GRAPEVINE, Texas — Forward of what would often be a sleepy spring college board election, a mass of fliers appeared on doorsteps within the Fort Value suburbs, warning of rampant “wokeness” and “sexually express books” in colleges, and urging modifications in management.

The fliers had been a part of a broad effort to shift the ideological route of college boards in a politically essential nook of Texas, made potential by a marketing campaign infusion of greater than $420,000 from an unlikely supply: a neighborhood cellphone supplier whose mission, it says, is speaking conservative Christian values.

All 11 candidates backed by the corporate, Patriot Cell, received their races throughout 4 college districts, together with the one in Grapevine, Texas, a conservative city the place the corporate relies and the place extremely rated colleges are the primary draw for households. In August, the board authorised new insurance policies limiting help for transgender college students, clamping down on books deemed inappropriate and setting up new guidelines that made it potential to be elected to the varsity board even with out a majority of votes.

The entry of a Texas cellphone firm into the nationwide tug of warfare over colleges is a part of a much more sweeping battle over the way forward for Texas being waged within the suburbs north of Dallas and Fort Value.

The corporate’s efforts have been seen as a mannequin by Republican candidates and conservative activists, who’ve sought to harness parental anger over public colleges as a way of holding onto suburban areas, a combat that would decide the way forward for the nation’s largest crimson state.

“If we lose Tarrant County, we lose Texas,” Jenny Story, Patriot Cell’s chief working officer, mentioned. “If we lose Texas, we lose the nation.”

Glen Whitley, the highest government in Tarrant County, mentioned the corporate has turn out to be an necessary participant in politics on this a part of the state. “They’ve been profitable in taking on the varsity board in Grapevine-Colleyville, in Keller and Southlake,” Mr. Whitley, a Republican, mentioned. He mentioned the corporate seemed to be setting its sights subsequent on metropolis council races subsequent 12 months.

“They’re coming after Fort Value,” Mr. Whitley mentioned.

Patriot Cell representatives are a frequent presence on the conservative political circuit throughout the nation, taking reward from Steve Bannon on the Conservative Political Motion Convention, shopping for tables at nonprofit fund-raisers and assembly with candidates from inside and out of doors of Texas.

Modeled after a progressive, California-based cellphone supplier based within the Eighties, the corporate unabashedly embraces its partisan agenda, donating cash to anti-abortion and different conservative causes. These days, it has begun spending cash on behalf of Republican political candidates.

Peter Barnes, who helped begin Credo Cell, the California cellphone firm that funded progressive causes, mentioned he lengthy anticipated that different corporations would comply with the same path.

“The enterprise mannequin is fairly easy and we anticipated that one thing related would emerge on the proper,” he mentioned of the plan for channeling income into politics. “But it surely didn’t — till now.”

In North Texas, Patriot Cell’s political spending has supported digital promoting, door hangers and marketing campaign mailers in addition to get-out-the-vote efforts on behalf of its chosen candidates.

Its political activism has already modified issues on the bottom in Grapevine, the place the nine-year-old firm relies. The brand new insurance policies on books and transgender points handed 4-to-3, with the 2 Patriot Cell-backed candidates making the distinction.

An array of highschool college students on this more and more various space responded with a walkout from class, led by transgender and nonbinary college students. Dad and mom against the modifications have begun assembly to determine their very own response.

In Grapevine’s harvest-and-wine-themed downtown, the place upscale espresso outlets and eating places might be discovered close to shows of “Extremely MAGA” sweatshirts, Patriot Cell is headquartered in a cluster of places of work unmarked from the surface.

The corporate’s brand adorns a convention room the place Senator Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael, leads a packed Bible research each Tuesday. Alongside one cubicle hangs a Texas flag with silhouettes of assault rifles and the phrases “Come and Take It,” in a nod to a well known slogan from the Texas revolution.

“We simply mentioned, ‘Look, we’re going to place God first,’” mentioned Glenn Story, the founder and chief government, sitting in his workplace on a latest afternoon, a guitar signed by Donald Trump Jr. hanging on the wall. “Which is why I haven’t erased that from the board,” he mentioned, pointing to a listing of core values written on a whiteboard, starting with “Missionaries vs. Mercenaries.”

“Our mission is to help our God-given Constitutional rights,” mentioned Ms. Story, the chief working officer and Mr. Story’s spouse.

“And to honor God, at all times,” mentioned Leigh Wambsganss, a vp on the firm who additionally heads the political motion committee, Patriot Cell Motion, based by the corporate’s executives.

Firms donate frequently to state and native political campaigns, however a regional firm, based with a partisan mission and prepared to spend cash in yard races, is uncommon. College boards throughout the nation are more and more turning into political battlegrounds, attracting bigger sums of cash and nationwide teams into what had as soon as been largely invisible native contests.

Patriot Cell’s political actions are targeted on suburban Tarrant County, north of Fort Value, largely as a result of the county has been trending blue, narrowly carried by President Biden in 2020 and by the previous Democratic congressman and present candidate for governor, Beto O’Rourke, throughout his 2018 Senate run.

Lengthy a bastion of well-regarded colleges, conservative church buildings and largely well-off, white neighborhoods, the realm nurtured sturdy Tea Occasion teams in the course of the Obama administration and, extra just lately, those who supported a Republican main challenger to the proper of Gov. Greg Abbott. It has a status, amongst some within the get together, as a hotbed for hard-right politics.

