To the Editor,

In the real-world lives of our children and community, I think Boards of Ed are now more important than the President, Congress, Supreme Court, or any other institution.

The pandemic of the past two years necessitated parents becoming more involved in their children’s education and what they found may have been horrifying to some, like myself, who believe academia adjudicated America as being systemically unwelcoming and racist.

I believe its solution was to focus on students’ physical and social differences … then divide them into bigots and victims. This ideology was then believed to be encoded into curricula and delivered by “professionally developed” teachers.

I think many parents found this ideology permeated every aspect of academia from Middle School to Post-Graduate … from the American Federation of Teachers to the Nat’l Assoc of School Boards. “Cancel Culture,” “Wokeism,” and indiscriminate charges of racism apparently dominated and in certain cases actively suppressed opposing points of view.

As those parents looked around, they found this approach produced tribalism, recrimination, and dysfunction as opposed to unity. But in protesting it, they may have found themselves largely on their own.

If our children, schools, and culture are to be saved, it will be thru local BOEs. They alone understand the Byzantine world of academia enough to instill a modicum of sanity for the protection of our children.

This is now happening across the nation. If the School Board in San Francisco can be reformed as it was last week, the writing is on the wall for radicals everywhere.

Our BOE contains some fine people who have inherited a terrible array of problems not of their making. Some have been subject to outrageous incivility and intimidation even before the previous election.

Support the reformers on our BOE as they strive to promote true education and defend our children from radicalism of any stripe. They are more important than any other of our institutions.

Tony Keating

Newtown