This is Part 7 of a 14-part series on how to confront leftist indoctrination in your child’s school. If you want to be part of the parental revolution, this series will help you learn how to reorient school systems back toward biblical ethics to ensure our kids can safely learn, grow, and be nurtured in environments that prioritize knowledge over dogma, truth over lies, and virtue over vice.

 

Engaging with a school board is the absolute minimum requirement for parents and community members who want to empower them and protect children. Typically, if your interaction is restricted solely to mere engagement, the board is mostly friendly toward parents. Nevertheless, engagement is a baseline skill set and operational method for initial and sustained engagement.

In order to use it effectively, parents should conduct some preliminary research on the individuals who sit on their respective school boards.

Research

Begin by following your school board member’s social media accounts and reviewing their public commentary. If they lock their account, that typically means the individual is unlikely to value transparency. Therefore, you should automatically rate them “3” or lower. 

Create Google alerts for keywords, names, and phrases so that when commentary on CRT, DEI, Radical Gender Theory, and any other radical ideology takes place, search engines will highlight it and let you know so you can keep up with the latest developments on these issues.

Attend at least one (preferably two or three) meetings to put together a basic profile of the individuals on your school board. This should make note of temperaments, priorities, and how the individual members engage with the public.

Work with your child, your friends, or your support network to put together information on potentially worrisome content, curricula, or activities in your school system. This is a vital part of the process.

Contact

You should contact any school board member (by phone or email) whom you believe or know to be a “1” or “2” about the potentially worrisome content, curricula, or activities in your school system. Provide as much detail as you can about your concerns, and then evaluate their response.

Afterward, make sure to introduce yourself to that individual board member either before or after the next meeting you attend.

Engage

Sign up to speak at the next meeting where the topic of concern will be discussed. You can sometimes do this online, though it is fairly common for speaking slots to be secured onsite at the meeting. So arrive early!

When you attend that meeting, make sure to take at least two other individuals with you to show some base level of support. Also, it is always easier to deliver your message when you know multiple people in the room share your concerns.

Make notes before you speak! Write down the most important points you want to convey.

School board meetings almost always limit individual speakers’ time in order to accommodate as many people as possible. This usually ranges anywhere from one to three minutes per person. Construct your comments accordingly in a three-step process:

• Raise the issue of concern. Make it specific, concise, and direct!
• Provide evidence. Briefly explain why this issue is concerning and how you learned about it.
• Make a direct request for resolving the issue.

After the meeting, approach the “1-” or “2”-rated school board members and thank them for allowing you to speak on the issue. Ask them what you should expect to see happen on that topic going forward. Clearly state your expectations, and if necessary, let them know that you plan to engage with other community members or even local media to bring this issue to more people’s attention.

Email the “1-” and “2”-rated school board members the week after the meeting to ask how things are proceeding and when you can expect them to take action to resolve the issue of concern.

Attend every future meeting until the issue is resolved. If you cannot attend, designate someone else to attend on your behalf. School board members, even friendly ones, need to know that you remain present and engaged.

Temperament

It is essential for you to remain level-headed, clear, and direct when engaging with school board members of any rating. Be respectful at all times.

The Board should never kick out a parent or remove someone from a meeting at the engagement level of interaction. If that occurs, a reevaluation of the board (and possibly your methods) is in order.

Maintenance

The relational component for parents is an important element of effecting lasting change and and the enactment of important policies that protect children from radical ideologies and practices. Thank and encourage “1-” and “2”-rated school board members whenever they take appropriate action (whether reactive or proactive) to protect children.

Once the board resolves a particular issue, work with the members to discuss policy changes that can lock in the win going forward, such as prohibiting explicit sexual content in the library or DEI curricula in the classroom.

 

John K. Amanchukwu Sr. is the Amazon bestselling author of Eraced: Uncovering the Lies of Critical Race Theory and Abortion (Salem Books, 2022). He currently serves as the first assistant and youth pastor of Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where he lives with his wife, Crystal, and their three children.

This article has been adapted from his resource, The Cyclone 400 Tool Kit: Protecting Our Children and Reclaiming Our Communities.