The School Board Integrity Project was born out of the need to bring the principles of integrity, respect, excellence, belonging, and trust back to the conversations surrounding our school board elections.

We have seen a concerted effort across our country to erode our public education systems, take away the freedoms to learn and read from our students, and sew division and hate based on what makes us different. In Minnesota, these extreme ideologies are creeping into our school board races and directly impacting our students and communities. This effort has shifted the focus away from our students and created an environment that grows more dangerous daily. That is a danger that I personally am all too familiar with.

In 2010, I was one of the student plaintiffs against the Anoka-Hennepin School District when the Department of Justice stepped in and imposed a five-year consent decree on the district after nine students committed suicide — many of them members or perceived members of the LGBTQ community — over the course of a year because of the environment that was created by the implementation inequitable and dangerous policies in the district.

Frankly, during that year, I was nearly the tenth suicide. It was an incredibly difficult time, but while I was searching for answers I quickly saw just what is at stake when extreme rhetoric comes from a vocal minority in the community and when the wrong people who don’t share our values get elected to positions of power — particularly on the school board level.

Being a student plaintiff in that lawsuit was the first bit of “activism” I ever took on. I remember feeling like a canary in a coal mine all those years ago trying to get people around me to understand the stakes and the irreparable harm being caused to our students and to our communities. I never would have thought I would be working in political spaces more than a decade later, advocating for issues, candidates up and down the ballot, and causes that can have positive impacts on people’s lives.

As I have been watching the politicization of these races grow, the rhetoric becoming even more extreme and dangerous, and the values that the majority of Minnesotans share slip away from the conversation, I knew — just like I did back in 2010— that we could no longer sit on the sidelines and wait for someone else to do something. So, we came together and started the School Board Integrity Project.

I’ve always seen the School Board Integrity Project as a way to share the information and skills that my team and I have learned throughout our careers and break down the barriers for candidates to run for their local school boards. If we want to see community members who share our values run and win against extreme candidates, they need our support to take those values and their passion and turn them into electoral victories. Historically, these races are often overlooked, under-resourced, and undervalued. We need to come together to change that because the stakes could not be any higher for our students than they are in this moment right now.

We look forward to continuing to help candidates and those who want to make a difference in these races to learn and grow the skills they need to make a difference in the lives of our students.