For decades, political combatants under the hypnosis of leftist ideology have had a stranglehold on academia and the American education system.  The largest teacher's union in the country advertises itself as non-partisan, but almost exclusively backs Democrat causes and candidates, and the culture of progressive thought so prevalent at the top trickled down, permeating all levels and spheres of education.

We've seen schools devolve from institutions of traditional learning into dens of fallacy and pedophilia.  City governments paying adult men for sexual performances in front of children, revisionist history to promote a Marxist agenda, and school libraries housing books with themes like "underage drinking, fondling, masturbation, orgasms, oral sex, sexual intercourse, sexual abuse, statutory rape, incest, and rape" are commonplace.  And parents have had enough.

Despite the claim that school board positions are politically independent, we all know that's obviously not the case — and on Tuesday night, Florida held early elections, where, arguably, the most consequential victories came with school boards.  Across thirteen counties, pro-family candidates secured decisive wins, and in five counties, they flipped school boards from leftist control to conservative majorities.

School boards that @1776ProjectPac flipped seats and won several conservative majorities:

- Bay
- Brevard
- Clay
- Duval
- Flager
- Hernando
- Hillsborough
- Martin
- Miami-Dade
- Okaloosa
- Polk
- Putnam
- Sarasota

— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) August 24, 2022

These outcomes served as a referendum on the activist assaults against our children, and the gains were hard fought and well deserved.  But the assailants aren't exclusively on the left, and the battle is far from over.

You may remember a viral moment in April 2021, when parents in Vail, Arizona showed up to a school board meeting en masse to object to the forced masking.  When the board refused to hear from their constituents and abandoned the meeting, the parents cited Robert's Rules of Order and elected a new board.  From an earlier American Thinker blog post:

The entire episode is evidence that patience is running out for restrictions on personal freedom imposed on [sic] the name of COVID control that are unsupported by science. The school board told local news outlets that '90%' of parents support the mask mandate but presented no evidence.

In the aftermath, the new board was unable to achieve legitimacy, but one of the women continues to take the current members to task — especially the "conservative" ones — and is now campaigning for a position.

Anastasia Tsatsakis is the founder of Freedom Fighters of Southern Arizona and was one of the parents elected that night in Vail.  She's a dead ringer for the fierce patriots who just secured seats across Florida, running on a platform of preserving rights of parents and children and restoring integrity and honesty to the governing board.  (Un)ironically, she's running against fellow "conservatives" who really aren't conservative, and therein lies the new battle — healthy skepticism is the name of the game.

One of Tsatsakis's opponents masquerades as a conservative yet was caught denying the existence of Antifa and, in a public forum, diminished the carnage, calling it "fake news" and the perpetrators "Republicans."

In a statement from Tsatsakis:

Since I got into the race for the Vail Governing Board, I have made it my mission to not only promote the good, but to point out there are many issues hiding behind a good name that need addressing. I have discovered the 'fuzzy experiment', pronoun usage, near-porn material present in freshman classes, and 'character enrichment' curricula which utilizes pieces of the globalist agenda. Our district has an overall score of 66% in math and ELA. This is unacceptable! We need to can do better.

My competitors are the 'go along to get along' crew. I am not. I will not kneel to those ideologies or agendas.

The results this week in Florida remind us that patriots are on the move, and this is a battle that can be won, but we must remain cautious to avoid the Trojan horses.

Image: Wokandapix from Pixabay, Pixabay License, free for commercial use, no attribution required