There has been an increase in recent years of parents raising their concerns in school board meetings across the nation. Their concerns range from radical gender and racial curriculum to boys being able to use girls’ restrooms, but they all share the common thread of public schools usurping the parent’s responsibility of raising their children.
Parents saw firsthand what was being taught in schools due to the COVID-19 school lockdowns bringing their children’s classroom instruction into their homes. Public schools did not decide to be radical at the start of COVID; this has been going on for years and it was finally brought to light. The reality of the matter is parents deserve transparency from their public schools.
Nicole Solas is a Rhode Island mom who enrolled her daughter in a public school for kindergarten. When she started asking the school about their curriculum, they asked her to submit public record requests. Nicole submitted the requests and the school board threatened to sue her for submitting too many requests. Unfortunately, the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest public sector teachers’ union, sued Nicole simply for asking to see her daughter’s kindergarten curriculum.
In Maine, an 11-year-old middle school boy recently read to his school board an excerpt from a book that was on display in his public school’s library. The pornographic scene that the boy read to the school board should make any sane person blush coming from an 11-year-old’s mouth. He goes on to share that the librarian asked him if he would like other related books or even a similar graphic novel. Thankfully this boy had enough sense to know something was wrong, so he checked it out and immediately showed his dad.
The point of both stories is that parents are responsible for raising and instilling values into their children, not public schools. The deliberate lack of transparency from public schools is stripping that right and responsibility away from parents.
Parents do not relinquish their rights and responsibilities for their children when they drop them off at their school’s front door. Parents alone know what is best for their children and the way in which they should learn things, not a Washington D.C. bureaucrat tapping their phone calls for speaking at a school board meeting. School decisions should be made closest to the child – in the home with their parents. It should be easy for a parent to know exactly what is happening behind school doors; increased transparency is the only way forward.