These Sacramento-area parents were fed up with COVID closures. Now they’re running for office
Jen Tarbox’s two children were in high school when the coronavirus pandemic shut schools across the world. In pivotal teenage years, they lost out on sports, activities and in-person classes at Folsom High School.
Tarbox, a social media marketer and the wife of an Air National Guard airman, felt the closures dragged on for far too long. She took action by showing up at her local school board again and again to press Folsom Cordova Unified trustees to reopen classrooms when statewide policies restricted in-person learning.
“I was fighting to get kids back in school, and I was focusing on the demographic of students who were really struggling,” said Tarbox.
Now, she’s among the many parents who are running for seats on California school boards this fall in part because of their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a wave of candidates who became active in politics in a three-year period when more parents began attending school board meetings on Zoom and caught a glimpse of class instruction during their childrens’ online learning.
While schools are receiving both positive attention and scrutiny from the new candidates, Troy Flint of the California School Board Association said the activism is a positive trend for education.
“The additional criticism may be difficult, but the fact that people are engaged is preferable to apathy and over time with diligent and transparent interaction,” Flint said. “School boards can channel that engagement in a positive manner.”
Some of the campaigns have a noticeable GOP tilt, reflecting conservatives’ frustration with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s COVID-19 policies. Those candidates, like Tarbox, felt children would have been better off if they returned to school earlier.
Tarbox says she’s “not a politician,” but she’s backed by a slate of well-known Republicans, including Assemblyman Kevin Kiley.
“Politics have weaseled their way into the education system and I don’t believe they belong there,” Tarbox said.
Republicans sense opportunity in school board races all over the state because of the parent activism COVID-19 inspired. Parent Revolt, a program started by the California Republican Party, recruits and trains parents to run for school board positions. Not every parent running on a conservative platform has participated in Parent Revolt, but the messaging is certainly similar.
“Parents matter, and providing a quality education that’s supportive of children is more important than supporting left-wing groups, special interests and teachers unions,” according to the program’s website.
The California Democratic Party does not have a comparable statewide organization recruiting school board candidates, although Democratic parents also are making first-time campaigns for office.
Local chapters of the California Teachers Association, the education union that is a key Democratic Party ally, are making endorsements in school board races. The broader union, however, has not created a statewide campaign to push back against the slates of local Republican candidates.
Republicans, teacher unions pick opposing candidates
Much of the pandemic frustration parent groups expressed in 2020 and 2021 has tempered this school year, at least in communities where Democrats outnumber Republicans. Schools are mostly back to normal with dances, sports and PTO meetings. That gives space for candidates to shift their energy to different topics.
Tarbox, for instance, wants to focus on ensuring that police officers remain at Folsom and Rancho Cordova campuses, and identifying more district support for special education programs.
She’s getting support from the Sacramento County Republican Party, Kiley, Kiley’s chief of staff Josh Hoover, the Folsom Chamber of Commerce and the Sacramento County Deputy Sheriff’s Association.
Tarbox is running against Kara Lofthouse for the seat Hoover is leaving as he campaigns for an Assembly seat. Lofthouse, a teacher, has support from the Folsom Cordova Education Association.
Ben Avey is another right-leaning parent making a run for a Sacramento County school board at the San Juan Unified School District. He’s a former Republican who left the party during the Trump administration, although he kept support from local GOP leaders like former Assemblyman Roger Niello.
Avey became active during the pandemic when he created the advocacy group San Juan Parents Association in response to the school closures.
He said that children, including his three elementary-school-aged children, felt deeply decisions made by the school board. Four of the five trustees do not have students in the district.
Avey wants to see more transparency from board members.
“School districts are defined by thousands of small decisions, and rarely do we see big decisions come to the board,” he said. “And that’s why we missed it. We weren’t paying attention to the thousands of small decisions that came in the past decade.”
He’s running against Ray Ward, a local entrepreneur and community volunteer whose adult daughter attended San Juan schools. He has support from the San Juan Teachers Association and the local chapter of the California School Employees Association.
GOP out to claim seats in Placer County
Outside of Sacramento County, parents energized by what they thought was a mishandling of the pandemic are running increasingly political campaigns for a typically nonpartisan role.
In Dry Creek Joint Elementary School District, the J-Team, three conservative candidates whose first names begin with J decided to run as a unit to unseat three veteran members. The district serves Antelope and Roseville.
Jon Fenske, a semi-retired civil engineer, is running on the GOP-endorsed pro-parent platform along with Jean Pagnone, owner of Liberty Firearms Training, and Jason Walker, a community services officer at the Placer County Sheriff’s office.
The J-Team has endorsements from Kiley and the Placer County GOP. Jonathan Zachreson, who founded the group Reopen California Schools in June 2020 is backing the J-Team, too. Zachreson is a candidate in the neighboring Roseville City School Board.
Kiley has played a major role in supporting parents and local candidates. He’s attended several campaign launch events, including Fenske’s, and recently launched what he calls “Champions for Kids,” a directory of pro-parent conservative candidates across the state that he’s endorsed.
“When the GOP asked me why I wanted to do this … I told them I don’t see this as an election, I see this as a righteous cause for the soul of America,” Fenske said at his campaign kickoff event on Aug. 24.
He criticized California school lessons that highlight gay and lesbian rights activists, saying they promoted “sexual confusion.”
“I am a big believer that parents have the chief power over their children’s health choices,” Fenske told The Sacramento Bee.
Fenske has put about $2,000 of his money into the campaign. He said he believes in “local control” and giving parents the final say about what happens in their kids’ schools.
“We’re all motivated to do what’s right for the children,” he said. “We don’t have aspirations to run for governor or anything. … We come from a very pure place.”
Teachers questioned in Rocklin
In neighboring Rocklin, more conservative parents are running for the first time and raking in those same big GOP endorsements. Kari Hamilton is one of them. Tiffany Saathoff and Dereck Counter – two conservative school board members running for re-election – both endorsed Hamilton, who was an active presence at the district school board meetings during the first two years of the pandemic and who has two children in the district.
In October 2021, she approached the school board with concerns about a Social Emotional Learning curriculum that “talks about intergenerational racism, white supremacy, a whole gamut of critical race theory type stuff.”
In March 2022, when nearly 200 Rocklin Unified school teachers walked out after the school board held a special meeting to drop the state’s mask mandate, Hamilton called those teachers out for participating in “crazy union ideals” and “shenanigans.”
“They should have shown up and done their jobs. … If you don’t want to teach, find another job,” she said.
Parents to the left of Hamilton are running for the same seat, and referencing the pandemic shutdowns from a different perspective.
One of her opponents, Michelle Sutherland, is running her third campaign after losing by a narrow margin in 2020, and has been interested in running for school board since before the pandemic. Also an active presence in school board meetings, Sutherland was disappointed at what she thought were political debates distracting from immediate student needs.
“It’s OK to not agree on things, but focusing on education – that’s my goal,” she said. “We need to focus on education. … I think that sets an example of our community for our kids, and what we want to promote. Not being pro-mask or anti-mask, but following the guidance and getting back to talking about what our kids need.”
Sutherland, who grew up in Rocklin and has three kids in the district, is also wary of the ways that conservative parent candidates dismiss teachers’ work.
“People move to Rocklin because of the schools,” she said.
“That’s a huge part of the community. In my mind, what makes schools great? It’s not just the facilities or the books, it’s who’s teaching the material. I strongly feel that the teachers in Rocklin are excellent. I wonder about some of that messaging that comes out – it really is our kids interacting with these teachers that makes the schools great.”
This story was originally published September 28, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
