How COVID-19 school closures sparked a parent movement driving politics three years on

OTiffany Justice, then-Indian River County School Board member, was shocked to hear that Tiffany had been fired.

It was the first day Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), declared that Florida Due to the spread and acceptance of the novel, schools in’s would be closed coronavirus The news hit her like a punch in the gut, and she recalled it to the mother of four school-age children.

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“I was standing in my school district, I was on a school board, and we found out the governor was going to close schools, and it was shocking, I remember feeling like someone … punched me in the stomach,” Justice was interviewed by the Washington Examiner. “A school district doesn’t start or stop easily, it’s kind of like a cruise ship. So the idea that we were going to shut down in-person learning and somehow try to pivot to online learning was like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion.”

Three years later, the effects of the greatest disruption to daily life, including the closing of schools, businesses, and houses of worship, still lingers on this anniversary of President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on March 13, 2020.

Justice said that the sudden and shocking closings of schools and the shift to virtual learning were a silver lining. It awakened parents to the truth of what was happening at the nation’s public schools.

“COVID pulled back the education curtain for every American parent, and they were able to see what their children were learning and what their children weren’t learning,” She said. “What we learned is that our children’s education is being stolen from them and replaced with ideological garbage that isn’t going to unfold their full potential in life.”

The effects of the pandemic on education stemmed first from extended school closings, then from parents’ concerns over the increasingly politicized content in classroom curricula. “changed everything,” Ian Prior, senior adviser at America First Legal, and executive director of Fight for Schools’ political action committee, told the Washington Examiner.

The author of this book Parents around the world, unite! How to Save Our Schools From the Left’s Radical Agenda Prior explained that parents were first concerned about the quality of classroom instruction in most schools. After frustrations over the lack of social interaction among students who remained at home, then alarm at critical racism and discussions about systemic racism. These were fueled by riots following the 2020 death George Floyd’s altercation with Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer. Chauvin was convicted in 2021 of Floyd’s death.

“Parents started realizing, ‘hey, this stuff sounds a little different than the things I’ve grown up with, [and I’m] trying to be a compassionate and inclusive person, but now I hear that’s not good enough,'” Prior “And then you start seeing this stuff in the schools, and you start seeing news about how it’s in the school. So [parents] start seeing and looking for what’s going on in these online learning sessions, and they’re starting to see some of this very language.”

Following Justice’s term as Indian River County school board member, there was a growing movement of parents organizing themselves to protest the closing of schools and the concerns about curriculum.

Justice and former Brevard Cou