An Easy Choice for Kansas School Board

A single image on the Facebook page of a Republican candidate running for the Kansas Board of Education tells you everything you need to know about the race.

Before we get to that image, here’s a bit of background.

The Kansas Board of Education, which consists of 10 elected members, helps determine education policy for the state’s K-12 schools.

Jeff Howards (D) is running against Danny Zeck (R) to represent District 1, located in northeast Kansas, on the Kansas School Board. 

The incumbent, Janet Waugh (D), was ineligible to run for reelection because she has been redistricted out of the first district.

 

Howards served for 20 years in the US Marine Corps and Army National Guard. He was a civilian educator in the US military for another 20 years.

Howards is currently the chair of the Leavenworth County Democratic Party.

 

  

The Kansas National Education Association (KNEA) has endorsed Howards. 

 

 

Zeck formerly served on the Leavenworth Board of Education. 

 

Both Zeck and Howards are residents of Leavenworth, Kansas. 

 

 

On Oct. 18, Zeck posted an image on Facebook highlighting his deeply problematic social conservative positions.

 

Zeck said he will, “protect children from dangerous and divisive propaganda being taught in Kansas schools such as CRT or SEL.”

 

CRT stands for Critical Race Theory, a college-level legal theory about structural racism.

The Kansas Board of Education does not oversee the state’s colleges and universities.

Critical Race Theory is not being taught in K-12 schools anywhere, Kansas included. 

In recent years, conservatives have riled up a fabricated moral panic about CRT being taught in K-12 schools. They use the phrase to refer to any lesson that teaches about America’s dark history of racism towards minority groups.

 

SEL stands for Social and Emotional Learning. 

The Kansas Board of Education has established the social-emotional growth of students as a priority for Kansas schools.

The Kansas Department of Education explains social-emotional growth include skills such as self-awareness, social awareness, problem solving, and decision making.

Those all seem like valuable things to me.  

Bizarrely, conservative activists have come to oppose social and emotional learning in schools.

While I believe the jargon surrounding social and emotional learning is needlessly complicated, it makes no sense to me why a candidate would run against teaching students basic social skills.

 

Zeck said he supports, “defending girls against biological males taking part in women’s sports.” 

Zeck's framing indicates he doesn't believe transgender identities are valid. 

There are very few transgender students in Kansas schools. They are not in a position to meaningfully crowd out athletic opportunities for cisgender female student athletes.

I support allowing transgender students to play on the sports teams where they feel most comfortable. 

 

Zeck also said he wants to, “place parents in charge of decisions when addressing, ‘gender transition’ procedures, including irreversible surgeries, chemical castration, and psychiatric services when present in Kansas schools.” 

The scare quotes around "gender transition" indicate Zeck doesn't believe transgender identities are valid, even after a medical transition. 

This one is a bit strange.

Zeck appears to be implying that Kansas schools might provide transgender students with gender-affirming medical care without parental consent.

That’s absurd. Those kinds of medical procedures would never be provided by Kansas schools.

As far as psychiatric services, the most that could potentially happen would be for a school counselor, teacher, or administrator to talk to a transgender student who is afraid to come out to their parents, because the student believes their parents might respond poorly.

Under those circumstances, I believe it would be abhorrent for an educational professional to violate the student’s privacy by outing them to their parents. 

Zeck’s position would appear to prohibit educational professionals from talking to a student about their gender dysphoria without parental permission. That would be a deeply immoral policy to adopt.  

 

Howards told WIBW that he chose to run for the Kansas School Board after he learned Zeck would be running for the position. 

“I am a Democrat and the Republicans had a very conservative individual running as their candidate,” Howards said. “I saw that, and said that for the sake of the kids and the students and education as a whole, somebody needed to do something.”

“Old Marines just go to the sound of the guns, and that’s where it was,” he added.  

 

 

Danny Zeck’s abhorrent social conservative positions make this election an easy choice for me. 

Jeff Howards will definitely receive my vote in November.

 

You can learn more about the race on Zeck’s and Howards’s campaign websites. Howards also answered questions about the race from the Topeka Capital Journal.

 

 

Postscript: The Kansas National Education Association (KNEA) endorsed Republican Vicki Schmidt in her reelection bid for Kansas Insurance Commissioner, just like I did.