Learning from Ottawa County: Why Forest Hills Area Residents Cannot Afford to Look Away from Public School Attacks
Forest Hills Public Schools’ November 2022 Board of Education election largely resulted in pro-FHPS and pro-public education candidates winning most of the open seats. Support FHPS and fellow residents who love and back our schools exhaled a small sigh of relief as the results formalized, but one of our biggest takeaways from this midterm cycle was the need to clue even more neighbors into the ongoing attack on our public schools and local government.
What to Know about the 2024 School Board Race
There will be at least two seats (of seven) on the 2024 ballot and what we know is that anti-public education and anti-FHPS “Moms for Liberty” candidates hope to turn the barge to chip away at and win one-by-one to achieve a majority takeover. Their goals are to ban books they don’t like, limit the truthful teaching of history, and bully diverse and LGBTQ students in favor of pushing “neutrality.”
From the beginning, Support FHPS has fought to protect the integrity of our top-ranked district by keeping politics OUT of our nonpartisan Board of Education and focusing on locally relevant issues.
We worked hard to help keep pro-FHPS candidates on our school board in 2022, but there’s ongoing advocacy to do.
New Local Disruption Proves Why We Must Stay Engaged
We’re closely connected with public school district supporters across Kent and Ottawa Counties, and unfortunately, their Board of Education election results didn’t deliver the same pro-public education outcomes.
Time will tell how newly elected trustees influence their districts, but we are already getting a preview of what can happen when citizens don’t plug in to local government happenings, candidates, and their “promises” to overhaul things until it’s too late.
Over in Ottawa County, mere days into new school board members and county commissioners taking office, steps have been taken to:
Cancel relationships and memberships with trusted and respected public school associations like the Michigan Association of School Boards to pivot to extreme “Moms for Liberty / Moms for America” – backed associations
Remove any references to diversity and citizens being welcome in their communities
Side-step ethics and bylaws and re-write them, shutting out and blocking citizens who question their procedures
Make closed-door decisions and back-alley agreements with un-vetted service providers
Kent County residents may not realize that county commission candidates attempted to pull the same well-coordinated and family funded Ottawa Impact campaign under the name “Kent Contract.” Fortunately, only a handful of these candidates won so they do not have the same authority that the commissioners now do in Ottawa, however those who won in our Cascade/Ada area are committed to upholding their promises to disrupt our school districts and have begun attending school board meetings. The Kent Contract county commission candidates operated in lock-step with local school board candidates.
During the 2022 FHPS Board of Education election, we sounded the alarm about the sad case study at a similarly named Forest Hills school district in Cincinnati, Ohio, which was taken over by mostly anti-public education, anti-diversity candidates. With the outcome in Ottawa, the examples continue creeping closer into our own backyard.
The writing is on the wall – or, shall we say, on the social media pages of locals and their attack groups, that they plan to snowball their enthusiasm for an anti-public school platform heading into 2024. When you hear fallacy arguments about books and diversity – that’s them at work.
How To Help Forest Hills Public Schools Between Election Cycles
Turn to SupportFHPS.org and our social media channels for ongoing dialogue about what’s happening in Forest Hills and invite your friends and neighbors to follow along.
Learn about the issues truly affecting our schools, students and educators – not those planted by politicians and cable news talking heads.
• We’re concerned about student and school safety, efforts to ban books, and keeping the perspectives of our educators in administration decisions.
Vote informed when the time comes. Over 50% of people usually do not vote in the school board or county level section of the ballot. And, if they do, data shows people tend to vote for women at the school board level when they don’t know anything else about the candidates on the ballot.
Donate periodically to Support FHPS, even if it’s $5 a month. We need to reach more people next election cycle and it’s easier to give over the course of months or years instead of leading right up into the election.