Letters to the Editor for Feb. 10, 2022

Attack on public schools is coordinated effort to destabilize

The attack on public schools around the country, scripted and funded by national groups eager to exploit cultural anxiety and weariness with the pandemic, isn’t just happening elsewhere. It’s happening here, and has been since last spring. Black-and-yellow clad Proud Boys and allied extremists group members are turning up at school board meetings and disrupting them. The Jan. 25 meeting of the Washougal School Board, for example, was adjourned because the Proud Boys in attendance wouldn’t put on masks. By refusing to follow Board policy, they essentially seized control of the agenda and deprived law-abiding citizens the chance to present comments to the Board. After the walkout on Monday of approximately 100 students at Washougal High School over the state mask mandate – a walkout, by the way, fully accommodated by the school administration – our local anti-public school group, the Washougal Moms and Skamania Defenders, put out a call on its Telegram account for “information” (that is, dirt) on the high school principal, whom they’ve bizarrely decided to claim is “racist.” They asked that anyone possessing “information” send it to the group “incognito” via an untraceable email address. Skullduggery and gaslighting in the service of the Moms’ far-right political and fundamentalist religious agenda is the order of the day, it would seem. Conspiracy theories, personal attacks, smears, harassment, the new and alarming presence of hate groups in our civic life – it’s all part of a coordinated effort to destabilize and ultimately destroy public schools as a foundational institution in American life. This isn’t a guess or a supposition; it’s right there online, in the group’s own words. As a community, the time for a decision has come. We must, as a body, step up and say, “Enough, no more.” Whatever your position on masks or any other topic, we all surely believe in decency. We all surely believe that some types of behavior are incompatible with democratic civil society. We call for mature and respectful discourse, and for an end to the histrionic attacks on our teachers, administrators, and school board.