There is Nothing Conservative About Undermining Public Education

There is nothing conservative about undermining public education and running for an office you are unqualified to hold. Falsely claiming schools are not focused on academics is irresponsible and an insult to teachers and administrators. The four members of the board who currently don’t vote to accept federal funding for our schools and engage in culture war issues are extremists who either support the destruction of public education as we know it or are pawns for that movement. If we get one more of them, the board will be deadlocked, and if we get two more, the extremists will be in control. We support Melanie Haas and Kris Meyer in the districts in this article and Beryl New, Betty Arnold and Jeffrey Jarman in the other districts. Please #beaninformedvoter

“‘They haven’t been inside of a school, many of them, in many years. Of the five candidates, some of them didn’t even send their kids to public schools,’ Haas said. ‘So I really take issue with them attacking our schools and using culture wars as the wedge when they really don’t know what’s going on inside of schools…’

“Haas, who won in 2020 by an 11-point margin, faces Republican Fred Postlewait, a retired Leavenworth Public Library computer systems manager who helped lead efforts to oppose a $420 million bond issue by Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools…Postlewait on his website says over the past decade ‘social engineering has replaced education.’ In an interview, he faulted ‘DEI’ and the presence of cellphones and laptops in elementary schools. He criticized drops in ACT scores (Haas said scores have come down because Kansas now pays for the test so more students take it)…

“The state Board of Education has long been a battleground pitting conservative Republicans against moderate Republicans and Democrats. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the board famously fought over the teaching of evolution, adopting a series of science standards over several years as members struggled with each other over the topic. The board has now been in a lengthy period of relatively moderate control for the past two decades. But the outcome of Tuesday’s contests could signal whether the board is entering a new, more tumultuous era.

“‘They do not have the same ideals that we used to have as Republicans,’ Sally Cauble, a former Republican member of the state Board of Education, said of several of the current GOP candidates. Cauble is helping lead Kansans for Excellence in Education, a PAC that’s endorsed this year’s Democratic candidates. She and other public education advocates expressed concern that national proponents of vouchers and tax incentives linked to private schools will target Kansas…

“In District 4, Democrat Kris Meyer is clear she opposes any move toward vouchers or a voucher-like system. Meyer, who has previously worked as an elementary school principal in De Soto, said ‘school choice means vouchers’ during a forum at the Lawrence Public Library earlier this month…O’Brien, a former state legislator from Tonganoxie, answered a voter guide questionnaire that she strongly supports eliminating the U.S. Department of Education and responded ‘strongly agree’ to the statement that ‘dollars should follow the child’ in education – a phrase Meyer called code for vouchers.”

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