In her official capacity as board member, from the podium of the CUSD80 board, Lindsay Love praised a Democratic Party aligned student organization.
Without any hint of an objection from other board members and board candidates attending a recent board meting, Lindsay Love, perhaps the most radical far left board member of the Chandler Unified School District, CUSD80, engaged in overtly partisan politics, right from the podium of the school board. She called out and praised a Democratic Party aligned student group, Keep Arizona Blue Student Coalition. According to Love this group has members which are recent graduates of CUSD80. Love is still donning a black face mask in board meetings.
How do students that hold differing political opinions see something like this? Would they fear reprisals from the school board, a government body, should they ever voice their opinions out in the open? Love also referred to the "work we have done here" in advancing civic engagement. This may raise concern among parents worried that school districts are indoctrinating their children with partisan political beliefs that many people think have no place in the classroom.
Far left board candidate Patti Serrano also wore a facemask while sitting in the audience. Teachers union presidents Katie Nash, a biology teacher at CUSD80's Chandler High, also attended wearing a black face mask.
Most egregiously perhaps is the group's position against school choice, aiming to deprive children of the chance to get financial support to attend a school of their choice, rather than being forced to attend public schools.
The arrangement in most places in the United States is, and has been for a long time, that families pay property taxes to pay for public schools. If they want to attend a school that is not a public school, they still have to pay those property taxes. Other school options are hence often financially prohibitive for families as they are not able to pay for both public and private schools.
A recent bill signed by the Governor and passed on strictly partisan lines - no Democrat voted for it - expands so called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, ESA, to all students in Arizona. This amounts to a school voucher worth around $7,000 per student per year. Although public schools receive about double this amount per student per year, the voucher somewhat equals the playing field on which private, pod, micro and home schools have to compete against public schools. It will enable a larger number of students to attend a school of their choice by broadening their financial options.
Teachers unions are currently engaged in a signature drive, Save our Schools Arizona, in order to stall the bill and put it on the ballot with hopes to defeat it for good there. Parents groups such as Decline to Sign Power2Parents are fighting to preserve the bill.
Video of Lindsay Love's partisan political speech from the podium
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