National School Boards Association letter to Biden

National School Boards Association 1680 Duke St. FL2, Alexandria, VA 22314-3493 Phone: (703) 838.6722 • Fax: (703) 683.7590 www.nsba.org The leading advocate for public education September 29, 2021 The Honorable Joseph R. Biden President of the United States The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20500 Re: Federal Assistance to Stop Threats and Acts of Violence Against Public Schoolchildren, Public School Board Members, and Other Public School District Officials and Educators Dear Mr. President: America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat. The National School Boards Association (NSBA) respectfully asks for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation. Local school board members want to hear from their communities on important issues and that must be at the forefront of good school board governance and promotion of free speech. However, there also must be safeguards in place to protect public schools and dedicated education leaders as they do their jobs. NSBA believes immediate assistance is required to protect our students, school board members, and educators who are susceptible to acts of violence affecting interstate commerce because of threats to their districts, families, and personal safety. As our school boards continue coronavirus recovery operations within their respective districts, they are also persevering against other challenges that could impede this progress in a number of communities. Coupled with attacks against school board members and educators for approving policies for masks to protect the health and safety of students and school employees, many public school officials are also facing physical threats because of propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula.1 This propaganda continues despite the fact that critical race theory is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K-12 class. On behalf of our state associations and the more than 90,000 school board members who govern our country’s 14,000 local public school districts educating more than 50 million schoolchildren, NSBA appreciates your leadership to end the proliferation of COVID-19 in our communities and our school districts. We also appreciate recent discussions with White House and U.S. Department of Education staff on many critical issues facing public schools, including threats school officials are receiving. 1 The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), “Fact Sheet: Demonstrations over Critical Race Theory in the United States,” July 14, 2021, https://acleddata.com/acleddatanew/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/ACLED_Fact-Sheet_CRT-Demos_2021.pdf.