In early May, Democrats in the House defeated the ” The bill was the latest effort to require public school teachers to answer parents when they ask about changes to their child’s gender identity.

But another bill is moving forward that supporters say would give parents more control over their children’s instruction in schools – and opponents say would intrude on classroom instruction.

would allow parents to opt their children out of any “instruction or program of” sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or gender expression.

Currently, state law allows parents to withdraw their children from classes related to human sexual education. HB 1312 would expand that ability to apply to the additional topics.

Under the existing process, parents must notify the school district in writing that they object to the class material. And the parents must propose alternative instruction that is agreed upon by the school district, and pay for it themselves if there is a cost.

HB 1312 would expand the withdrawal and require school district staff to notify parents at least two weeks in advance of any material that might fall into the category.

Separately, the bill would prevent school districts from requiring that teachers withhold information from parents about their child’s well-being – including information about their sexuality. Individual teachers could still choose not to answer questions from parents about their child’s sexuality, but school districts could not make it a blanket policy under the bill.

The legislation, which passed the House 186-185, appears likely to clear the Republican-led Senate, too; the Senate Education Committee voted to recommend that it pass, in a 3-1, party-line vote.

Supporters say the bill would give parents a greater say in how their children learn about sensitive topics. But opponents said the bill would empower discriminatory views against LGBTQ+ people, and that the notification process would be disruptive to teachers.

“The bill seems to be targeting, and I think stigmatizing, any instruction concerning LGBTQ+ people, and I think that this language really sends the message to LGBTQ+ students that their feelings and identities are something to be shunned, feared, potentially even censored, or not even acknowledged,” said Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire.

To Sen. Tim Lang, a Sanbornton Republican, the bill would encourage parents to communicate with their children about the topics – knowing that they were coming up in the curriculum – which he said could foster better connections between parents and children.

“Parents should have these discussions with their own children and not have teachers do this. This bill is the prompt for parents to have those conversations.”

Lang said the notification requirements would not prevent school districts from teaching the topics, but would rather allow parents to choose whether to participate in them. And he argued that the bill is not intended to allow parents to withdraw their child from materials that relate to LGBTQ+ people or movements in history.

“It’s just informative to parents,” he said. “Nothing stops the school from doing those classes. The class is allowed. That just says that if you do it though, because this is a sensitive topic, you need to notify parents.”

A class about Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francisco politician who was assassinated in 1978, would not fall under the definition of instruction of sexual orientation, Lang said, because Milk was a historical figure. But any instruction directed at students themselves that delved into their own sexual orientations or gender identity – such as that in a sex education class – would need to be disclosed, he said.

But representatives of teachers unions said the bill as written does not make those distinctions clear. Teachers might interpret the law to mean that any class that discussed the history of LGBTQ+ rights would need to be noticed ahead of time, opponents said. And English teachers might feel compelled to disclose any book that featured LGBTQ+ characters, and to empower parents to prevent their children from reading those books.

“If you pass this bill that expands the areas that a parent is required notification of and can opt a child out of, where will it stop?” said Deb Howes, president of the American Federation of Teachers of New Hampshire. “… Can you study the pay gap between men and women in the same jobs in an economics class, which has to do with policies around gender discrimination?”

Lang disagreed with that characterization; books that happen to include transgender or non-heterosexual characters would not automatically invoke the disclosure requirement, he said. Only instruction that was specifically intended to teach students about sexual orientation or gender identity would need advanced notice, he said.

Brian Hawkins, director of government relations for the National Education Association of New Hampshire, argued that the topics the bill would add to the parental notification law were so broad that teachers would find the law difficult to follow.

“We think that 1312 is another piece of legislation that would significantly limit educators’ ability to teach, and provides far too many instances of vague language and framework to determine when certain actions violate the statute,” Hawkins said.

New Hampshire lawmakers first passed the law allowing parental opt-out from sex ed in 2017. In recent years, Republicans have pushed to allow more parental control over school library books, and have pressed for legislation to require teachers to answer any questions from parents about their child’s preferred pronouns or gender identity in school.

The latest parental notification bill effort, , was “indefinitely postponed” earlier this month, on a voting day when House Democrats had a majority over Republicans in the near-evenly divided chamber. That motion means that the bill is dead and that it cannot return as an amendment to another bill this legislative session.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on and .

Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday that he will sign legislation restricting challenges to books in public schools, blaming “activist” teachers and others of making a “mockery” of his parental rights legislation by filing frivolous challenges.

The 2021 Parental Rights in Education Act, sometimes referred to as “Don’t Say Gay,” allows parents the opportunity to review, and potentially object to, school library books that they find “inappropriate,” with the goal of removing questionable material from school libraries, even if other families are OK with the content.

Especially targeted was LGBTQ content.

What followed were wholesale challenges to books and other material, requiring their removal from libraries and classrooms pending sometimes protracted reviews of their suitability.

Legislation passed during this year’s legislative session () allows only one challenge per month unless the challenge comes from the parent or guardian of a child in a public school.

“It is done intentionally, and it is part of an agenda, and that’s wrong,” DeSantis said during a news conference.

