I’ve taught First Amendment Rights, Feature Writing, Media & Culture at Central Washington University. I’ve taught dozens of writing workshops across the country and overseas, and I continue to substitute teach as my schedule allows.  I’m married to an educator who spent 40-plus years in the classroom teaching and coaching.

Tim and I built our lives around education and kids. It’s been a terrific life. We never ever run out of things to discuss, whether that is the debate between teaching whole language vs phonetics, or Oregon’s failed Certificate of Advanced Mastery (CIM/CAM) program (an expensive boondoggle of an experiment) and the latest cultural fight, Critical Race Theory. Just ask any parent yammering on about it to define it and how it’s being taught in schools. Good luck with that.

Recently, the talk around our house and in the community has been about the impact of recent school board elections in a neighboring county. Three far-right candidates, who ran on a platform of opposing the teaching of Critical Race Theory and the banning of LGBTQ+ books/materials, took over the school board in nearby Crook County.

As a result of that election, the Crook County Superintendent stepped down, as did one of the school board members. That Superintendent was recipient of Superintendent of the Year Award this past year. She previously had been named principal of the year, so obviously she’s distinguished herself among educators statewide.

In response to the Superintendent resignation, the incoming board members issued a press release:

“We ran on the promise to the Crook County voters that parental rights would be valued in all aspects,” according to a Thursday statement signed by  Cheyenne Edgerly, Jennifer Knight and Jessica Brumble. “It saddens us that Dr. Johnson can not get behind that community vision for the school.”

That vision is one of exclusion, not inclusion.

It should be noted that Cheyenne Edgerly was working in her husband’s mortuary business prior to running for school board. She is the mother of six kids, and homeschooled her children until moving to Crook County in 2015. At the time, her husband praised the school district, which was under the leadership of the very same school board members Edgerly and her far-right crew just replaced: “The schools here have been a good experience for us,” said Brett Edgerly in 2015. “I want to send out a big shout out to the school district for the job they do.”

Apparently, the couple hadn’t been in the county long enough to stir up trouble and besides, they were running a business people were dying to get into.

It’s difficult to say what changed for the couple between 2015 to 2023, other than perhaps the national political climate?

Statistically, not much changed in Crook County over that time. Somewhere around 25,000 people live in Crook County. Mostly all white people, 95%. Only 0.5% is Black, which makes a person wonder why these “Mama Bears” as they are referred to around the county are so worried about Critical Race Theory, which was never being taught in the schools to begin with. Not that facts matter to extremists.

Only 2.6% of the total population of Crook County is mixed race. So basically in Crook County you have white kids going to school with a bunch of other white kids.

But these women worried that their white kids were going to feel bad about being white if they read a book about slavery. Really?

Lord God forbid they should read anything other than white patriarchal narrative history.

For pity’s sake.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Crook County happens to be one of the least educated counties in the state. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 11% lack a high school diploma, and only 18% of those 25 and over have a Bachelor’s degree (likely the educators in the district). Only 5.4% have a graduate degree.

Contrast that with Deschutes, where nearly 40% of those 25 and over have a Bachelor’s degree and nearly 15% have graduate degrees. Or with Benton County, the most educated community in the state, where 24% of the population has a graduate degree and over 50% have a Bachelor’s.

As to the education levels of these three women, good luck finding that online.

One might conclude that the less educated a population is, the easier it is to stoke fear in them and drive them to vote for far-right candidates, who push racism and bigotry upon the undereducated.

Prior to the election of these three far-right candidates to Crook County’s School Board, Oregon Public Radio’s reporter Joni Auden Land made this observation:

They call themselves Crook County for Better Education. Now online they say they oppose indoctrination in schools and that they want to “restore wholesome education.” It’s not clear what those terms mean right now, but at least one member (Edgerly) of the slate has opposed school materials that discuss civil rights for people of color and LGBTQ people. And for school board races in a small district of this size in a rural area, they’re very organized. The candidates are backed by a recently formed political action committee created by political consultant Brian Iverson. Now you may recognize Iverson’s name because he’s married to a state lawmaker who is Republican House minority leader Vikki Breese-Iverson. And he did not respond to requests for comment.

It is not a coincidence that politicians like Iverson are going to communities like Crook County and generating controversies among the primarily white and undereducated in order to then swoop in with the “answer” to all their politically manufactured problems.

That is exactly what has happened in Crook County.

Make no mistake: It’s the playbook for White Christian Nationalists to follow all across this country.

The Crook County School Board will meet Monday, June 12 @ 6:30 p.m. @ Crook County Middle School100 NE Knowledge Street, Prineville.

Karen Spears Zacharias is the author of The Murder Gene: A True Story.