Parents should have the right to protect their children without question.
Commentary
Should parents or public schools be in charge of children’s development as they enroll in taxpayer funded schools? In recent times, there have been battles over critical race theory and transgender ideologies in countless numbers of school districts throughout California and other states. Too many districts have folded to the overreach of state pressure and LGBT activist groups, who bully districts to include woke ideologies in their curricula.
However, Chino Valley USD and Murrietta Valley USD in Southern California have come down in favor of sharing information with parents regarding students who experience gender confusion and want to alter their personal pronouns. According to The Epoch Times and other news outlets, Orange USD and Temecula Valley USD are currently debating this sensitive topic, and school board members are divided on how this confidential information ought to be shared with parents.
Reported the Orange County Register, Orange USD Board Trustee John Lopez noted, “We need to look at the context of the parents. Do we really support the parents? We have to be honest with ourselves. We have seen a separation between students and their parents over the last several years when it comes to those discussions.”
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Mari Barke, President of the Orange County Board of Education, added, “It’s never OK to lie or deceive parents, honesty will always be the best policy. Adults should know better than to keep secrets from a student’s parents,” according to the newspaper.
However, understanding how factual information or gossip spreads throughout a school, students are often aware of other students’ issues before the staff is privy to the info. In other words, school secrets are often open secrets.
Regardless of this reality, why are school boards discussing or voting on this issue? Or if they vote, shouldn’t it be a unanimous vote that parents must be notified regarding school bullying or students who are undergoing an identity crisis? A student who experiences gender confusion also might be unduly influenced by social media or older influencers who wield power over the student. While parents don’t need to constantly hover over their children, their radar should be attuned to inappropriate outside influences.
It doesn’t take brain surgery for schools to notify parents about their child’s well-being. Indeed, it’s a no-brainer that school boards and district schools should craft policies that keep parents in the loop regarding student academic progress and behavioral issues. Let’s break down why this is so important.
First, students belong to their parents and not to the state. The majority of parents know their kids best and look out for their best interests. Parents pay taxes that keep the public schools in operation. School staff come and go while parents are permanent, even when their kids grow up. Therefore, parents ought to have a strong voice in what is being taught in the schools.
Next, students attend school for about 30 hours a week. That translates to around 1,080 hours a year due to all the holidays and weekends. Students attend school about 180 days out of the year, but less than 20 percent of the total hours in a week are spent at school. If you examine an entire year, students attend school a bit more than 12 percent of the total hours in a year. The bottom line is that the public schools should be serving children and parents, not the other way around.
Unfortunately, some activists paint parents as transphobic when they call for natural rights in school interactions. Most parents merely want to protect the majority of children from the tyranny of unscientific “gender-affirming care.” Society can ill afford to genuflect to a small minority that denies biological truths, lobbies for special treatment, and attempts to dictate the cultural narrative to the majority of folks who cherish traditional family values.
When “gender-affirming care” advocates counsel kids to use bathrooms and locker rooms that are the opposite of their biological gender, ingest puberty blockers and intersex drugs, or undergo irreversible surgeries, one would hate to see what gender negating care would look like. Shouldn’t gender-affirming care affirm one’s biological sex and recognize the clear differences between males and females? These natural differences ought to be celebrated, not denigrated.
Moreover, shouldn’t school boards be discussing methods to improve the curriculum and discipline standards rather than remain fixated on peripheral woke topics? Educators should strive to empower students to be confident critical thinkers who learn civics and earn their way through merit, personal responsibility, and a healthy work ethic.
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