Year in review: Grassroots parents group became a political force in 2022 to oust status quo school boards
Tori Richards
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A grassroots parent group seeking to delete critical race theory from schools has now expanded into a national political force to be reckoned with, as half its 500 candidates took seats on school boards.
“It’s a parent revolution,” said Tiffany Justice, cofounder of Moms for Liberty. “You have a whole new group of people entering into government and politics, these are normal people who have lives and families. They genuinely care about our country and want to serve. It’s an exciting time to be an American.”
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The nonprofit organization is just a year old and operates on a shoestring budget, but fielded candidates in 19 states that have been “firing superintendents right and left,” Justice said. The group was founded after angry parents descended on school board meetings nationwide, demanding a halt to mask mandates and COVID-19 school closures.
“The only power you have is to hire your superintendent and you direct him through policy. …They have liberal school boards with liberal superintendents that haven’t made any good policy,” she said. “Boards are changing their superintendents sometimes at their very first meeting.”
This happened in Berkeley County, South Carolina, where newly elected board members created a majority that fired Superintendent Deon Jackson during the first meeting and replaced him with another person. Jackson called the move a “plot” and threatened to sue.
Board members said Jackson was fired for deteriorating relationships with school police and child protection agencies, among other things.
Moms for Liberty has a philosophy aimed at ferreting school policies promoting critical race theory, transgenderism, LGBTQ rights, and sexuality issues. Its group’s 50% national win rate jumped to 80% in Florida, where a donor put up $50,000 to combat the huge war chests of teachers’ unions that fought for incumbents.
“Nationally, we had no money in our PAC,” said Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich. “In Florida, we had 65 candidates we endorsed with a little money.”
Descovich pointed to the California Teachers Union, which backed its candidates with $2.8 million in funding. Despite no money, 28 out of 50 Moms for Liberty candidates won their seats in the Golden State. If the organization could start raising funds, the potential for success is unlimited, Descovich said.
“We are thrilled with the results from this year’s elections and we are just getting started,” she said. “There are 13,000 school districts in the country and teachers unions have a presence in every single one. We have a lot of work to do. We have a long way to go.”
Justice and Descovich, who both won school board seats in 2016 to clean up the districts in Florida, initially created a buzz about Moms for Liberty on right-leaning news outlets as they blasted school districts that refused to reopen classrooms during the pandemic. This eventually spread to headlines in dozens of mainstream news organizations on topics ranging from unisex restrooms to pornographic library books.
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The women are seeing their numbers grow as parents obtain training to start new chapters and then turn communities upside down with new blood in status-quo school boards whose policies have not been questioned in decades.
“People saw that there were policies that hurt them, hurt their kids, and weren’t about true American values and our founding principles,” Justice said.