U.S. public schools lost $3.2 billion fighting conservative culture wars: report

Instead of putting their funds towards education, U.S. public schools have been forced to spend approximately $3.2 billion on security, public relations, and legal assistance combating right-wing attacks.

That's the estimated cost of conservatives targeting schools for supposedly teaching about race and LGBTQ+ identities during the 2023-2024 school year, according to a new report from the University of California, Riverside; University of California, Los Angeles; University of Texas at Austin; and American University. Researchers surveyed 467 public school superintendents across 46 states, finding steep costs even in districts that reported low levels of conflict.

The districts, which serve an average of 10,000 students per year, reported expenses of $249,765 on average in low-conflict districts, nearly $500,000 on average in moderate-conflict districts, and $811,805 on average in high conflict-districts. Districts with low conflict saved an estimated $562,000.

The increased costs came from communications, legal, security, and staffing needs. Superintendents reported having to devote hundreds of hours to combating online misinformation or responding to media inquiries about topics such as book bans or requests for public records. Threats and harassment against staff and even students also caused districts to allocate more toward security, such as metal detectors and student resource officers.

The threats have led staff to quit in droves, forcing districts to devote resources towards hiring and training replacements. These attacks even directly impacted the superintendents, as 10 percent reported receiving threats of violence and 11 percent said they experienced property vandalism.

One superintendent reported his previously peaceful school board becoming derailed when conservatives won seats promising to protect “parent rights” and “chase the CRT boogeyman,” CRT being critical race theory. The members would devolve their meetings into "personal attacks," validating groups that spread misinformation about the district online.

Others reported conservatives volunteering at libraries only for the purpose of finding content that had LGBTQ+ themes or other topics they deemed "inappropriate" in order to challenge the books.These parents would also then read select, out-of-context passages at board meetings, derailing them.

As their efforts went viral in conservative spaces, many began directly harassing school staff online, sometimes escalating to direct in-person threats. One superintendent said: “Our social media accounts were effectively bombed … full of messages of hate. My 60-plus-year-old administrative assistant was bombarded with phone calls to the point where she wanted to quit.”

The report noted that there is not one policy solution that could prevent this behavior, but rather that it is a social problem that society at large must reject. Superintendents especially emphasized the importance for "educational leaders and for the broader public to work to diminish the opportunities for conflict entrepreneurs to disrupt and distract and gain power — in school board meetings and elsewhere."

"Rejecting this small number of conflict entrepreneurs would help ensure that community members communicate their disagreements in a manner consistent with democratic principles," it concluded. "This means upholding norms of respect, evidence-based reasoning, and civil deliberation that embraces the well-being and dignity of all. Such behavior would save a great deal of money that could then be spent to support our schools."