Between the Middletown Area Town Hall, or MATH, candidates forum and his own posts, special election school board candidate Bryan Pullman has proved that he is as out of touch with the reality of our education system to a level that should leave one in slack jawed horror.

Pullman believes that critical race theory, or CRT, is “dogma” and an “excuse for minorities to fail.” Without doing any obvious research to grasp what CRT is or that it is presently only taught in a handful of colleges in the US, he has stoked fears and said that “CRT training” will be in our schools. Wrong atop wrong.

Ethnic studies are a wonderful thing, especially when districts like ours add curriculum about their local Indigenous tribe. This was obviously news to Pullman who has no idea what is being taught but told the crowd at MATH that “transgender is being taught” at our schools.

If that wasn’t sad enough, he went on to say he was “against burning books” but followed that up with questioning books for their “age appropriateness” (as if that didn’t already occur) and that books with “sexuality” were not going to make the cut either. A book about a man taking a wife and having a child would be off the list by this logic. Guess that rules out the New Testament.

Mr. Pullman clearly does not like sexuality being taught. He gets the “biology part” yet clearly doesn’t know what parents are signing permission slips for their age-appropriate-students to learn about.

The man clearly does not like to investigate what is currently happening or research how things work. His big gun issues are the potential mask and vaccine mandates that could return. He feels very strongly, as is recorded for the world to see, about the dangers of what he views as a government overreach. COVID woke him up, “I’d been asleep for years … started going to board meetings seven months ago.”

This issue getting him fired up to take on a local school board is the most telling of all his mind-boggling ignorance. He and too many others believe that a school board is where you tell the state to piss off. His justification was that “we aren’t a big city” and should have special rights essentially. Anyone who thinks that a school board is a policy battleground with their state is a fool or a political tool for some group or another.

To get his board seat Pullman has allowed his team to resort to mudslinging though none had come from his opponent, bold lies about his opponent’s agenda, disingenuous accusations about his yard signs being stolen when they were removed by Caltrans for illegal placement, and all the aforementioned misinformation that is simple fear mongering. His own fears of the boogeyman have spilled over into his warped reality. Make no mistake, he believes with all his heart that he is trying to help and that is what leaves yours truly so shaken.

Many thanks to his opponent, Charise Reynolds, for digging deep to combat the lies, misinformation and petty behavior from the Pullman campaign.

Even with all the distractions she has kept her eye on the ball and is ready to get to work for the betterment of her community.

She makes it clear that it’s not about her, a stark contrast to a man who is making his run all about himself.

Hers is a campaign of the teachers, admins, students and parents — nobody first, just on even keels.

Ryan Kasmier lives in Hidden Valley Lake, California.