John,
Fourteen years ago, on a school choir trip, I was outed by my peers. I was just 14 years old. The bullying that followed was relentless. But what made it worse was the silence from the adults who were supposed to protect me.
At that time, my school district in Minnesota had a so-called "neutrality policy," which prevented teachers from stepping in to stop anti-LGBTQ harassment. The message was clear: Your safety is a political question. And we're staying out of it.
That year, nine students in my district died by suicide. I nearly became the tenth.
But in my grief, I realized: What we were experiencing wasn't just tragic, it was political.
So, I sued. I became a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against my school district, and I won.
Fast forward to 2025, and I'm once again alarmed by the rising hate and extremism targeting our schools.
Right-wing groups are organizing and winning local school board elections, backed by massive amounts of outside money.
They're turning what should be collaborative conversations about student success into toxic political battlegrounds: book bans, bullying, and censorship. They claim to represent parents, but in reality, they represent a radical minority with a dangerous agenda.
And they're winning because fewer than 10% of voters regularly show up for school board elections, despite 1 in 5 elected officials in the country serve on a school board. That vacuum of participation is exactly what the far-right is counting on.
But here's the good news: We're fighting back.
That's why I founded the School Board Integrity Project. We are recruiting, training, and electing school board candidates who believe in:
- Practicing good governance
- Academic excellence and the freedom to learn
- Schools where every kid belongs
Since I launched SBIP in 2023, we've supported over 500 school board candidates across 38 states, and won 75% of our races. We've also partnered with over 100 organizations nationwide.
The stakes have never been higher. Our school boards are the pillars of our democracy. And the future we choose for our public schools is the future we choose for our country.
