South Carolina taxpayers set to pay for Moms for Liberty-run charter school

Taxpayers in South Carolina will soon be paying for a school run by extremists. Activists from the Moms for Liberty chapter in Charleston are launching a taxpayer-funded public charter school named the Ashley River Classical Academy with a controversial curriculum set to serve as its foundation.

Moms for Liberty, which has been engaged in efforts opposing LGBTQ+ rights and advocating for removing certain library books, is now stepping into educational governance.

The Ashley River Classical Academy, slated to open for the 2024-2025 academic year, is spearheaded by key Charleston Moms for Liberty members, Popular Informationreports.

Three of the seven Ashley River Classical Academy board members are prominently associated with the Charleston chapter of Moms for Liberty. These members include Tara Wood, who serves as the chair; Janine Nagrodsky, the treasurer; and Nicole McCarthy, the head of the education committee.

Wood, with a background in real estate, has criticized the Charleston County School District’s spending on consultants and curricula that she perceives as inappropriate for children, according to Popular Information.

The school echoes this conservative educational perspective by endorsing the controversial Hillsdale College’s 1776 Curriculum.

The 1776 Curriculum, developed by the small Michigan-based college, has been at the center of educational debates nationwide. Critics view it as a conservative reinterpretation of American history. They point to a whitewashing of slavery, America’s long racism problem, and the erasure of LGBTQ+ people as examples. The curriculum choice aligns with the recent national trend of conservative groups like Moms for Liberty pushing for more patriotic educational content.

The oversight of Ashley River Classical Academy falls under Erskine College, a small Christian institution with recent fundamentalist leanings, as reported by The Post and Courier. This arrangement has raised concerns because Erskine, despite facing financial distress and accreditation issues, can sponsor charter schools without substantial state standards or oversight.

The move by Moms for Liberty comes at a time when the influence of the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated antigovernment extremist group and similar conservative educational agendas are being challenged across the United States. In recent school board elections, voters in various states, including Pennsylvania and New Mexico, rejected candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty, signaling a pushback against their educational and political stances.

Additionally, incidents like the recent termination of Pennsylvania’s Pennridge School District’s contract with Vermilion Education, which shared connections with Hillsdale College, demonstrate growing skepticism towards conservative educational reforms. This skepticism is partly due to concerns about curriculum content and the professional quality of the educational materials and oversight.