West Bonner County, Idaho, like most of the state, is Trump country. The four-time indicted former president won 73% of the vote in the county in 2020. And, following their MAGA instincts, county voters swept in a radical right-wing school board in the November 2021 elections.
After seeing those two board members work diligently to destroy their schools, county voters overwhelmingly recalled them last Tuesday.
The big 60% recall vote underscored the depth of disgust this conservative community felt for electing candidates who delivered exactly what they promised to do. And yet weirdly, they didn’t like conservative governance when it affected them directly!
Defending themselves in the voter guide, recalled Board Chair Keith Rutledge wrote:
Your vote today will determine the future of our district. Voting AGAINST my recall will keep a conservative majority on the school board that is working hard to improve the outcomes for our district’s children. Voting for my recall will hand control of our district back over to the very same people that are responsible for 60% reading competency rates and call that ‘a success.’
Rutledge’s defense was OH NO THE LIBERALS. Vice Chair Susan Brown, also recalled, was even more unhinged in her voter statement:
If you want a board member who will fight for financial transparency, work to keep our schools free of woke agendas, and demand educational outcomes better than 60% competency for our children, vote AGAINST the recall.
WOKE WOKE WOKE.
Man, no one is buying that “woke” crap anymore, are they?
Their campaign website declared, “Keep the board CONSERVATIVE Vote AGAINST the leftist-backed recall.” No one bought that either.
So what did these two school board members do to merit the wrath of their conservative community?
For one thing, they lobbied for the defeat of a supplement school funding levy. Voters rejected the measure, which cost the district $4.7 million—a third of their budget. No organization can survive that kind of financial hit without serious consequences. As the recall organizers argued, “Rutledge and Brown failed to uphold their oaths of office to improve public schools, don’t respect their constituents or fellow board members and have shown a lack of concern for student education.” You don’t improve anything by decimating its budget.
In addition, they hired a school superintendent, Branden Durst, who had zero experience as either a teacher or school administrator. But, he had plenty of experience as a culture war warrior at the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which is just as awful as you think it is. The top Education headlines on their website hyperventilate about Boise schools “affirm[ing] new sexual identities of ‘gender queer,’ ‘pansexual,’ and ‘nonbinary,’” cry about “woke pre-K and child care providers,” focus on bathroom policy nonsense, and pine for Florida-style education reforms that are gutting that state’s supply of teachers.
In fact, one of the headlines on their site hails West Bonner School District for implementing a transphobic bathroom policy. (I can’t imagine what it might be like growing up trans or queer in West Bonner.) Durst wasn’t hired to improve educational outcomes—the guy clearly has no clue what he’s doing—but to implement a culture war agenda with zero relevance to educating students. In fact, Durst is literally not qualified for the position, as Idaho requires, “four years of full-time certificated experience working with students while under contract with an accredited school.” Durst’s application must get a waiver by the State Board of Education (which hasn’t happened yet).
One of the dissenting school board members, Carlyn Barton, set the stage for the subsequent recall effort with her fierce opposition to Durst’s hiring on June 29:
[F]rom the research I have done, the superintendent candidate that was voted in is not currently qualified or able to fulfill all the duties of a public-school superintendent. Even with an emergency certification. The direction of our board has turned into a fascist dictatorship with an agenda which is far from our conservative point of view and no way open to uniting the board employees of this district or community. The direction or agenda that has been kept from the members, not only from the board, but our community.
Weird huh? They vote for fascist MAGA types, then wonder why the people they elected are acting like fascists.
Not that we should expect deeper reflection...
Dana Douglas, the chairwoman of Recall Replace Rebuild, described herself as a conservative Christian. She said the takeover of the school district is an example of what can happen when parents and voters do not pay close enough attention.
“It could happen anywhere,” Douglas said.
It’s the “lone wolf” theory applied to politics. You see, the problem wasn’t conservatism, it was just these two rogue actors who are hurting the wrong people. They’d have no trouble with conservatives at the state board of education, say, arbitrarily cutting Boise’s school budget by a third. Those people deserve it. Those kids aren’t even all white! West Bonner conservatives just don’t like it when they, themselves, suffer the consequences of conservative ideology.
Still, this made me laugh:
“This community is not going to back down,” Turner said. “We are awake now and we are going to stay awake.”
Yup, that is totally not woke. It’s awake. Not woke.
Got it?
p.s. The local MAGA crowd declared that the election was, you guessed it, fraudulent.
p.p.s. From commenter Lincoln green, there's even more to the story!
The election results aren’t official until certified and that won’t happen until this Thursday. So the lame duck board scheduled a meeting for Friday last week, with the agenda being to dissolve the school board, turn the meeting over to their superintendent buddy, then nominate and elect a new chairman. Essentially the lame duck board was scheming to overturn the election.
The winners of the election barely managed to stave off the coup, by getting a restraining order Friday from a Bonner County judge, to delay all school board actions until after the election is certified.
That’s how MAGA people work. They don’t want elections. They don’t want the people to rule. They want MAGA rule.
