Maryland Students, Educators, and Schools Deserve Better
Don’t let these extremist school board candidates have a say over our schools.
Anne Arundel
County School Board
Anne Arundel County is facing extremist school board candidates who would force their political agendas into our kids’ classrooms.
In district 3,
Chuck Yocum says he would teach students that many January 6th insurrectionists were given “crazy sentences” for “nothing more than trespassing,”
And In district 5,
LaToya Nkongolo is a pro-book banning candidate who says that policies supporting LGBTQ people are causing “mental illness.”
Here in Anne Arundel County, we teach our children to treat others with kindness.
But Yocum didn’t get the memo — he publicly calls women “b*tch,” “slut,” and “wh*res,” and uses the slur “r*tard” to mock people. He has open disdain for our public school educators, telling them to “stop your incessant whining about how hard your job is.”
At a campaign event, Nkongolo echoed extreme, fringe conspiracy theories, calling Anne Arundel County Public Schools an “institution of grooming,” claiming that teachers are attempting to “influence our kids” to “cause sexual confusion.”
At a school board candidate forum, Nkongolo openly supported banning certain books from school libraries. It’s little surprise, then, that she hosted a meet-and-greet event with Moms for Liberty, an extremist group known for promoting book bans, including books on Martin Luther King and Anne Frank, and being accused of harassing educators and community leaders.
Yocum says that when teaching students about January 6th, he would cover what he calls “the media’s blatant distortion of the truth.” Defending his claim that “doctors are not the authority, teachers are not the authority, the government is not the authority” Yocum wrote that, “Drs said masks worked when all along knew did nothing [sic],” presumably referring to the Covid-19 pandemic.
We have real issues to address in Anne Arundel County Public Schools, and we need leaders who will put our kids first. But Chuck Yocum and LaToya Nkongolo are fixated on extreme fringe theories.