Right-wing extremism causes budget woes for school districts

Jeff Peterson, a former principal in Raymond, a rural village south of Milwaukee, knows the costs of extremism in local schools all too well.

Peterson was the principal of Raymond Elementary from 2021 until 2023, when the school board elected not to renew his contract — a decision he says the board made because he is gay. He’s now suing his former school district for alleged discrimination.

His removal is an example of the sort of tumult and turmoil that can result when partisan division makes its way onto school boards. And these sorts of problems don’t just lead to division within communities. They can actually be quite costly — in terms of both time and money.

Even before Peterson’s removal, right-wing extremists were causing problems, he said. In one case, a parent who was later elected to the school board complained about a book in the school library, requiring an entire committee to review it.

“I think there was eight to 10 people on the committee,” Peterson said. “They obviously all had to read the book. We had meetings. We discussed the book. We discussed pros and cons and whether it’s appropriate for developmental ages of the students we deal with, where it was housed in the library, all those things.”

The whole thing ended up being a time suck, according to Peterson.

“It definitely was taking me away from spending time in classrooms, giving feedback to teachers, interacting and building relationships and learning about the students that go to our school,” Peterson said. “It also took me away from building positive relationships with community members who wanted to support our school, a very small district that has a small operating budget, and we rely on our community to support us, whether it’s through their taxpayer money or through donations.”

Peterson’s removal also illustrates the sorts of financial costs that can result from extremism in local schools. 

During the 2023-2024 fiscal year, the Raymond School District overspent its budget by nearly $700,000, according to the Racine County Eye. About $200,000 of that was tied to legal costs, a significant portion due to its legal battle with Peterson. The Raymond School District did not respond to a request for comment.

The situation at Raymond, however, is far from unique.

According to a report published by the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, called “The Costs of Conflict,” a district of 10,000 students with high-conflict with right-wing extremists might spend more than $800,000 on added security, staff turnover, and extra employees to handle an increase in public information requests; a low-conflict district would likely spend around $250,000.

The report is based on a survey of 467 public school district superintendents from 46 states that asked about the kinds of conflict over what it termed “culturally divisive issues” that arise in their districts: who is involved, how often such conflicts happen, where they happen, how often threats are made against staff, and what the financial and human resources expenses related to those conflicts are.

Conflict on local school boards has increased dramatically since the 2020-2021 school year, according to the report, about issues ranging from COVID-19 precautions to teaching about racism to supporting LGBTQ+ students.

“Again and again, we heard stories of sizable expenses related to all this tumult—the money schools and school systems needed to spend on these issues, many told us, meant less money was available for other educational priorities,” the report says.

One superintendent interviewed for the report said his school district had to spend an additional $100,000 on security because of unpredictable and sometimes violent behavior on the part of board meeting attendees. He characterized a couple recently elected board members as “extremists” backed by Moms for Liberty and “other special interest groups.” He told the researchers that the district spent more than $500,000 in legal fees connected with lawsuits stemming from “one trustee’s behavior and the campaign against our LGBTQ+ community.” The district also lost a contract with a local technology firm that didn’t like being talked about negatively, and recruitment of staff is difficult because of the hostile environment.

“It’s gotten incredibly contentious,” the superintendent said. “They’re just trying to disrupt.”

The report didn’t name any of the superintendents interviewed, instead assigning them pseudonyms and descriptions to protect their identities.

In total, the report says, culturally divisive conflict cost public schools across the United States about $3.2 billion during the 2023-2024 school year.

Patricia Jackson and Ben Hodge, both teachers in the Central York School District near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, said they’ve seen firsthand how much an extremist school board can cost a district. They say their district suffered through problems between 2020 through the 2023 board elections, when a new slate of more moderate board members replaced some of the most extremist members.

Jackson and Hodge are co-advisers for the Panther Anti-Racist Union, named for the school’s mascot, at Central York High School. They fought against content bans implemented by the former school board members, including one on a list of books, videos and other resources that had originally been put together by a district diversity committee.

“In between and during that fight, there were several investigations and Right-to-Know requests filed against myself and other teachers and lawyer fees all attached to those, so those costs started to add up,” Hodge said.

Jackson said allies of the former school board often used such requests under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law in an effort to intimidate teachers. Those requests were expensive for the district, she said: “Ben and I caught wind that the cost of one of these was about $20,000 because it all had to be reviewed by the district solicitor, and that district solicitor is about 500 bucks an hour.”

In the report, one superintendent said staff have had to spend thousands of hours dealing with public records requests, which have increased to more than 600 a year from a previous average of about 150.

Another superintendent cited in the report said: “The fiscal costs to the district are enormous, but [so are] the cultural costs of not standing up to the extremists. If someone doesn’t, then the students and employees lose. … It’s the worst it’s ever been.”