All right, at this time we will take five minutes and clear the room. Take five minutes and clear.

At this time we will take five minutes to clear the room.

So is this just how school board meetings go now?

This is what it sounded like in a meeting of the Fresno Unified School Board in California earlier this month.

And here's another one recently in Loudon County, Virginia.

And here's Williamson County, Tennessee.

You can leave me alone, but we need to remind you that we know you will never be allowed to public again.

Now, anger from parents, directed at school officials, is not a new thing in the pandemic.

But it's different now.

Confrontations are increasingly hostile.

They are about mask mandates, sure, but also about stuff like critical race theory, which has become

a short hand for the idea that kids are taught about the legacy of racism in America.

Here's what one school board member in centerville, Ohio, Megan Murray Sparks told NPR about a recent meeting.

Every entrance, we had security.

They had to see from the they were going to put us in that they had planned out if anything was to happen.

I was so scared before the meeting, I was physically ill in the bathroom texting my priest.

Consider this, school districts became ideological battlegrounds during the pandemic.

And now those battles are being fueled by outside groups.

And school leaders are growing more worried about threats and intimidation.

From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro.

It's Monday, October 25th.

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