I founded the 1776 Project PAC in 2021 after an incident at my godson’s school. His teacher read the books Race Cars and Something Happened In Our Town: A Child’s Story About Racial Injustice to his fourth-grade class, followed by a lecture about how police were racist. 

Many children in that classroom had parents and relatives who were police officers, and a teacher who had never met them in person because of the lockdowns was telling them not to trust law enforcement. 

Multiple parents who heard the lesson first hand because their child learned remotely contacted me to learn what to do. While that single teacher was confronted by the principal, PTA, and an elected official, I quickly learned how pervasive the gravity of the situation was. Progressive activists within our public education system were using their positions to indoctrinate children. Even conservative communities in red states were not immune from this growing epidemic.

Feeling like something needed to be done, I created the 1776 Project to change public education by reforming school boards and electing reform-minded conservatives who wanted to improve public education in this country. 

Over the last three years, I’ve listened to thousands of concerned parents, community activists, and educators, and the more I’ve heard, the more I’ve realized that a lot more needs to be done.

The truth is that public education in its current state is failing millions of American children. Even if there wasn’t a single culture war issue in our public schools, millions of children are behind in reading and math proficiency, parents and teachers fear for their safety inside schools, and school districts across the country have begun moving away from ideas like colorblindness and merit and instead embracing soft segregation and telling children their identity matters more than their ability.

This organization that I thought up alone has manifested into helping elect more than 200 school board candidates and positively impacting the education of millions of students in over a dozen states. Our work has only begun, but the support from hundreds of thousands of Americans fuels this, and it could be the beginning of a new day when it comes to education. 

I truly believe every child in this country deserves a quality public education, and we’re working to ensure that happens, one district at a time.

Ryan James Girdusky
1776 Project PAC Founder