Carmel’s school board race is a fight over misinformation, and the role schools play in students' lives

Dina Ferchmin has visited more than 1,000 homes in Carmel since she began campaigning for a seat on the Carmel Clay School Board earlier this year. She enjoys meeting people, but that doesn’t mean the interactions are always pleasant.

Recently, she said, a man whose door she knocked on became angry and aggressive. She said he accused her of being a member of Moms for Liberty, a national right-wing organization with a chapter in Hamilton County.

During the last school board election in 2022, Hamilton County Moms for Liberty supported a slate of conservative candidates for Carmel school board who campaigned on the claim that liberal teachers were indoctrinating students into progressive ideologies. And the Hamilton County chapter garnered national attention last year after they quoted Adolf Hitler in a newsletter.

Only one of the conservative candidates endorsed by Hamilton County Moms for Liberty — Greg Brown — won a seat on the Carmel school board last election cycle. Brown has donated and loaned thousands of dollars to Carmel Excellence, a political action committee that supports Ferchmin and fellow school board candidate Robin Clark.

Ferchmin and Clark are campaigning as conservatives. But Ferchmin said she’s not personally affiliated with Moms for Liberty.

“I have met some of the people from [Hamilton County Moms for Liberty] throughout the years, but I've never attended any events or activities or anything,” Ferchmin said.

The four candidates running for Carmel Clay School Board — Dina Ferchmin, Robin Clark, Jon Shapiro and Kris Wheeler — are vying for two at-large seats. The candidates who win this November will determine the political makeup of the five-member board and could greatly influence the future of the district. They all agree that the district is excellent. Carmel Clay Schools, which serve about 16,000 students, had a graduation rate of nearly 99 percent last school year, and the district is routinely ranked as one of the best in not just Indiana, but the entire country.

However, the candidates disagree over what’s happening inside classrooms and what role schools should play in students’ lives. 

Ferchmin and Clark are campaigning on the idea that classrooms have become bastions of leftist and identity politics, and that the district should place a greater emphasis on core academic subjects to boost performance on standardized tests. They’re also campaigning as conservatives, despite the fact that school board elections in Indiana are nonpartisan races — meaning a party label does not appear next to candidates’ names on the ballot. 

Shapiro and Wheeler, on the other hand, say Carmel schools need careful stewardship of their resources, but are fundamentally on the right track. They don’t believe teachers are imposing their personal beliefs on students and they support the district’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Unlike Ferchmin and Clark, they’re not campaigning on their political party affiliations.

Carmel voters are already deciding who will join the school board in January, as early voting is underway ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

The conservative pitch for school board 

On a Saturday in September, Ferchmin was again going door-to-door. After knocking on more than half-a-dozen with no luck, someone in a sprawling single-family home on a cul-de-sac finally answered and agreed to hear her out. 

“As part of the school board, I'd be in charge of representing all of our communities, so I want to know what are your thoughts. What do you want me to focus on?” Ferchmin asked. 

Brandon, who provided only his first name to WFYI, explained that his children attend nearby private Catholic schools. Ferchmin asked what it would take for him to send his kids to Carmel Clay schools instead. 

“We do tend to have more conservative values,” Brandon said. “I've heard a lot in the media and the news about certain books being in libraries, etc. So that would be something that would be important to us.”

Those issues are important to Ferchim, too. The 54-year-old was born in Argentina to parents who fled Soviet regimes in Poland and Croatia. Her family emigrated to Puerto Rico where Ferchmin spent most of her childhood. She graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and served as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. She currently owns a consulting business with her husband. 

“All of these politics, I'm trying to remove that out of our schools and let parents teach those things at home, and let schools be neutral in that sense,” Ferchmin explained to Brandon. 

Ferchmin told WFYI she’d like to see a renewed focus on core academic subjects. All three of her children attended Carmel schools and two of them graduated from the district’s high school. She said she’s noticed a decline in academic rigor in the district over the last decade. 

