Great two-part piece by Pro Publica, working with the Trib, dropped last week, about wingnut attempts to reshape public schools — from someone who was on the ground for this.

Courtney Gore is a Granbury ISD school board member who got elected because she regurgitated all the nonsense about how public schools were teaching critical race theory, offering inappropriate messages and library books about sexuality, etc. She hosts a local Christian talk radio show where she talked about this.

Then, after she got elected, she actually investigated.

And, she saw the light.

She’d examined curriculum related to social-emotional learning, which has come under attack by Christian conservatives who say it encourages children to question gender roles and prioritizes feelings over biblical teachings. Instead, Gore found the materials taught children “how to be a good friend, a good human.” 

Gore rushed to share the news with the hard-liners who had encouraged her to run for the seat. She expected them to be as relieved and excited as she had been. But she said they were indifferent, even dismissive, because “it didn’t fit the narrative that they were trying to push.” 

So, in the spring of 2022, Gore went public with a series of Facebook posts. She told residents that her backers were using divisive rhetoric to manipulate the community’s emotions. They were interested not in improving public education but rather in sowing distrust, Gore said. 

“I’m over the political agenda, hypocrisy bs,” Gore wrote. “I took part in it myself. I refuse to participate in it any longer. It’s not serving our party. We have to do better.”

She didn't shut up, though:

Gore said she feels that she was unwittingly part of a statewide effort to weaken local support of public schools and lay the groundwork for a voucher system. 

And she said that unless she and others sound the alarm, residents won’t realize what is happening until it is too late. 

I feel like if I don’t speak out, then I’m complicit,” Gore said. “I refuse to be complicit in something that’s going to hurt children.”

And, of course, it got worse after that. Granbury ISD has to supply security at school board meetings, in part, to escort her to and from her car.

Because of that outspokenness, Gore is facing backlash from the same people who supported her race. She has been threatened at raucous school board meetings and shunned by people she once considered friends. 

School marshals escort her and her fellow board members to their cars to ensure no one accosts them.

What do you expect, when the leader of the movement, the grüppenführer, Tim Dunn, is normally known by his title of "Christofascist"?

And, that leads us to Part 2, where Gore talks more in depth, and more directly, about Dunn and his partners in crime, Farris and Dan Wilks.