LAS VEGAS — On Wednesday morning, Clark County School Board Trustee Linda Cavazos received a call from a mother of a gender diverse student. She expressed that she was so frightened by election results that she was considering pulling her child out of the Clark County School District.

Two school board candidates with ties to parental rights group Moms for Liberty, which advocates for censorship of education on cultural issues such as gender identity and race, were leading in their races as of Wednesday afternoon.

The women — Lydia Dominguez and Lorena Biassotti — both announced their official departure from Moms for Liberty in August because of interpersonal issues with the leadership, but have said they still support the entirety of the group’s mission. Biassotti also founded My Children’s Advocate, which has a website advocating for religion to be central to a nation, and to “end wokeism.”

If they hold their leads, it will mark the first time that candidates who were backed by Moms for Liberty — which the two were in the primary election — will sit on the school board.

Biassotti, the founder of Moms for Liberty’s Clark County chapter and a former vice chair, said Wednesday that if elected, she hoped to repeal, or at least peel back, the school district’s gender policy 5138. It is titled “addressing the rights and needs of students with diverse gender identities or expressions.” The board adopted the policy in 2018 after a state law required it.

“It’s not a topic that belongs in our school,” she said. “There is no educational value to it.”

Dominguez did not respond to requests for an interview on Wednesday but has expressed similar views on gender and race as Biassotti, who referred to Dominguez as being “like a sister.” The two have also been outspoken about their support for President-elect Donald Trump, though Biassotti said that her position was nonpartisan.

Dominguez and Biassotti could not achieve their goals alone, given that there are seven voting members on the school board. Still, they will hold two votes during what some have called the school board’s most consequential decision to date: selecting a superintendent for the country’s fifth-largest school district.

If they threaten freedom of speech, the ACLU is prepared to sue, according to Athar Haseebullah, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada.

“School boards are a critical governance system within Nevada, and really within any state. Public education is at the baseline and foundation of societal life,” he said.

Moms for Liberty also have put out lists of books that they believe should be banned.

“The biggest issue we have with books is that they’re not being opened,” Haseebullah said, referencing the low proficiency rates in the district.

Superintendent search

The most consequential decision Dominguez and Biassotti will be a part of is the superintendent search, which the board has delayed until March.

Biassotti said that she was hoping for a more conservative or moderate leader, but would be open to collaboration during the selection process. Trustee Ramona Esparza-Stoffregan said that given the fact that the board had hired outside consultants and received community feedback, the board had a responsibility to choose a superintendent based on what the community wanted.

Joining a divided board

The school board has struggled with division in recent years — it was plagued by a consistent 4-3 voting split which then became a 3-3 tie after Katie Williams resigned in September.

If Biassotti and Dominguez join the board, they will be welcomed by three trustees who endorsed their opponents. Cavazos and Esparza-Stoffregan held a news conference in October endorsing the women’s opponents, which was later supported on social media by Trustee Brenda Zamora.

Biassotti, who formerly used the last name Cardenas, also had conflict with board members in the past when she spoke at meetings criticizing antiracism policies and mask mandates, which included wearing a hazmat suit.

But Cavazos, Esparza-Stoffregan and Biassotti all said they were looking forward to collaboration on the board.

Cavazos and Esparza-Stoffregan said they hoped that Dominguez and Biassotti would put aside their allegiances and work to represent not only their district, but all of Clark County.

They added that gender policy is one they care deeply about, both for students and teachers, and said that other trustees support it as well.

“They say they want to have more parental involvement, and that’s why they ran. I think that they need to consider that all parents in our district, parents of gender diverse children, have just as much right to be included and to be respected as they do,” Cavazos said.

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