The Illinois Association of School Boards (IASB) has not yet declared its stance on whether to leave the National Association of School Boards (NASB) in the wake of the latter board's letter to the Biden administration requesting aid and calling parents “domestic terrorists.”
In response to the NASB’s letter, Attorney General Merrick Garland, whom Republicans blocked from the U.S. Supreme Court years earlier, said in a memo such outraged parents are worthy of the FBI’s attention.
School boards are in the headlines like no other time due to recent action regarding continued use of masks.
Across Illinois, parents and children alike are challenging schools to end COVID practices and return schools to as close to pre-COVID life as possible.
The IASB did not respond to an interview request from Prairie State Wire on the topic coming on the heels of a similar Pennsylvania board announcing its disassociation from the NASB.
“The most recent national controversy surrounding a letter to President Biden suggesting that some parents should be considered domestic terrorists was the final straw. This misguided approach has made our work and that of many school boards more difficult,” the Pennsylvania School Boards Association’s letter stating the group’s departure said.
The Pennsylvania board, which is responsible for oversight of the state’s school boards, said Garland’s memo was needlessly biased.
“It has fomented more disputes and cast partisanship on our work on behalf of school directors, when we seek to find common ground and support all school directors in their work, no matter their politics. Now is not the time for more politics and posturing, it is the time for solutions to the many challenges facing education,” the authors wrote.
Many other states' school board associations are expected to follow.
Most recently parents and students have been protesting in Lyons Township and have another protest scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 19 with State Sen. Darren Bailey, a gubernatorial candidate.
School boards across the state and country have been threatened with such tactics as defunding or loss of accreditation if they remove what are increasingly being seen as controversial and what many say are invalid COVID prevention tactics, namely wearing masks and requiring vaccines, such as in Chicago Public Schools where teachers were granted a reprieve.
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