My name is Greg Woodard and I am running for Boise School District Trustee, Race #1. I am a dad to five kids who are or were enrolled in the District. I am a husband to a wonderful wife. My wife and I are both successful products of the public school system. What I am not is someone who pursues conspiracies, book banning, and other radical special interests. Those are the spurious claims that former Trustees (some of whom failed to serve their entire elected terms) and former Superintendents have leveled against me and have hidden behind the pathetic “many of whom” moniker to avoid the fact that they have zero evidence for their false claims against me.
I am spending considerable time and money on a serious campaign because for too long, the current Board has ignored many parents’ voices in the District. I have an adopted son who, because of his past trauma, needs structure and consistency in his life. School is a key provider of those needs. Covid upended all of that. Unfortunately, the Board’s slow response to getting our kids back to in-person school made the situation much worse for my son and my entire family. West Ada, the largest school district in the state, was back to hybrid and in-person learning much sooner than Boise. West Ada also went to a mask optional policy well before Boise, and the Covid numbers for the two districts were similar even though Boise continued to mandate masks for kids, to their physical and mental detriment.
The Board has also been far from transparent. They banned public comment at Board meetings for over a year and ignored my multiple requests for their authority to deny parents and others the important right to have our voices heard at Board meetings. The Board made decisions on significant policies like mask mandates, the dress code, and the decision to go to full day kindergarten and virtually eliminate half day kindergarten with little to no parent input. For example, last year the Board voted at a regularly scheduled meeting to make masks optional, only to reverse that decision a few weeks later at an “emergency” meeting that provided little to no notice to parents.
We are the only school district in the state that does not have its election during the general election which has resulted in embarrassingly low voter turnout over the last decade of Trustee elections.
These are not the hallmarks of a transparent Board that is truly concerned with working in partnership with parents to make sure our kids have the best education possible.
It is disappointing that my opponents (who have also falsely smeared me as a “right-wing extremist,” “public education opponent,” and someone with “divisive, distracting intentions”) would use their powerful proxies to make false statements against me. I do not have many well-heeled contributors or well-connected friends to finance and help run my campaign like they do. I am running a grass-roots campaign supported by incredible parents who, like me, want their voices heard in the District.
What I do have is a strong motivation to continue to make my platform heard. I have expressed my disagreement with the decisions my opponents have made on the Board, but I have not taken the low road of personal attacks and false smears. Sadly, I cannot say the same for them. I will continue to promote parent choice and Board transparency, both now and in the future, regardless of the outcome of the election.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and please do your own research. My platform and my story can be found at http://www.greg4bsd.com, and you can reach out to me through that site if you have any further questions.
