It is school board voting day across Western New York, and, as was the case last year, the nation’s drift into divisive – even hateful – politics is infecting many races.
Last year, the trend showed up most prominently in the Hamburg race where one candidate’s social media account made clear that her backers’ strategy was to create “massive upheaval” through “civil disobedience.” It wasn’t an agenda focused on educating children.
Among the issues last year was library books, as far-right candidates demanded the right to determine what other people’s children could be allowed to read. That issue continues in this year’s elections as the radical right once again takes aim at school libraries.
It is a national issue, most vocally promoted by the misnamed “Moms for Liberty,” whose goal is to curtail the liberty of others. The group, which includes a local chapter, betrays itself through its objection to what it labels as the “woke agenda” of the state teachers union.
People are also reading…
The far right uses the word “woke” as a weapon. It is, to be sure, a clumsy formulation and easy to caricature, but too often on the right, the real complaint is about anything meant to promote fairness and equality, especially any curriculum that deals with difficult issues such as race and sexuality. Both can be taught in age-appropriate ways.
Among the candidates hoping to assert their reading preferences over others are three in the Lancaster school district. Dan Romig, Laura Sproull and Tara Romig are running as a block. They say they don’t want books with sexually explicit material in school libraries. It’s a cheap line.
The fact is – partly because of the exaggerated alarms from the political right – sexuality has become an prominent issue, one from which it is impossible to shield students. Parents have the right – the responsibility – to prescribe what they want their own children to read. They don’t have the right to make those choices for the children of others. It is much better to trust the professionalism of school librarians than the shrieks of far-right zealots looking for a ladder to higher government office.
By far, the most troubling issue to come to light in this election season involves a candidate whose social media posts describe a hateful heart.
Sandra Magnano is running for a seat on the West Seneca school board. She assures her voter base that she is neither antisemitic nor anti-gay, but her Truth Social account challenges that insistence. In it, she includes posts that compare President Biden to Adolf Hilter, criticizes Pride Month as “disgusting” and calls for abolition of the FBI, which one post disgracefully compares to the Nazi SS and Soviet KGB.
Truth Social, of course, is the social media company launched by Donald Trump, the former president who couldn’t bring himself to criticize American Nazis and other white supremacists when they marched in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. So there’s that.
Magnano claims to recognize at least some of the problems with that platform, which she described as silly.
“I’m not antsemitic, I’m not anti-gay. I just want to be clear on that,” Magnano told The Buffalo News last week. “I’ve been meaning to take down this stupid Truth Social thing.”
Oh, good. But she didn’t.
She says she’s not anti-gay, even though she reposted a vile observation about Pride Month.
Regarding a post that dabbled in antisemitism, she said: “I don’t know why I did that.” About another post, she hedged: “That was wrong on my part. If I did retweet that, I apologize for that.” The post referred to Biden with a derogatory term for developmentally challenged people.
It is an odd campaign strategy for a position that aims to influence the lives of the district’s children. Sadly, though, it’s not out of character for what too often passes as conservative politics.
That is not conservative. It is hateful and controlling and fully in line with the autocratic impulses released by the former president.
Like democracy, itself, leading a school district is difficult. It demands thoughtfulness and a willingness to listen and to learn. That is not what is on display from too many school board candidates these days. So, as voters go to the polls today, they should keep this thought in mind: Character counts.
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