The brand new insurance policies voted on within the Grapevine-Colleyville Unbiased College District have divided dad and mom and raised concern amongst some lecturers, a few of whom mentioned they feared turning into targets of the brand new college board.

One of many new board members steered as a lot throughout a Republican discussion board over the summer time, saying the board had a “checklist” of lecturers who she believed had been activists selling progressive concepts about race and fairness.

“They’re simply poison and they’re taking our colleges down,” the board member, Tammy Nakamura, mentioned.

Some lecturers have begun eradicating books from their school rooms slightly than abide by new guidelines that require titles to be posted on-line in order that they are often publicly reviewed. The district canceled its annual Scholastic e-book truthful after earlier issues about books that had been “mis-merchandised” and weren’t age-appropriate, a district spokeswoman mentioned.

“You now have the varsity board approving library books, and I really feel that’s utterly micromanaging the administration,” mentioned Jorge Rodríguez, a faculty board member who voted in opposition to the brand new insurance policies, including that greater than 1 / 4 of the district’s 14,000 college students had been economically deprived. “We’re right here to teach children and this isn’t serving to.”

The highest spokesman for the district resigned just a few months after being employed, citing the “divisive” environment. The district’s superintendent mentioned just lately that he deliberate to retire on the finish of the varsity 12 months.

“I’ve at all times been a staunch conservative,” mentioned Christy Horne, a dad or mum whose two kids go to elementary college within the district. However the assaults on lecturers had been an excessive amount of for her, Ms. Horne mentioned. “It acquired private.”

However for Mario Cordova, one other dad or mum within the district, the brand new college board management has rightly given extra management over curriculum and studying materials to oldsters, lots of whom had been dismayed by what they noticed their kids studying in distant education in the course of the pandemic.

“Dad and mom throughout the district voted for a change on the board final Might and are glad to see them comply with by,” Mr. Cordova wrote in an electronic mail. Opponents of the modifications are “crying wolf,” he added. “This crowd has satisfied themselves they can’t educate kids with out incessant conversations about intercourse and gender.”

For a lot of dad and mom and lecturers, an early signal that their colleges had turn out to be a political battleground got here final 12 months with complaints over the primary Black highschool principal at Colleyville Heritage Excessive College.

Some dad and mom contended that the principal, Dr. James Whitfield, had been selling “important race principle” and had been rankled by an electronic mail he despatched, days after the demise of George Floyd, expressing solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters and a want to create higher fairness.

“He’s going to start out a variety advisory committee? At our faculty? He’s going to say that Black Lives Matter?” mentioned Dr. Whitfield, describing the response he encountered. The combat made nationwide headlines and the district finally reached a settlement with Dr. Whitfield that included his departure as principal.

The district superintendent has mentioned the choice was not about race.

A number of months after Dr. Whitfield’s departure, opponents of a variety plan in neighboring Southlake received management of the native college board, with assist from a political motion committee, Southlake Households. One of many founders was Ms. Wambsganss, a dad or mum in Southlake colleges and a former tv information anchor. One other was Tim O’Hare, who’s the Republican nominee in November’s election to steer Tarrant County.

Dad and mom each in Southlake and in Grapevine-Colleyville have been offended by the sexual content material, together with express descriptions of sexual exercise, in some books provided to college students, in addition to sure discussions of gender and race, mentioned Ms. Wambsganss, now at Patriot Cell.

“Dad and mom don’t imagine that gender points ought to be mentioned in Ok by 12,” she mentioned. “Particularly Christian dad and mom are not looking for a number of genders mentioned with their kids by somebody who isn’t their dad and mom.”

She added: “I at all times say, it’s not about homosexuality. It’s not about heterosexuality. Cease sexualizing children in both of these arenas.”

The victories by Patriot Cell-backed candidates stunned some dad and mom who didn’t agree with the brand new route within the district.

On a latest morning, a dozen of these dad and mom and neighborhood members gathered on the native botanical backyard. For a lot of, it was the primary time they’d met after discovering each other by one of many many proliferating Fb pages devoted to the varsity district conflicts.

“I ask myself daily, what did I carry my kids into,” mentioned Katherine Parks, who moved to the realm from France.

“We had been Swift Boated by these individuals,” mentioned Tom Hart, a Republican former metropolis councilman in Colleyville, referring to the political assaults that helped sink John Kerry’s presidential marketing campaign in 2004. “We can not fight $400,000 in funding from the surface.”

As dad and mom met to strategize, some college students at Grapevine Excessive College, the place the Homosexual-Straight Alliance membership was shuttered for lack of a college sponsor, have already begun to seek out methods to protest. A pupil began a e-book membership for studying banned books. A bunch of associates organized a walkout.

“We will discover solidarity, and we are able to discover security in one another,” mentioned Marceline, who requested that solely their first identify be used out of concern for potential reprisals. “As a result of we can not belief the adults.”

About 100 college students joined within the walkout. No related protest has taken place at close by Colleyville Heritage Excessive College, and for a lot of college students, the start of the varsity 12 months has proceeded, kind of, because it at all times has.