(Center of the American Experiment) — Education Minnesota’s local chapter in Brainerd stuffed campaign flyers into staff mailboxes at the district urging staff to check out their “Pro-Educator” voter guide. While not necessarily illegal, it is a clear misuse of public resources for political gain. Most school districts have a specific policy against using staff mailboxes for campaigning, but Brainerd does not. Yet.
According to email correspondence between Cristine Trooien of the Minnesota Parents Alliance (MPA) and Brainerd Superintendent Peter Grant, the Brainerd district admitted the flyer shouldn’t have been distributed on school property and they are working on a new policy.
Trooien first notified Grant of the problem and asked for an “equal time” opportunity to distribute the voter guide from MPA on Oct. 17, 2024. Not getting a response, she sent another email on October 18. Grant finally responded on Oct. 23 saying:
“Hello Cristine,
We do not allow political PACS to stuff mailboxes of our employees.
Thank you”
Trooien reminded him that the union PAC already did, in fact, stuff mailboxes of employees with a political flyer. At this point, Grant admitted the union flyer was a violation and said the district is working on a policy to address it.
“Actually, that was not to be done either. We have discussed this with EMB. The Board is working on a new policy that addresses this issue. The EMB can place in employee mailboxes for union communications but it is not to be political nature at all. Thus we are addressing this.”
EMB is Education Minnesota Brainerd.
So the district is addressing it with a new policy but at this point will not let MPA get equal time for the election happening in 13 days. This is just another example of the education cartel joining together to protect the status quo. The teachers’ union gets access to the mailboxes paid for by taxpayers, the district admits it was wrong, but the political advantage remains for the union-endorsed incumbents. “We’ll fix it later with a new policy” is not enough. Brainerd should allow the MPA voter guide flyer to be distributed immediately.
This is just another example of the recent trend of Education Minnesota cheating to win elections.
This article was originally published at Center of the American Experiment.
Bill Walsh
Bill Walsh is the Communications Director at Center of the American Experiment.
