Johnston County school showdown is blackmail with a $7.9 million price tag

So much for keeping politics out of the classroom.

With millions of dollars in school funding on the line, the Johnston County school board recently adopted a policy that limits how history and racism can be taught in schools.

The Johnston County Board of Commissioners said in June that it would withhold $7.9 million from schools until the school board enacted a policy banning Critical Race Theory from being taught. This is the second time the school board has revised the policy — the first version, presented in July, wasn’t enough to satisfy commissioners.

Under the new policy — which was approved unanimously by the school board last week — teachers can be disciplined or fired if they teach certain things, including that American historical figures weren’t heroes or that racism is a permanent part of American life. Once the policy was passed, commissioners voted to hand over the funds.

The policy attempts to whitewash history by favoring ideology over truth. Republicans have long cried wolf over “indoctrination” and Critical Race Theory in schools, and we’ve said before that it’s a problem that doesn’t really exist.

But even more worrisome than the policy itself is how it was enacted in the first place — through political power play. This isn’t proper county governance, it’s deliberate political interference. Some might even call it extortion.

April Lee, president of the Johnston County Association of Educators, told the News & Observer that the school system is “selling our souls to the devil for $7.9 million.”

County leaders should never withhold education funds for purely political purposes, but especially not now, when schools are already severely underfunded. North Carolina has a serious teacher and bus driver shortage. Educators are trying to make up for more than a year of pandemic-induced learning losses. These issues are real, and schools need every cent they can get in order to address them. Weaponizing those needs for ideological gain is shameful.

But it’s not the first time that county leaders in North Carolina have used sorely needed funds to attempt to coerce school boards into fulfilling their own policy goals.

Back in June, the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners withheld $56 million from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, demanding a detailed, data-driven plan to address the district’s racial achievement gap. But the school board stood its ground, and after a month of squabbling and mediation, CMS got its money without surrendering to commissioners’ demands.

But for all the similarities, that situation was a lot different than what happened in Johnston County last week. School board members didn’t fight back. They didn’t even protest. They acquiesced with the commissioners’ demands quickly and quietly.

“When we all work together we can accomplish good things for kids, and this is one of those moments I truly believe has happened,” school board vice chairwoman Terri Sessoms said after the policy was enacted.

But there was no “working together” in this scenario. Cooperation and good-faith negotiation doesn’t, and shouldn’t, involve blackmail. Commissioners played the school board, and the school board let them. And in doing so, they’ve set a dangerous precedent. The school board has shown it’s willing to cave to commissioners’ demands, even when they’re demands that the county has no business making. The county has the upper hand now — so what happens the next time they want the school board to follow their political agenda? What if it tempts other counties to do the same?

School boards should have the autonomy to decide what’s best for our schools and our children. The Johnston County school board failed to defend that autonomy, but it never should have been compromised in the first place. County leaders don’t get to strong-arm school boards, or dictate what or how kids learn. Their only job is to bankroll it, no strings attached. Politicizing that process is a dangerous game.

This story was originally published October 6, 2021 at 1:46 PM with the headline "Johnston County school showdown is blackmail with a $7.9 million price tag."