A month ago, the National School Boards Association wrote a letter to President Biden, asking for help on behalf of local school boards that were under attack and subject to threats by groups angry about masking and critical race theory.
The letter said, in part,
America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat. The National School Boards Association (NSBA) respectfully asks for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation. Local school board members want to hear from their communities on important issues and that must be at the forefront of good school board governance and promotion of free speech. However, there also must be safeguards in place to protect public schools and dedicated education leaders as they do their jobs.
NSBA believes immediate assistance is required to protect our students, school board members, and educators who are susceptible to acts of violence affecting interstate commerce because of threats to their districts, families, and personal safety. As our school boards continue coronavirus recovery operations within their respective districts, they are also persevering against other challenges that could impede this progress in a number of communities. Coupled with attacks against school board members and educators for approving policies for masks to protect the health and safety of students and school employees, many public school officials are also facing physical threats because of propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula.1 This propaganda continues despite the fact that critical race theory is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K-12 class…
As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.
Bianca Quilantan of Politico reported that the NSBA has now apologized for the letter and withdrawn it in response to the actions of a group called “Parents Defending Education.”
About a month after the association sent its initial plea letter to the Biden administration, the NSBA has faced outrage on all sides — from its members, state attorneys general, lawmakers and parent advocacy groups. These critics say the involvement of the FBI in school board meetings would chill parents’ free speech. “The NSBA seems more concerned about suppressing speech with which it disagrees than real threats of violence,” more than a dozen attorneys general wrote.
— Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, a group “working to reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas,” said her group has emailed 47 state school board associations for comment on the NSBA’s Sept. 29 letter. Neily said 19 have distanced themselves from the group’s letter, and many state school boards said they had not been made aware of the NSBA’s request ahead of time.
— “On behalf of NSBA, we regret and apologize for the letter,” a memo from NSBA’s board to its members said. “There was no justification for some of the language included in the letter. We should have had a better process in place to allow for consultation on a communication of this significance. We apologize also for the strain and stress this situation has caused you and your organizations.”
Parents Defending Education is a rightwing group fighting ”indoctrination” in the schools. Its president formerly worked at the Cato Institute and Independent Women’s Forum.
Before the NSBA withdrew its letter, Anya Kamenetz of NPR wrote about the groups that have organized to harass local school boards. In several states and districts around the country, protestors have been disrupting school board meetings. They’re opposed to mask policies. Vaccine mandates. LGBTQ rights. Sex education. Removing police from schools. Teaching about race and American history, or sometimes, anything called “diversity, equity and inclusion” or even “social-emotional learning.”
So the shouting, screaming, and threats of violence at school board meetings will go on. Who will dare to stand up for civility and democracy? Who will want to run for their local school board?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I do not think local school boards and school staff are equipped for the attacking behaviors that we are witnessing today. Our good people are being bullied and the public schools are being further weakened exponentially as a result. If parents disagree with what the schools are doing, they have a right to take their children elsewhere.
yet the overall political game being played is arguing that parents have a right to keep their children right where they are WHILE overwhelmingly disrupting the chance of anyone getting a solid education
They better RETHINK as intensification only continues.
“Virginia GOP gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin put out a 60-second ad yesterday of a Very Concerned Mother who somberly recounts how her son showed her his school reading material, and how her “heart sunk” because the reading was “some of the most explicit material you can imagine.
”Lawmakers’ “faces turned bright red” upon reading the material when the mother, Laura Murphy, brought it to them, she claims.
Curiously enough, the ad never mentions which book it was or how old Murphy’s son was at the time.
It turns out the book was Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel “Beloved,” according to the Washington Post’s 2013 report on Murphy’s plight. It was assigned to her son in his AP English class when he was a high school senior, and Murphy attempted to get the book banned.
The student told the Post at the time that the book had given him nightmares because it was “disgusting and gross” and “hard for me to handle.” He is now an associate general counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee.”
youngkinforgovernor.com
Gleichschaltung is what this is: aligning all public entities with the authoritarian government.
This is a smear campaign against public education. Instead of the FBI schools boards should call the local police department if any parents become unruly or threatening. They boards should issue a “code of conduct” at the beginning of meetings. Disruptive parents should be warned. If parents fail to abide by the code of conduct, the police should escort them from the building. Backed by dark money conservatives will do anything in their power to undermine public education and create chaos.
“On behalf of NSBA, we regret and apologize
for the letter…We apologize also for the
strain and stress this situation has caused
you and your organizations.”
Thanks, but there’s no need to apologize.
You caused me NO “strain or stress”.
YOUR Pretenses of control and management,
requires belief in them.
If the behavior of a culture, is an expression
of beliefs, WHAT haven’t you seen?
You may fault the nonbelievers, demonize them,
and cling to your expectations.
Not a free pass for nonbelievers, BUT
golly gee, whose call is it?
You’re no more their boss of beliefs than they
are boss of your beliefs.
Realistic expectations???
They apologized that some people were upset. They didn’t say that they didn’t think the appropriate resources of the FBI shouldn’t be made available to those who requested them. I suppose they should have been cleared about what they were requesting–consultation–rather than storm troopers. If local law enforcement cannot supply the necessary support, then it seems reasonable to request support from the FBI. Threats of violence and intimidation are never right, but the police can’t do much until those threats have been carried out. After listening to the threats leveled against election officials, I am convinced of the need for more than watching and waiting. When normal rules of civil behavior are routinely ignored in favor of threats of violence and intimidation, we have to pay attention.
A week or so ago, Florida stopped paying dues to the organization due to the letter.
Not
A
Surprise
At
All
NYT has annoyed me again. I googled “Garland stands by memo.” I got 10 headline hits– most said “stands by,” a couple said “defends.” NYT chose “Republicans assail Garland…” >:-(
Using a narrow lens to view the NSBA and Garland initiatives is certainly your perogative.
The authoritarian nature of the the letters should not have given license to Districts to decide who could or could not attend public meetings, including the meetings that are virtual but that is what’s happened.
Many Districts are still virtual and/or their board meetings are conducted virtually.
Watch more board meetings. Read more agendas.
Board members had already been in the habit of gaslighting parental speech if it failed to align with their narratives, plans, objectives on any topic.
These letters gave a license to school boards across the country to add the topic of increased board meeting security to their agendas.
For parents who were already part of a District resistance the villification increased – regardless of the topic.
The bottom line is that incompetent school boards are a dime a dozen. Plenty are using these letters to gain sympathy while distracting voters from their failures that include inadequate policies to improve student outcomes and, like Scranton, no contracts for teachers.
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t Scranton under state control not local? That would bring up another set of issues that have little to do with loss of just parental voice. Community voice is shut out as well. Detroit public schools were destroyed by state control, not to mention New Orleans. As to asking for help dealing with violence, threats and intimidation how does that gets spun as muzzling parents? Such tactics are NEVER appropriate. That’s not to say that there aren’t times when boards can be overly dismissive or controlling, but you seem to be painting with a rather broad brush.