“I mean, schools are there to serve a community. Schools are not there for you to try to go on some ideological joyride at the expense of our kids,” he said.

The Legislature hasn’t sent the bill to DeSantis yet, but he said that he will sign it once that happens.

DeSantis appeared at Warrington Preparatory Academy, a charter school that opened last year at the site of a consistently poorly performing public school.

The bill is an omnibus pertaining to state education policy. The governor highlighted the book challenge changes plus language that expedites charter conversions, requiring districts to allow charter operators access to the facilities to devise a turnaround plan. Districts couldn’t remove resources or charge rent and would have to maintain the building. Children in the public-school zone would be first in line for charter school admission.

‘The Bluest Eye’

House member Jennifer Canady, a Republican from Polk County, mentioned a new bar on placing students in dropout prevention programs “solely because of a disability.” Students who are placed in those programs would be entitled to individualized goals “so we are focused on what they need to do in order to be successful,” she said.

“This bill is going to require that we treat students as the individuals that they are and make sure that they are in the best learning environment for them,” Canady added.

As for book challenges, in 2022 set up a more orderly system for them, including review by the Florida Department of Education.

Still, books and sheltered from access by kids have included bestsellers including “The Kite Runner” and “The Bluest Eye,” the latter by the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison, plus “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson about growing up Black and queer.

In Jacksonville, books about , which are on the state’s recommended list, were unavailable to students for months pending reviews.

During the 2022-2023 school year, recorded 1,406 book ban cases in Florida, which accounted for 40% of the national total. That organization the Escambia County School District over its banning policies.

DeSantis insisted he is only after books that aren’t “age and developmentally appropriate.”

“You should not be having books in these schools, particularly in younger grades, that are sexually explicit, that are promoting ideology like gender ideology. We don’t believe you teach a kindergartener that they can change their gender — that’s just not appropriate, that’s not what parents want to be taught in our schools,” he said Monday.

Litigation

PEN America and the Florida Education Association, representing classroom teachers, have complained that the laws are so vague that they invited districts to overly restrict access to material. The state laws don’t directly threaten felony charges for violations, but the Duval County district that that could happen if they expose children to material deemed pornographic.

To DeSantis, such concerns are “performative; that’s political. You’re trying to be an activist when you should be trying to be an educator.”

He did concede: “It’s from all ends of the political spectrum — I mean, there’s some people that really think all these books that have been in school are inappropriate; there’s other people that know that they’re appropriate but are trying to act like Florida does not want these books in.”

Overall, “it’s being done to create a narrative that somehow, oh my gosh, all these books are, quote, banned. No book is banned in Florida. The most grotesque pornographic books that are in schools that have been removed because they’re inappropriate, you can go buy it in a bookstore if that’s what floats your boat, you’re able to do that. But do not jam that down the throat of a sixth-grade child,” the governor said.

“…Just as it’s wrong for a school district, an activist teacher, a school union to try to impose an agenda on a student, it’s also wrong for a citizen activist or parent to do these passive-aggressive false challenges to try to act like somehow we don’t want education in Florida,” he said.

“If you are trying to be an activist, if you’re trying to withdraw valid materials as a way to basically lodge a protest, you’re going to be held accountable for that, because you’re depriving the students of their right to be able to have a good education.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

A group of Montana students, teachers, librarians, and organizations representing school counselors and psychologists filed a Tuesday seeking to block the 2021 law that requires school staff to if they plan to teach or discuss anything with students that involves “human sexuality.”

The group asked a Lewis and Clark County District Court judge to permanently block the passed during and signed into law by Gov. Greg Gianforte, saying it violates multiple provisions of the state Constitution ensuring rights to freedom of speech and expression, privacy, due process, equal protection and a quality educational opportunity.

“Without clear guidance on the issues that fall under the scope of SB 99, teachers, librarians, and others are at risk of discipline if they unknowingly violate this legislation,” said Marthe VanSickle, an attorney at the ACLU of Montana, which is one of three law firms and organizations representing the plaintiffs. “SB 99 has left Montana schools navigating uncertainty and vulnerability which stifles learning opportunities for students and threatens free exchange of ideas.”

In response, the Governor’s Office and Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen said they remain committed to the law and ensuring a parent’s right to know if their children are learning about explicit content at school.

“While the governor’s office generally doesn’t comment on ongoing litigation, the governor remains committed to preserving a Montana parent’s role in his or her child’s education, especially a parent’s right to know when a child might be exposed to sexually explicit content in the classroom,” the governor’s spokesperson, Kaitlin Price, said in a statement.

The plaintiffs include the Montana School Counselors Association, Montana Association of School Psychologists, a Billings high school English teacher, a Billings West librarian and teacher, two students and EmpowerMT, an organization that provides training to several districts in the state about how to build more inclusive school communities.

They are suing Gianforte, Arntzen, her Office of Public Instruction, and the Montana Board of Public Education, alleging vagueness is creating abundant issues for educators, the Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ community, and mental health professionals that work with students because the law is being “weaponized” to shut down discussions and lessons that some parents might morally object to.

