I wish that every extremist school board candidate who ran on platforms of righteous and reactionary anger did not get elected to local school boards, but unfortunately some did.

But a lot of them did not.

And for good reason.

It is hard to think of any other office that gets as much attention and has as many available seats where the qualifications to serve do not require any experience in public schools as a local school board election. That alone can make for some interesting results. If your school board election process is anything like the one in my home district, every seat is up for election in the same cycle. There could be a complete overhaul of the most powerful group to dictate the direction of a local school system.

In my district as in others, many candidates ran this year on platforms that screamed about CRT being taught in our schools or indoctrination of students by teachers or even “grooming” of young people. And those platforms where founded on reactionary movements that had little basis.

North Carolina certainly was not the only state to deal with flaming false narratives.

And most of the calls that VA hotline did receive came from a small group of people.

In NC, there has yet been a documented case where CRT has been found to be taught in our schools as part of the curriculum.

And remember this?

That was set up eight months ago by Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.

Any witches found?

No.

This state even had candidates talking about kitty litter in school bathrooms for students who identified as “furries” instead of humans.

Those issues were not problems. They were red herrings and diversionary tactics used to stoke fear and animosity over schools. They were filled with the hot air of anger devoid of actual plans or solutions to real issues like funding and educator vacancies.

Candidates who ran on those platforms lacked vision and insight because all of their senses were deluged with fiction and all of their energies were consumed from fuming about what they thought should have been done about that once in a lifetime pandemic.

But for those who did get elected, time will tell if you have “solutions” to real issues or just want to keep running on false narratives.