Public School Pandemonium Teaches a Valuable Lesson

Editor’s note: This article is republished with permission from Foundation for Economic Education.

On September 29, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) asked President Biden to use the full power of the federal government against parents. Their offense? Disrupting school board meetings to protest mask mandates for their children, and to question lessons tinged with identity politics.

The letter, signed by NSBA President Viola Garcia and Interim Executive Director and CEO Chip Slaven, acknowledged that “it is vital that public discourses be encouraged in a safe and open environment, in which varying viewpoints can be offered in a peaceful manner.”¹ However, when referring to meeting disruptions across the country, it pulled no punches. “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased,” it reads, “the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

To meet the threat:

NSBA specifically solicits the expertise and resources of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, and its National Threat Assessment Center regarding the level of risk to public schoolchildren, educators, board members, and facilities/campuses. We also request the assistance of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to intervene against threatening letters and cyberbullying attacks that have been transmitted to students, school board members, district administrators, and other educators.

As justification for the use of such power, the NSBA stated that “​​law enforcement officials in some jurisdictions need assistance” and that students, school board members, and educators “are susceptible to acts of violence affecting interstate commerce.”

In response, members of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association voted unanimously to leave the NSBA, saying, “The most recent national controversy surrounding a letter to President Biden suggesting that some parents should be considered domestic terrorists was the final straw. This misguided approach has made our work and that of many school boards more difficult.”² Further, “attempting to solve the problems with a call for federal intervention is not the place to begin, nor a model for promoting greater civility and respect for the democratic process.” Ohio and Missouri joined Pennsylvania in quitting the NSBA, and scores of other states have distanced themselves from the national group as well.³ . . .

About Jon Hersey

Jon Hersey (@revivingreason) is managing editor of The Objective Standard and holds fellowships at Foundation for Economic Education, where he writes in defense of freedom, and at Objective Standard Institute, where he teaches “How to Write Powerfully in Defense of Liberty.” He hosts the podcast “Philosophy for Flourishing.” He’s on a mission to identify and apply the principles of human flourishing. Get his ebook on writing in defense of liberty here, and join his mailing list at JonHersey.com.

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