OPINION:
It is unquestionable that parents have the right to make important decisions regarding their child’s well-being. Unfortunately, an increasing number of school districts are denying parents this fundamental right. Too many “woke” school administrators now see it as their duty to indoctrinate instead of educate. This is creating a catastrophe within education.
Rather than addressing the legitimate concerns of parents, many school boards are trying to obscure these policies from view — and the dangerous incidents that occur at schools because of them. Parents have every right to be infuriated.
For example, in Loudoun County, Virginia, a biologically male student at a local high school — wearing a skirt and described as “gender fluid” — sexually assaulted a female student in a school bathroom. Instead of adequately disciplining the student, the school district transferred him to a different school where he assaulted another female classmate.
Unsurprisingly, this was not an isolated incident. It was recently reported that the Alexandria, Virginia, school district and its school board failed to inform parents about a violent sexual assault at one of its schools. This occurred after the school board recklessly removed school resource officers from its campuses in the mania of the “defund the police” movement. Parents were never formally notified of the incident apart from a fleeting mention of a possible sexual assault at a school board meeting.
Any parent would be outraged by those heinous acts. However, when the father of one of the Loudoun County victims spoke out against the school district’s transgender bathroom policy at a school board meeting, he was forced to the ground and arrested. Before this father spoke, the Loudoun County Public School superintendent claimed that no record existed of any assault occurring in a school bathroom. This father’s arrest was then cited in a National School Boards Association letter, which argued that outspoken parents should be treated as “domestic terrorists.”
Obviously, a primary issue here is the safety of America’s children. When schools and school boards conceal these incidents from parents, they hinder parents from being able to protect their children. Clearly, school officials and teachers unions can’t be relied on to put students first — it is up to parents to carry that torch.
In fact, the left’s attacks on parental rights seem to know no bounds. There is a disturbing trend in some school districts to keep important health information about students hidden from parents, including gender transitions.
According to a report by the American Enterprise Institute, a school district in Madison, Wisconsin, released guidelines instructing teachers to allow students to change their names and pronouns without parental consent. The guidelines also forbade staff from sharing this information with parents without a student’s permission and instructed teachers and staff to deceive parents by continuing to use a student’s legal name and pronoun when communicating with him or her.
Another district in the state told teachers that “parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities. That knowledge must be earned.” Similar policies have been adopted across the country. In 2016, the Obama Department of Education issued recommendations for supporting transgender students; one section of the guidance stated that “parental participation is not required” when a student transitions at school.
Gender transitions are major decisions with lifelong consequences to the physical, emotional and psychological health of a child; withholding this information from parents undermines parental rights and is dangerous to the child. In fact, one 12-year-old girl in Florida attempted to hang herself in a school restroom after she received secret gender identity counseling from a school administrator without parental consent. Schools must not willfully ignore their legal obligation to inform parents about their child’s medical and behavior issues.
These malicious attacks on parental rights are precisely why we need the Parents Bill of Rights. Parents shouldn’t have to stand up to the powerful education bureaucracy alone, and Republicans in Congress are ready to support them. This legislation would empower parents to do the thing most important to them: protect their children.
Parents have a constitutional and moral right to raise their children in accord with their own sincerely held beliefs. As taxpayers, parents should have a say in how schools are administered. The simple fact that these rights are under assault is an affront to the values our country has long espoused. If we don’t fight to protect these rights, the consequences will be disastrous.
• Rep. Virginia Foxx is the U.S. representative for North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District.
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