mail].

Appeared in the October 12, 2021, print edition as 'A Dad Takes On the School Board.'

[Thomas Hurt]

2. Christofascists have been doing this since Reagan.