“SB 99 is part of a concerted effort by the Legislature and the Defendants to erase 2S-LGBTQIA+ histories, viewpoints and curricula from public instruction,” the lawsuit says. “It is also part of a coordinated effort to create a climate of hostility towards 2S-LGBTQIA+ individuals. In short, SB 99 marginalizes the history, concerns, experiences, and aspirations of the 2S-LGBTQIA+ community.”

The group says the law has led to teachers, librarians, counselors and psychologists avoiding discussing gender identity, sexual health, and even legal decisions in lessons that are not planned in advance so they don’t risk potential punishment for violating the law. They say nearly three years on, they have received about exactly when they should be notifying parents two days in advance of any lesson or discussion.

The lawsuit says Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ students are also unable to learn more about those communities and that the law also subjects them to being further singled out because of their identities and subject to bullying. It says that students cannot engage in spontaneous conversations in school groups like a Genders and Sexuality Alliance without first notifying parents.

And it says the law is violating the constitutional requirement for quality educational opportunities for Montana students because the restrictions surrounding sex education are not informing students of healthy practices and are paring down their opportunities to learn as much as they wish.

The suit calls the law “astonishingly vague” and says the challenge comes in part because the Montana Legislature failed to refine definitions in the bill of what constituted “providing information” or “maintaining a curriculum” during the 2023 legislative session. Two bills that of the law both died in the process.

And it says that the discussion over the bill signaled a legislative intent to enforce “Christian values” in Montana’s public schools that would violate the state Constitution.

The educators say they have had to stop teaching certain books and topics, that classroom libraries have been shut down, that they’ve had to question whether their mental health discussions with students violate the law and have faced harassment from the community for trying to teach about LGBTQ+ history and rights.

“SB99 gives anti-2S-LGBTQIA+ parents a potent cudgel against any teacher, counselor, school psychologist, or librarian who is dedicated to tolerance, inclusivity, and compassion in the classroom and school,” the suit says. “As a result, teachers, counselors, and school psychologists are likely to continue to steer clear or any instruction or counseling that might put them in the crosshairs of SB 99 and its proponents, to the detriment of public-school students across the State.”

For the two student plaintiffs, the suit says the law is preventing Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ students from accessing information about the community and scientific material on sexuality and gender identity. And it is keeping student peer educators from speaking with other students to better inform them about sexual health and relationships, the lawsuit says.

“Every student has a right to access information about human sexuality without censorship from their teachers and without fear they are running afoul of SB 99,” the suit says. “As a result of the hostile climate SB 99 has created, R.S. and her peers will go out into the world as adults without the quality education to which they are entitled under the Montana Constitution.”

It contends that school psychologists and counselors have also had to change their practices surrounding what they can say to students, even involving serious matters like suicidality, which goes against best practices for their professions.

“Many of those conversation are, by necessity, confidential,” Montana School Counselors Association Advocacy Chairperson Erica Parrish said in a statement. “SB 99 places school counselors between the proverbial rock and a hard place: we can either follow our professional and ethical obligations to our students, or we can follow SB 99’s parent notification requirement. It’s impossible to do both.”

The lawsuit claims the law violates the Montana Constitution by chilling speech, infringing on the privacy rights of students and educators, and not giving the plaintiffs due process because of its vagueness. It says the law violates the equal protection clause because it disproportionately affects Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ students, and does not afford Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ students the chance to receive a quality education.

The attorneys in the case are asking a judge to find the law to be unconstitutional, to award nominal damages to the student plaintiffs, as well as attorneys’ fees and costs.

In a statement, Arntzen, who is running in the Republican primary for Montana’s 2nd Congressional District seat, said the lawsuit was an attack on her because she’s a Republican who supports more parental involvement in Montana classroom curriculum.

“Woke organizations are once again attacking me because I am a conservative and I’m standing for parental rights,” she said. “Government bureaucracy doesn’t own our children. I stand with Montana parents who are rightfully concerned over sexual indoctrination in the classroom. Montana families have the right to know what their children are being taught and the right to opt-out of participating. I will continue to fiercely defend parental rights.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com. Follow Daily Montanan on and .

The complaint argues that these warrantless actions, which often include strip-searches of children and multiple, traumatizing return visits by case workers, violate the Fourth Amendment. The city’s Administration for Children’s Services is charged with investigating all reports of child abuse and neglect.

“ACS caseworkers lie to parents and withhold information from them about their rights, threaten to involve the police when police are clearly not needed and even directly threaten to take parents’ children away from their care — all to pressure parents to give ACS access to families’ homes and strip-search their children,” states a press release announcing the Feb. 20 filing of the litigation in U.S. District Court. 

The attorneys bringing the case point out that these practices inflict disproportionate harm and trauma on Black and Hispanic families, who are the subject of 80% of ACS investigations, and that in 70% of those inquiries, allegations of parental abuse and neglect are determined to be unfounded.

Calls to reform the nation’s child welfare system have been growing, often spurred by the work of reporters uncovering abuses. The NYC lawsuit cites the investigative reporting of former 74 staffer Asher Lehrer-Small, which revealed the extent to which unfounded reports of suspected parental abuse and neglect were made by NYC teachers and a pattern of retaliation against special education parents , who were reported to ACS after speaking up on their children’s behalf.

