Rhetoric heats up at Valley school board meetings

By Philip Haldiman
Mail | Twitter: @PhilipHaldiman

At least one of the people speaking out with harsh rhetoric at recent school board meetings is coming with connections to a national conservative group.

Tiffany Benson, an employee of Phoenix-based Turning Point USA, has spoken at Peoria Unified School District governing board meetings regarding issues pushed by conservatives in the region, including some on the board. The organization first denied she worked with them before saying Benson was speaking out on her own time.

It’s not the only place Benson has spoken before governing board members, as she has appeared before Higley Unified School District’s governing board in Gilbert and the Liberty Elementary School District governing board in Buckeye.

Benson has spoken in support of implementing an anti-transgender policy at PUSD banning those students from district bathrooms and locker rooms in the general population.

She has voiced claims that separation of church and state is myth, certain districts are comprised of Marxist-trained pedophile predators, and called on parents to bankrupt the district of public funding by urging them to remove their children from PUSD.

The Peoria Unified school board on a split vote April 27 decided not to create a transgender policy, which resulted in a stream of anger from some parents, including heightened rhetoric from Benson, which involved biblical invocations and fiery words toward PUSD at the April 27 school board meeting.

At the meeting, Benson said Peoria Unified is a pedophile ring and students are being sacrificed on the altar of public education.

“It’s the evil board members, evil teachers, evil administrators who give kids gynecology coloring sheets, that lure them into conversations on sex and gender and coach them to hide things from their parents. It’s weak men who are bringing society down and weak females who are traitors to our sex,” Benson said.

Independent Newsmedia reached out to TPUSA for confirmation of Benson’s affiliation with the organization via email. Andrew Kolvet, who is tasked with the organization’s public relations, stated, “no one on the team knows Tiffany Benson, so she’s unaffiliated (with TPUSA).”

Previously, Benson had sent an email to Independent Newsmedia with a TPUSA email address and branding, and her title listed as special projects administrator for TPUSA.

Consequently, Peoria Independent followed up with Kolvet, who confirmed Benson is a staff member.

He apologized and said Benson attended PUSD meetings on her own.

She has voiced heated comments publicly at the meetings of at least three public school districts.

During the public comment period of a May 10 Higley Unified meeting, Benson called for an investigation of the board and called board members “pedophiles by proxy,” claiming proposed technology curriculum exposes district students as young as pre-kindergarten to sexualized content and gender propaganda.

During the public comment period of a Jan. 30, Liberty Elementary School District meeting, Benson said gender is not fluid and is a physical and biological reality that never changes and that overtly drawing attention to gender in schools is pedophilia.

While it is unclear if Benson attended all the meetings as a member of the community or a member of Turning Point USA, she stated on her speaker request card at Higley that she was from the organization.

Independent Newsmedia reached out to Benson, but she did not respond.

TPUSA is a group founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk and Bill Montgomery that initially sought to promote conservative ideas on college campuses but has in recent years worked to have chapters at high schools around the nation, including some in the Valley.

Kirk, a Scottsdale resident, has previously spoke before the Scottsdale Unified School District governing board on issues, though he has not mentioned his affiliation with TPUSA.

The group has been active in pushing conservative ideas at local school boards recently. The organization keeps a continuously updated database called School Board Watch List based on publicly available sourcing, as well as tips and leads intended as a resource for local parents who are worried about the curricula and ideologies their local school districts might be endorsing.

Transgender students in bathrooms is one of the many hot-button issues the organization informs people about, whether they live within those districts’ boundaries or not.

“The (School Board Watch List) provides tips and best practices for how parents can get involved in their local school boards if they discover radical ideologies like (critical race theory), 1619 Project, sexual/gender ideology etc.,” Kolvet said in an email.

The subject of transgender students in Peoria Unified bathrooms and locker rooms has been a lightning rod at the public comment sections during school board meetings for months now.

Benson is not the only person who has publicly called Peoria Unified “evil.”

In an apparent response to a failed attempt at bringing a transgender policy to PUSD, April 27, board member Rebecca Hill doubled down on past anti-PUSD statements at the dais, and at the May 11 meeting, said PUSD is a “broken, evil system.”

“And so from this point forward, pretty much until we start supporting 100% of our population of students at PUSD, which obviously includes the girls, I am voting no on a lot of stuff,” she said.

Philip Haldiman can be reached at phaldiman@iniusa.org, or on Twitter @philiphaldiman. We’d like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.

News Editor Tom Blodgett contributed to this article.

Philip Haldiman
Senior News Editor | Peoria
@PhilipHaldiman

phaldiman@iniusa.org

Meet Philip
Haldiman is an award-winning journalist who most recently took first place for investigative reporting in 2023 from Arizona Newspapers Association. He joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2015, covering Sun City West his first year. Since 2016, he has covered the city of Peoria. Prior to coming to INI, he was a reporter with The Arizona Republic for seven years, covering numerous cities throughout the Valley. Before that, he was a freelance writer.

Community: Haldiman spearheads the Peoria Independent Hometown Heroes Awards program, honoring local individuals and businesses that give back to the community. He has hosted local candidate forums over the years and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. Haldiman also served as a member of the Journalism Program Community Advisory Board at Glendale Community College. Outside journalism, Haldiman served as a member of the city of Peoria Complete Count Committee for the Census, 2019-2020. Lastly, he has served as a member of his HOA governing board since 2021.

Education: Arizona State University with a BA in Journalism and Mass Communications and a BA in Theater. 

Random Fact: Haldiman is a fourth-generation Arizonan as well as wrote and produced an autobiographical comic book about his time spent in Hollywood and his life as a cult film star.

Hobbies: He enjoys hiking Arizona’s mountainous landscapes and is currently working on a play for the stage.