Those values are enshrined in our U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights.

Our founding fathers also recognized that education was central to a thriving nation. They knew that an educated nation was necessary to prepare its citizens for a republican form of government. With that acknowledgment and awareness of an educated citizenry, our founding leaders promoted public education that has allowed our country to endure and flourish. The desire to create public schools was the foundation for advancing our citizens' knowledge of and fitness for self-government and local control by citizens through elected leadership.

The concept of local control in education has been traditionally recognized and revered by both Democrats and Republicans alike. The concept of local control is grounded in a philosophy that citizens and institutions that are closest to their communities are the best endowed in the welfare and success of its educators, students, and communities.

In the three years since our nation was paralyzed with the COVID-19 pandemic, our nation has become increasingly detached and divided. Our students have been academically damaged by school closures, worsening test scores, and less parental rights and local control of education.

At this historic moment, our communities hold fast to politically and culturally diverse views of self-governance. Unproven and troublesome university pedagogical theories have become the primary focus by state bureaucrats resulting in a drifting education mission to the detriment of academic achievement, parental rights, and school choice. Essentially, public education has been diverted from the primary goal of inculcating facts and knowledge to our children, as well as critical thinking skills. Now the progressive left's mission is to advance divisive gender and race theories over academics.