Public education is no stranger, historically, to politics poking its nose inside the schoolhouse door. Pitched battles over everything from the teaching of evolution to court-ordered desegregation often began inside a classroom.
Over time, however, what we’ve discovered is that students just want to learn and teachers just want to teach. The ones doing all the fussing and fighting have separate and unrelated agendas that have little to do with actually improving education. They just want an ideological “win.”
That is exactly where we found ourselves this year with the Moore County Board of Education. Comity became enmity. Collegiality and respect eroded into mockery and ridicule. Ideology supplanted ideas.
In 2021, the Moore County Board of Education became just another conscripted stiff in America’s culture war.
“We do have an image problem,” said school board member Robert Levy in a comment that highlights the very problem. “Much of that comes from the idea that education is somehow a vehicle for liberal indoctrination.”
Long Division
Levy and fellow conservative David Hensley primarily led this past year’s charge against what they termed as “business as usual” for schools.
“People have been exposed to what many school boards across the country have done, and they’re not putting up with it,” Hensley said in this year’s Newsmaker story.
“I think that parents nationwide, for whatever reason — the pandemic, they had nothing better to do — they could see what their students were learning, they started paying attention. Parents woke up and they rightfully spoke up.”
Repeatedly in the past year, Hensley has criticized “radical leftists” or their “agenda” for the division that rends the school board. Seeing as how the seven-member board is almost exclusively made up of registered Republicans, it’s not clear who Hensley was singling out, but it’s that kind of discourse that has flavored the debate before a board whose primary goal is overseeing the state-mandated operation of public schools.
The public, of course, follows the cues of its leaders, so the rhetoric and actions of people coming before the board this past year reflected the partisanship.
Along the way, the Board of Education had speakers stand before them and openly pray for their lost souls. Another speaker stood wordlessly for almost three minutes and just scowled at the board. Yet another shouted that a face mask mandate was killing his child.
Seeking ‘the Very Best’
This, of course, is no way to operate a public school system, especially one trying to attract a new superintendent and stabilize operations after almost two years of COVID-driven learning distraction.
Moore County has had a strong school system for a rural North Carolina county. Political turmoil does nothing for us. But there’s hope that most parents have little use for any of the rhetoric.
Take Michelle Cuthrell, who created the “Moore Good News” website this fall to show appreciation and support for teachers and school staff.
“Politics aren’t just dividing our community; they are dividing our entire country,” she said.
“But at the end of the day, no matter what side of the political spectrum we fall into, we’re all just parents and educators and board members and community members who want the very best for the students we love.”
