School board races take partisan turn in Iowa's suburbs

DES MOINES — In Iowa’s suburban communities, school board campaigns are brewing around battle lines that reflect state-level politics — parental involvement, social issues, curriculum and library book restrictions are central in these races that will determine how schools implement new laws that bring big changes to education.

Conservative candidates campaigning in Johnston, Marion and elsewhere have centered their campaigns on parental involvement, steering away from progressive social issues in school curriculum. Liberal groups, meanwhile, hope candidates they back can minimize the implementation of laws they say will harm LGBTQ students.

The races technically are nonpartisan, but they’ve become increasingly partisan in recent years as disagreements over school curriculum, transgender students and COVID-19 measures have galvanized education politics at the state and local level.

Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law a major education bill this year, passed by Republican lawmakers, that banned books with sexual content from school libraries, prohibited instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation and required the school to notify parents if a student requests to use a different name or set of pronouns, among other changes.

Those restrictions are set in law, but how a district decides to interpret and implement them falls to the school board, said Keenan Crow, a lobbyist for LGBTQ advocacy group One Iowa. One Iowa Action, the group’s policy arm, endorsed school board candidates for the first time this year.

“After we took such a beating during the legislative session, really one of the only ways to mitigate the damage was to get folks on those school boards that are going to interpret and implement these laws in some of the least harmful possible ways,” Crow said.

Crow said that would include keeping restrictions on gender identity and sexual orientation to kindergarten through sixth grade, rather than extending them through 12th grade. The law also bans books from school libraries that depict or describe any of a list of sex acts, and Crow said more conservative school boards could interpret that more broadly than needed and pull books with LGBTQ characters unnecessarily.

Local chapters of Moms for Liberty — a national organization that advocates for conservative school policies as well as parental involvement in schools — also plan to endorse candidates in some of the six counties where the group is active.

Jennifer Turner, the chair of the Polk County chapter of Moms for Liberty, said the group is looking to endorse candidates who will keep parents involved in the district’s process.

“We want school board members that want to partner with parents,” she said. “We want to make a partnership between schools and parents, so I think that’s our No. 1 quality.”

The left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center this year designated Moms for Liberty as an anti-government “extremist group,” a distinction the group disputes. In Iowa, Moms for Liberty was involved in pushing for the law that prohibited instruction of gender and sexual orientation in early grades and banned certain books from school libraries.

Turner said candidates’ positions on those issues are less important now that the law was settled at the state level, but she wants to support candidates that advocate for transparency in all aspects of education.

The Linn-Mar School District in Marion made national headlines last year over a policy that was intended to support the district’s transgender students. Students could request to be referred to by a different name or set of gender pronouns, and the decision to notify the parents was left up to the students -- in accordance with state policy guidance at the time.

Parents upset over the policy met with Reynolds and U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson in private, and it prompted a lawsuit from a group of parents. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has campaigned on education issues, criticized the policy in a presidential primary debate last Wednesday.

Now, with four open seats on the Linn-Mar school board, division over that policy is a major issue in the campaigns.

Bret Nilles, the chair of the Linn County Democrats, said local Democrats are organizing around candidates he thinks will support the district’s LGBTQ students and “take a reasonable look” at implementing the book restrictions.

“We're encouraging all our members to help them in terms of volunteering, but that's really the extent of it,” he said. “We're really trying to leave it up to the members of the school district because I think they're going to make the best decision.”

Geralyn Jones, chair of the Linn County chapter of Moms for Liberty, said the group plans to endorse a handful of candidates, including in the Linn-Mar district, but it has not yet announced the endorsements. Some candidates who indicated they aligned with the group’s views did not want to be publicly endorsed because of its negative public image, Jones said.

When it comes to LGBTQ instruction and book restrictions, Jones said she thinks the law was properly handled at the state level, but she wants to ensure candidates will enact policies that are in line with the law.

Echoing Turner, Jones said what’s most important is electing candidates who will involve parents in the school board’s decision-making.

“Moms for Liberty is pro-parental rights,” she said. “We are pro-age appropriate books in our schools. We’re pro-parent, we’re pro-teacher, and we’re pro-student. And anything to the contrary is simply untrue.”

Fundraising expected to swell

The rise in political division at the school board level has brought the campaigns from quiet, small-dollar affairs to multi-thousand dollar operations comparable with statehouse races, said Tim Nelson, a campaign consultant who is working with two liberal candidates for the Johnston school board.

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Campaigns in the Des Moines suburbs need to raise between $5,000 and $15,000 to remain competitive, he said. Winners, however, are not paid to serve on school boards.

“The amount of power that these boards have and the kind of vote that you need to turn out, moving forward, they need to be treated like state legislative races,” Nelson said. “They need to have that kind of money being involved.”

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Nilles said he expects more outside spending to be involved in the Linn-Mar races, especially given the national attention the district has drawn. He said he recently saw a campaign flyer from a group associated with Pence that advocated for parental rights in education.

Jones ran unsuccessfully for the Linn-Mar school board in 2021. She said the average campaign spending then was about $2,000, while candidates this year are already raising more than $4,000.

“We have a huge strategy and a plan that’s going forward, and I don’t think that school board elections are what they once were,” she said.