School board races are meant to be nonpartisan, but across the region Democrats and Republicans have been openly supporting Board of Education candidates, with conservative parents’ rights groups making gains in several area counties.

Moms for Liberty has chapters in 10 Maryland counties. Lisa Geraghty, chair of the Howard County chapter, says members are “true, patriotic Americans that adhere to the Constitution, which allows every individual to worship in any way that they choose any religion, believe what they want to believe, and, most importantly, raise their own children with their own values and beliefs.”

The 1776 Project PAC, which has campaigned for school board candidates in Carroll County, says on its website that it supports “reform-minded conservatives who oppose political indoctrination and believe in parental rights,” endorsed 19 school board candidates in nine of the state’s 24 school districts, according to the Capital News Service. These included candidates in Carroll, Frederick and Howard counties.

In 2023, the 1776 Project PAC was fined more than $20,000 by the Maryland State Board of Elections for its campaign practices during the 2022 school board election when it sent 13,879 text messages to Carroll County voters urging them to vote for certain candidates.

During this year’s election cycle, the Carroll Moms for Liberty chapter and 1776 Project PAC endorsed and advocated for the election of Greg Malveaux and Kristen Zihmer. They were the top two vote-getters for two seats on Carroll County’s Board of Education last week.

In nearby Frederick County, former chair of the county’s Moms for Liberty chapter Jaime Brennan, of Mount Airy, earned the most votes Tuesday for a seat on that county’s school board, while another parents’ rights advocate, Colt Morningstar Black, came in second, according to unofficial results posted Thursday. Both were endorsed by 1776 Project PAC.

In Howard County, the 1776 Project PAC endorsed Trent Kittleman, a candidate for the District 5 school board seat. Though Moms for Liberty did not officially endorse a candidate, Kittleman has been a member of that group. Kittleman, a Republican, said she joined in 2022 after losing reelection to the state delegate seat she held for eight years. She said members of the Moms for Liberty chapter in Howard County are “some of the best people I’ve ever known.”

When the chapter’s focus shifted from parents’ rights to removing books from school libraries, Kittleman said she left the group, as she wants to accomplish things that are “important, not ideological.”

Kittleman is closely trailing Andrea Chamblee for the District 5 Howard County school board seat. Chamblee, who has been endorsed and funded by many Democrats, had received 52% of votes as of Friday, to Kittleman’s 48%.

Geraghty said the Howard chapter recommended voters support Kittleman as well as Andre Gao, who held a narrow lead over Meg Ricks for the District 1 Howard school board seat. More mail-in and provisional ballots remain to be counted this week in Howard, and results are not yet final.

In Anne Arundel County, no school board candidates were openly associated with Moms for Liberty or signed the group’s pledge, and the Anne Arundel chapter did not make public endorsements; however, several candidates campaigned on ideas similar to what Moms for Liberty espouses.

Candidates Edilene Barros, LaToya Nkongolo, Dawn Pulliam and Chuck Yocum all advocated for increased parental control over school curriculum, especially regarding gender identity and sex education. They also all campaigned against bathroom accommodations for transgender students and argued that teachers should be required to tell parents if a student shows signs of struggling with their gender identity. Nkongolo and Pulliam also spoke in favor of restricting books in school libraries based on age appropriateness and parent input.

Only Pulliam won her school board race in Anne Arundel County.

Local advocacy

In Carroll and Howard counties, members of Moms for Liberty chapters have given passionate testimony at school board meetings over the last year, reading passages from books they deem inappropriate for school shelves and following up by filing dozens of book removal requests with local school districts.

The Carroll County chapter of the group in the last year sent 61 book removal requests to Carroll’s public school system, which has spent months reviewing the requests. As of August school officials decided to remove 21 of the books from school libraries, retain 11, and allow 13 to remain but require parental permission for a student to check them out.

The Carroll County Board of Education also unanimously voted on Jan. 10 to update Policy IIAA, banning all library books and instructional materials that include “sexually explicit” content from public schools, a policy pushed for by the local Moms for Liberty chapter. The updated policy defines sexually explicit content as “unambiguously describing, depicting, showing, or writing about sex or sex acts in a detailed or graphic manner.”

Current Carroll BOE vice president Tara Battaglia and board member Steve Whisler are listed as having signed the Moms for Liberty pledge to “secure parental rights at all levels of government” on the organization’s website, leaving only one board member, Pat Dorsey, not tied to the group.

Mercedes Moebuis, president of the Republican Club of Carroll County said in an emailed statement that Malveaux and Zihmer “are people of great character and ethics and … won Carroll County because they also represented the values and ideals of the majority of Carroll voters.”

The two other candidates in Carroll’s school board race, Amanda Jozkowski said Muri Dueppen, were supported financially by Democrats and said they knew they were the underdogs in the county, which is a Republican stronghold. Their goal was to change the dialogue to show “there’s not just one value system in Carroll County,” Jozkowski said.

After learning of the election results, Zihmer said that she and Malveaux are “passionate about traditional academics” and would focus on “getting back to the basics” with an emphasis on math and English education. Responding to a question about the school board’s book removal policies, Malveaux said he would not “waste taxpayer dollars on books that are not age appropriate. I don’t believe in censorship, but believe in making sure that what we have in our system is age appropriate;” while Zihmer stated that “when approved materials are controversial or open to question, I generally default to parental consent.”

Jozkowski says she has concerns about how “parental rights” are sometimes interpreted.

“In my opinion, if you are saying that you can make decisions on behalf of my children about what they should and should not have access to, then that is not giving me my parental rights and my freedom to make choices that are appropriate for my family and my children,” she said.

In strongly Democratic Howard County, no current school board member has signed the Moms for Liberty pledge.

The Howard Moms for Liberty chapter requested removal of books from school libraries, but the efforts have so far been unsuccessful. Members of the organization often speak during public forum sessions at school board meetings, sharing concerns about “woke ideology” and parents’ rights. According to the Capital News Service, in March the Howard chapter of Moms for Liberty laid out a plan to request removal of 46 books from Howard public schools’ shelves.

Kittleman says she has distanced herself from the group.

“Part of my thinking was the fact that the left became so hysterical about the success of Moms for Liberty that they decided to target it and destroyed its reputation,” Kittleman said.

The Howard County Democratic Central Committee said it felt the need to become more involved in local school board races due to Moms for Liberty’s involvement. DCC Chair Shahan Rizvi said the group threw its support behind Chamblee in District 5 and Jen Mallo in District 4, donating to candidates for the first time after getting the green light from the Maryland Democratic Party two years ago to support and engage in school board races.

“Board of Education used to be a nonpartisan race, and still is,” Rizvi said. “But what we’re learning in education circles is that there is a Democratic view in education, and there’s an emerging Republican view in education.”

Ken Ulman, chair of the Maryland Democratic Party who served as Howard County executive from 2006 to 2014, said in a news release that the party is “committed to defending our students from the dangerous fringe agenda that extremist candidates and the far-right groups are hoping to bring to our state. We won’t allow radical activists dedicated to banning books and discriminating against students to take over our schools.”

Reporter Thomas Goodwin Smith contributed.

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