Another Sartell school board election is near, which means yet another high-visibility local election.
This November, I will be voting for Chelsea Thielen, Tricia Meling and Matthew Moehrle. I will not be voting for the other candidates because of the groups that appear to back them and the actions they have taken. These organizations include Kids Over Politics, Patriots United for Common Sense School Board Members, and rocksandcows.org, to name a few.
The main reason I oppose KOP is their history of challenging books. If other communities across the nation are evidence, such campaigns go too far and end up jeopardizing books that teach us a lot about topics we all need to learn a lot more about, such as those involving race, gender, sexual orientation, disability and more.
Challenges aside, one must question what kind of high schooler would be bookish enough to read such a novel yet be impressionable enough to adopt some “deviant” behavior as a result of reading a graphic scene (me apparently, since I have read a number of sex scenes from novels while in high school, and look at all the damage it has caused).
Another reason I oppose these groups and their affiliated board members is the damage they have done to our faculty. Teachers being named, shamed and threatened is behavior reminiscent of closed societies, like the dictatorships we Americans used to despise, at least until Donald Trump started praising Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin. We are truly privileged to have our teachers and staff, and it is a shame we lost one because of the behavior of a school board member elected in 2022.
Some have cited concerns about “woke” indoctrination involving LGBTQIA+ issues or Critical Race Theory as justification for their efforts in support of KOP and these other groups’ policies. I will not waste time explaining why this is not indoctrination, since I have failed to see or hear decent arguments addressing the points in my previous column dedicated to defining indoctrination.
As for education about the LGBTQIA+ community and people of different races and beliefs, I believe it is vital to the process of healing America. Opposition to programs meant to explore diversity and equity hinders that process. I find that opposition irritating, since it entails non-marginalized groups touting their own experiences as evidence that racism, sexism and bigotry are negligible enough to be ignored, all while those marginalized are screaming otherwise.
Coming back to school boards, I imagine effective ones work with each other and school staff professionally, getting issues resolved directly by following the chain of command. Professional school board members would not inappropriately politicize such matters by going public, especially via a biased group that uses copy-paste rhetoric to inject politics into our community dialogue while threatening anyone who disagrees. In other words, I expect a school board to function the way a military unit does. This makes the recent breakdown in board functionality ironic given the background of one member.
Additionally, school boards are supposed to be completely apolitical, yet groups like “Patriots United for Common Sense School Board Members” – which definitely leans a certain way based on the perceived need to explicitly advertise its patriotism – are providing money for school board campaigns. Why is an anonymous group (try looking them up online) providing $925 in contributions?
Thus, based on the groups that have endorsed, supported or platformed the other candidates, I think it’s critical to vote for Thielen, Meling and Moehrle. They alone cannot undo the damage done, but they can prevent the scale from tipping away from decency, civility and respect for all our students and educators, regardless of their identities or views.
Janagan Ramanathan is a Sartell High School alum, former U.S. Naval Academy midshipman and current aerospace engineering major at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
