In a bid to de-stigmatize the political process, the California Policy Center (CPC) is teaching parents how to campaign and be elected to their local school boards.
“When you're thinking about running for office, a lot of people have zero-idea where to start,” said Lance Christensen, vice president of CPC's education policy and government affairs. “It's targeted to anybody who wants to make a positive change in education. We want to break it down to its nuts and bolts and help parents understand that this is something they can do, but it isn't something they have to do. They can also encourage others to do it.”
Offered face to face and remotely through a partnership with the Parent Union, the three-part presentation trains potential candidates on how to run for school board in a bi-annual election.
“We teach it in a way that allows people to understand the paperwork they need to file, the timeline they need to think about, how to build support, how to message better, and here’s how to make the decision itself and what it might mean for them and their families," Christensen told the Southern California Record.
Organizations that the CPC have partnered with this year to offer the class include Moms on the Ground, Let Them Breathe and Moms for Liberty.
“We focus on the parents because we think they have an invested future there,” Christensen said. “There’s also a decent amount that are grandparents or aunts or uncles or people who had kids in the system but they've graduated, moved out of the home, and are no longer in public schools.”
CPC began organizing the class five to six months ago in response to a national uproar in which parents attending school board meetings in opposition to critical race theory were labeled domestic terrorists.
“Parents finally realized they don't want to be called domestic terrorists anymore,” Christensen said. “They want to have a voice and they want it to be civil. A lot of them want to be involved and do it positively but it's very difficult when they're continually characterized as bad people.”
A Sept. 29, 2021 letter sent to U.S. President Joe Biden, signed by National School Boards Association NSBA Interim Executive Director Chip Slaven and President Viola Garcia, asked for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of alleged threats against school board members by parents who allegedly appeared to be engaging in domestic terrorism.
“We're getting a pretty positive response," Christensen added. "In the several times that we've done this, we've had dozens of people show up who are very interested in learning how to run for office. We’ve also had a number of people who are homeschoolers or in private schools who just feel like this is a duty they have to make sure their community is taken care of and that the public schools are overseen by thoughtful and trusted adults."