Rep. Ed DeLaney: Creating little red school districts in Indiana

The hard right has struggled to upend K-12 education with its claims of rampant sexualization of our kids via bad books and excessive detail offered during sex education. Parents don’t buy it, nor do voters.

The good folks in Hamilton County rejected such attacks and left moderates in charge of their schools. Maybe they liked their experience with great facilities, high college-going rates, and a reputation for excellence in sports and academics. Unfortunately for the fanatics, their combination of interest-group funding, Republican Party endorsements and rage did not get enough foes of our schools onto the school boards to suit them.

So those who resent public education, even when it works, have come to the court of last resort: the Indiana General Assembly. We are moving backward on two fronts. A bill to make school board elections partisan is sitting on the goal line as of this writing . A separate bill to tie up school boards with micro-management of sex education is on the 10-yard line. Let’s look at these two ideas separately and then together.

Partisan school board elections: Virtually all of our public school districts have elected boards. In the elections, members are chosen from candidates who are nonpartisan, i.e. their candidacies are not identified with a political party. This keeps the choice of board leaders out of the scrum of partisan politics. It also keeps partisan behavior out of the management of our schools. Issues of curriculum, management and finance are decided on their merits and are not made into trophies celebrating partisan victories. Board members can have shifting alliances, looking at issues on their merits. There is no need for a scorecard as to which political party won.

By a vote of 54-40 on Senate Bill 287, the Republican supermajority in the Indiana House of Representatives has joined the push to upend this. It has drafted a rickety new electoral method. Current members might not want to serve in this new environment. Candidates will not face a primary election but can self-identify by party, subject to a limited veto by the unelected party chair. Candidates also have the option of not identifying with a party, leaving a blank in any space allocated for listing a party. The blank space will signify “that the candidate elects not to disclose any affiliation with a political party or that the candidate is not affiliated with a political party and does not identify as an independent candidate.” If this doesn’t lead to voter confusion, who knows what would? Presumably, hard-core partisans will know whom to vote for.

The war on sex education: The hard right is frustrated by the failure of its attempts to disrupt and demean our public schools with false claims of sexualization of the curriculum. So, it wants to compel an annual in-depth review of sex education by the school board as opposed to continued, sensitive management of this by school administrators.

Our presumably partisan board members will have to meet annually to approve a laundry list of materials and procedures if they wish to have sex education at all. They must also decide which weeks this dangerous matter can be taught, whether boys and girls can be taught together, and even whether the teacher will be male or female. Who wants to run for an office facing this challenge? Well, a partisan or a hard-core opponent of sex education. Of course, if the advocates for sexual ignorance are frustrated by board votes, they have an absolute right to keep their kid home.

The bottom line? Do you want a “red” school board, a “blue” one or just the decent one you already have?•

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DeLaney, an Indianapolis attorney, is a Democrat representing the 86th District in the Indiana House of Representatives. Send comments to [email protected].

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