OPINION: Voters stand up for public education
Public education was the big winner in last week’s election in Ozaukee County.
This is true in spite of the defeat of the Northern Ozaukee School District referendum that would have allowed the district to exceed state revenue limits to meet operational expenses. All signs suggest that unfortunate outcome was not a reflection of dissatisfaction with the performance of district schools, but rather a reaction to the prospect of increased school taxes at a time when municipal property taxes are rising.
Elsewhere in the area, public education won because the majority of voters chose school board candidates who emphasized academic issues and rejected those who advocated for more parental control of education under the banner of “parents’ rights.”
In several school districts, candidates endorsed by political groups sought to take over schools boards to influence what is taught in the classroom. Most voters wanted no part of it.
Some districts experienced acrimonious school board campaigns that turned communities into political battlegrounds.
To the credit of the six school board candidates on the ballot, that was not the case in the Port Washington-Saukville School District. There was disagreement, of course, but it was expressed without rancor. The closest thing to a controversial public utterance was a comment by a candidate (who went on to lose the election) that she was running to keep “racist” policies “like teaching white students they are evil because they are white” out of curriculums.
In contrast, the lead-up to the school board election in the West Bend School District featured harsh rhetoric from right-wing extremist candidates that carried on even after they lost the election. In a personal attack on a winning candidate, a physician, one of the losers posted on Facebook: “Well West Bend has spoken. They have chosen a 500 pound ‘health professional.’ Who I can tell you is not a smart choice for your medical care.”
That is just a particularly crude example of the adversarial nature of the so-called parents’ rights movement, whose agents aim to make public education conform to their beliefs and agendas.
Those agendas include denigrating the professional authority of teachers and administrators in matters of curriculums and teaching materials and taking over school boards to enact policies that give the parents the power to ban books and censor the teaching of history.
Florida offers a vile example of where this can lead. There, books have been banned after a few parents complained. The showing in an elementary school of a 1998 Disney movie about Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old Black girl who integrated a school in New Orleans in 1960, was stopped on the complaint of a single parent. The parent said she objected to the film because it might teach children that white people hate Black people.
A principal in Florida was forced to resign after three parents complained about showing sixth-grade students an image of Michelangelo’s magnificent statue of a nude David. One of the parents called the masterpiece pornographic.
Parents should have a voice in how public schools are run, and school board meetings are the forums where they can be heard, but their views should be a complement to the expert judgment of teachers and principals, rather than a replacement.
Giving one or a few parents the power to decide what can be taught, as is the case in Florida, undermines the foundation of public education. Public schools must serve entire communities and a wide spectrum of interests, not the narrow views of a few, while meeting accepted educational standards.
Most Americans seem to understand that. A 2022 Harris poll found that 70% oppose banning books on “divisive topics” in schools.
Before she won re-election to the Port Washington-Saukville School Board last week, Sara McCutcheon said, “I’m concerned about the current climate in public education. I believe there is an attack on public education . . . and I don’t want to see it here.”
Fortunately, most voters in her district and others in Ozaukee County agree.
Category:
Feedback:
Click Here to Send a Letter to the EditorOzaukee Press
Wisconsin’s largest paid circulation community weekly newspaper. Serving Port Washington, Saukville, Grafton, Fredonia, Belgium, as well as Ozaukee County government. Locally owned and printed in Port Washington, Wisconsin.
125 E. Main St.
Port Washington, WI 53074
(262) 284-3494