Threats intensify against school board members
It was only days after Sami Al-Abdrabbuh was re-elected to the school board in Corvallis, Oregon that the text messages arrived.
The first, he said, was a photograph taken at a shooting range. It showed one of his campaign’s lawn signs — “Re-Elect Sami” — riddled with bullet holes.
The second was a warning from a friend. This one said one of their neighbors was looking for Al-Abdrabbuh. The neighbor was threatening to kill him.
Like many school board races this year, the one in May in Corvallis, a left-leaning college town in the northwest corner of the state, was especially contentious, swirling around concerns not only about the coronavirus pandemic but also the teaching of what Al-Abdrabbuh called the “dark history” of America’s struggle with race. Even months later, Al-Abdrabbuh, the chairman of the school board, is still taking precautions. He regularly speaks to the police and scans his driveway in the morning before walking to his car. He often mixes up his daily route to work.
“I love serving on the school board,” he said. “But I don’t want to die for it.”
Al-Abdrabbuh is not alone. Since the spring, a steady tide of school board members across the country have nervously come forward with accounts of threats they have received from enraged local parents. At first, the grievances mainly centered on concerns about the way their children were being taught about race and racism. Now, parents are more often infuriated by Covid-19 restrictions like mask mandates in classrooms.
It is an echo of what happened when those faithful to the Tea Party stormed Obamacare town halls across the country more than a decade ago. In recent months, there have been Nazi salutes at school board meetings and emails threatening rape. Obscenities have been hurled — or burned into people’s lawns with weed spray.
In one extreme case, in suburban San Diego, a group of people protesting mask mandates disrupted a school board meeting in September. After taking an unauthorized vote, they summarily installed themselves as the district’s new board.
While there has not been serious violence yet, there have been a handful of arrests for charges such as assault and disorderly conduct. The National School Boards Association has likened some of these incidents to domestic terrorism, though the group eventually walked back that claim after it triggered a backlash from its state member organizations.
Sitting at the intersection of parenting and policy, local school boards have always been a place where passions run high and politics get personal. Especially since the nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, many boards have struggled with the question of how to include the subject of race in their curriculums.
Some protesters who have caused a stir at school board meetings in recent months have defended themselves by saying that they were merely exercising their First Amendment rights and that schools are better when parents are involved, arguments echoed by Republicans in Congress and in statehouse races.
Parents who have been vocal in their opposition to the Corvallis school board said they were unaware of any threats against Al-Abdrabbuh or other board members.
They said it would be counterproductive to their cause to threaten violence because it would allow school officials to paint dissenting parents as hateful bigots. They said their frustrations, however, were legitimate and stemmed from the board’s lack of transparency.
“I would definitely say there is brewing tension, but I’m not at that place, that’s not in line with my character,” Alisha Carlson, 36, a life coach with two children in the local schools, said of the threats. “I’m not going to personally attack or assault somebody.”
Becky Dubrasich, 41, an emergency-room nurse with three children in the district, said she was so concerned about the board requiring vaccinations that she has been sending a daily email to school officials voicing her opposition.