A Penn-Harris-Madison school board candidate is pushing for a more conservative board

MISHAWAKA — School board filings opened late last month across Indiana, and one parent in the Penn-Harris-Madison district is drawing attention in conservative circles.

Andy Rutten, a P-H-M parent and frequent critic of the school district, filed last week to run for the district's at-large seat. His candidacy comes as four of seven P-H-M seats are up for election on Nov. 8, signaling a potential shift in balance on the board.

Rutten is associated with an active group, Strengthen our Schools, which has routinely attended P-H-M school board meetings over the last year to protest COVID-19 policies and the tenets of critical race theory, which the group says has been backdoored into classrooms.

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P-H-M administrators have consistently said critical race theory is not taught in the district and that lessons on diversity are meant to teach students to celebrate differences, not to make them feel badly about themselves. Last year after a series of public information sessions, the district removed some new lessons on implicit bias, microaggression and anti-racism from high schoolers' social-emotional learning studies.

Rutten and others, however, have routinely called on the school board to better define critical race theory and commit to keeping it out of the district. And, in a recent interview with The Tribune, Rutten said he thinks the district's recent diversity efforts have gone too far.

"While well-intentioned, I think it competes with the learning and teaching of math and reading," Rutten said of the district's social-emotional learning. "The sole purpose of schools is academic instruction."

Which Penn-Harris-Madison seats are open?

Rutten is running for the school board's one at-large seat. As of Wednesday morning, only one other person had filed to run for this seat, Dana Sullivan, a school nurse who works in the South Bend district and says she hopes to leave politics at the door.

"The school board needs to be able to work together and solve problems without bringing in the politics if you can," Sullivan told The Tribune last week. "I'm a level-headed person so I feel like I can see things … with a level-headed approach."

At-large positions are voted on by all residents of a school district. This fall, three other seats — one representing each Penn, Harris and Madison townships — also will be decided by residents within each township.

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Board President Christopher Riley is currently the district's at-large representative, but he has filed this fall to run instead for the board's open Harris Township position, which will be left open by Board Vice President Angie Gates.

Gates told The Tribune that she doesn't plan to seek re-election this fall. She said she's planning instead to invest more time in the local counseling practice she opened this spring and plans to move to Michigan after her term is up.

Riley has served the board for three terms in his current at-large seat and said he's seeking the Harris Township position this year because it gives him the best platform to "focus on legitimate issues that face our students, teachers and parents."

"I just want the race to reflect the professional dignity of the school corporation," Riley said.

Two other seats on the P-H-M board are open this fall — one representing Penn Township and another representing Madison Township. As of Wednesday, only James Turnwald, executive director of the Michiana Council of Governments, had filed to run for the Penn Township seat. The P-H-M school board appointed Turnwald to this role in December after two board members resigned mid-term.

As of Wednesday, no one has submitted a petition to run for the Madison Township seat, filled now by Larry Beehler, who has served on the board since 1986.

Relationship with P-H-M schools

Rutten is no stranger to the P-H-M district. Rutten and several others in the Strengthen our Schools group applied to join the school board this winter when the board sought to fill its two openings. Rutten, however, was not among the eight candidates invited to an interview.

Soon after, Rutten filed a complaint alleging the school corporation violated state law by excluding the public from meetings of P-H-M's Superintendent Advisory Council, a group tasked last school year with exploring issues of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Indiana's public access counselor issued an opinion in March stating that, after a recent shift in legal interpretation, P-H-M should convene the meetings in public. In response, P-H-M opened up its final meeting of the year.

Open Door Law:Penn-Harris-Madison to open diversity committee meetings

A month later, Rutten made local headlines after a St. Joseph County police sergeant arrested him for refusing to take his seat during an April school board meeting.

The interaction, captured in a livestream on the school district's Youtube page, shows Rutten speaking for about two-and-a-half minutes, before asking a question about a proposed bond issuance. An administrator responds, answering for about 15 seconds. When told his three minutes of speaking time are up, a defiant Rutten refuses to sit down and debates whether he should be allowed to continue speaking.

A police report obtained by The Tribune shows Rutten told an arresting officer that his refusal to comply was planned and that he had no intention of sitting down after three minutes. Rutten disputed the accuracy of that report and told The Tribune he didn't plan to be arrested that night but was prepared to ask for additional time to finish his comments.

Riley, who is seen on video asking Rutten multiple times to take his seat, declined to comment on the arrest. Court records show no charges were filed after the incident.

"What happens speaks for itself and I just don't want this race to be focused on issues such as that," Riley said. "Let's talk about how we get the teachers resources they need to be successful. Let's talk about how we keep the cost of educational materials down. Let's talk about expanding educational opportunities for kids after school and in the summer. Let's talk about recruiting and training high-quality talent to be our educators. These are the things that matter."

Positioning for a more conservative board

On a conservative radio show last week, Rutten said he views this fall's race as "a substantial election as far as changing the composition of the school board."

Members of the Strengthen our Schools group have already routinely attended P-H-M school board meetings and pushed for changes to policies they disagree with, most recently asking the board to remove language from school handbooks allowing students and their families to request the use of preferred pronouns.

On his campaign website, Rutten expresses a desire for "no politics in the classroom," while in the same paragraph declaring himself a "conservative candidate." School board seats in Indiana are generally considered nonpartisan and do not list party affiliation on the ballot.

Viewpoint:Injecting partisanship into school boards is bad policy

Rutten told The Tribune he considers the board to be "inherently a political governing body," but that "school board members generally aren't in the classroom," so their decisions should not influence academic education. School boards in Indiana do, however, have oversight of things such as student handbook adoption, textbook selection and the hiring of teachers and staff — all items that can influence classroom learning.

During the summer of 2020 and in the wake of the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, a group of P-H-M alumni delivered a letter to administrators outlining their experiences with racism in the district and called on the corporation to take actions like hiring more teachers of diverse backgrounds and training staff in racial trauma.

When asked what specific actions he would take to make marginalized communities, including LGBTQ students and students of color, feel protected in schools, Rutten said he felt the district was already doing a good job of this and opined over whether P-H-M had become "carried away" to the point where others are now feeling excluded.

Asked about who, Rutten at first said "parents who attend school board meetings," then further explained that he's "talked with a lot of different parents" who say their students who are "athletes or academics or band members" are now feeling left out.

Rutten also said the district should be "getting back to the basics" in academics and away from social-emotional learning — a concept schools across Indiana have increasingly invested in to help students cope with changes brought by the coronavirus pandemic.

When asked if he thinks he can work along with other board members with opposing views, Rutten said he's tried only to be critical of issues, not people, and that he feels he maintains good relationships with members of the board.

The window to file for school board remains open through Aug. 26. Election day is Nov. 8.

Note: School board filing petitions for this story were requested by The Tribune on Wednesday. The Tribune will continue to report on candidates until and after the school board filing window closes.

Email South Bend Tribune education reporter Carley Lanich at clanich@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @carleylanich.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: A P-H-M candidate wants to make the school board more conservative