Southern York County schools are doing well. Why elect board members who will break them?
Do the voters of Southern York County School District want to elect a school board that is set on tearing it down?
I ask this question having recently read in the local paper that Susquehannock High School ranks No. 2 in York County, 64 in Pennsylvania, and 1,718 in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of best high schools in the country. The scoring factors in things like college readiness, state assessment proficiency, underserved student performance, and graduation rate.
Yet an ultra conservative coalition of five school board candidates, draped in the banner of “parental rights,” would have you believe that SYCSD is culturally bankrupt, failing students, and fiscally a mess and in need of their intervention.
Using a national playbook unfolding in districts like SYC nationwide, this coalition has spelled out what it plans to do in a platform that reads like a far-right manifesto. Most egregious, these candidates made pledges to groups for campaign donations and endorsements to enact discriminatory policies that will limit access to resources and speech in public schools, as well as purge the superintendant, solicitor and any school employee not aligned with their goals.
It was “everything, everywhere, all at once,” the former Sarasota school board chair Jane Goodwin told Vanity Fair in May of what happened in her district. Since last November, she said the new board has systemically dismantled everything. By the way, Sarasota’s schools historically ranked tops in Florida. But the dizzying number of attacks, the report says, has led to staffing and hiring challenges, cancelation of classes, and a growing exodus from the community.
More: Election 2023: Who is on the ballot in York County for the Nov. 7 election?
Expect the same in SYC, “woke audits” of the curriculum, book bans, and the sanitizing of the history taught. The coalition is supported by the 1776 Project and eager to introduce “more conservative interpretations of history.” You know, like the benefits of slavery for slaves. Sloppy and slanted, not one professional historian was consulted in the writing of the 1776 Project.
Education culture wars have become the engine of Republican politics nationwide, tied to every race up government, as state legislators like Senator Kristin Phillips Hill and Representative Mike Jones, and U.S. Congressman Lloyd Smucker reflect in their endorsements of these extreme partisan candidates. These legislators support expanding “education vouchers” that siphon money from public schools, with the end game of privatizing the public education system.
As happened in Sarasota, ideologically aligned members filled the school board of the small mountain town of Woodland Park, Colorado, and in short order they forced out the superintendent; approved the community’s first charter school without public notice, giving it a third of the middle school building; and rejected grants that would retain mental health workers, as well as opted out of free student access to mental health services. By the way, the interim superintendent of the district operates Education ReEnvisioned charter schools.
Woodland Park is also the first district in the country to adopt the “American Birthright social studies standard.” The National Council for the Social Studies does not endorse this, stating: “If implemented in schools, these suggested standards would have damaging and lasting effects on the civic knowledge of students and their capacity to engage in civic reasoning and deliberation.”
Despite receiving an 8% pay raise, Woodland Park school employees are headed for the exit. Nearly 40% of the high school’s professional staff said they wouldn’t return next school year. “This is an active case study on what will happen if extremist policies take over our public education system,” David Graf, an English teacher who resigned after 17 years, told NBC News in May.
I share these examples foreshadowing what awaits SYCSD if the five politically zealous candidates win the election Nov. 7. Their success would create a seven-member ideological majority, of which four of the directors would be married couples from two households.
As Liv Coleman, a political science professor at the University of Tampa told Vanity Fair regarding what’s happening in Sarasota, “Sometimes things have to break before people really pay attention.”
Do voters want that for Southern York County School District?
Voters who would rather build on the district’s success than break it have a clear choice Nov. 7, and I ask they vote for Elizabeth Arpin, Danielle Weaver-Watts (current director), Amy Hall, and Charles Fallin — who represent both major political parties — and write in Kelly Jarvis (current director, and Independent) to fill the five open seats.
These candidates, all parents and taxpayers in the district, reflect different perspectives and experiences, and most importantly have not pledged their decisions to a political party, PAC or agenda. Instead, they plan to focus on how to strengthen public education and support students’ success and wellbeing, including addressing shortages of teachers, counselors and social workers.
Please pay attention to this year’s school board election, or you may find everything, everywhere, all at once has been dismantled in the district you love.
Deborah Kalina was a SYCSD Board Director 2017 to 2021.
This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Southern York County, Pa. schools are doing well. Don't break them
