A few years ago, registered nurse Bernadette Reinking, weary after three decades of working with physicians and the medical system, retreated into her house in central Pennsylvania to, as she puts it, “raise my grandbabies”—all seven of them. Then, after two years of full-time grandmothering, she said, “I opened my door and found all of this mess.”
The mess was the Dover Area School Board, where, according to Reinking, the school board members “were not very kind to people who were offering other opinions.” Reinking, whose four children had gone through the Dover school system, decided to run for a seat on the board.
So did Bryan Rehm, a high-school physics teacher who was angered by school board members “calling people names and spouting Bible scripture at people who disagreed with them.” Rehm said the school board also stopped funding school field trips, ended student participation in a national robotics...
