New Jersey Teachers Union Labels Concerned Parents ‘Extremists’ in New Ad

Bill PanAugust 18, 2022

New Jersey’s largest teachers’ union has drawn criticism after airing an ad that appears to call parents who voice their opposition against inappropriate sex and gender indoctrination in schools “extremists.”

Amid the controversy over New Jersey’s sex education standard set to be implemented this fall, the 200,000-member-strong New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) on Monday released a new 15-second ad titled “Same Thing.”

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“We don’t agree on everything in New Jersey,” the narrator says as the ad opens with pictures captioned “Pork Roll” and “Taylor Ham,” a reference to New Jerseyans’ long-standing debate over what to call their iconic breakfast sandwich.

“But we all agree that our kids deserve a world-class education,” the narrator continues. “So when extremists start attacking our schools, that’s not who we are.”

The ad at this point shows photos of people protesting at school board meetings, with two news headlines: one report entitled “Some NJ schools under siege,” about concerned parents demanding school libraries to remove books they considered inappropriate for young kids; and the other entitled “‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Introduced By NJ State Senator,” about a proposed bill that would impose restrictions on how New Jersey schools can teach about sex and gender.

One of the photos used in the ad was taken last August at a Clark County, Nevada, school board meeting, where people protested against the school district’s COVID-19 mask mandate before being escorted out by police. Another one depicts a man yelling during a May 2021 meeting in Cherokee County, Georgia, after the school board rescinded a resolution against the teaching of critical race theory.

“People who only want to fight to score political points should take that somewhere else,” the ad concludes.

Republicans Respond

Republican lawmakers criticized the ad, saying the union is out of touch with