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Wanted: Highly trained educator willing to be used as cannon fodder in the culture wars.

That presumably wont be how the Wentzville School District advertises to replace its second lost superintendent in two years but its a reasonable prediction for what awaits the eventual successor to Superintendent Danielle Tormala.

Tormalas surprise resignation announcement last week is the latest example of the damage the political right is doing to education in its zeal to make school board meetings and classrooms into platforms for their ideological extremism.

This time, the cost is literal: Tormalas eye-popping $1 million contract buyout indicates the district fears she would have a potentially more expensive legal cause of action for having been essentially hounded out of her job by the toxic politics swirling around the school board.

The Wentzville district, one of Missouris largest, has been buffeted in the past few years by the populist movement that swept the nations school board meetings and elections when schools resumed in-person classroom instruction after the pandemic.

As districts tried to navigate the subsequent COVID resurgences with medically reasonable mask and vaccination policies, right-wing activists dug in with opposition to such precautions. From meeting audiences and, increasingly, from seats on the boards themselves, they also ramped up efforts to ban books and scrub classroom curriculum dealing with race or gender.

For school district leaders, it created a whole new set of necessary skills. Former Wentzville Superintendent Curtis Cain was so unflappable even when people are screaming and yelling, one high school principal in the district told the National Conference on Education in 2022, the year Cain was named National Superintendent of the Year.

That was Cains last year with the Wentzville district. Not long before he left to become superintendent at the Rockwood School District, he had watched the Wentzville School Board refuse his recommendation to require masks in any schools that hit a 3% COVID positivity rate a rational recommendation based in part on the districts problems keeping classrooms staffed due to infections.

The school board during Cains tenure also embarked on a book-banning binge that included the literary classic The Bluest Eye, which is about the societal effects of racism. That book was returned to school library shelves only after a lawsuit by students.

The culture-war friction has continued during Tormalas tenure, which began later in 2022.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has sued the district for allegedly violating the state Sunshine Law by discussing transgender bathroom policies in a closed meeting. While open meetings are important, Baileys inordinate focus on that one was, as usual, less about doing his job than preening for the right-wing base.

As the Post-Dispatchs Blythe Bernhard has reported, Tormalas tenure has seen police being called to a high school to investigate books and the resignations of three of the districts four librarians. A petition drive called for her ouster, based on the ironic allegation that she had created a hostile environment for conservative board members and parents.

Its clear her infraction was saying things at board meetings like, The terms diversity, equity and inclusion cannot be dirty words in this district. Former state Sen. Bob Onder, now a Republican congressional candidate, took to social media to lambast Tormala as wokester apparently the ultimate insult in his world.

While Tormalas official explanation last week for taking an immediate sabbatical and then leaving at the end of the school year was appropriately diplomatic and vague, its not hard to read between the lines.

As the St. Charles County NAACP put in a statement, her efforts to work with community leaders and stakeholders who advocate for a safe and equitable education for all students and fair treatment of staff was met with vitriol and harassment from a very vocal minority of patrons in the district for the last two years.

This is a pattern, the group wrote, that began with the previous superintendent of this district and there doesnt appear to be an end in sight.

Thankfully, thats not entirely true.

As we noted earlier this month, the sweeping defeats of right-wing school board candidates throughout the St. Louis region (including in Wentzville) in the April 2 elections was an encouraging sign.

It could be that parents and the public are finally tired of school board meetings that feel like MAGA rallies that theyre ready to get back to the business of educating kids instead of using them as political props. The question is, how many more good educators will be driven out in the meantime.

Tamara King-Krolik addresses the Wentzville school board on Oct. 19 about racist incidents in school and systemic racism in the district. Superintendent Danielle Tormala responds with an apology and review of ongoing work to address issues. Video edited by Beth O'Malley

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Editorial: Wentzville superintendent is the latest to exit the culture-war battlefield - St. Louis Post-Dispatch