SE Valley Times

Roy Morales, a former candidate for Higley Unified School District (HUSD) school board, said that school board member Kathleen Richards is the "poster child of woke" and that she is in favor of "LGBTQIA" material in classrooms. 

“Kathleen Richards is the poster child of the wokeness," Morales told SE Valley Times. "She claims that it's ok to allow our children access to LGBTQIA materials in schools and that our children have the maturity to handle these subjects. She always supports the bond initiative and over-rides. She is against any conservative value and does not respect anyone that holds conservative values.”

Richards is running for election to an at-large seat on the HUSD Governing Board. Early voting began on October 9 and extends through November 1 for the November 5 general election.

According to a report from Gilbert Sun News, in May of this year, Bob Parrish, a local resident, raised concerns with five books assigned as part of an independent reading assignment in the district. Parrish took particular issue with the "extremely sexually explicit” content in the book “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult, which has reportedly been banned in 43 school districts and is "about a teen who after years of bullying commits a mass school shooting."

In a September 19, post on her campaign's Facebook page, Richards said other school board candidates locally and around the country are using "scare tactics designed to foster seeds of doubt in the wrong places." She said that "there are not crazy things happening in our schools and teachers are not trying to do anything nefarious with our kids," and "the bogeyman isn't real."

Roy Morales is a local resident and civic activist. Morales ran for HUSD school board in 2022 on a platform opposing Critical Race Theory (CRT), drag queen story hours, and child sexualization, and supporting parental rights in education.