Yep, it's that. The author is not arguing in good faith (IMHO), and is mad that crank causes can't easily subvert a school district, if the school district is sufficiently large enough to resist it. The big tell is that the author won't actually list what "community values" or "will of citizens" they think are missing in these democratically-elected school district boards (because if they admitted it honestly, it would be immediately obvious why districts resist it)
And this isn't just a thought-piece, this is a real battle happening at the local level in Michigan right now, during the past election, something like 60% of the candidates for each random district are that district's crazy cranks from school board meetings, intentionally running in bad faith, just to push minority-held crazy religious/political-extremist beliefs onto children via the school board). Districts can't kick them out of the meetings, if they are on the board themselves.