• Exclusive Data: Educators’ ‘Careless’ Child Abuse Reports Devastate Thousands of NYC Families
  
• They Stood Up to NYC Schools For Their Disabled Child. Then Child Protective Services Arrived
  

A spokeswoman for ACS that the agency would review the lawsuit and is “committed to keeping children safe and respecting parents’ rights.” 

“We will continue to advance our efforts to achieve safety, equity and justice by enhancing parents’ awareness of their rights, connecting families to critical services, providing families with alternatives to child protection investigations and working with key systems to reduce the number of families experiencing an unnecessary child protective investigation,” spokeswoman Marisa Kaufman said. 

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of nine plaintiffs, but could grow much larger. It asks that ACS’s practices be deemed unconstitutional, that the agency remedy how it investigates families and conducts searches, and that the plaintiffs be awarded compensatory damages.

“This may be one of the most important lawsuits in the field in the last [50]  years,” Martin Guggenheim, an NYU law professor and children’s rights and family law expert, said in the release.

Read the 49-page complaint here

Since their creation three years ago, the conservative parental rights organization Moms for Liberty has emerged as a major player in national education politics in the U.S., and certainly in Florida, where the group began in 2021.

“We started with two chapters, Brevard and Indian River. And in three years, we are now at 310 chapters in 48 states with 130,000 members and I think that’s remarkable. It’s because of the work that you started here in Florida,” Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich said on Friday while speaking in front of a crowd in Florida’s Capitol courtyard in Tallahassee.

Moms for Liberty emerged in the wake of schools shutting down during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, with parents feeling in some cases that local school boards weren’t listening to their concerns over remote learning and mask mandates.

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And they had a receptive audience in Tallahassee under Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-controlled Legislature, resulting in legislation such as the (the “Don’t say gay” bill) and in the 2022 legislative session.

The group is still considered controversial: It’s been labeled as an and a “far-right” organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

SPLC writes: “Moms for Liberty and its nationwide chapters combat what they consider the ‘woke indoctrination’ of children by advocating for book bans in school libraries and endorsing candidates for public office that align with the group’s views. They also use their multiple social media platforms to target teachers and school officials, advocate for the abolition of the Department of Education, advance a conspiracy propaganda, and spread hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community.”

Co-founder Tiffany Justice rejected that assertion, that “we are a group of moms and dads and grandparents and aunts and uncles, community members that are very concerned about the direction of the country,” according to Fox News Tonight, in June 2023.

Justice, Descovich and Sarasota’s Bridget Ziegler were the three original co-founders of Moms for Liberty, though Ziegler, a Sarasota School Board member, left the organization shortly after its creation. Ziegler has been in the spotlight recently after it was reported that she and her husband had a consensual with another woman, among other concerns.

Descovich said that while Moms for Liberty originally focused on turning around members of school boards, the group learned quickly that they needed to invest energy in state legislatures to change laws, she said on Friday in Tallahassee.

“Florida started forming organically a legislative committee, and that was the model that is now being used in 18 states of Moms for Liberty with legislative committees,” she said.

Meanwhile, Brevard County School Board member Jennifer Jenkins says that the culture wars of the past few years, pushed by DeSantis, appear to be losing some of its steam.

But she also says that Moms for Liberty’s impact isn’t going away in Florida.

“What’s scary though is that the reason (Moms for Liberty) rose and were viable in Florida still exists,” Jenkins says. “That infrastructure didn’t fall apart, right? I think that they’re going to continue to thrive here and create this façade that they’re the driving force and the moving force. I don’t know if that will die down. Perhaps someone will try to conquer that.”

Organizers at Friday’s event didn’t speak much about the future, but they are expected to again get involved in local elections later this year.

The Florida chapter that they say, “stand with parents.” The list includes both of Florida’s two U.S. GOP senators, Rick Scott and Marco Rubio.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

An alliance of conservative groups on Tuesday submitted nearly 425,000 signatures for an initiative to guarantee parents access to materials their children are taught in K-12 classrooms and information about medical services public schools provide.

The proposed ballot measure, , would on matters ranging from reviewing textbooks and curriculum to obtaining medical records to being able to opt their child out of assignments involving questions about a child’s sexual experiences or their family’s religious beliefs.

Initiative supporters delivered boxes of petitions to the Secretary of State’s Office in Tumwater at 1:30 p.m. They said they were turning in 423,399 signatures.

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“This initiative is nothing anyone would have believed was controversial even a few years ago,” said hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, founder of Let’s Go Washington and chief financier of the signature-gathering effort.

“Parents are the primary stakeholder in raising children,” he said in a statement. “The overwhelming number of signatures from across the political spectrum shows that everyone just wants to get back to normal.”

State Rep. Jim Walsh of Aberdeen, who also chairs the Washington State Republican Party, is the prime sponsor of this initiative and five others circulated this year by Let’s Go Washington, Restore Washington and other conservative political groups.

