In NJ, progressives mobilize against ‘right-wing extremism’ on sex ed, LGBTQ school policies

Some of New Jersey’s most powerful political fundraisers and an increasingly organized wave of progressive parents and activists are working to defend the state’s controversial sex education standards, LGBTQ-centric curricula and diversity initiatives they say conservatives have a head start in opposing.

The efforts to organize are already having visible impacts. In February, the year-old New Jersey Public Education Coalition — which describes itself as a non-partisan group to “protect our public schools and communities from right-wing extremism" — called on its network to send dozens of people to a Colts Neck Board of Education meeting. Group members opposed a policy board members considered to impose bathroom restrictions on transgender students, and require schools to notify parents when students newly assert or question their gender identities. The K-8 district’s board shot down the policy 7-2.

Other groups are making legal filings that would allow them to spend on elections and advocacy, as battles over sex ed standards, banning library books and lessons about diversity heat up in the state. They cite among their motivations the momentum of the conservative New Jersey Project, which objects to the standards as encouraging the “sexualization of kids,” and says they're part of a “woke NJ Agenda" that includes issues ranging from COVID policies to social-emotional learning. New Jersey Project, which advocates for parental choice in education, celebrated the victories of 151 school board candidates it endorsed across 85 districts last fall.

We noticed that the MAGA extremists in a lot of our school districts simply got organized first [with] a lot of voters.

Former 7th District Rep. Tom Malinowski

The new progressive groups also point to growing numbers of schools either rejecting or aiming to work around aspects of the mandatory sex ed standards, which were adopted in 2019 but went into effect last fall. The standards set benchmarks for when students should be introduced to certain concepts. By the fifth grade, they say, students should know about making individuals feel welcome “regardless of their gender, gender expression, or sexual orientation.” The standards also address issues including consent, sexting, mental health and abuse prevention.

But some parents argue they introduce advanced or even explicit concepts to children at too young of an age. For instance, they call for eighth graders to be able to define vaginal, anal and oral sex.

“We noticed that the MAGA extremists in a lot of our school districts simply got organized first [with] a lot of voters,” said former 7th District Rep. Tom Malinowski, who in March converted his campaign committee into the “Districts for Democracy” PAC. It has a stated goal of keeping culture wars out of schools, including by opposing book-banning in libraries, as some parents in Hunterdon County sought to do with LGBTQ-centered materials during the 2021-22 school year.

One organization founded last year, The Education Truth Project, recently filed to become a 501(c)(4), a type of nonprofit, often called a “dark money” group, because it doesn’t have to disclose its donors. The group says it aims to help school board hopefuls “combat the toxic candidates and environment created by MAGA movement.” Founder Matt Kazmierczak, a former Republican strategist who said he’s become disillusioned with the direction of the party, said the group may begin endorsing candidates and making independent expenditures to support them later this year. The group also funds some New Jersey Public Education Coalition projects..

And the powerful New Jersey Education Association teachers union already has a track record of spending in districts where culture battles are being waged. The union is behind an ongoing initiative to train advocates to address issues of “aggressive book banning, anti-inclusion activity [and] organized political groups.” And it runs sessions for members on topics including inclusive curricula and making school board endorsements.

Last year, it drew condemnation from Republican lawmakers and some parents for funding a television ad opposing “extremists” it says use wedge issues to sow discord within school boards, with images of protesters and crowded meetings over headlines about battles to get books on LGBTQ+ issues pulled from library shelves.

“It's not surprising that in those places where conservative candidates won running against the state's health and physical education standards and curriculum issues there is a liberal response,” Marc Pfeiffer, assistant director of the Bloustein Local Government Research Center at Rutgers University, said. “The physics law that says ‘to everything there is an equal and opposite reaction’ applies to school politics as well.”

Not only financial support

Malinowski’s group is beginning its financial support with just one community: Westfield, in the heart of his former district. The former congressman said he’s providing “in the low hundreds of dollars” to three of the five candidates running in Westfield school board elections taking place Tuesday — Kent Diamond, Charles Galinas and Brendan Galligan. Each pledged to “oppose censorship and culture war politics and focus on supporting local schools,” Malinowski said.

