Parental rights: Challengers hope to bring change to Augusta County School Board

MOUNT SIDNEY — Standing on the front porch of a house in a small, two-road subdivision just off Route 11, Sharon Griffin waits for someone to answer the door on which she has just knocked. The subdivision is tucked away between Route 11 and Interstate 81, barely visible to drivers on either highway.

Griffin was there though, no neighborhood too small for her to canvas as she attempted to reach as many voters as possible by Election Day.

It's her second attempt of the afternoon, the first door knock getting no response. When that happens she leaves a campaign flyer on the door and heads off to the next house.

But the second time is the charm for Griffin on this overcast, mid-September afternoon. An older man answers the door in a white t-shirt and a pair of black Adidas basketball shorts, and Griffin identifies herself as a candidate for school board.

The two talk for about 10 minutes. The man's wife joins them on the porch maybe halfway through the conversation. Turns out they have a grandson who goes to Augusta County Public Schools and a daughter who works in the school system, so they are concerned about what happens in education.

Despite that connection to schools, it’s pretty clear the man who answered the door doesn’t have a clue as to who Griffin is. It’s probably a safe bet that he doesn’t know who she is running against either, the current North River District representative, Nick Collins. Or, for that matter, anyone who was on the board.

He says the only thing he really knows about the board is the occasional sign he sees “here or there as you’re driving.”

From unchallenged to tensely contested, school board elections hinge on hard to define 'issues'

That is most likely the case for many voters in Augusta County. Until recently it felt like the school board election was almost an afterthought. According to the Virginia Department of Elections, since 2003 there have been 39 school board elections over the seven districts in Augusta County through last year. Only six have been challenged — one of those was a race between two write-in candidates. Three districts have not had a contested race in that time.

This year, however, things are different. Three of the four open seats are contested. None of the incumbents in those challenged districts — Collins in the North River, Tim Swortzel in the Wayne and John Ward in the Riverheads — have ever had an opponent. Collins has been elected six times without a challenger.

“I really do believe I have some things to contribute,” Griffin tells the man and woman standing on their front porch. “I’m not saying anything bad about Mr. Collins, he’s a nice man, but he’s been in 24 years and he’s running for his seventh term. Some people just hear that and say, ‘Oh, time for a change.’”

Change being the key word as the challengers this year are hoping to bring lots of it.

This will be a critical election for the direction of the Augusta County School Board. Joining Griffin in challenging incumbents this year are Mykell Alleman, who is running against Swortzel in the Wayne, and Page Hearn, running against Ward in the Riverheads.

One of the big changes the challengers hope to initiate is giving parents more power in the direction of their children's education, something they believe isn't happening. They aren't alone in Virginia or the United States in framing the difference between themselves and their incumbent opponents as one of "parental rights."

Alleman, Griffin and Hearn have all campaigned, in part, on the issue of parental rights. Already on the board is Pastures District representative Tim Simmons, while South River representative Mike Lawson is running unopposed in the South River District. Both campaigned successfully on the parental rights issue.

A four-person majority of Simmons, Lawson, and two of the three challengers could shake things up on the board.

School boards as battle grounds

In March 2022, on an episode of Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, co-founder of the conservative Moms for Liberty Tiffany Justice said “We're going to take over the school boards, but that's not enough. Once we replace the school boards, what we need to do is we need to have search firms, that are conservative search firms, that help us to find new educational leaders, because parents are going to get in there and they're going to want to fire everyone.”

The results of school board elections across the country that November were mixed when it came to those sharing similar beliefs with Justice.

Politco reported that in Oswego, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, four school board candidates backed by the conservative 1776 Project all lost. In Charleston County, South Carolina, however, Moms for Liberty backed five of the eight winning candidates.

The Brookings Institute reported that 372 candidates backed by Moms for Liberty in 88 counties have won election since 2022.

In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin won two years ago with a campaign strongly focused on parental rights in education. The issue is based on the belief of some on the far right that parents have been removed from the decisions schools are making for their children.

Many of the hot-button issues in education — transgender polices, Critical Race Theory, school vouchers, banned and challenged books — are often framed as violations of parental rights.

