Vernon Township Republicans call on SHS school board members to renounce State Democratic Party Endorsements

This past April 4th's Illinois Consolidated General Election was colored by the unprecedented 6-figure investment in local school and library board races across Illinois by Governor JB Pritzker and funneled through the state Democratic Party. According to this Sun Times article, over 80 districts across Illinois were targeted to elect ideological-aligned candidates to local office.

In addition to providing their campaigns funding mass mailings and text messages, the funding was used by the Illinois Democratic Party to create a website that served as a directory for Democratic voters to find candidates that Pritzker and the party endorsed or opposed. Visitors to the "defendourschoolsil.com" website saw the following description of the party's efforts, alluding to the need to undermine conservative efforts to ban pornography, support the sacred relationship between a parent and their child, prioritize STEM and improved outcomes over the teaching of critical theories, and end remote learning/mask mandates/vaccine mandates. See the screen grab below:

Since the election, the website has been deleted but thanks to the Wayback machine and screenshots from a friend of the Vernon Township Republicans, see below, we can see how this effort played out in Vernon Township.

In this past April 4th General Consolidated Election, all four of the four incumbents on the District 125 Board of Trustees up for election won their bids against two underfunded and late starting opponents. 

The incumbent board of trustee members (Tyer, Ben-Yoseph, Neault, and Cao) ran as a slate. Three of the incumbents were recent appointees that had not faced election before.

The Illinois Democratic Party endorsed the entire slate of incumbents and went a step further to describe SHS parent Aaron Glenn as an "extremist" because he voted in a Republican primary.

The Vernon Township Republicans calls on trustee members Tyer, Ben-Yoseph, Neault, and Cao to renounce this endorsement and disclose any support received from their campaign committee and aligned network of other committees.

And to restore the trust of parents in the D125 school district, the Vernon Township Republicans calls on trustee members Tyer, Ben-Yoseph, Neault, and Cao to further 1) affirm their commitment to placing the feedback of our community's parents above that of the influence of an outside ideological machine and 2) prioritizing student outcomes over an ideological agenda.