“Not necessarily so. In small, rural districts, the school board wields a lot of power locally...”
Feel free to believe that, but DO NOT COMPLAIN HERE when your ideals meet reality. The bottom line is that they ALL come from the same breeding ground, which are the ‘Schools of Education’, and until that is changed, you CANNOT win. They’ll simply work around you guys with tactics like real time curriculum changes (where what you see at 7PM is NOT what the kids see at 1030 AM, for example - thanks to ‘technology’). You will ALWAYS be on the back end of what they do.
If you do want to fight, have your kids take SCREEN SHOTS of what’s being pumped into them, rather than trusting the ‘updated’ curriculum that they want you to see.
I taught at a rural district for over 25 years. None of the board members in my years of teaching had been anywhere near a ‘School of Education’, but most were high school graduates. Because of where we are, they are the political big shots in local politics handling lots of money (for them and the area). Many were really full of themselves and were convinced that they knew more about teaching than the people they had hired to do the job.
As time went on, board members’ education levels did move up and included professors from the local university. This is not to say that there weren’t hare-brained educational ‘reforms’ eagerly embraced by members who had attended a ‘workshop’ or two.
I do understand your cynicism about public schools but to be fair you should realize that it isn’t nearly as dark everywhere as may be the case near you. Feeling the way you do, homeschooling is now, with internet resources, is easier to do than ever.