Youngkin's administration released model policies for the treatment of transgender students in June. In a press release, the Virginia Department of Education mentions the issue, saying the policies restores parental rights in decision making about their child’s identity. The policies require school personnel to use only a student's name that appears in official records or a nickname commonly associated with that name unless the school has parental permission in writing.

Critical Race Theory is an academic and legal framework that "recognizes that racism is more than the result of individual bias and prejudice. It is embedded in laws, policies and institutions that uphold and reproduce racial inequalities," according to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF) website.

The LDF says the term has been unjustifiably used to include all diversity and inclusion efforts, race-conscious policies, and education about racism, but in his first executive order, Youngkin banned what he termed “inherently divisive concepts, like Critical Race Theory" that he said "presumes that some students are consciously or unconsciously racist, sexist or oppressive, and that other students are victims.”

Melissa Moschella, an associate professor of philosophy at The Catholic University of America, wrote that the teaching of CRT in K-12 shows that public schools aren't ideologically neutral, using that argument to advocate for a voucher system.

"Public schools’ monopoly on public educational funding violates parental rights," Moschella wrote.

Right there on Griffin’s red, white and blue flyer, it reads, “Voice for Children’s Protection and Parent’s Rights."

When asked how she defines parental rights, Griffin said parents have the primary responsibility for their children and too often across the country schools have usurped those rights.

“My job is not to represent the school system to the public, and I feel like when they sit in board meetings, the current school board is representing the school system to the public,” Griffin said at recent candidate forum. “My job is to represent the constituents to the school system, represent their values and their concerns. Somehow we got that turned upside down in the country and in places in Virginia.”

In Youngkin's model policies — which are supported by Griffin, Alleman, Hearn and Lawson — the governor says that "parents have the right to instill and nurture values and beliefs for their own children and make decisions concerning their children’s education and upbringing in accordance with their customs, faith, and family culture."

Critics of the parental rights movement don't disagree that parents have this right. In fact, maybe they have this duty, but at some point they have to trust that they've taught their children well and see if they can live in the real world within that value system.

“We do not want to raise snowflakes who are not able to take the realities of the real world,” Texas state Rep. James Talaricoit said in a hearing about a book banning bill in his state. “We want to prepare our kids, especially our teens in high school, for what they’re going to face when they’re outside our school laws.”

Nick Collins, who is challenging Griffin, doesn't deny that parents have the right to be involved in their children’s education, only that he doesn't think it is the issue that the challengers are making it out to be. According to the 24-year veteran of the board, no one has ever given him an example of a parent being denied access to information concerning their child’s education. All he hears are anecdotal tales.

“It's kind of like we're waving a flag,” he said. “I'd really like to hear some specific examples, because I think our doors are open at the schools, in the school board office, in the instructional department.”

He said any concern by parents will be heard.

“Some of these things that have been discussed, I take exception to,” Collins said. “Because I feel like there is an avenue for every parent to express their concern.”

When asked in the forum about parental rights, Hearn said the term is a self-explanatory phrase.

"Parental rights is just that you have the right to make the decisions as to what is best for your child," she said. "That goes for their education. That goes for their extracurricular. That goes for their religion. That goes for everything. That is your right as a parent, and your right only. We should not be co-parenting with the government in any aspect. And that includes the school board."

Does the parental rights debate conflate "rights with "responsibility?" Does it ask too much from the schools and not enough from the parents in raising children?

"Parents have a right to raise and train their children," Hearn's opponent, John Ward, told The News Leader this summer. "In a democratic society we have that freedom. Parents are responsible for the proper care and training of lives entrusted to them."

Unlike the other challegers, Alleman has said she believes in parental rights, but she also believes in parental responsibility.

"If your child is the one who is disruptive in class and that teacher calls you, you should be walking side-by-side with that teacher," Alleman said. "You and the teacher are the best allies together. This is not parents versus teachers. It should never have turned into that. It's always about unity."

What's wrong with the incumbents?

