A progressive group plans to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars into an effort to elect hundreds of left-leaning school board members across the country, underscoring how these local races are increasingly drawing attention from advocacy groups and well-known politicians.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) launched the Save Our School Boards campaign on Friday to push more than 200 school board candidates lined up in the upcoming cycle. The group hopes to raise $450,000 to help with ballot signatures, the budget, grassroots support and more.
Missy Zombor, a PCCC-endorsed school board member recently elected in Milwaukee, said the organization’s support can be an opportunity for many would-be members, in part because of the scrutiny and competition they attract currently the races.
“School board campaigns are some of the most polarizing and challenging political campaigns right now and are often run by new candidates with little or no campaign experience. Learn how to create a budget, get your voter file, communicate with the media. and preparing for everything else along the way can be daunting,” Zombor said in a statement to ABC News.
Education issues have become more central to political discourse nationally, especially on the right, since COVID-19-era restrictions changed schooling after 2020. This includes conversations about what topics are appropriate for which grade levels, especially lessons on race and LGBTQ issues and the best balance between government authority in schools and parents’ ability to decide how their children are taught.
Last year, for example, San Francisco voters ousted three members of the city’s school board over COVID-19 and virtual learning protocols, marking the first time in the city’s history that the board members had been removed.
Focusing on these issues was seen by experts as contributing to the victory of conservatives such as Virginia Governor Glen Youngkin, elected in 2021.
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for president next year, celebrated his own successful endorsements for a slew of school board candidates in his state in 2022.
In this Feb. 12, 2022, file photo, supporters of the San Francisco School Board remember hold signs at Carl Larsen Park during a rally in San Francisco’s Sunset District.
San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images, FILE
“We were able to take school boards that had left-leaning majorities … We were able to replace them across the state,” he said at the time.
DeSantis championed “parents’ rights” through his Legislature, supporting a controversial blanket ban on classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity for most K-12 students.
Some high-profile Democrats are mounting their own campaigns from the other side of the spectrum, as seen with the recent outlawing of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s book ban.
The PCCC’s Friday fundraiser launch comes just a week before the conservative nonprofit Moms for Liberty holds its annual meeting in Philadelphia, where several Republican 2024 candidates are scheduled to speak and Democrat Robert F. .Kennedy Jr..
Hannah Riddle, PCCC’s director of candidate services, told ABC News that she sees the right-wing efforts as “really serious threats, not theoretical ones.”
The PCCC will focus its efforts on battleground states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas, as well as Illinois and Virginia, where several school board seats will see vacancies, Riddle said.
Riddle said pushing local races can have an impact on broader voter interest and participation.
“It’s not just about training candidates to run for office this year, it’s also creating an infrastructure that exists locally that allows us to build vertically,” he said. “Local races will draw a lot of people to vote next year.”
“A lot of people are disillusioned by the inflammatory federal message we’re seeing every day in the media,” he argued.
