School boards are supposed to be nonpartisan, but right-wing ideology has been pushing into school board meetings for a number of years now.
From censures to conservative groups, political theatrics has become a common experience at Peoria Unified governing board meetings, and it has especially heated up recently over the issue of transgender students in bathrooms and locker rooms.
The situation has become so intense that the district had to beef up security for meetings.
For a few years now, people with conservative beliefs have been flooding the public comment section of the district’s school board meetings with varying degrees of force. But since the board voted 3-2 against creating new policy directed at the transgender students in bathrooms and locker rooms, April 27, the heat has intensified with extreme rhetoric.
Conservatives have railed against masks, Critical Race Theory, curriculum, and other issues at Peoria Unified meetings, but they have been able to sink their teeth into the transgender issue for months.
Tiffany Benson, an employee of Phoenix-based Turning Point USA, has spoken at numerous school board meetings throughout the Valley espousing conservative beliefs, including PUSD, where she recently echoed board member Rebecca Hill in her belief that the district is “evil.” Both women trumpeted this sentiment after the transgender vote, and doubled down on their dislike for the district.
Benson 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.
Her dispatches have involved biblical invocations and fiery language toward PUSD regarding the transgender issue. Benson is a special projects administrator at Turning Point USA, but the organization first denied she worked with them before saying Benson was speaking out on her own time.
At the April 27 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.
Also since the vote, Hill has used her voting power to try and stonewall important initiatives, at times solely because the board did not support a transgender policy.
“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 at the May 11 meeting.
Since the failure of the transgender policy, the narrative has shifted, with Hill, governing board member Heather Rooks, and other people portraying the vote as an intentional move to harm PUSD girls — that having no transgender policy opens the door for either a trans girl or a cis male to go into the girls’ bathrooms and harm girls.
However, district officials say there have been no incidents of harm by transgender students in the girl’s bathrooms.
Meeting distractions have included Bible invocations from Rooks and Hill and their recitations of the PUSD slogan, “Every student, every day” but with the added tagline: “except the girls.”
Other theatrics include audience members turning their backs to the dais while others speak in support of transgender students, and submitting affidavits to the board, claiming violation of parental rights. Officials say attempts like these are not legally binding, yet it appears no lawsuits have been filed against the district regarding any disputes conservatives have brought before the board in recent years.
Advocacy group weighs in
At least one advocacy group has taken notice of the heated activity around the PUSD school board.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is asking Rooks and Hill to stop using their government positions to promote their personal religious beliefs.
A letter to the board members from Christopher Line, staff attorney for Freedom From Religion Foundation, particularity points out Rooks, and states she has been using her position on the board to foist her personal religious beliefs upon district parents and community members.
The letter cites the Establishment Clause in the Constitution, which “protects Americans’ religious freedom by ensuring the continued separation of religion and government — dictates that the government cannot in any way show favoritism toward religion.”
The letter adds Rooks has openly embraced Christian nationalism and invites her supporters to attend board meetings en masse, sometimes causing disruptions to the official proceedings.
“While board members are free to promote their personal religious beliefs however they wish in their personal capacities outside of the school board, as government officials they cannot be allowed to commandeer the board in order to impose their personal religious beliefs on district students, parents, and employees,” the letter said.
One of the missions of Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religious Freedom is to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism, according to the group.
The group is asking the Peoria Unified school board to take whatever action necessary to ensure Rooks and Hill respect the constitutional rights of the Peoria Unified School District community.
In 2016, the Freedom From Religion Foundation won a federal court judgment against Chino Valley Unified School District for inserting religion into official proceedings, and the court ordered the district to pay more than $200,000 in the plaintiffs’ attorney fees and costs.
“If (PUSD) board members continue to impose religion on those in attendance, it will subject the school district to unnecessary liability and potential financial strain,” the letter stated.
Most recent attack
Most recently the Legislative District 27 Republican Party censured three members of the Peoria Unified governing board for what they say are “harmful actions” to the girls of the district.
At the May 22 school board meeting during the public comment section, a woman who claimed to represent Legislative District 27 Republican Party, speaking in place of Jerry Vance, read their censure resolution.
However, Peoria Independent reached out to several members of the conservative political group for confirmation, and none of them responded.
The censure resolution claims that governing board members David Sandoval, Bill Sorensen and Melissa Ewing broke their oath to the Arizona Constitution and the people of the district when they voted against drafting a policy about transgender students in district bathrooms.
The censure states that the three governing board members did not take into account “the fear of boys in girl’s bathrooms” and they “prefer to serve the federal government over the people of Arizona.”
Sandoval, Sorensen and Ewing did not respond to Peoria Independent regarding the censure.
LD27 Dems District Chair Valerie Harris said no party should be censuring nonpartisan elected officials. Public school boards are subject to federal law, which supersedes district policy.
“This action by the LD27 Republicans represents a continuation of the nationwide far rightwing agenda to replace public education with a ‘for profit’ system based on extreme religious interpretations,” she said. “I believe public education should remain nonpartisan and inclusive.”
Republicans of LD 27 and LD 28 censured former Mayor Peoria Cathy Carlat last year, again, in a nonpartisan role, for endorsing Sen. Mark Kelly in the general election.
However, censures are generally not meant for nonpartisan boards such as school boards and city councils, and are usually aimed at those within a party system the larger group is not happy with.
Thomas Volgy, a professor of political science at University of Arizona, said censure activities are typically done over symbolic issues, for example, transgender concerns. But, he said, a censure by either party’s legislative district, or even the state party, has absolutely no legal standing, and certainly a partisan legislative district has no authority over an elected school district board.
The Peoria Unified school board is responsible to the residents who elected them, and no partisan group can “censure” them, he said.
“All that censure means, in this context, is that the Republicans in LD27 are unhappy with the direction the Peoria school board is taking, and absolutely nothing more,” Volgy said. “This simply reflects the degree of intensity present in our politics at the moment, or should I say the degree of insanity in our politics at the moment?”
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.
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