Last year in Westfield, a school board presentation included links to a sex ed advocacy nonprofit’s sample lessons, escalating statewide and national controversies over New Jersey’s sex education standards. Suggested materials aimed at first-graders discussed gender identity, and materials for older students described pornography as “normal” to watch but exaggerated from reality. During the 2022 congressional campaign, Republican Tom Kean Jr., alleged on Fox News Westfield educators were teaching “pornography” to second-graders, even though the district never adopted the nonprofit’s materials. Kean would go on to unseat Malinowski.

State law already lets parents opt their children out of any health or sex ed lessons they find objectionable. Some districts are going further. Middletown is employing what’s been broadly described as an “opt-in” system, asking every family if its children will participate. East Hanover, in a letter to parents last year, said lessons based on the new standards would be confined to the last day of class.

Other districts, including Garwood and Warren Township, have refused to adopt the standards altogether. And the number of districts defying or reinterpreting the standards has grown after conservative victories in the last election.

For instance, a slate of newly elected Bernards Township board members led a 4-3 vote in March to have their administration consider “alternate methods of forms of delivery" for the standards, such as sending materials home with students in packets. That group ran under the name “For Bernards Children,” with the New Jersey Project’s endorsement.

We've got to educate [parents] so that they know, what's the truth and what's the disinformation.

New Jersey Public Education Coalition founder Michael Gottesman

Only 14 New Jersey school districts have elections Tuesday; most of the state’s nearly 600 school districts instead hold their elections in the fall. It’s not clear yet if there will be major financial impacts from the new wave of organizing on those races, or from the conservative movement progressives say they’re responding to. Kazmierczak said his Education Truth Project hasn’t started making independent expenditures to support candidates, and the New Jersey Project — which opposes the state’s sex ed standards and curriculum centering LGBTQ individuals’ contributions to society — hasn’t yet been approved to operate as a state PAC.

Last year, the NJEA super PAC, Garden State Forward, spent more than $300,000 on independent expenditures for school elections, including more than $25,000 in Sparta, according to data from the state Election Law Enforcement Commission. Ultimately, the New Jersey Project-backed Students First slate took all six seats in a crowded race of 17 candidates.

The union also donated about $25,000 to an eventually defeated Wayne-based slate where candidates described the sex ed standards as “thoughtful, age-appropriate, and [promoting] kindness while discouraging bullying.”

An NJEA spokesman hasn’t answered a message seeking information about what towns it might prioritize in elections this year, but union president Sean Spiller previously said the NJEA supports “any candidate who is pro-public education.”

The founder of the New Jersey Public Education Coalition, Wayne Democratic Club Vice President Michael Gottesman, said much of the activism and activity is happening outside of election cycles and not tied explicitly to campaign spending.

He said his own group has about $5,000 in the bank, half of which he provided, and half collected through a GoFundMe campaign — though that doesn’t account for whatever of its projects the Education Truth Project 501(c)(4) may fund. Gottesman’s group, an LLC, doesn’t donate to campaigns, but provides one-on-one mentoring for candidates, and has run a series in-person and online of “educational roadshows” on issues like sex ed and diversity in schools, he said. The group hasn’t mentored any candidates in this spring’s 14 races, he said.

He described swarming the Colts Neck meeting as a “squadron alert,” made possible through a network of volunteers in about half of all New Jersey towns, ready to sound alarm bells when issues like the transgender student policy come up in their communities. And he said the coalition serves as a way for like-minded members to pool resources, such as “informal scripts” for speaking at school boards. It has an advisory board that includes school librarians, school board members and the first trans woman school board president in the state, Dover’s Daniella Mendez.

Gottesman said he sees the sex education standards as particularly important to preventing child abuse, but members also focus on issues of social emotional learning, or diversity, equity and inclusion.

“We've got to educate [parents] so that they know, what's the truth and what's the disinformation,” he said.

Gottesman’s group is also lobbying the state to enforce the sex ed standards. Department of Education officials have said districts could face “discipline” for defying them, but largely demurred as to how. The group asked the state New Jersey School Ethics Commission for an opinion as to whether individual school board members would be violating ethics rules if they voted for policies that work around the sex ed standards, like an “opt-in” system. The commission said it would first need a ruling from a court or a state agency saying such a vote was breaking a law before it could find someone in violation.

