This series explores how public schools are now a battleground in the culture war of U.S. politics. Capital & Main will report from the classrooms and communities being divided as school boards and legislatures increasingly adopt book bans, limit the teaching of race and history and pass policies targeting gender identity in schools.
Not far from a birthplace of the Black Lives Matter movement, a school district convulses after Black history and literature classes are canceled.
Using money, mass mobilizations and culture wars, church leaders get their members — and sometimes themselves — elected to office.
Tim Thompson engineered a school board takeover by recruiting and financing candidates who run against race, religion and gender identity policies.
Danny Gonzalez, one of three members elected in 2022 who voted to report transgender students to their parents and ban critical race theory, has left the board.
Culture wars rage as school board puts $93,000 in new library books in storage and bans titles by Judy Blume and Dr. Seuss.
Students and teachers say Temecula’s far-right school board endangers free speech as well as their safety.
Residents with different agendas united this year to remove members who attacked teaching on race and LGBTQ+ topics. Some Black recall supporters say the community has failed for decades to fight racism.
It may take state supreme courts and new legislation to find a cease-fire in the K-12 battles over parental rights and student privacy.
Opposition builds as parents’ group stokes nation’s culture wars.
