Published: November 14, 2021
By: Ruth Serven Smith
Alabama’s state school board association has joined 11 other charters that have ended or plan to end relationships with the National School Boards Association over a letter to the Biden administration requesting federal intervention in managing protests and threats at school-board meetings.
In response to the September letter, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo stating that he would deploy the FBI in collaboration with federal law enforcement to investigate and potentially prosecute parents found guilty of threatening school administrators.
Many representatives of the state chapters were not happy. They have complained that the group is mislabeling parents who use meetings to oppose mask mandates or curriculum changes.
“There is a place for a national voice on the extreme behavior we are seeing at local board meetings. There is a need to expose the verifiable activities of groups whose stated goal is to disrupt school board meetings,” an email from Sally Smith, executive director for the Alabama Association of School Boards, reads, according to documents obtained by Parents Defending Education, a conservative advocacy group. “That opportunity is now lost. NSBA’s letter to the president was so incompetent it achieves neither of these goals, and in fact, did far more harm than good.”
“If NSBA is going to be a shill for an administration (any administration) to the detriment of many of its members, what rational explanation is there for failure to involve the board in this decision?” she asked in another email.
An Alabama man, Christopher Key, who has protested central Alabama school board meetings and threatened to “execute” pharmacists at a Missouri Walmart, was noted in the initial memo to federal officials.
According to a recent EdWeek Research Center survey, 60% of school and district leaders said someone in their district had been verbally or physically threatened in the past year by those displeased with a school’s or district’s approach to COVID mitigation measures.
In a recent official statement, Smith’s chapter said it agreed with the need for more attention to threats at meetings and against school officials, but did not think federal law enforcement needed to get involved.
“The Alabama Association of School Boards is extremely concerned about lack of civil discourse at board meetings and threats to public officials and school employees,” the statement read. “We believe any criminal activity should be investigated by local law enforcement agencies; however, we do not believe there is a need for federal intervention at this juncture.”
The statement said that the Alabama chapter was not consulted before the national organization made its request.
“AASB has withheld its dues to join NSBA for the current membership year, though AASB’s bylaws require it to be an NSBA member,” the statement concluded, and state delegates would vote in December about a permanent change to the bylaws.
While the letter did get some positive responses from some states and other educational advocacy groups, many others told the national organization the memo was unwelcome.
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