Liberal and moderate candidates take control of school boards in contentious races across US

NegativeNull@lemm.ee@lemm.ee to politics @lemmy.world – 260 points –
Liberal and moderate candidates take control of school boards in contentious races across US
apnews.com
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We had several Moms for Liberty-ish candidates in all of the nearby districts and I think they were mostly all defeated pretty soundly, so that was nice. I guess the one good thing these assholes have done is get a lot more people to pay attention to school board elections, even if it's just to stop them from slithering in with their alt-right bullshit.

“They don’t want to engage in this banning of books or censoring of honest history or undermining who kids are,” Randi Weingarten, the teachers union president told The Associated Press on Wednesday, characterizing the candidates who won as “pro-public school.”

It's sad that we've gotten to a point where this has to be a fight.

Is there any reasonable stance a person could hold, where teachers unions would be a "frequent foe"?

Imagine always knowing better than teachers, doctors, historians, fact checkers, other parents, and virtually any expert or intellectual. I can't even wrap my head around that level of ego. The mind boggles.

Easy explanation! They aren't comparing brain pans with those people, they're saying those 'experts' have an agenda and they're smart enough to see through it.

"All the smarties want X, so I hate it!" isnt exactly a strong stance either.

I suspect future historians (if we survive as a species) will think of this time as another Dark Ages.

Nah we recording it all pretty well these days, buuuuut, I get what you’re saying. People are behaving like they did in the dark ages.

Social media is scary.

Sweet old grandma from down the street that used to give you treats, she was always apolitical, loving and an all around warm person. Nowadays instead of telling you to eat all your vegetables and be kind to your neighbor she says, “I seen on Facebook that they’re poisoning the water supply so more kids become trans. They’ve started executing Christians in California for not being gay. They’re trying to kill off old people with shots so that the communists can take control and force sterilize white people. Be sure to vote Hitler honey. They’ve been keeping him alive in Russia with experimental drugs and he’s escaped to save us all. Oh yeah, did you hear about Marlene dying after she got a shot. She was a perfectly healthy 99 year old woman. So young, it just don’t make sense why the democrats wanted her dead.”

I don’t think we can survive having access to endless information. It would be nice if we were all smart enough to handle it and sift through the bullshit, but people exist who believe the world is flat because some jackass on social media said so.

The American Federation of Teachers said candidates publicly endorsed by conservative groups such as Moms for Liberty and the 1776 Project lost about 70% of their races nationally in elections this week — a tally those groups dispute.

...

The 1776 Project said 58% of the candidates they endorsed — many of them in conservative areas — won. Moms for Liberty, which works in largely suburban swing districts, said 40% of its endorsed candidates won.

Wtf kind of jankity-ass reporting is that? Person A says it's raining, Person B says it's not. Stick your fucking head out the window, find out the truth, and report that!

Its hundreds/thousands of races across the country, all of them local seats.

It is entirely likely that there is not complete public reporting of all the races yet, so they are relying on 3rd party info as it "should" be more accurate due to direct knowledge of outcomes.

I see your point, but they're not even relying on 3rd party data. They're relying on 3rd party press releases. At the bare minimum, AP should have asked for the data behind each of those claims and cross referenced them against each other. Otherwise what value is this "journalism" adding here? I can go read a Mom's for Liberty press release if I wanted to hear unfact-checked bullshit.

I agree overall, and if I'm being cynical, media likes to portray a "fight" between different groups, that some conflict exists, even when there isnt any.

Instead of reporting the literal facts, they often write a narrative of battling groups, which is bolstered by differing statistics.

This undoubtedly gets way more clicks then otherwise, but once you start looking for it it's everywhere.

A lot of the races won by 1776, and the MfL were against each other. So there was a lot of swapping seats.

Cool. When do we start teaching kids about what Republicans are?

This is the best summary I could come up with:


“They don’t want to engage in this banning of books or censoring of honest history or undermining who kids are,” Randi Weingarten, the teachers union president told The Associated Press on Wednesday, characterizing the candidates who won as “pro-public school.”

Tina Descovich, a Moms for Liberty founder, said Tuesday’s elections brought the number of its candidates who have won races in the past two years to 365.

“We have to work harder and we have to figure out how to invest in our candidates,” Descovich said, noting that teachers unions — a frequent foe — have decades-old political operations.

School boards, usually nonpartisan, deal with the nitty-gritty of running a key community institution that decides curriculum standards and discipline policies for students, negotiates contracts with teachers unions and sets property tax rates for homeowners.

A conservative board in that county was one of the first to enact Youngkin’s reforms, and the superintendent hired by that district pulled 13 books from library shelves, including “Beloved” by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky.

“I think that that is a rejection of these policies and beliefs that public schools are bad,” said Brittania Morey, who won reelection to the Linn-Mar board with the support of those who oppose Moms for Liberty-endorsed candidates.


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