In a very conservative county, it’s not that the current board members are considered liberal by any stretch of the imagination. Collins, Ward and Swortzel all were part of a board that unanimously voted against former Gov. Ralph Northam’s model policies aimed at protecting transgender students in 2021.

And all three recently voted to make bathrooms at the county's two new middle schools gender-specific following public outcry when it was discovered that the board had reached a consensus to make them gender neutral during the design phase.

Even at the recent candidate forum, Collins, when addressing a question about transgender students playing sports, stated, “Boys are boys and girls are girls.”

While it's not easy to pinpoint all the reasons some don't like the incumbents, it seems that some of their more vocal detractors simply don’t like that they are positive about the school system.

During the September school board meeting, Swoope resident Nick Astarb went to the podium during the public comment period.

"When the school board members go around the room this evening, as you do, you take turns, I'm not really interested, we're not interested in who you had cookies with, who you substituted for, what football game you went to or that you bought a goat," Astarb said. "What we're interested in is what you're going to do about an administration that's running roughshod over this school board."

At the school board forum Oct. 16, Collins started his closing remarks countering what some of the other candidates had just said by saying, “OK, I’m going to get feisty. We are not upside down and we are not backwards. Augusta County has one of the best school systems in this Valley.”

That drew some boos from the audience and one loud, “Wrong,” from someone watching.

Collins then went on to highlight some positives, including a student with disabilities who recently gave the pledge of allegiance at a school board meeting. That drew even louder negative response and got a sheriff’s deputy involved in calming down a man and woman shouting at Collins.

Collins then shouted back at the couple, telling the unidentified woman, “How about shutting up, lady.” Simmons has asked Collins to step down as chair following that statement, but it did seem like he and other longtime board members — Swortzel and Ward did not participate in the forum — were under attack from the start of the night.

“The past several years you have watched as the school board has started to implement policy that is contrary to the beliefs and the values of the parents,” Alleman said during the forum. “Never before in our history have so many parents come out and risen up against the people they voted into office because they don't represent their values.”

After the forum, a teacher in Augusta County who didn’t wish to be identified, messaged The News Leader and asked if we thought the job of Superintendent Eric Bond was in trouble if the challengers win. The teacher said that, if so, he might start looking for a job in another district.

In January, 2022 a newly elected conservative Spotsylvania School Board fired its superintendent. The Virginia Code does provide a division's school board the ability to fine, suspend or remove from office a superintendent, so the question is a valid one, especially based on how some candidates feel about the current relationship between the board and Bond.

“Personally the way I feel things go right now with the school board is that Dr. Bond makes the decisions and tells the school board what to do and the school board tells the parents what's going to happen,” Hearn said. “That is literally the exact opposite of the way things should go.”

That drew applause from some in the audience.

It's the home stretch, but who's coming out to vote?

As the campaign enters its final week, there's still no real indication of how the vote will go in the three contested races. The forum on Oct. 16 drew around 100 people in person and within a week the livestream had been watched 4,700 times.

So people are paying attention. How many will actually vote, though?

According to the Virginia Department of Elections, the North River District has 7,529 active registered voters. In 2019, when Collins last ran and was unopposed, he received 3,280 votes. That's only 43% of those registered. Ward got 42% of the registered voters in the Riverheads District and Swortzel received 40% in the Wayne District that same year. Both were also unopposed.

If the message challengers like Griffin, Alleman and Hearn are communicating resonates with the public enough to drive voters to the polls, upsetting the incumbents is certainly within reason.

That's Griffin's hope as she continued to knock on doors that September afternoon. As she and the reporter from The News Leader parted ways that day, Griffin, a red drawstring bag across her back, headed up a gravel driveway toward another house with another door on which to knock.

Augusta County will soon find out if was enough houses and doors to get her a win Nov. 7.

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— Patrick Hite is a reporter at The News Leader. Story ideas and tips always welcome. Contact Patrick (he/him/his) at phite@newsleader.com and follow him on Twitter @Patrick_Hite. Subscribe to us at newsleader.com

This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Parental rights: Challengers push for changes to Augusta County School Board