“We have got to focus, just laser focus on our academics. We don't have time in schools to be pushing one agenda or the other,” Ferchmin said.

Erik Young, the executive director of Carmel Excellence, the PAC supporting Ferchmin and Clark, believes students are exposed to liberal ideologies in classrooms across the country. And while he doesn’t think it’s as bad in Carmel as it is on the east or west coasts, he said “it’s not zero at Carmel.” 
 

Carmel Excellence’s stated mission is to support “common-sense conservative school board leaders.” Ferchmin and Clark have also been endorsed by the Hamilton County Republican Party. The Indiana Republican Party also paid for mailers supporting Ferchmin and Clark.

“The schools in the United States right now are so politicized we think on the left, that if we just de-politicize them that would be all that we would ask for in this election,” Young said.

When asked what he means by 'politics in the classroom,' Young said “different flags, different philosophies.”

Pride flags in classrooms have become a particular point of contention in Indiana and schools across the country. And many teachers want to display them not to promote a particular political ideology, but to make students who identify as LGBTQ feel safe and welcome. 

But Ferchmin said all children need to feel that way in school. 

“If we have one set of flags, then we need to allow all sets of flags,” she said. “And that's just not possible.”

A barrage of misinformation 

Ferchmin and Clark have been particularly critical of Carmel’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. 

“Perhaps it was not the intent of the DEI program, but I have heard too many examples of it being used to actually shame white children,” Ferchmin said at a recent debate between the Carmel school board candidates. 

Ferchmin said she’s also heard stories about students who have been labeled as oppressors by Carmel teachers. 

But Carmel Clay Superintendent Michael Beresford rejects those rumors.

“I would say that that's false,” Beresford said when asked about such claims in a recent interview with WFYI. 

“I've spent more time giving out accurate information to combat misinformation that's being spread around the community in the last four or five years than I've ever had in my career,” said Beresford, who will retire next summer after seven years leading the district.
 

The misinformation has ranged from claims that students are dressing up as cats and using litter boxes in school bathrooms — a national debunked conspiracy amplified by some high-profile Republicans — to inaccurate interpretations of student test scores, to claims that teachers are indoctrinating students into liberal viewpoints, Beresford said. 

Beresford addressed the latter claim during the 2022 election cycle by publishing a video message defending the district’s teachers. 

“We're not going to sit back and just allow that to happen,” he said, explaining why he released the video message. “We're going to stand up for our teachers. And the teachers in Carmel are beloved.”

The barrage of misinformation isn’t limited to Carmel; since the COVID-19 pandemic, districts across the country have had to combat similar claims about what’s going on inside classrooms.

“The only motivation I can see about putting out misinformation is to scare people into voting their way, maybe, or something along those lines,” Beresford said. 

Still, voters like Mary Stuy are convinced that schools are pushing progressive politics in classrooms. Stuy was one of nearly 400 people who attended a debate between the four school board candidates earlier this month at the city’s performing arts center.

“I don't like all the DEI that they're trying to promote,” Stuy said. Stuy’s three children graduated from Carmel schools, where she said they received a “phenomenal” education. 

But Stuy is worried the district’s DEI efforts are introducing topics like gender identity to young children and that children should be allowed to "just be children.”

“You keep your family business at home, you let the parents put in the moral code,” Stuy said. “You, the teachers, need to do the educating.”

Because of that she plans to vote for Ferchmin and Clark.

‘What we have is not broken’

Jon Shapiro doesn’t think Carmel schools are perfect, but he certainly doesn’t agree with the claims that the district’s DEI efforts are harming children or that teachers are bringing their personal politics into the classroom.

Shapiro said he’s visited thousands of homes throughout Carmel. On a sweltering day in late August, he explains to a resident that his family moved to Carmel for the schools. 

“And we've been thrilled, and we've had a great experience — not perfect, but excellent,” Shapiro said while standing outside their garage. “And I want to make sure that it stays that way. So what that means to me is that we continue to find innovative ways for our kids to be successful.”

