Wedge issues rule the debate in Lehigh Valley school board races

PARKLAND, Pa. — Parkland resident Laura Warmkessel said she only grew concerned with what was happening in her local school district when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

She had a positive impression of the Parkland School District where her stepson, Connor Morris, graduated in 2018. Then Morris had to attend classes at the University of Pennsylvania virtually in 2020 because of the contagious virus.

• School board races have become proxy fights over culture war issues
• Republicans and Democrats are facing off on race and gender policies
• Races have become nationalized due to COVID and political actors

“He was Zoom remote, you know, had to wear a mask everywhere,” she said. “They're only each allowed to have like one person over in their house or apartment. I mean, it was crazy. He didn't get an education.”

COVID and the national reckoning over racial justice in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police jolted Warmkessel and others into action. School board meetings became frontlines for battles over mask mandates, while school districts and universities across the country were announcing anti-discrimination policies and equity plans as a result of the protests - including Parkland.

Warmkessel started attending school board meetings even though her son was longer in the district.

“And then I started digging into Parkland and how, you know, we have this belonging and equity and CRT,” she said.

Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is an academic framework that examines how institutions perpetuate racism. It’s usually taught in graduate programs. But it’s become a catch-all for some who believe any discussion of race, inclusiveness or equity, is divisive.

Warmkessel has been endorsed by the Lehigh County chapter for Moms for Liberty this year for her campaign for school board. The organization, which was founded in Florida in 2021, quickly went from fighting masking and vaccines to cultural wedge issues like gender identity, book bans and Critical Race Theory. It opposes protections for LGBTQ and transgender students, books in school libraries with LGBTQ or “pornographic” content and diversity-related material in classrooms.

The organization has hundreds of county chapters across the U.S. with at least 27 chapters in Pennsylvania, including Lehigh and Northampton countries.

The Parkland school board has five positions up for grabs, which could dramatically reshape district policies. Beth Finch is a school board candidate who was identified in news reports in 2021 and 2022 as co-chair of Moms for Liberty. But she told a LehighValleyNews.com reporter she never had that role and declined it when asked. Finch said recently on WAEB's "Bobby Gunther Walsh" show that reshaping policy was the plan for her and her fellow Republicans.

"They should be teaching basics here," she said. "We're talking reading, writing, Math. We're not talking social issues, we're not talking about bringing tenets of CRT through various grants and ways and names like [social emotional learning] and [diversity, equity and inclusion]."

Dan Hopkins is a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s the author of the book “The Increasingly United States” about how local politics has gone national.

Hopkins said school board races have gone from debates over raising property taxes to identity-oriented issues. The confluence of remote learning, he said, which allowed some parents to see into classrooms and found things they didn’t like to see taught, along with political organizers and donors is fueling the division.

“These are issues that play well nationwide, right,” he said. “Because issues of equality and diversity, racial and ethnic marginalization, issues of gender identification are issues that are common across the country, and so can pretty easily animate a wide range of electorates. Then in that way, local school boards become the latest battlefield, in what is a nationalized and polarized contest between two different parties in two different groups of activists.”

Some Republicans in Lehigh Valley are pushing these hot-button issues as part of their election strategy. Lehigh County Republican Committee Chairman Joe Vichot said they’ve learned the GOP candidates have to work together to get elected. To that end, he says the committee has endorsed slates of candidates in Southern Lehigh, Parkland and East Penn School Districts, which are the area’s most contested races.

In the Southern Lehigh school board race, a slate of five GOP candidates signed a pledge designed to tell voters who the “true Republicans” in the race, and distinguish themselves from another group of more moderate Republicans. As part of the pledge, group members agreed to pass policies that would require parents to be notified if a student wants to use different gender pronouns at school, ban "woke" politics and reject curriculum based on so-called critical race theory, which could limit what is taught about certain historical events in the U.S., such as slavery.

“So now, everybody knows where the five that are endorsed by the Republican committee stand there and how they're connected to this particular pledge,” Vichot said. “And hopefully, we'll do a good job of continuing to connect that.”

Another slate of Republican candidates in the East Penn School District has been accused of having ties to Moms for Liberty and a local conservative group, Restoring Excellence in East Penn Education (REEPE), but denies any connection. Those candidates have said any relations with REEPE's leader, Frank Dumbleton, were related to his role in the Lehigh County Republican Committee, and have rejected associations with both groups.

An attendee of a Moms for Liberty public meeting, who opposes the group's efforts, posted on social media that the slate's campaign materials promoting candidates were distributed at the meeting. She said Dumbleton, who was the speaker at the meeting, also referred to the candidates as "our."

Vichot says the committee wanted to use a broader message to attract support in Parkland and East Penn. And he said he’s also concerned that some candidates have changed their party affiliation and also cross-filed to confuse voters.

“One of the things you got to be careful there is that the people that you're really trying to reach in a primary is your party,” Vichot said. “Because that's the only people who can really, truly can vote for you.”

Lehigh County Democratic Committee Chair Lori McFarland said Democrats are countering GOP efforts by forming alliances with people she called “the sane” Republicans, and promoting themselves as the backstop to those kinds of policies being approved in their school district.

“Everybody seems to have some sort of a personal agenda other than educating our kids,” she said. “Which by the way, is the number one function of state government. And it's a constitutional guarantee.”

McFarland said the Democrats are sticking to tried and true methods for winning school elections.

“Our game plan is to release an army of volunteers to door knock, have those one-on-one conversations, getting out mailers and really trying to discuss the issues and present the issues,” she said. “So voters have a better understanding of what they're up against.”

The election of school board members in Southern Lehigh, East Penn and Parkland school districts could dramatically alter the kind of policies members approve for tens of thousands of students. Dan Hopkins said he wouldn’t be surprised if people moved on from fighting over school board policies after a while. But for those candidates who win a four-year term, their impact on children could last long after Election Day.