Turning Point USA endorsement not a badge of honor for school board seat 

OPINION — Desiree Byrne and Heather Rooks both want Peoria Unified voters to see their Turning Point Action endorsement as a credential. Byrne posted her endorsement graphic thanking the group directly; Rooks did the same. Neither of them should be treating this as a selling point. It’s a warning label.

School board seats are supposed to be the most local, most practical, least ideological offices in American government. Parents want buses that run on time, teachers who are supported, and kids who can read at grade level. None of that requires a national activist organization’s stamp of approval, and TPUSA’s stamp comes with baggage no PUSD candidate should want.

TPUSA is not a public education advocacy group. It is a national political operation built around culture-war messaging, and its own material has repeatedly cast public schools as sites of “indoctrination” to be fought rather than institutions to be strengthened. An organization that treats public education as the enemy is a strange ally for someone asking to govern one.

TPUSA’s record on race is also well documented: founder-era commentary and campus chapter controversies around the country have drawn accusations of promoting racially charged rhetoric, and the organization has been a leading voice against diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools; the same DEI programs meant to make sure every student, regardless of background or disability, gets a fair shot.

You don’t have to take my word for what that looks like once it’s implemented, Rooks’ own campaign literature spells it out as a list of accomplishments. Her “Record of Action” flyer boasts that she worked to remove DEI language from PUSD’s mission statement, brought forward a districtwide policy prohibiting DEI outright, and pushed through a new social studies and history curriculum specifically because it excludes DEI content.

Consider what that last one actually means: a social studies and history curriculum built around leaving material out. It also touts a “privacy policy” mandating separate bathrooms by biological sex, a policy sold as protection, but really a solution in search of a problem, invoked to target transgender and nonbinary students. These are not accomplishments a school board member should be campaigning on. They’re a checklist of what a Christian nationalist political organization asked for, delivered.

And Peoria doesn’t need to guess what a TPUSA-aligned board member looks like in the rest of her conduct, we’ve lived it with Rooks. And it hasn’t been pleasant. She was voted out as board president by her own colleagues, 3-2, amid the Centennial High School misconduct case, after board members said she disregarded evidence from the Arizona Department of Education, PUSD’s own HR department, and law enforcement. She sued the district she serves over a religious-speech dispute rather than resolve it internally. That’s not “standing up for parents.” That’s a pattern of putting personal ideology ahead of the district’s functioning, the opposite of what an apolitical governing seat requires.

Byrne is asking voters to hand her the same playbook. Peoria doesn’t need a Rooks 2.0. Voters should ask both candidates a simple question: If you can’t name one public-school value TPUSA actually shares, why is their endorsement the first thing you’re campaigning on, and why are you proud of a record built on cutting DEI and rewriting the curriculum around its absence, rather than on academic outcomes?

Editor's Note: Ann Gamble is a pen name.