A vision for education must go through school boards
Education is undeniably critical, yet despite widespread agreement on its importance, many Americans remain uninvolved.
“If you want to change the direction of the country—and I believe that’s what most people aim for in any public policy movement—there’s nothing more important than what children learn during the 13 years they spend in school,” says David Hoyt.
In a nearly two-decade-long career, Hoyt started focusing more on education when he launched a classical charter school in Jacksonville, Florida alongside his wife.
“It was a very instructive process, particularly learning more about how school boards work,” he reflects.
Hoyt wasn’t thinking about launching a school when the genesis for Cornerstone Classical Academy emerged. “My wife and I knew that we wanted something different for our kids because the public schools where we live are not very high performing.” He was asked to tour a school and that led to looking at other schools and a deeper passion for classical education.
“I visited this classical charter school down in Naples, Florida, and I was blown away by what these kids were doing,” says Hoyt. “They had a fully integrated curriculum. They’re learning about the Renaissance and history while they’re doing drawings of the Sistine Chapel. They were diagramming sentences in Latin in third grade that I couldn’t do in high school Latin.”
Hoyt wondered how to get a school like that started in his area and said they told him they need “a bunch of tiger moms to get together and form a board.” Since he says he’s married to one, they got to work. “We massively underestimated how much effort would go into getting this launched.”
He says they initially envisioned a small school with a few hundred students. The team that was put together wound up going in a much different direction and bought a 16-acre property, renovating about 100,000 square feet of space. Cornerstone Classical Academy is now up to 900 students with another 900 on the waitlist with plans to keep adding a grade every year until they reach 1,200 students.
“There’s several states and school districts that are starting to implement classical curricula in the public school system, which is something we’re huge fans of at SBAE because it’s more rigorous.”
He states that many private schools aren’t accessible for many families because of cost and even some of the shifting values at many elite schools no longer line up with the values in the home.
Before the emergence of Classical Charter Academy, Hoyt worked at policy groups, but education was only one of many focus areas. Hoyt says he found out about School Boards for Academic Excellence (SBAE) and saw nobody else explicitly working on school board policy across the country. “I just wanted to be a part of it.” He now serves as executive director of the organization.
School boards were barely visible in public discourse, especially among voters and conservatives. However, things began to change with the growing focus on standardized testing and the controversy surrounding the Common Core curriculum. COVID-19 lockdowns further intensified this shift, sparking a surge in demand for greater accountability of school boards.
“A lot of parents were forced to deal with the fact that their kids are not getting a very good education because they saw it from their living rooms,” says Hoyt. “Then you had school closures, mask mandates, and a bunch of other stuff that riled parents up.”
School boards have tremendous power because they are the decision makers on so many of those issues.
“What we found with SBAE is a lot of times it’s just the administrators making decisions, and the school board is expected to go along with it.”
Issues related to sexual identity have exploded in schools, too. “The reason why the school board is the most important lever of power is because it’s the highest decision-making authority in any local education agency,” says Hoyt. Wherever one falls on the controversial issues wreaking havoc in schools, Hoyt emphasizes that parents should have the power to determine what their kids are learning. SBAE is working to fill in the gap and do more to equip local school boards as decision makers and foster better relationships within their community.
The way that it works in a lot of school districts, the policies trickle down from the federal level,” says Hoyt. “If they don’t want to get sued, and nobody wants to get sued, they’re strongly encouraged just to go along with it.”
Controversial social issues can distract from the immense amount of learning loss in schools. He says a big chunk of the media likes to focus on so-called “book bans” because it can be an issue where favorable language helps them frame the controversy to their advantage.
The reason why the school board is the most important lever of power is because it’s the highest decision-making authority in any local education agency
“A lot of school board members ran on a platform of getting inappropriate materials out of libraries and out of curricula and it’s inarguable that much of this content does not belong in front of kids of a certain age.”
Hoyt emphasizes that discipline, safety, and parental rights are essential components of any well-functioning school. He points to Governor Glenn Youngkin’s recent efforts to champion parental rights legislation in Virginia as a key example.
As for learning loss, he calls the abysmal National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, the nation’s report card, as evidence of the widespread failure in so many schools.
“What we hope to do at SBAE is advance that conversation onto the reforms that make a real difference for academic outcomes.”
So much of Hoyt’s focus is on what can be achieved in education for the future of the country. “The voters of these elections 13 years from now are sitting in class, getting their worldview informed by either truth or non-truth.” He believes this has massive ramifications for not only a well-informed public but the future of liberty. “I hope we can prepare young people for preserving liberty and a deeper understanding of America’s founding ideals and purpose.”
Ray Nothstine is editor of American Habits.
