Lorena Biassotti wants to ban books from CCSD. Will voters support her?

Biassotti is one of the CCSD School Board candidates backed by Moms for Liberty, a far-right group that aims to incorporate conservative values in schools, including banning books that mention the LGBTQ+ community.

For the past three years, the Clark County School District (CCSD) has avoided most of the controversy that has plagued many school districts across the country, as a movement of far-right activists, politicians, and parents have sought to ban books they dislike and impose their socially conservative agenda on classrooms.  

That could all change if Lorena Biassotti is elected to the CCSD Board of Trustees in November.

A former realtor turned full-time self-described “mama bear,” Biassotti is running for one of the four CCSD board seats up for election this year on a message that mostly resonates with the far-right. 

While school board positions are technically nonpartisan, some candidates still put their values and beliefs front and center in order to gain support. In Biassotti’s case, she has positioned herself as a conservative culture warrior, serving as the vice chair of the Clark County Moms for Liberty chapter and the founder of the conservative nonprofit My Children’s Advocate.

Moms for Liberty, which has been described as a far-right extremist organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has pushed for book bans in school libraries and classrooms nationwide and opposes school curricula that mention LGBTQ rights or race and ethnicity. My Children’s Advocate, meanwhile, aims to “eradicate” social justice, LGBTQ+, and critical race theory from public schools, and push for the “return [of] patriotic education” and “American exceptionalism,” according to the nonprofit’s website.

The My Children’s Advocate Facebook and Instagram pages often try to reach parents by posting deeply inflammatory messages and hate-filled memes. The posts argue that trans people are not real, local teachers are indoctrinating children, that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion frameworks are racist against white people, and compare accepting LGBTQ people to accepting pedophilia.

The accounts have also posted images that compared transgender people to pedophiles and people with schizophrenia. 

Screenshot of a post from My Children’s Advocate Facebook page, which Lorena Biassotti founded.

Biassotti has also not been shy about sharing her political views on her own Facebook page. While her page has since been made private, The Nevadan obtained screenshots of posts made in recent years that included her opposition to same-sex marriage and her feelings towards the LGBTQ+ community.

In an interview during a school board candidate forum before the June primary, Biassotti told The Nevadan that she is running to be a “voice for parents” on the School Board.

Biassotti is running for trustee District E, which encompasses Summerlin and west Las Vegas valley. According to Clark County voter records, District E has about 68,500 registered Democrats, about 61,100 registered Republicans, and more than 89,000 voters that are registered as nonpartisan or under a minor party. 

Biassotti is running against Kamilah Bywaters, who was a special education teacher in CCSD for three years and currently serves as president of the Las Vegas Alliance of Black School Educators.

Bywaters is endorsed by several nonprofit organizations and community advocacy groups, including Nevada State Education Association and Planned Parenthood Votes Nevada.

Through her My Children’s Advocate social media pages, Biassotti has baselessly claimed that the Planned Parenthood endorsement means Bywaters would try to promote abortion as a birth control method to the children of CCSD. 

Screenshot of a post from My Children’s Advocate Facebook page, which Lorena Biassotti founded.

In a statement to The Nevadan, Bywaters said “Biassotti is, quite simply, lying about my beliefs.”

“Nevadans know that Planned Parenthood is an important community resource that provides contraceptives, prenatal health services, STD screening and treatments. What I want is for the young women of our community to avoid, altogether, the hard choices that come with unplanned and unwanted pregnancy,” Bywaters said. “I am dedicated to getting our students the education and resources they need to avoid those dire situations. The red states Biassotti wants to emulate have much higher rates of teen pregnancy than we do here in Nevada and we cannot adopt a failed model.”

Biassotti’s agenda for CCSD

One of Biassoti’s top priorities is having more parental involvement in the school board and school curricula, especially when it comes to sex education, books on LGBTQ+ issues, and gender ideology.

In the last couple of years, Biassotti has published or republished posts that call for the banning of certain explicit books from schools and even held a “Pull the Porn Party” with Moms for Liberty last year where parents “filled out forms” to remove certain books. 

