Source: Nworeport

The Ohio, Missouri, and Pennsylvania state school board associations announced this week that they have abandoned the National School Boards Association amid consequences from the organization’s letter to the Biden administration that cited parents as “domestic terrorists.”

“The National School Boards Association (NSBA) respectfully asks for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation,” the letter states.

Ohio and Missouri joined Louisiana and Pennsylvania in departing from the national organization. The Alabama, Florida, and Kentucky associations have stated they are currently pondering their membership with the national organization.

Ohio Missouri and Pennsylvania all mentioned the letter from the NSBA to the Biden administration that called protesting parents ‘domestic terrorists’ as the reason for their withdrawal.

The letter inspired

Attorney General Merrick Garland to build a joint FBI-DOJ task force to review terrorist threats from parents protesting at school board meetings across the country.

The organization excused the letter following public criticism, sometime after Garland testified before Congress in defense of using the letter as the basis for building the task force. But the NSBA’s backtrack is proving to be a case of too little, too late.

In a letter to the NSBA, Ohio School Boards Association President, Robert Heard, and CEO Richard Lewis, noted that the company sent the letter to the Biden administration “on behalf of

state associations and school board members across the nation.”

“This assertion could not be further from the truth,” Heard and Lewis wrote. “OSBA was not notified of the letter, nor were we asked for our thoughts on the matter. If we had been consulted, we would have strongly disagreed with NSBA’s decision to request federal intervention as well as your claims of domestic

terrorism and hate crimes.”

“OSBA believes strongly in the value of parental and community discussion at school board meetings, and we reject the labeling of parents as domestic terrorists,” Heard and Lewis continued.

In a letter to its members stating the decision to leave, Missouri School Boards’ Association Executive Director Melissa Randol said NSBA’s choice to pen the letter “demonstrated it does not currently align with MSBA’s guiding principles of local governance.”

Randol called the NSBA’s apology for the letter a “step in the right direction.” She added, “We believe NSBA still has

significant work ahead, both implementing processes and procedures to prevent similar problems in the future, as well as repairing their fractured relationships.”

The NSBA did not respond to a request for comment.