Monroe County school board elections hinge again on COVID, racism

Voters in the May 17 school board elections in Monroe County will need keen reading comprehension skills to decide which candidates best suit them.

Some candidates are promising to protect children in public schools, while others make the more familiar pledge to serve them. Some call for equity, others for equality.

In particular, a seemingly innocuous commitment to prioritize parental involvement has become coded language, denoting opposition to COVID-related mask mandates and the diversity-related initiatives underway in most local school districts.

A loose coalition centered around those hot-button issues has solidified in the last year, drawing support from allies nationwide and mixing with concerns about sexual education, including unfounded charges of pedophilia and pornography in schools.

"I don't want anybody talking to my children about certain things," Greece board candidate Keith Shaw said. "I think as a parent, this stuff should come to us first."

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At the same time, a number of candidates across the county are running proudly on a different set of codewords: equity, culturally responsive curriculum, antiracism.

"We cannot be blind to the fact that systems and barriers have been in place that we need to remove to make sure we continue to do what’s best for all students," Christine Brown Richards, an incumbent candidate in Gates Chili, said.

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Parental rights

In an interview, Jennifer Fonseca, a candidate in Webster, said her platform is a simple one. She's in favor of improving academics, listening to parents and transparency for resident taxpayers.

In public comments over the last year, she has been more specific.

In October Fonseca, a former Rochester City School District teacher, criticized "the communist agenda of our country ... to train our children's brains into something that violates family and Christian values and beliefs." She named three books in school libraries — "Lawn Boy" by Jonathan Evison, "Gender Queer: A Memoir" by Maia Kobabe and "George" by Alex Gino — as "child abuse, pornography and pedophilia," and submitted a written request to have them removed from circulation.

Those specific books, and the general themes of LGBTQ identity and racial inequality, have been targeted in local school board races across the country. The Florida-based organization Moms for Liberty has been instrumental in organizing and amplifying their mission, "to unite parents who are ready to fight those that stand in the way of liberty."

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Moms of Liberty has a chapter in Monroe County, with Melaney Bernhardt, a school board candidate in Brighton, as its secretary. An undated photo on the chapter website shows about 20 people at a meeting, including Bernhardt and Fonseca.

Fonseca, Louis Levine and Richard Fraser have also received the support of the Webster Republican Committee, which is unusual since school board elections in New York outside the Big 5 district areas are nonpartisan. The town Republicans sent out a mailer that includes the statement: "Fiction belongs in the English department, not in our History classes."

In Gates Chili, candidate Robert E. Lee III said at a candidates' forum that equity initiatives represent an "old tried-and-failed Marxist stance." His ballo-tmate, Lynn Knauf, added: "A wise woman told me, the word, to her, ‘racism,’ is racist in itself."

These concerns, together with lingering resentment over the ways schools handled COVID protocols over the last two years, have been gathered under the umbrella of parental rights: the right to inspect and approve or deny curricular choices or library books, and the right for one's children to wear a mask or not.

"I am starting to see that there is more politics coming into the classroom," Fonseca said. "Somebody’s ideologies, let’s put it that way."

Antiracism

On the opposite end of the spectrum are a number of candidates throughout Monroe County running in support of their districts' movement toward social-emotional learning, culturally responsive curriculum and anti-racism as a guiding principle.

Nicole Doyley, Emily Belcer and Krista Khan are all candidates for school board and mothers of color in Penfield, a district whose students are 82% white.

Among other things, they support professional development around equity and racism for educators; hiring more non-white teachers; and changes to curriculum and policy that take the needs of all students into account.

Doyley, a writer and educator who focuses on race, is making her first run for elected office in order to "help our schools to train critical thinkers and empathetic leaders," and also to promote and celebrate diversity, she said.

She and other like-minded candidates noted that a public school serves a broad public good and cannot bend to parents' desires in every case, in particular where controversy exists over the proper way forward.

"Parents know their kids best and they never should be shut out," she said. "But at the same time, parents who choose to send their kids to public school — on some level you can't question every single thing being taught in the classroom. ... When we're teaching America's history, it's not going to damage kids to know the whole truth."

Terry Melore, an incumbent candidate in Greece and a former teacher, said many board critics fail to recognize the extent to which state policy guides districts' actions.

"I met with a parent who was very upset with so-called critical race theory," she said. "I told her: 'You know the curriculum comes from the state?' And she said, 'I’m tired of that answer.' But that’s the answer."

Districts do in fact develop or select their own curriculum, but it must align with state standards, including the Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework in New York.

Broadly speaking, local teachers unions have endorsed candidates who support equity measures, something their opponents take as evidence of status-quo cronyism.

Regan Howlett, a candidate in Rush-Henrietta, put it differently at a candidate forum last month.

"I’m here for the queer kids; I’m here for the Black kids; I’m here for the kid with disabilities," she said. "I’m here for the kids who have traditionally been shut out."

School board and budget votes in all school districts in New York except the Big 5 urban districts take place May 17; times and locations vary by district.

Contact staff writer Justin Murphy at jmurphy7@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Monroe County school board elections hinge again on COVID, racism