The books in question cover issues such as gender identity and sex education, or have scenes that are sexually explicit, but were determined to be appropriate by school district librarians. The books — which were only approved for certain high school classrooms and libraries — included Gender Queer, a memoir by Maia Kobabe about her journey to accept her nonbinary and asexual identities, and Mike Curato’s “Flamer,” which features a 14-year-old boy at summer camp coming to grips with his sexuality. 

Biassotti has also taken issue with how schools handle instances where a child prefers to be addressed by a different name or pronoun.

Biassotti said the school district is “overstepping its boundaries” with its policy that requires teachers to address students by the name and pronoun that correspond to their gender identity or expression. CCSD policy 5138, titled “Addressing the rights and needs of students with diverse gender identities or expressions,” which was adopted in 2018, establishes the protocol for a “Gender Support Plan” for students. 

The gender support plan requires steps to protect the student’s privacy, “appropriate engagement” of the parents, and consideration of the student’s rights and needs, as well as the school’s capacity when it comes to implementing the support plan and accommodations. 

Biassotti argues that schools are taking action on the plans without parents or in a way that parents don’t agree with. 

“I think the school board is setting itself up for more lawsuits, because they keep violating the rights of parents on what we feel is inappropriate,” Biassotti told The Nevadan, referring to a lawsuit from last year that involved a high school student who felt uncomfortable during an assignment where students had to memorize a monologue written by a fellow classmate. The monologue in the lawsuit described a woman coming out as lesbian to her ex-boyfriend. 

“We have a constitutional right to direct the opinion of our children. And when that’s ignored, and villainized, and censored, it’s gonna end up in court,” Biassotti continued.

Vicki Kreidel, a local teacher and president of the National Education Association of Southern Nevada, said Biassotti is only running “to censor history, ban our books, and attack our LGBTQ+ students.”

“Nevadans want candidates who will work to strengthen our neighborhood public schools, address the educator shortage so that each student has a qualified teacher in each classroom, and ensure CCSD teachers have the resources needed to do it,” Kreidel said in a statement. “Extremism might garner attention, but having a plan to move our district forward will win this election. That’s what our kids and educators deserve. That’s why we’re proud to support Kamilah Bywaters. Whether it’s education funding, student safety, or student supports, she understands the issues that impact CCSD educators and students the most.” 

Biassotti — who recently attended a Donald Trump rally last month in Las Vegas — also told The Nevadan that the school board should “just focus on academics” and “take politics out of the classroom.” 

Biassotti referred to her high school aged daughter learning about socialism in US history class.

“She said, ‘It’s US history. And I thought I was gonna learn history. Instead, [the teacher is] talking about socialism, and the pros and cons of socialism.’ So she feels that the teacher is training them to be activists,” Biassotti said about her child’s experience. “I think we need to focus on teaching our children, American exceptionalism, our history, you would want to instill a vision of hope when you’re wanting to thrive in this country in America.” 

The CCSD Social Studies curriculum outlined for grades 9 to 12 states that US history classes focus on founding documents and democratic principles, as well as “multicultural history, economics, civics, and geography of the Industrial Revolution through the present day.” 

The document states that US history “should be taught from multiple and varied perspectives for a vivid and complex picture of U.S. history” and suggested topics include nativism and populism, imperialism, World War I, the 1920s, the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War, the rights movements of the 1970s, globalism, and terrorism.

The making of Lorena Biassotti

Biassotti, whose maiden name is Cardenas, is the daughter of Mexican-born parents and grew up in California. Biassotti, her husband, and four children moved to Las Vegas seven years ago.

After working as a realtor during the housing market boom in the early 2000’s, Biassotti became a stay-at-home mom when she had the first of her four children. Being a full-time mom allowed her to be more aware of her children’s education, she said, and she saw how the COVID-19 pandemic affected them. 

Like many other members of Moms for Liberty, Biassotti made her entry into politics by protesting the school’s board decision to require students to wear masks in schools during the worst of the pandemic.

Biassotti is also a member of Trumpettes USA, a group of women who support Donald Trump across the world. In her introduction post she said she has always been a registered Republican and even pushed back when her mom told her “we belong to the Democratic party.”

She also bragged that she is a “steadfast Trump supporter, AND HAVE NEVER SWAYED!”