In November, they for to repeal the Climate Commitment Act. Petitions for a third measure dealing with vehicle pursuits by police are scheduled for delivery Thursday, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.

Collectively these measures are part of a broad Republican-driven strategy to push back on significant social, fiscal and environmental policies approved by Democratic legislators and Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee over the objections of many GOP lawmakers.

Need or distraction?

Initiative 2081 focuses on public schools which have increasingly been a battleground in Washington and across the nation on issues of curricula related to sexual health and race and policies on COVID vaccinations and gender identity.

The measure would require parents to be able to review educational materials and receive copies of academic and medical records for free. It also says parents should “receive written notice and the option to opt their child out” of surveys, assignments, questionnaires, and other activities in which questions are asked about their child’s “sexual experiences or attractions” or their family religion or political affiliations.

Another provision calls for parents to be notified if their child receives any medications or medical care that could result in a financial impact.

Officials with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction are studying the measure to see how it aligns with current Washington law.

“Most of the provisions appear to be consistent with ” said OSPI spokeswoman Katy Payne. “We are reviewing it in further detail to determine if the initiative conflicts with any existing civil rights protections or Human Rights Commission determinations.”

Mark Gardner, a high school teacher in the Camas School District, said the premise of ensuring parents have a voice isn’t problematic. The reality, he said, is most of what is sought exists now through state law or school district policies.

“To me this feels like a distraction from our greater needs,” he said. State lawmakers should look to boost funding for hiring support staff and paraeducators, for example, because these professionals “would really serve our kids,” he said.

To be certified, Initiative 2081 petitions must contain the signatures of at least 324,516 registered voters. State election officials recommend initiative sponsors submit at least 405,000 signatures to account for any found to be invalid.

The process of certifying valid signatures will begin after the Dec. 29 deadline for filing initiatives to the Legislature.

Because it is an , if it has the requisite number of signatures it will first be sent to lawmakers who can adopt it as written in the 2024 session. They also can reject or refuse to act on it, in which case it will go on the November 2024 ballot.

Lawmakers can approve an alternative measure to be placed on the ballot alongside the initiative if they want, as well.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com. Follow Washington State Standard on and .

A key issue underlying the 2023 Virginia election first drew statewide – and national – attention in a debate two years ago.

During a 2021 Virginia gubernatorial debate, Democratic candidate made a critical mistake that led to his defeat by GOP challenger Glenn Youngkin.

Instead of acknowledging concerns that parents were having over school curriculum, McAuliffe dismissed them.

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“I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decision,” McAuliffe said during the debate. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

McAuliffe’s remarks sparked a backlash among white conservatives who were incensed that their children were being forced to read books that touched on contentious topics such as racism and sexuality.

In fact, one of Youngkin’s showed a white mother who was nearly brought to tears by her son’s anguish after reading about the horrors of slavery in Toni Morrison’s “.” She said the book should not have been required high school reading.

But while Youngkin and other campaigning for offices from to in the 2023 cycle have hitched their political success to parental rights and banning books deemed offensive, they do not own those issues.

In fact, the very thing that parental rights advocates are fighting to exclude is the very thing that parental rights groups of the 1960s fought to have included: an accurate reflection of the role that Black people played in the shaping of American history and culture.

I know this because a great deal of time studying one of the seminal parental rights movements in American public education for my book, “.”

In that book, I detailed the 1968 struggle over community control of public schools in the predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood of Ocean Hill-Brownsville in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. There, as in Virginia, by the public education system demanded to have their voices heard in determining school curricula.

But at Ocean Hill-Brownsville, it was Black and Latino parents who demanded their right to have a say in the education of their children.

Inside the classrooms

For decades, Black history had been a neglected topic in New York City schools.

In the 1960s, only a handful of textbooks on the Board of Education-approved list discussed the history of African Americans in significant detail. The lack of such material was widely blamed for the disappointing academic performance of Black and Latino students.

In an effort to help those students and improve test scores, New York City school officials launched an experiment to give the mostly minority parents more say in school matters by appointing them to school governing boards. As I note in , the new governing boards immediately set out to move the history of Black Americans from the margins of the American experience to its epicenter.

Not everyone supported the changes to what was being taught in the classrooms. When the newly formed board composed of fired 13 teachers and six administrators for trying to block the changes, the United Federation of Teachers union organized several strikes to shut down the schools in a dispute over control of personnel, finances and curricula.

The strikes lasted for 36 school days and affected about 47,000 teachers and nearly 1 million students. The strike ended on Nov. 17 when the state took control of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school district.

Most of the jobs left vacant by striking union members were filled by a group of nonunionized “replacement” teachers sympathetic to the Ocean Hill-Brownsville parents.

In this racially charged atmosphere, local parents enjoyed an unprecedented opportunity to assert their rights. In the words of one school board representative, they sought to “supply the missing pieces of Black culture,” which would be “the well-spring from which all areas will flow, and counter the total focus in today’s curriculum on the European Anglo-Saxon experience.”

During , Ocean Hill-Brownsville parents worked with the teachers who had defied the union and staffed the schools to help implement an ambitious Black history curriculum. It included lessons on Black revolutionary leaders , and .