Last month, Gottesman’s group told state officials his coalition would be willing to “find and file a test case” with the ethics commission, if they’d first issue the kind of guidance the commission says it would need. He said representatives of the governor’s office have agreed to talk soon about possibilities.

The commission, however, has already twice declined to penalize Warren school board members for votes rejecting the standards outright.

‘Real teaching instead of woke ideology’

The founder of think tank Sunlight Policy Center, Michael Lilley, argues whatever financing and momentum has come from conservatives is a response to the teachers union’s outsized role in New Jersey politics. But he says parents are also organically responding in earnest to issues they care about.

“People want to characterize the parent movement as being all conservative, and I know a lot of conservatives have gotten involved, because they didn’t like what they saw when it comes to things like sex ed, or critical race theory,” Lilley said.

New Jersey Project was founded in September 2022 by parents Tara Edel, Eric Simkin, and Mike Gleisberg. Gleisberg said it developed out of the now-13,000-member anti-mask-mandate Facebook group NJ Fresh Faced Schools. Group members have shared resources like sample curriculum opt-out letters

The NJ teachers union put out an ad that said parents are enemies of teachers, which has done nothing but create discord between teachers and parents.

Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich

“Public education, and I’d argue education at-large in the United States now, has been grossly politicized, and that it’s egregiously biased with an extreme politically left slant,” Gleisberg said. He said he’s upset by the sexual education curriculum because it normalizes various gender identities in the classroom.

Another conservative group, Arise New Jersey, tracked hundreds of candidates in the 2022 election and celebrated victories in several counties, NJ.com reported last November. Its website is defunct, but recently posted materials describing “gender ideology” as a “denial of reality” to its social media. Arise hasn’t responded to inquiries via email and its Facebook page.

National conservative organizations have also played a role in New Jersey’s sex education battle. The national Moms for Liberty 501(c)(4) — which has opposed mask mandates and many educational materials focused on LGBTQ inclusivity and sex ed — says on its website it has chapters in six New Jersey counties. NJ.com reported 11 of the 23 candidates the group supported in largely conservative Morris County won in 2022. The group says it’s not endorsing any New Jersey candidates this spring.

“The NJ teachers union put out an ad that said parents are enemies of teachers, which has done nothing but create discord between teachers and parents,” Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich said in a statement sent to Gothamist. “Instead, we want to partner with teachers to shift the focus to be on real teaching instead of on woke ideology and pseudoscience."

Malinowski tied much of the uproar at school boards to rhetoric from national conservative figures, like former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Former Bernards school board member Guddia Singh, who lost her seat in the 2022 sweep by the slate backed by New Jersey Project, said after Trump was elected in 2016 “a lot of people felt entitled to come out and be a little bit more vocal with their opinion” on cultural issues.

But Pfeiffer, from the Bloustein center, tracked politicization back to at least 2012, when the state Legislature and then-Gov. Chris Christie gave districts the option to move their elections from April to November, when most other elections take place. Parties started to feel freer to play a role in the formally nonpartisan school elections, he said.

Impacts of politicization

Tabitha Dell’Angelo, interim dean at The College of New Jersey’s School of Education as well as a school board member at the Central Bucks School District in Pennsylvania, said political division has made it hard to recruit teachers amid a national shortage.

Dell’Angelo is the founder of the Urban Education Program – focused on recruiting and training teachers who are equity-literate. She has opposed policies fellow school board members approved to ban “advocacy activities” by teachers, including hanging LGBTQ+ pride flags in the classroom.

“And I hear from teachers all the time, both in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, that they feel like they're not trusted,” she said.

NJEA's Spiller, a former Wayne high school teacher, said he’s also seen a “steady decline” in teachers joining the profession over the last 10 years, and that tension at the school board level isn’t helping public schools hire more teachers.

Malinowski said he aims to help with that.

“The goal is for, again, teachers not to have to worry about every single thing that (they) say. It creates a climate of fear and intimidation” he said. “I don't want that coming to New Jersey.”

Louis C. Hochman contributed to this report.

This story has been updated to correct the number of members of the New Jersey Fresh Faced Schools Facebook group