Take Back the Public School

Next month's Boise School Board election has the potential to change everything

This September, voters in the Boise School District have a unique opportunity to dramatically reshape the second largest public school system in Idaho.

Trustees of the Boise School District serve staggered six year terms. However, three of the six seats were filled over the last two years due to resignations, and all three appointees must face the voters to fill out the remainder of their terms. Andy Hawes is running to finish out the last four years of his term, while Elizabeth Langley and Steve Schmidt are both running to finish the last two years of theirs.

Board President Dave Wagers and fellow incumbent Beth Oppenheimer are running for reelection to full six-year terms as well. This means that five of the six trustee positions are on the ballot this year, giving conservative parents in Boise a rare chance to completely overhaul the school district.

School board races are technically nonpartisan, a cloak that leftist activists have hidden behind for a long time. They run on promises of objectivity, or even self described conservatism, then work with far-left activists in the teachers unions to push a progressive agenda in our public schools. Children in Idaho learn that whiteness is evil, that sex is a spectrum, and that America’s heroes were nothing more than racist misogynist villains. They are taught to hide things from their parents and are groomed to become loyal foot soldiers of the Marxist revolution.

Fighting back means retaking every public school apparatus. The teachers unions must be broken, the curricula at teacher training schools must be overhauled, and the credentialing system must be reformed. Common Core needs to go away and textbook publishers need to have their monopoly dispersed. Fighting the rot in our public schools is like fighting a hydra, but your local school board is a good place to start.

Krista Hasler is one of two conservatives running against Mr. Wagers and Ms. Oppenheimer for a full six-year term. I had the opportunity to hear her speak last week at the Ada County Republicans meeting and came away impressed with her knowledge and her passion. Ms. Hasler has four children, with the oldest going into junior high in the Boise School District next year. She is painfully aware of the awful nonsense that is being peddled at all levels. Her candidate profile on the Republican Party voter guide says:

Many of the current Trustees and the teachers union have banded together to try and resist change in this election. They have stated that change in leadership and policy is “distressing in our polarized world” and that change will be “disruptive.”

Do you see how this works? We are meant to believe that the entire leftist agenda - Marxism, Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, driving a wedge between children and their parents, the destruction of our culture - are all nonpolitical. On the other hand, a conservative mother with traditional values running for the school board is polarizing and disruptive.

You’re darn right it’s disruptive, disruptive of a pernicious agenda that has been unchallenged for far too long. Remember, leftists think they own your children. The mask has come off in recent years as leftist teachers complain that parents are able to listen in on Zoom classes to hear what is actually taught in classrooms and Democrat politicians denounce efforts by parents to practice oversight of public school curricula. We need someone to disrupt this state-sponsored grooming and indoctrination of our own children.

Greg Woodard is also running for one of the two six-year terms. With five children, Mr. Woodard also has skin in the game regarding the public school system. He says that the Covid-19 response spurred his interest in becoming involved:

…the current Board ignored many parents' voices in delaying re-opening our schools to full time in-person education, putting them behind other students in our state who were back to in-person learning before our District.

Air Force veteran Neil Mercer is running for the four-year term. Like Woodard, Mercer calls for more transparency on the school board and more responsiveness to parents. To that end, he says:

Part of working closely with parents is to have complete transparency between the Board and parents so families can understand why decisions are being made, not just being told what the decision is.

Two conservative candidates are running for the two-year term in race #3. Todd Kurowski (above left) is also an Air Force veteran and calls himself a reluctant candidate. He is dismayed by the direction of the Boise School District, especially with regards to student safety, and feels compelled to do what he can. Nate Dean (above right) is a science teacher in the Boise School District and like the others feels that the current board of trustees is neither transparent nor responsive.

I have been told that the incumbent in this race, Elizabeth Langley, is a conservative. However, her public Facebook posts for the last two years say otherwise. She strongly supported mask and vaccine mandates and opposed Lt. Governor McGeachin’s education task force that investigated CRT and other anti-American ideologies in public schools. If this is what passes for conservative today then we are in big trouble. Ms. Langley was invited to both submit a biography for the Republican voter guide and to speak to the Ada County Republican meeting last week, but declined both.

Steve Schmidt is the only incumbent worth voting for. He was appointed last December to fill a vacancy, and is running to finish the final two years of his term. When he was initially appointed he had to defend himself to local media on charges of being white and male, which some journalists apparently found disqualifying. Mr. Schmidt is an engineer by trade, and therefore brings a rational perspective to the problems in the Boise School District.

Schmidt’s opponent is straight out of Marxist central casting. Shiva Rajbhandari is a high school student and left-wing activist who dutifully recites all the socialist shibboleths. He supports so-called climate justice, gun control, abortion, and everything else you would expect from the unhinged left today. While it is tempting to say that we support young people getting involved in politics, allowing Mr. Rajbhandari to become a BSD trustee would be an absolute disaster.

If you live in the Boise School District then it is imperative that you take the time to vote for these conservative candidates. We always complain about the state of our public schools, but here is an opportunity to do something. Click here to download the district boundary map and see if you are eligible to vote in this election.

There is one catch: The Boise School District Board of Trustees election is not in November, but in September! In fact, Election Day is on Tuesday, September 6th - the day after Labor Day. You see, the Boise School District actually predates the establishment of the State of Idaho, so their charter supersedes state law. When the legislature passed a law in 2013 to bring local, municipal, and school district elections in line with the usual November Election Day, Boise, Lewiston, and Emmett were exempted. The Board of Trustees has the authority to alter their own charter, as Lewiston and Emmett did, but they have thus far refused.

Why? I suspect they believe that lower turnout is an advantage for the existing establishment. The existing board, the district employees, and the teachers unions all support the status quo, and so they want to make sure that only their supporters bother to vote.

It is time to change that system.

If you live within the boundaries of the Boise School District, make the time to vote on Tuesday September 6th. Most schools will serve as polling places from 8am to 8pm that day - check this list for specific locations.

If you are not sure you will be able to vote that day, then you can request an absentee ballot. Click here to submit such a request, and be sure that you do so before the deadline on August 26th.

The leftist establishment that controls our public school system is counting on your apathy. There has never been a better time to get involved. Remember the Virginia gubernatorial election last year? Parents who had never considered themselves political realized what the school system was doing to their children and the result was a revolution. Let’s bring the education revolution to Idaho in September!