This school board candidate was at the U.S. Capitol day of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection

All five of the seats on the board for Avon Community School Corporation represent Washington Township and two of the positions will be on the ballot in November. 

One of the candidates vying for one of the spots is Shawna Lake, who was shown in a social media post to have been at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the day the building was attacked.

That day, supporters of now-former President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol. Rioters broke into the building and began searching for lawmakers, forcing evacuations of the House and Senate.

Hundreds were injured and five people died during and after the insurrection. The House committee tasked with investigating the day's events recently voted unanimously to subpoena Trump.

Photos of Lake wearing a Trump hat, holding an American flag and a Trump flag and posing in front of the U.S. Capitol Building were posted on Twitter in September. The images posted were screenshots taken from Lake’s husband’s Facebook and had the timestamp of Jan. 6, 2021. Lake’s campaign manager, J.D. Thomas, confirmed she was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 "participating in a constitutionally protected activity" and said she never went into a “restricted area.”

2022 Indiana General Election:Meet the Avon Community School Corporation board candidates

Lake has been working as a certified surgical technologist since 2014. She served eight years with the U.S. Air Force, working in health service management. Part of the reason Lake wanted to run is that she believes that school systems are failing students and that students are being exploited for political gain, according to Lake’s website.

Lake has one school-aged daughter who attends private school “because of the cesspool of insanity that government funded education has been allowed to become,” according to her website. She has two other kids.

“Our children are not being educated, they are being indoctrinated,” she writes on her website. “Indoctrinated to be a group of socialist, Marxist, America-hating, gender confused, zealots that will one day govern this nation.”

Some of Lake’s points on her platform include supporting parents’ rights, focusing on academic excellence over more political issues and providing students the proper environment and educational tools. Lake is endorsed by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, Indiana Family Action PAC and Purple for Parents Indiana.

Learn more about Lake at lake4schoolboard.com.

Early in-person voting has already begun in Indiana and will end on Nov. 7 at noon. Contact your County Clerk’s office to find locations and hours for early voting and for in-person voting on Nov. 8.

Voters can also vote absentee but need to request a ballot no later than Oct. 27, or 12 days before the general election on Nov. 8.

To request an absentee ballot, you must meet the requirements, which can be found online at in.gov/sos/elections/voter-information/ways-to-vote. You can request online or by mailing or hand-delivering the application to your county election board or the Indiana Election Division. You also can email the application to elections@iec.in.gov.

Once received, you should mail the ballot back to your local county election office. Ballots must be received by election officials by 6 p.m. on Election Day, or it will not be processed.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.