Involved Parents Are America's Most Wanted

January 26, 2022

Round One in Virginia goes to Team Parents. On day one, Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) announced a hotline for parents to report divisive material in the schools. In no time, that hotline began to expose woke ideology. "There were reports of a school in Fairfax County teaching a high school level course that included a privilege bingo game," said FRC Senior Fellow for Education Studies Meg Kilgannon, where, if you were white or male or were part of a military family, you had "privilege." Talk about an unrealistic, unfair portrayal of how real life works!

Firm support from the governor is exactly what Virginia parents needed after hostile school boards cut them out of the process, dismissed their concerns and attacked them personally. The stonewalling went so far that the school board in Loudoun County abruptly ended a public meeting and arrested a father to conceal a sexual assault on his daughter enabled by their transgender bathroom policy. The Justice Department stepped in, not to investigate the criminal or the school board, but to threaten parents with a domestic terrorism investigation. No wonder Virginia parents voted for Youngkin. Said Kilgannon, "It's a really gratifying case of an elected official who ran for office promising to respect and defend parents' rights... and is actually doing that."

Youngkin also let parents decide whether their children should wear masks to school, creating a carveout to school board mask mandates by executive order. The order is based on a lack of scientific evidence showing a need to mask children and the possibility that mask-wearing may actually hamper a child's development and learning. While many parents are happy, some school boards are not. Seven DC-area school boards have sued to block the policy. "There's nothing preventing the parents in those counties from sending their children to school masked," noted Kilgannon. "The executive order simply... allows parents to decide what will happen."

Parents are exposing CRT and LGBT indoctrination in schools in other states, too. States like Idaho and North Carolina have also created portals where parents can report divisive, un-American curriculum to which their children have been exposed. "These efforts are not just political gamesmanship, as the mainstream media would have people believe," said Kilgannon. Parents are "responding to what's happening in the classrooms, which they were able to see because of the virtual learning during the pandemic."

"Parents all across the country are giving help, whether they're asked or not," said Kilgannon. When Minnesota initiated a review of their social studies curriculum in order to approve a K-12, California-style "ethnic studies" program, parents revealed that the school system in St. Paul, the state capital, had partnered with LGBT advocacy groups to indoctrinate toddlers about how to choose their own gender. At that age, kids can't tell their left shoe from their right one.

The sad part is, radical school districts are pushing woke indoctrination to the neglect of real education. Only 33 percent of St. Paul students test proficient for reading at grade level, and only 21 percent test proficient in math. Kilgannon continued, "parents are aware that the education their children are getting is not the education that the parents got."

Parents across the country are also getting involved, both by exposing divisive indoctrination or by becoming "the one [on the school board] who will listen." Any parent can participate in an online school board boot camp. "If you're a high school graduate," said Kilgannon, "you're qualified to determine what is appropriate for high schools." The Left fears parents--not because they're violent, but because they can expose and end the indoctrination.