ID: Fake Superintendent To Launch Christian Charter School

Brandon Durst is back, and he has a new plan. He's starting a new charter school in Idaho. It might be a school of sport, or maybe it will be a Christian charter. 

We've seen Durst at work. He's not a big time grifter, but he is certainly emblematic of a certain type of pseudo-conservative right-wing "my only qualification is Jesus" actor that is feeling empowered these days.

A quick Durst review

The broad outlines of his career are pretty simple. Born in Boise. Attended Pacific Lutheran University (BA in poli sci with communication minor), grad school at Kent State and Claremont Graduate University (public policy, international political economy), then Boise State University (Master of Public Administration). In 2022, he went back to BSU for a degree in Executive Educational Leadership.

His LinkedIn account lists 20 "experience" items since 2000, and Durst seems to have bounced quickly from job to job until 2006, when he was elected as an Idaho State Representative for four years. Then in 2012 he was elected to the state senate, a job that he held for one year. He did all that as Democrat; in 2016, he switched his party to the GOP.

Then independent consultant, a mediator for a "child custody and Christian mediation" outfit. Then an Idaho Family Policy Center senior policy fellow. IFPC advocates for the usual religious right causes, but they have a broader focus as well: "To advance the cultural commission." They see the Great Commission in a dominionist light-- the church is to teach "nations to obey everything Jesus has commanded." And they suggest you get your kid out of public school.

Durst's had a   recent gig with the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a right tilted thinky tank that wants to "make Idaho into a Laboratory of Liberty by exposing, defeating, and replacing the state's socialist public policies." They run a Center for American Education which, among other things, maintains a map so you can see where schools are "indoctrinating students with leftist nonsense." They also recommend you get your child out of public school.

Durst carries some baggage. That one year tenure in the Senate? Durst resigned because the press got ahold of the fact that he was actually living in Idaho only part time; his wife was working as a teacher near Seattle and he was living there at least part of the time with his family. KTVB, the station that followed the story, "observed his home looked empty of furniture when stopping by to knock on the door last week." Durst insisted that his bed and clothes were there. And he blamed the split living arrangement on Idaho schools:

There's a big difference between living out of your district for an entire year, and having a family member who is a teacher that doesn't get treated well because they live in Idaho and have to find employment someplace else. I think there's a big difference, Durst said.

For a while, it looked like he would fight the charge. But in the end he resigned his seat.

2022 was not a great year for Durst. After the Idaho Senate failed to advance the parental rights bill that he was promoting, Durst confronted Senator Jim Woodward with enough aggressiveness that Woodward called the cops on him. After blowing off a meeting with GOP leadership, Durst blasted senators on social media. The Senate GOP majority wrote a letter condemning Durst for "spurious attacks against members of the Senate, meant to coerce votes and influence elections." In a press release, GOP leaders condemned Durst and said his actions "demonstrate egregious conduct unbecoming of anyone, especially a former legislator and current statewide political candidate."

The "candidate" part refers to Durst's run for the office of state superintendent. He told East Idaho News, “Parents are tired. They don’t feel respected or trusted and they want some real change in their school superintendent. They’re all talking about the same things. They want to stop the indoctrination that’s happening in their schools, they want to (be able) to make decisions for their kids." He ran on three priorities-- end common core, stop critical race theory, and school choice ("fund students, not systems"). He came in second in the GOP primary, losing to Debbie Critchfield by about 25,000 votes. Remember that name.

Durst had remarried in 2016 (in Washington state), and in 2022, his wife and ex-wife got into a scuffle that almost blew up into abuse allegations against Durst and his wife over a whack with a wooden spoon on a 14-year-old child. He explained later, “The child wasn’t being respectful, wasn’t obeying … It wasn’t even very hard, but things can happen in the political world where things get taken out of proportion, and that’s what happened here." Certainly his candidacy made the story bigger than it might otherwise have been.

In 2023, the West Bonner district was desperate enough to hire Durst as superintendent (they had gone through three superintendents in one year). The contract was a bizarre one, with numerous unusual benefits and a super-majority required to oust him. Durst lacked even the tiniest hint of a qualification for the job, and the state wouldn't issue him any kind of certificate. Durst took all of this with the quiet grace and dignity for which he is known. On his blue-checked Twitter account, he complained that something smells. "...this was a discriminatory act by a board run by those with a political axe to grind. They will be held accountable for their discriminatory actions." That despite the extreme far-rightness of Idaho's leaders.

He sort of quit and the board sort of accepted his resignation, and then he sued for breach of contract because he didn't really quit (God bless Idaho Ed News for its coverage of this saga). His tenure lasted basically the summer of 2023--three months, without the schools even open.

Bryan Clark at The Idaho Statesman wrote the political obit on Durst, who they called a "serial political entrepreneur" in June when he was trying to establish his "own little kingdom."

The unifying thread is overwhelming personal ambition. The causes change, but what’s been constant is Durst’s belief that he should be given the power to implement his ideas, whatever they are that week.

There has been a second constant as well: failure

So now what is he up to?

Kaeden Lincoln has just reported the newest chapter in the Durst Saga. 

Durst and a couple of failed school board candidates (who ran for the West Ada board, the district where everyone is famously not welcome) want to launch the Brabeion Academy, "Idaho's 1st Public School of Sport" (motto "Victory Through Excellence"). The K-8 school promises to open in Fall of 2026. "Brabeion" is a Greek term that turns up in Paul's Letter to the Philippians and means "prize." The school's mailing address is in a small office strip mall in Garden City. 

The board includes President Miguel DeLuna has 35 years in California law enforcement, starting out as a deputy sheriff and including 11 years as with Oakland Unified School District Police Services "at a high school with prevalent gang activity." He ran unsuccessfully for the West Ada board in 2023. Treasurer Tom Moore ran alongside DeLuna and failed. He's a retired Navy aviator. The board secretary is Jullie Dillehay, Durst's mother. Laura Warden is "a veteran homeschooler with over fifteen years of experience" and a "devoted follower of Jesus and is passionate about preserving freedom like America’s Founding Fathers and freedom in Christ Jesus." Durst is the chair, and lists superintendent of West Bonner as one of his qualifications.

The school doesn't have a physical location yet. They plan on using Hillsdale's christianist nationalist 1776 curriculum, supplemented with PragerU's whackadoo materials. 

Durst called the school a "Christian public charter school" on Twitter, arguing

Here is the bottom line: the state of Idaho provides a public benefit (a charter, aka a license) to private nonsectarian organizations, but openly discriminates against private sectarian organizations, solely due to their religious nature. SCOTUS has been clear, doing so is a violation of Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Durst told Lincoln, "Given the way the Supreme Court ruled on the case from Oklahoma, it’s still our opinion that it is constitutional to have religious charter schools. And so all of our board members are open to that potential move, but we’re taking it one step at a time.”

The way the Supreme Court ruled on Oklahoma's christian charter school was they let the lower court ruling stand-- the one that said it violated the state constitution. I share Durst's feeling that it's only a matter of time before SCOTUS okays religious charters-- but it hasn't happened yet.

When and if it does happen, though, Brandon Durst will be right there with the army of folks who have no educational qualifications other than their ideological bent.