From Satanism to Spending: School Board Controversy in America

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Benjamin Deitchman
October 30, 2021

It is a perpetual phenomenon that conflict and controversy at boards of education divide communities. In a recent memorandum Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote, “In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools.”  Back in 1995 an article in the Westchester Weekly local news insert of The New York Times noted of the Bedford (New York) Central School District, “The controversy has become so heated that the police were required to control attendance at a forum the school district held last week to address [the] accusations.” The accusations at the center of that forum at Bedford’s Fox Lane High School were eventually filed in a lawsuit, finally concluded in 2001, that alleged that, among other perceived transgressions, the local schools engaged in, “The promotion of satanism and occultism, pagan religions and ‘New Age spirituality,’ the latter being a religion which promotes as the goal of spiritual progress the full actualization of the human person as the godhead[.]”  As a 2001 Fox Lane graduate, the “Satan suit” and other school board debates shaped the adolescent experience inside and outside the classroom.

I agree with the Second Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals in its decision in Altman v. Bedford Central School District that satanism was not part of my education. Despite the baselessness of the allegations from a few aggrieved parents and citizens, the seemingly facetious lawsuit impacted my middle and high school years. One specific issue from the plaintiffs was an objection to the celebration of our planet on Earth Day. This had a chilling effect on the Earth Day programming as the Fox Lane faculty and administration needed to protect the school from a small set of litigious residents seeking to impose unrepresentative values on the entire community. In their other objections to science activities and the study of ancient and modern religions, this vocal local group, with connections to national organizations, sought to challenge and limit the curriculum according to their own specific beliefs. In the modern social media era the intensity of the debate and the ridiculousness of arguing that the schools promoted satanism might have created viral content in the national discourse, but in the 1990s it simply further fractured a relatively small school district that already had heated arguments over its budget.

A 1994 election for a school board seat in Bedford ended in an exact tie, forcing a runoff campaign that was a harbinger of future disagreements between community members focused on maintaining the status quo of high-quality education and community members focused on reducing public expenditures.  Every year the voting public in Bedford had the opportunity to directly cast ballots for or against the school budget and, while the school system was a motivating factor for many to choose to live in the district helping to maintain property values, reducing taxes regardless of the potential impact on educational programming was a priority for many voters. Board of education meetings featured significant back and forth between community members and even students, televised live on the school district’s local cable channel. In my college application essay I compared the statements of my fellow below voting age students and myself at these meeting defending foreign language programs to the District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, defending the annual District of Columbia Appropriations Bill in Congress because we all had a major stake, but no vote. Although the comparison was exaggerated to try to impress admissions committees, I would not have been able to impress admissions committees without the community resources for my public school education that approval of the budget afforded.

The public needs to be involved in public education, but ideology needs to stay out of the classroom. Citizens and their elected officials have the right, and responsibility, to oversee their tax dollars. The opportunity to challenge public officials, including education providers, over something realistic, or even whether they are preaching satanism, is part of our civic culture and fundamental to American democracy. As debates over infectious disease protocols, theories about race relations and other classroom and extracurricular activities rage on, civility is critical. The focus of education needs to be on children, providing them with the broad tools to learn, grow and achieve. As public administrators we understand that providing a public service based on the expertise and abilities of the qualified people and systems in place without the interference of politics is not always possible.

Having lived through the division in my community, it is important that we keep kids out of the contemporary culture wars.  The education domain should not become an indirect proxy to inflame other disagreements in this country. Children have suffered enough over the past two years. Adults must avoid making children political and cultural pawns and fund a broad, diverse and open-minded 21^st education for them.  Controversy is our past and present, but the children are the future.                                

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Author: Benjamin Deitchman is a public policy practitioner in Atlanta, Georgia. He is a 2001 graduate of Fox Lane High School and he never studied satanism in his years as a Bedford Central School District student.  Dr. Deitchman is on Twitter at Deitchman. His email address is [email protected].

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