One year after conservative parents began packing school board meetings nationwide to protest lessons on racism and library books dealing with sex, sexual orientation and gender, those issues are dominating May 7 school board elections across Texas, especially in the booming and fast-diversifying suburbs outside Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio.Īn NBC News review of school board elections in 20 suburban Texas school districts revealed more than 40 candidates running campaigns focused, at least in part, on culture war issues that have monopolized national politics. And in Mansfield, a suburb southwest of Dallas, a newly formed political action committee sent mailers alleging that “woke” policies were to blame for a mass shooting in the district and endorsing four school board candidates who would “protect our children” and “keep critical race theory out of our classrooms.”