His only child currently attends Carmel High School. Shapiro has spent his career working in youth-focused nonprofits and is currently the director of fundraising and donor relations at Hope Academy, an Indianapolis charter school for students struggling with substance use issues. 

Shapiro’s pitch to voters focuses on careful and transparent stewardship of the district’s resources, that “success” means different things to different families, that schools have an obligation to prepare students for a variety of post-secondary paths, and stronger collaboration between the district and parents. 
 

Shapiro and Kris Wheeler hope to be elected together. They recently received an endorsement from former Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard — a Republican. The Carmel Teachers’ Association also endorsed Shapiro and Wheeler, which required a supermajority of support from its members and marked the first time the union has ever endorsed candidates for school board.

Shapiro strongly believes partisan politics have no place in the campaign, or the operations of the school board. 

“I just feel like strong public schools is not a Republican issue. It's not a Democrat issue. It's not an independent issue. It's something that we all want,” Shapiro said. “My perspective is what we have is not broken. It doesn't need some sort of drastic overhaul.”

But Shapiro said schools do need to provide more than just academics; they need to support kids' emotional and social needs — and teach them how to interact in a very diverse world.

Shapiro's campaign, like those of the other candidates, is boosted by volunteers. 

Carmel parent Andrea Gilman was inspired to volunteer for Shapiro and Wheeler’s campaigns because of what the conservative candidates were saying about Carmel schools during the 2022 election. 

“I am a very firm believer that representation is not indoctrination,” she said while knocking doors with Shapiro. 

“We're just trying to show that other people exist,” Gilman said. “Like, who is in your home isn't what the world looks like. And there's nothing wrong with that.” 
 

Like Shapiro, Gilman supports the district’s DEI efforts. And she said her youngest daughter, a current Carmel student, has benefitted from the social and emotional support she’s gotten from the schools. 

“I truly feel like the teachers and the Carmel school systems care about her as a person, and I don't want that to go away, because I know that academically, she will struggle," Gilman said. 

Shapiro and Wheeler are backed by Support CCS, a nonpartisan political action committee that formed in 2021 in response to attempts by Moms for Liberty and other conservative groups to influence district policies. 

Jennifer Cashin, a Carmel parent who describes herself as a moderate Republican, leads Support CCS. 

“In Carmel, you're going to see the entire range of extremely liberal to extremely ultra-conservative, but I believe the overwhelming majority of us live in the middle of that more moderate perspective,” Cashin said.

Cashin fears that if Ferchmin and Clark were to win, they — along with current board member Greg Brown — would implement policies rooted in their own conservative values and beliefs. 

“So what's really at stake here is making their schools extremely partisan versus continuing to focus on just building on success,” she said.

Students’ concerns

A politicized school board is something that worries Carmel High School junior Samantha Blume. She’s concerned that conservative takeover of the school board could lead to restrictions on the types of reading materials students have access to, especially books that feature the lived experiences of queer people and minorities.

“I think a lot of that is at stake,” Blume said. “There are so many people in our schools who identify as LGBTQ or identify with a certain race or minority. And I think it's really sad because we see a lot of these people come in and say, you know, like [these books are] dangerous, but it's just like who they are.”

Carmel High School sophomore Jack Kovac, who is white, said his teachers have never made him feel less than or ashamed because of his identity. And he’s supportive of the district’s efforts to celebrate the diversity among its student body.

“I just feel like teachers are like very accepting and I haven't really felt them bringing their individual political ideas into a classroom really ever,” Kovac said.

And while neither Kovac nor Blume are old enough to vote, they feel like the school board race has the potential to impact them and their peers.

“It really matters, at least for me, where the future of Carmel Clay Schools goes as a whole,” Kovac said. “I am kind of worried about what will happen, but I feel like voicing my opinion or like alerting my friends is really, really important and a really good thing to do to draw attention to the school board election.”

Contact WFYI investigative education reporter Lee V. Gaines at lgaines@wfyi.org.