Two weeks after Viola Garcia signed a letter to President Joseph Biden imploring the federal government to spy on some parents who speak out at school board meetings, she was appointed to a prestigious board to oversee the federal evaluation of the nation's schools.
Garcia, an elected board member of the predominantly Hispanic working-class Aldine Independent School District in the greater Houston area, on October 13 was one of five people named by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to serve on the National Assessment Governing Board established by Congress in 1988. According to a Department of Education press release, the governing board oversees and sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as “the Nation's Report Card.”
“The 26-member Governing Board is responsible for deciding which subjects NAEP assesses, determining the assessments' content, setting achievement levels that describe student performance, and pursuing new ways to make NAEP results useful and meaningful to the public,” the release said.
The release added that the “nonpartisan” board operates independently but under law its members are appointed by the Secretary of Education. Two former governors, Democrat Beverly Perdue of North Carolina and Republican Haley Barbour of Mississippi, are current board members.
Garcia's term began retroactively on October 1 and will end on September 30, 2024.
Garcia has been a board member at Aldine ISD since 1992, after resigning as a principal in the district to stay at home with her three daughters, according to a podcast about her on the district's web site. In 2018, a middle school in the district was named after her. She went “national” in 2021 when she was elected president of the Alexandria, Virginia-based National School Boards Association (NSBA), the podcast said.
Garcia's newfound duties recently included paving the way for what will likely be the unprecedented siccing of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal police against some parents who oppose the strong leftist turn in public education.
On September 29, Garcia and NSBA chief executive Chip Slaven signed a letter to Biden claiming that “America's public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat” by parents who are angry at school Covid masking policies or who believe the “propaganda” that critical race theory is taught in public schools.
“This propaganda continues despite the fact that critical race theory is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K-12 class,” the letter said.
Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo has reported that critical race theory has made inroads into public education for more than 10 years and on June 30 the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union, “voted to approve a plan to promote critical race theory in all 50 states.”
Purportedly citing more than 20 examples of “malice, violence, and threats against public school officials,” the NSBA asked the Biden Administration to classify such “heinous actions” as forms of domestic terrorism and hate crimes and use the PATRIOT Act and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act to monitor and potentially prosecute alleged offenders. They also claimed the alleged threats could harm interstate commerce, presumably to justify federal intervention in what have historically been local and state matters.
According to Rufo, only one of the cited incidents was an actual case of violence against a school official.
On October 4, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo agreeing that in recent months there has been “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff.” He said the Department of Justice “takes these incidents seriously” and would use its “authority and resources” to identify such threats and prosecute offenders when appropriate. He said the department would issue a series of measures in the coming days and that he had directed the FBI to meet with federal, state and local officials within 30 days to facilitate discussions of strategies to address the threats and “open dedicated lines of communication” to address them.
In the letter, Garcia and Slaven said they “appreciate recent discussions with White House and U.S. Department of Education staff on many critical issues facing public schools, including threats school officials are receiving.”
On September 30, one day after Garcia co-signed the letter, Secretary of Education Cardona refused to answer in a Congressional hearing whether parents have the “primary role” in their children's education, only saying they have an “important role.”
Schoolgrader is not suggesting there was necessarily a connection between Garcia's letter and her appointment by Cardona to the governing board. Garcia and the Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment.
Garcia and Slaven purported to write their letter on “behalf of our state associations and the more than 90,000 school board members who govern our country's 14,000 local public school districts.”
Garcia and Slaven knew their organization does not speak for local school board members, as the NSBA only represents statewide associations that in turn represent the school boards in their respective sates.
Garcia and Slaven seemingly communicated more with the White House and the Department of Education in drafting their letter than some of the statewide associations they are supposed to represent.
At least three statewide school board associations — in Louisiana, Kentucky and Virginia — said they were not consulted about the letter and federal intervention in school board meetings is not necessary or wanted. The associations in Louisiana and Kentucky said they would evaluate whether to continue membership in the NSBA.
The Louisiana association added the letter “discourages active participation in the governance process” and was a “huge step backwards” in the efforts of various state school board associations to promote openness, transparency and local autonomy.
The Kentucky group said it is “watching for much needed corrective action from NSBA's leadership and a renewed commitment to transparency.”
The Texas Association of School Boards, in which Garcia served as president in 2012 and 2013, did not reply to a request for comment.
The many vehement critics of the NSBA letter might be surprised that Garcia said in the Aldine ISD podcast that the biggest driver for her commitment to education was being a parent and that local school decisions should be made by local school boards. She bragged that all her daughters graduated from the Aldine district and are successful, with one working for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Washington D.C. and married to a virologist in Anthony Fauci's department at the National Institutes of Health. She said being a parent has allowed her to empathize more with Latin American kids who come across the U.S. border “unaccompanied,” adding that “it tugs at your heart strings.”
She said the major focus at the NSBA in the past year has been “equity,” but the work of the organization in promoting equity has been “broader” than race in trying to address whatever local needs there may be.
According to the NSBA web site, the organization's planned “Equity Symposium West” on October 22-23 in Oklahoma City was abruptly cancelled without explanation “in collaboration with the Oklahoma School Board Association,” and full refunds would be provided since “the timing of this decision is inconvenient.”
The Aldine ISD latest five-year Plan, called “A New Way Forward,” published in August 2019, says that “increased focus on equity and culture will be embedded in all areas of the organization” to help “honor diversity” and promote positive interactions.
Of the district's 67,000 students, 75% are Hispanic, 21% are black, 2% are white and 1% are Asian, according to the Alief ISD web site.
Garcia recollected in the podcast that when her daughters began going to school in the district it was predominantly white, less than 15% Hispanic and “20-something percent” black.
“And so, we flip from the time our daughters begin elementary school to now and that whole population shift, the demographics of our district has shifted and the needs of our district have shifted,” she said.