Their recommendations would eventually influence the direction of curricula in the New York City public school system as a whole.

A constant struggle

This example of parental rights serves as a reminder to those who assume that white conservatives are the only active and involved parents trying to assert their rights.

Indeed, in Virginia itself, Black parents are still having an effect on what is taught in public schools. In one example, the proposed a set of revisions to the state’s Standards of Learning in history and social sciences that failed to mention Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Black politicians and parents as “white-washing,” and the changes were later .

In a further blow to conservatives, parental activists helped shepherd standards that were approved in April 2023.

The standards state unequivocally that “the institution of slavery was the cause of the Civil War.” In addition, they recognize “the indelible stain of slavery, segregation, and racism in the United States and around the world” and emphasize “the development of African American culture in America.”

Most important, at least to those who agree that parents should have an active role in the education of their children, the standards state that “parents should have access to all instructional materials utilized in any Virginia public school.”

The parental rights movement, then, in Virginia and elsewhere, is not solely the province of the right. As history has shown – and today’s debates over school curricula show – “parental rights” are for all parents.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

At a hosted by the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, DeSantis pointed to recent dismal national test scores as vindication for his decision to fully reopen schools in the fall of 2020. He touted his parental rights agenda and defended his opposition to mask mandates and quarantines for children who weren’t sick.

“The way different places handled COVID is going to reverberate in terms of the educational outcomes for these kids for quite some time,” he said. “We got the big issues right. Unfortunately, a lot of places around the country got the big issues wrong.”

The event coincided with the release of a new , which ranks Florida as first in the nation for school choice, transparency on education and the extent to which it keeps “overburdensome” regulations to a minimum. But as with recent appearances in and , the events also offered an opportunity to position DeSantis, who is running for reelection against Democrat Charlie Crist, as a potential national candidate. 

“You can stand for regular people, and we can beat these elites,” he said, acknowledging the “blowback” he faced from teachers unions for requiring schools to be open five days a week. “I’ll take the arrows. That’s what a leader does.”

In the , DeSantis has at least a 5 percentage point lead over Crist. Critics say his policies defy Republicans’ preference for local control, and he’s facing a federal lawsuit over a new law that limits what teachers and college professors can say about race and gender in the classroom. 

DeSantis-backed school board candidates picked up seats across Florida in last month’s primary. But Corey DeAngelis, a speaker at the event and a senior fellow at the conservative American Federation for Children, said the anti-union message resonates beyond Florida.

He pointed to the defeat of nine out of 10 in the Republican primary who were backed by the Tennessee Education Association. 

“Coming out against parental rights in education is becoming a form of political suicide,” he said, citing Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s statement in last year’s Virginia governor’s race that he didn’t think “parents should be telling schools what to teach.” Many observers link that comment to his defeat by Republican Glenn Youngkin.

‘Political games’

McAuliffe during that campaign for having American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten join him at a rally. But that hasn’t stopped some Democratic candidates from giving the teachers unions even more visibility this year. 

In Florida, Crist chose United Teachers of Dade President as his running mate. And in Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, in a tight race against Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz for a Senate seat, said if he wins, would be to the teachers unions.

Democrats are divided over whether President Joe Biden’s could lift their chances at the polls in November. But some, like Nevada incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, running against Republican Adam Laxalt, on passage of the American Rescue Plan, which included $122 billion for K-12. 

Heather Harding, executive director of the Campaign for Our Shared Future, is among those trying to redirect the conversation on education away from culture wars. Funded by organizations that , the nonprofit is organizing parents and educators to counter conservative activist groups like Moms for Liberty.

“Many politicians across the country are manufacturing controversies and outrage for their own personal gain,” Harding said in an email, without naming DeSantis specifically. “Their political games are hurting our children’s education and futures.”

The left-leaning Network for Public Education issued its own earlier this year, ranking states on their “resistance to the privatization of public education.” Nebraska and North Dakota, which have neither voucher programs nor charter school laws, both received an A+.

By contrast, the Heritage Foundation’s new tool measures education policies that matter most to conservatives. States received more points if they support alternative teacher licensing programs and dropped Common Core standards. They ranked lower, however, if they have a lot of districts with diversity officers, which according to their , “provide political support and organization to one side of the debate over the contentious issues of race and opportunity.”

The report card builds on earlier efforts — from groups like and the conservative — to identify states with more choice-friendly features at a time when the movement to give families more options has picked up momentum.

Arizona, which came in second in the report card, recently opened up its to any family. Proponents of expanded choice want to see public education funds “follow the child” into whatever school, public or private, the parent chooses.

“If you like your public school, you can keep your public school,” DeAngelis said, offering a twist on the motto former President Barack Obama used to promote the Affordable Care Act. “I think we’re going to look back in a couple of decades … and think it was just absolutely ridiculous that we forced families to take their kids’ education dollars to residentially assigned government-run institutions.” 

Unofficial results show 19 of the 30 candidates he endorsed won their races. Six others are headed to runoffs in the general election on Nov. 8 and five were defeated.

