‘What Were You Thinking?’: Emails reveal more state school board members frustrated and with NSBA letter

Responses continue to come in to Parents Defending Education in response to our public records requests related to the NSBA letter to the Biden administration. The latest tranche of documents reveals email conversations between Delaware, Florida and Ohio school board officials and National School Boards Association (NSBA) leadership; the state directors take issue with how the letter came to be and the assertions made within it.

On Oct. 10, 2021, Devin Sheehan, a regional director for the NSBA, sent a letter to executive directors in the northeast region to “compile any concerns, thoughts or recommendations.”

He got an earful and their discontent and frustration came through loud and clear with complaints about board members asking for retractions of language, pushing to withdraw from NSBA altogether, and the partisan nature of the attack on parents.

“This appears to be a personal-agenda letter that has no place in a national organization that purports to represent 90,000 locally elected school board members, all of whom have varying views on many issues,” said Bill Ferguson, an Ohio School Board Association member.

Ohio has since ended its relationship with the parent organization.