Meg Schroeder was visibly emotional as she introduced herself to the school board as a mom of three kids in three schools.
“I’ve never done this,” she said, her voice breaking. “But I feel so very passionate and that’s why I’m here.”
In recent weeks, the Wake County Board of Education’s bimonthly public comment sessions have increasingly become a forum for conservative political vitriol and viral social media moments. Moms for Liberty and Michele Morrow, the far-right candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, have been rallying their supporters to disrupt school board meetings over issues like graphic content in books. Recently, a teacher was singled out for wearing a tutu during school spirit week. But now, parents like Schroeder and the Wake County PTA are fighting back, bringing their supporters out in numbers to speak against book banning and to support school staff.
At the Wake school board’s September 17 meeting, an Athens Drive High School student named Lorena Benson told the nine board members that her English teacher had assigned a short story that Benson said contained “graphic, incestual sexual language” that made her uncomfortable. A video of her two-minute speech spread across social media and landed on the Wake County Moms for Liberty Facebook page, where the moderator encouraged parents to “contact your child’s teacher and make sure you know EVERYTHING they are reading.”
At the next school board meeting, a conservative Wake Forest pastor named John Amanchukwu staged a protest during the public comment period, yelling “Justice for Lorena Benson!” and refusing to leave the podium after his speaking time elapsed. A large group of Morrow supporters wearing T-shirts emblazoned with her name clapped and cheered for Amanchukwu as a guard handcuffed him and removed him from the meeting.
Morrow was in the room and had planned the stunt with Amanchukwu ahead of time. In an e-blast to her supporters the day before, she asked them to cancel their plans and join her and Amanchukwu at the meeting.
“We need 50+ people there, in my shirts, standing behind John outside as he gives an interview to the press,” Morrow’s message to the Wake Forest Area Republican Club read. “This is the greatest ‘commercial’ for our campaign and it is FREE!”
Morrow and Amanchukwu did not respond to the INDY’s request for comment.
Two weeks later, the Wake chapter of Moms for Liberty—a far right group that advocates book bans and anti-LGBTQ school policies—shared a photo of a male teacher, Adam Chu, at Martin Magnet Middle School wearing a long tutu-style skirt during spirit week. The post called the teacher “perverse” and asked group members to speak about it during public comment at the next school board meeting.
Chu took the attacks in stride, telling The News & Observer, “I agree with the Moms for Liberty that I was totally not pulling off the tutu. Not my best look.”
Members of Moms for Liberty did attend the October 15 meeting to talk about the tutu, disparage the school board, and baselessly accuse public school teachers of grooming students. But they were outnumbered—for the first time in weeks—by a different group of public commenters.
Schroeder, wearing a red Briarcliff Elementary hoodie, explained that her kids have been in Wake public schools for 11 years. She’s also worked as a long-term and daily substitute teacher within the school system. She voiced major concerns about House Bill 10, a state bill that would divert nearly $100 million in public school funding toward private school vouchers next year if it becomes law.
“I have seen firsthand what it looks like to be understaffed, underfunded, and undersupported,” she said. “I am a newly single mom of these three kids and I need these schools, these teachers, these bus drivers. Please don’t take any more money from our schools.”
One after another, parents of students in Wake public schools took the podium to protest HB 10, praise public school teachers, and call for better school funding. (Wake County Public Schools are chronically underfunded by the state legislature and the county government must fill the funding gap each year.)
“Every time I send my child into her school I am literally flooded with gratitude because I know that she is surrounded by dedicated, talented professional educators,” Carrie Whitaker, a mom to a Wake County Public Schools elementary schooler, told the board.
“The voices that might be ranting about book content, or about what a teacher wore on spirit day—those voices are distractions from what really matters.”
Whitaker urged the board to stay focused on school safety, public school funding, and teacher pay.
As the commenters took turns going up to speak, Marie Dexter smiled and whispered words of encouragement to them from her seat near the back of the room.
Dexter is president of the Wake PTA Council, a nonpartisan, all-volunteer organization that oversees the nearly 200 parent-teacher associations in Wake County. In a conversation with the INDY, she explains that the role of a PTA is “not just fundraising and having fun-runs and spring carnivals.” At a time when far-right groups are routinely questioning the value of public education, PTAs are defending it.
The Wake PTA Council sent out an email blast ahead of the October 15 board meeting asking members to come and speak about positive experiences they’ve had at their kids’ schools, the power of PTA, and the importance of public education.
“We were trying to really pack the room at the last school board meeting to counteract the negativity that’s been happening,” Dexter says. “The more we can say it, hopefully the more people will hear our message, and not just the other side.”
Dexter acknowledges that it’s not easy to countermessage against groups like Moms for Liberty or the Morrow campaign, who latch on to specific incidents to stir up anger toward educators and the school board. The PTA Council tries to stay above the fray, she says.
“We didn’t put out any messaging about the issue at Martin Middle because it’s kind of ridiculous, from our perspective,” Dexter says. “The teacher was wearing a tutu during spirit week. If you guys want to go rant and rave about that, then you go and look a little bit crazy. We’re not going to respond.”
Instead, the PTA Council tries to focus on legislative issues and elections that affect public education.
“We know the state legislature is going to be meeting soon about HB 10, so that’s really why we were focusing on getting the message out last week,” Dexter says. “And of course, we want people to understand the importance of researching their candidates.”
Moms for Liberty has found success sharing videos and calls to action on social media, but that strategy hasn’t been effective for the PTA Council.
“We have tried in the past to do some social media posts,” Dexter says. “But all that has ended up happening is that groups like Moms for Liberty have commented very hateful things, and then we’ve had to take the posts down.”
Moms for Liberty members often invoke the Parents’ Bill of Rights law during school board meetings, especially when they object to certain books being assigned or accessible at school. The legislation is divisive: critics say it discriminates against LGBTQ students and makes it harder for teachers to do their jobs.
The Wake PTA Council offers a different view of “family engagement” in schools—why it matters and what it should look like.
“For us, family engagement is knowing what’s going on in your child’s school, being there to support the teachers, being there to connect with other families, to volunteer in the schools and help our kids with things like reading and writing and math,” Dexter says. “It’s not about parents being able to approve the curriculum.”
As for the part of the Parents’ Bill of Rights that requires the school to notify a parent if their child changes their name or pronouns, “that kind of stuff is just hurtful to our students,” Dexter says. “If they can’t talk about that at home and school is their safe place to talk about that, we want them to have somewhere to go to be able to express who they really are.”
Dexter believes in the power of the PTA Council to shift the narrative around Wake County Public Schools, but she also acknowledges that PTAs have their flaws.
“The difficulty with PTA is that there’s a very stereotypical view of a white mom who doesn’t work, who’s at the school all the time doing stuff,” Dexter says.
She hopes to encourage more engagement from dads and Black and Hispanic parents in the future, but she knows that barriers exist to participating in a time-consuming volunteer activity like PTA.
For now, Dexter is focused on the upcoming election, where several school board seats as well as the state superintendent of public instruction position are on the ballot. She wants to maintain a consistent PTA presence at school board meetings past election day.
“If a certain candidate does win the superintendent position, I am sure that we will be busier than ever with our advocacy pushes,” she says. “But even if the other candidate wins, we’re still going to be taking positions and passing resolutions on important issues.”
Chloe Courtney Bohl is a corps member for Report for America. Reach her at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].