“Women with kids are the swing vote in Florida,” said Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida. DeSantis, she added, was “brilliant” in waiting until early voting was over Sunday to on behalf of his candidates. “He knows that the majority of Republicans are going to vote on Election Day.”

The majority of the governor’s favored candidates won in counties that voted for former President Trump in 2020, but some also picked up seats in Democratic strongholds. 

“We’re excited about the boards we flipped that now have a majority of parents’ rights members,” said Tina Descovich, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a growing conservative organization that, like DeSantis, is opposed to schools’ attention to LGBTQ rights and social justice issues. “Parents know their children the best.”

In Miami-Dade, the state’s largest district, DeSantis-backed Monica Colucci, an educator who worked in the governor’s administration, defeated longtime incumbent Marta Perez. And Roberto Alonso, who founded an ed tech company and owns an adult day care, beat two other candidates, including Maribel Balbin, who was endorsed by the teachers union.

Balbin said she didn’t want Alonso to “walk into a seat without at least having a challenge of some sort.”

In Duval County, which includes Jacksonville, April Carney — who was part of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — beat incumbent Elizabeth Andersen, a licensed mental health therapist. Carney, one of DeSantis’s candidates, has not confirmed whether she was at the Capitol that day.

“I’m concerned for our teachers and students,” Andersen told The 74. She rejected political endorsements because she didn’t want the race to be partisan. “This level of political involvement by the governor in a local race is unprecedented and un-American.” 

The primary was a chance to gauge how voters would respond to DeSantis’s anti-”woke” education agenda. 

DeSantis has made a cornerstone of his re-election campaign. In November, he’ll face U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, a Democrat and former governor who released his of school board preferences. But some education advocates viewed the endorsements from both candidates as unwelcome intrusion into nonpartisan races.

“Parents don’t like it,” said Melissa Erickson, executive director of the Alliance for Public Schools — an advocacy organization focusing on districts along the I-4 corridor, from Tampa (Hillsborough County) to Daytona Beach (Volusia County). “They want school board meetings to be boring again.”

In Hillsborough County, where Crist’s and DeSantis’s candidates went head-to-head, Erickson saw less of an impact. Incumbent Stacy Hahn, endorsed by DeSantis, was reelected, as was incumbent Karen Perez, who picked up Crist’s endorsement. Another DeSantis candidate, Patricia Rendon won an open seat. 

“Two incumbents are going back to the school board. People are voting for who they know,” Erickson said. “Nobody massively outperformed their demographic.” 

‘A one-size-fits-all’ agenda

DeSantis unveiled his initial in June. After Crist announced his preferred candidates in July, DeSantis expanded his list to cover 18 districts. 

To earn the governor’s support, candidates had to complete a survey and commit to furthering his 10-point , which includes keeping “woke gender ideology out of schools” and rejecting critical race theory in the curriculum.

Andersen, in Duval, said the pledge runs counter to the principle of local control in education. 

“To me that’s a one-size-fit-all education agenda,” she said. “We are not the same as Hillsborough or Miami. We want to make decisions that work for our schools and our kids.”

But she represents a more conservative, mostly white part of the county. Carney won 53% of the vote.

With the Florida governor expected to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024, the question is whether his education platform translates outside of Florida as well. He recently took his message to Arizona, Pennsylvania and Ohio, for Republican candidates. Republican Doug Mastriano, running for Pennsylvania governor, said he wanted to make his state the

“Many people have moved to Florida because of what we’ve done,” said Alysha Legge, who lost to incumbent Perez in Hillsborough. She pointed to above-average and keeping schools open during the pandemic as reasons contributing to the state’s growth. “I honestly would love for him to stay in Florida. We need him a little longer.”

and changing demographics have shifted the state in a . Part of that growth includes an influx of Cubans. While they tend to lean more Republican, , some experts on Florida politics said that doesn’t mean they are as far to the right as DeSantis and former President Donald Trump. 

​​”Hispanics are more in the center. They’re trying to figure out what U.S. politics are all about,” said Marcos Vilar, executive director of , a nonprofit that has worked to get Hispanic candidates elected to school boards. 

Vilar was more focused on races in Orange County, which has a large Hispanic population. DeSantis didn’t endorse anyone in those races, but there were still contests between conservative and more liberal candidates. 

, incumbents Teresa Jacobs and Angie Gallo fended off conservative challengers, but Alicia Farrant, part of Moms for Liberty, will face Michael Daniels in a runoff. Many of DeSantis’s picks also received backing from the , a conservative group focused on removing any influence of critical race theory over K-12 curriculum.

In Manatee County, just south of the Tampa area, Sean Conley challenged DeSantis-backed incumbent Chad Choate. Although he’s a Republican — supporting for-profit charter schools, tighter security and fiscal responsibility — Conley said he knew it would be difficult to win. Even the chairman of the local Republican party got involved in the race. urging members in an Aug.18 email to be “laser-focused” on winning the seats for DeSantis’s candidates. 

Rev. James Golden, another Manatee County board member who ran for re-election is a local leader in the Democratic party. But he said he has “scrupulously” avoided partisanship in his role as a board member. 

