A nonpartisan group formed in Lee County to become advocates for public schools, students, parents and educators is making its voice heard at school board meetings and is sharing information with the public in a variety of ways.

Madelon Stewart said The Purple Group of Lee County is a subcommittee of a group that formed Quality Schools for the Future of Lee County.

“We formed when there was a referendum put on the ballet that called for a partisan superintendent of schools. We are educators, parents, grandparents and know it was a horrible idea. We unfortunately failed,” she said.

Following that, Stewart said people from various organizations shared that a “very right-wing political agenda,” not necessarily comprised of parents, but those that lived in the community, were funded with outside sources, so they began making statements at the school board meetings.

“We felt they were everywhere all the time,” she said, adding that perhaps people began thinking this was what the community believed to be true.

The Purple Group formed as nonpartisan, which is essential to their focus — student learning, parental rights, respect for education, and accountability and transparency.

The leadership group has 15 individuals with others who are members, but do not wish to speak in public. They spend their time educating the public through the public comment portion of the school board meetings, as well as other events, two of which are scheduled in January.

The Purple Group will share information on Jan. 13 from 2 to 4 p.m. at Collaboratory, at 2031 Jackson St., Fort Myers. They will also be featured on Jan. 30 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Bonita Springs Public Library, at 10560 Reynolds St., Bonita Springs. The public is welcome to attend both events.

The group continues to educate themselves on what is taking place in and outside of school, so they can further inform the community.

“We are not afraid to speak out. Some of us are retired. We feel this is the right thing to do. We can’t just stand by and let people who really are trying to undermine the foundations of our democracy in so many institutions. We are positive. Our focus is — we want to educate people on how important public schools are in America,” Stewart said. “We want to support public schools because we think they are the foundation of the American democracy. If we don’t have educated citizens, we can’t have a democracy. We need to have kids make rational decisions based on true information and not just emotions and fear.”

Paula Porter is another leader of The Purple Group and is the social media guru, relaying information through The Purple Group of Lee County’s Facebook and YouTube pages.

“We’ve met individually with each of the school board members to promote our agenda a little bit and let people realize we are not radicals trying to change the world. We are trying to support students, teachers, and parents’ rights as well,” she said.

Some of their areas of focus thus far include ensuring school district staff that they are valued professionals, as well as providing information about book bans.

“These groups are doing it across the board for all of our institutions saying, ‘You can’t trust these people anymore,’ and we know that is wrong,” she said. “It sends the wrong message to the community. It sends the wrong message to teachers and other professions.”

The Purple Group has met with the educators to ensure they know their professionalism is valued.

When books began being challenged across Florida, the group took this area as another focus.

“We know the schools have to follow the laws, but the law is very vague and now getting more specific. The last two years, they have just been going crazy. They put in hurdles. Students cannot have free access to books or any other educational materials in the library,” Stewart said.

She said Lee County has a wide range of multi-cultural and multi-ethnic communities that are from all walks of life who need information about all sorts of topics.

“We went to school board meetings. We believe in parents’ rights. What we don’t want is parents saying, ‘It’s not good for my child, not good for your child either.’ We support individual rights to make decisions for their own kids,” Stewart said.

Ray Clasen, another leader of The Purple Group, said he had written several letters to the editor and tried to get involved in his own little way before finding out about the group. He is trying to be as active as he can, as he was not in favor of the school district’s media access form.

“I think we are fortunate in Lee County. We haven’t gone as extreme as other counties have done; they have banned many more books than Lee County,” he said. “Our number is relatively small. Book banning is something that doesn’t happen in a free democratic secular society. We need to make people understand that there is a movement. There is a movement in this country that wants to undermine public education just like we have undermined some of our other foundational institutions. We are sliding towards something other than democracy in this country and I think to most of us that is not acceptable. The minority that wants to get rid of democracy in this country is very loud and very well-funded.”

Clasen said they have to find ways to educate the public about what is taking place.

“I taught for 35 years. Parents went to the teacher to try to resolve the problem. Now parents seem to go straight to the school board with any issue that concerns them,” he said. “A lot of power seems to be in the hands of very few people in respect to what children get to read. It’s not so bad in Lee County, but across the state this is a very concerning situation.”

Porter said she has served on a couple of the school ad hoc committees that have reviewed the book challenge form. The form for the district is probably one of the better ones out there, she said.

“There is a new law coming out in January — a statewide form for media access for all the schools,” Porter said, adding that they want a list of all the books challenged in the state in the school districts.

She said there is one problem with the current state law book challenge — the person submitting the challenge does not have had to read the book.

“These parents that are challenging the books are making the decision for all the parents. They are taking away parents’ rights,” Porter said. “If you don’t like the stuff, don’t let your kids read it. Let the parents make the choice, or the student make the choice. Don’t take the choice away from them.”