Editorial: Hampton Roads voters must pay special attention to school board races

Since school boards in Virginia don’t have taxing power and rely on city or county boards for funding, elections to serve on them are usually staid, courteous affairs, devoid of the divisive rhetoric that is commonplace in campaigns for higher office.

This year is different. Fully infected by the culture wars, races for school board across Hampton Roads and Virginia have more importance than any in recent memory — and demand more of voters who will decide on Nov. 8 who serves in those positions.

Public education has long been a central function of government. And for nearly as long as Americans have sent their kids to government-run schools, they’ve been upset with nearly every aspect of how the government runs those schools.

So many of the nation’s seismic policy debates have pertained to what happens in the schoolhouse. Tennessee’s 1925 Scopes Trial about teaching evolution in school, the 1971 Supreme Court ruling in Lemon v. Kurtzman about public funding for religious schools, and the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision about school segregation are but three prominent examples.

Throughout the nation’s history, who is taught, what is taught and how it is taught have roiled communities, states and even the federal government. Public opinion changes — the tenor of debate ebbs and flows — and all the while educators do their level best to prepare their young charges for life beyond the classroom.

In the last several years, the vitriol and ugliness so commonplace in our national politics have seeped into municipal politics. One reason for that is the pandemic; schools and education were a point of contention throughout. But there is also a concerted pushback to efforts to make education more inclusive, equitable and accessible to students of more diverse backgrounds.

Hampton Roads hasn’t been immune to that. In fact, Virginia Beach is among the communities routinely cited nationally for the ferocity of its debate over curriculum choices, virtual learning guidelines and inclusion policies. (Loudoun County is usually No. 1 on those lists.)

This “parents’ rights” movement proved itself to be a potent force in electoral politics last year when a focus on education policy and empowering parents helped lift Republican Glenn Youngkin to the governor’s office. He has spent much of the last 10 months remaking state education policy in response.

But, as with most social and populists movements of this sort, the benefit of these changes depend on who the “parents” in question are.

Taking aim at policies that promote equity and inclusion doesn’t benefit parents of students who thrive under those policies. Rewriting transgender policies in a way that could harm trans students does no favors to the parents of those children.

Likewise, smearing teachers and administrators as “groomers” and “pedophiles” — as happened at a Virginia Beach School Board meeting this year — does a grave disservice to those teachers and administrators working to make their classrooms welcoming to all students. Worse, it could drive those educators out of the profession, harming countless children as a result.

And that’s to say nothing of those candidates who proudly argue for the removal of books from the classroom and school libraries, which is also a tale as old as this country. Decades ago, it was “Huck Finn” and “A Catcher in the Rye”; now it’s the “Bluest Eye” and “Gender Queer.”

In both cases, these are books that help students better understand themselves and the world around them. And in both cases the busybodies want to ban them for being subversive, dangerous and inappropriate.

Obviously parents should play a role in what happens in public school classrooms — not just some parents, but all parents. But we should also trust educators to do their job, as they have always done — with care, concern and professionalism.

These are the decisions on the ballot this year, and why voters must take great care in their research and preparation before making their choices on Nov. 8.