The parent choice advocate who founded Let Them Breathe and Let Them Choose is campaigning for a seat on the Carlsbad Unified School District school board.
Sharon McKeeman announced her decision to run last week.
“From what I've been doing, I learned from leaders and candidates and have many things already in place,” she said. “There's going to be a lot of coming together and helping.”
McKeeman emerged as a media darling at the height of the pandemic during rallies and protests when school districts began mandating masks and the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Sharon is an incredibly passionate person who wants to do the right thing by families,” said Lance Christensen, who is a candidate for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction. “Anybody who has the sort of passion that she does, I think would be qualified and very capable of being an excellent school board member.”
In addition to staging rallies, Let Them Choose sued San Diego United School District over its student vaccine mandate and won.
“I’m in the infancy of my campaign and I think you will see a lot of parents running for school board,” McKeeman told the Southern California Record.
McKeeman’s organizations have gone on to sue many other school districts but the ongoing litigation isn't expected to hinder McKeeman's campaign.
“I don't think they play anything on how good a school board member she might be,” Christensen told the Southern California Record. “Any parent who wants to be involved in their kids' school system and make effective changes in it and can do so through a civicly engaged way, like running for school board, should be seriously considering that opportunity.”
The Carlsbad Unified School District is among the school districts that were sued over school reopening. The board of trustees convened last week to discuss litigation and personnel in a closed session, according to media reports.
“I was involved in that school reopening complaint but that wasn't a Let Them Breathe lawsuit,” McKeeman added. “That was against the state and a whole bunch of San Diego county schools.”
San Diego Superior Court Judge Cynthia Freeland issued an order in March requiring Carlsbad along with San Dieguito, Poway, Oceanside, San Marcos, and Vista school districts to reopen.
“There are two of us parents running for Carlsbad school board and we both were involved from the start in school reopening,” McKeeman added. “In the seat I'm running for, there's been a long-time incumbent who is moving on. In the other seat the parent is running for, the incumbent is a paid California Teachers Association employee who parents considered trying to recall over a conflict of interest, but decided in the end that we were close enough to elections.”