WHY THIS MATTERS

What often presents itself as local conflict or isolated “parent concerns” is frequently connected to broader systems—coordinated messaging strategies, funding pipelines, and political infrastructure operating across regions. Understanding these patterns is critical. This is about more than school boards. It’s about information, influence, and democracy at the local level.

RESOURCES

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Our Schools USA is dedicated to empowering parents, students, and community members to protect quality public education for all students. Positive learning outcomes for all students are often overlooked in the current environment around public schools.Students should be the #1 priority in public education. Our Schools USA is focusing on students first and students always.

Center For Media & Democracy investigations, public information requests, and lawsuits have ignited national conversations on money in politics and the distortion of U.S. law and democracy — at every level of government and in every region of the country. We believe in the public’s right to know how government operates and how corporations influence our democracy — and the true motivations for their actions. When necessary, CMD litigates to defend that right and ensure those in power follow the law.

Nationalists with the end goal of dismantling public education are driving coordinated efforts across the country, with school districts increasingly feeling the impact of extremist school board takeovers at the expense of students and teachers. Even in a state as blue as California, Christian nationalist groups are finding pathways to power through local positions like school boards, turning Southern California into a growing hotspot where organized, often outside agitators target communities—sometimes showing up as hostile, disruptive forces at meetings. In response, The Charty B is a group of activists working to map this broader network of right-wing extremism, including protesters, churches, and dark money organizations. Knowledge is power—so we encourage you to explore the map (best viewed on a computer), share it with your community, and use it as a tool to better understand the connections and individuals influencing what’s happening locally.

The Shadow Network - Anne Nelson:

In 1981, emboldened by Ronald Reagan’s election, a group of some fifty Republican operatives, evangelicals, oil barons, and gun lobbyists met in a Washington suburb to coordinate their attack on civil liberties and the social safety net. These men and women called their coalition the Council for National Policy. Over four decades, this elite club has become a strategic nerve center for channeling money and mobilizing votes behind the scenes. Its secretive membership rolls represent a high-powered roster of fundamentalists, oligarchs, and their allies, from Oliver North, Ed Meese, and Tim LaHaye in the Council’s early days to Kellyanne Conway, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, and the DeVos and Mercer families today.

In Shadow Network, award-winning author and media analyst Anne Nelson chronicles this astonishing history and illuminates the coalition’s key figures and their tactics. She traces how the collapse of American local journalism laid the foundation for the Council for National Policy’s information war and listens in on the hardline broadcasting its members control. And she reveals how the group has collaborated with the Koch brothers to outfit Radical Right organizations with state-of-the-art apps and a shared pool of captured voter data — outmaneuvering the Democratic Party in a digital arms race whose result has yet to be decided.

In a time of stark and growing threats to our most valued institutions and democratic freedoms, Shadow Network is essential reading.

The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual - Jennifer Berkshire & Jack Schneider:

Our public schools are on the front lines of a fierce battle. In communities across the nation, heated culture wars have erupted—threatening to undermine the very foundation of public education. Extremist groups are pushing book bans, demanding limits on what teachers can say about history, race, and gender, and rolling out aggressive campaigns for so-called “parents’ rights.” Meanwhile, the rise of school voucher programs diverts funding from public classrooms, putting critical resources—and students’ futures—at risk.

In this concise, incisive guide, which Kirkus Reviews describes as a “call to action,” journalist Jennifer C. Berkshire and education scholar Jack Schneider expose what’s driving these coordinated attacks and explain why schools are now so vulnerable. They tackle complex topics in “compact and accessible terms” (Jacobin), unpacking everything from book-banning trends and voucher schemes to the real stakes behind the “parents’ rights” rhetoric.

The Education Wars is more than an alarm; it’s a vital handbook for parents, educators, and citizens who care about the future of public education. Packed with timely information and actionable insights, this book charts a powerful “path for protecting the fundamentals of what makes public schools so important” (Booklist).