With voters last fall renewing a for the school district, Golden thought that was a good sign they would vote him in for another term. But challenger Richard Tatem earned just enough votes to avoid a runoff.

The governor, Golden said, is “tearing down the fundamental premise behind public education.” Teachers, he added, shouldn’t have to worry about “whose mama is a Democrat and whose daddy is a Republican.”

“There are a lot of great parents out there,” said Rep. Kimberly Rice, a Hudson Republican. “Unfortunately, there are also some not-so-great parents out there. And those are the kids that are the most vulnerable, and that I am deeply concerned about.” 

As originally passed by the House, restated a number of already existing rights for parents in schools – including the right to review curricula and to withdraw their child from certain instruction – and allowed parents to seek damages against the state for a violation.

But a version went further. It would have required that public schools notify parents any time their child joined a class, club, or sports team, as well as every time a school employee had “taken action” involving school policies related to a student’s “gender expression and identity.”

On Tuesday, Rice and other Republican House members on the “committee of conference” negotiating panel spoke strongly against the proposed notification requirements, and the group of three representatives and three senators failed to find an agreement. 

The split effectively ends prospects for the bill in New Hampshire this year, as states across the country see to establish greater parental rights over school processes. 

The breakdown in negotiations came after a number of advocacy civil rights groups, as well as the state Attorney General’s Office, also raised concerns the bill would require schools to “out” students, arguing it would discourage some students from seeking counseling and put others at risk. 

In the days before the meeting, a group of those organizations co-signed a letter opposing the bill, including GLAD, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, New Hampshire AFL-CIO, National Education Association of New Hampshire, American Federation of Teachers, New Futures, Waypoint, and others.

Assistant Attorney General Sean Locke, head of the state’s civil rights unit, told the committee Tuesday the bill could find schools in violation of the state’s 2018 anti-discrimination law, which added gender identity to the list of protections in public places and schools. 

And Locke argued that schools could face legal liability should a student die by suicide after being “outed” to parents, as required by the bill. 

“The language specifically targets students based upon their gender identity or expression,” Locke said. 

Rice cited that opposition at the outset of the meeting and said the issues raised were too numerous to deal with in the final days of the legislative session.

Senate Republicans had said the notification requirements were necessary to allow parents to be informed of their child’s development and to prevent schools from withholding information that could prove important. 

“We are here because we are concerned about our children,” said Sen. Sharon Carson, a Londonderry Republican. “And the fact that parental rights have been eroded over time.” 

Carson said the bill would ensure schools were not acting as counselors for students without parental sign off.

“When did teachers become mental health counselors?” Carson said. “When did that happen?”

She added: “If my child is going to get mental health counseling at school, I want to make sure that that person is qualified to do that type of counseling decision with my child. But because no one is being told, I don’t get to make that decision for my child.”

In an exchange with Carson, Locke disputed the argument that the conversations covered by the bill always counted as counseling or mental health treatment, noting the bill included situations where a student might be struggling with their gender identity and ask a teacher for advice. 

“If a student says, ‘Look I’m questioning my sexuality; I’m worried about coming out to my parents because of their reaction,’ it may be counseling in a very broad sense…” he said. “But is it mental health counseling at the end of the day?”

Locke argued that the proposed law could prevent students from consulting school counselors or teachers about how to come out to their parents, a difficult decision that can require support. 

At times, the debate Tuesday became passionate. 

“So if we do nothing, aren’t we then saying to parents that schools can keep secrets from you in the coming year?” said Sen. Bill Gannon, a Sandown Republican.

Rice responded: “No, I think we’re saying to parents that we want to make sure we do it right because that’s what’s in the best interest of their children.” 

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on and .

Supporters of the bill said it was necessary to subject teachers to lawsuits in order to bring transparency to schools, which they said have been asking “inappropriate questions” of students. The main impetus for the legislation were student surveys sent out by schools — often aimed at identifying students struggling with mental health during the pandemic — that made and .

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by Rep. Steve Kaiser, R-Phoenix, began its legislative life as a more controversial bill that would have forced teachers to tell parents everything a student tells them — including outing them if a student .

The bill was eventually . Kaiser insisted that the bill was never meant as “an attack” on the LGBTQ community, even though it specifically said teachers would have to disclose information about a student’s “purported gender identity” or a request to transition to a gender other than the “student’s biological sex.” It was also drafted by two .��

The bill in its current form prohibits a school, political subdivision or government from “usurping the fundamental right” of a parent in raising their children, allows a parent to bring a civil suit against any government entity or official that violates the in Arizona law, gives parents the rights to all written or electronic records from a school about their child — including a students counseling records — and requires schools to notify parents before a survey is conducted of students, among other changes.

“I am a hard ‘no’ on this bill,” Sen. Christine Marsh, a Phoenix Democrat and the 2016 Arizona Teacher of the Year, said when explaining her vote on the floor Monday afternoon. She added that the vague wording of “usurping the fundamental right” in the bill will likely lead to many parents filing lawsuits.��

“Anything could potentially qualify for it so we might have a whole bunch of teachers going to court for this,” she said.

Those concerns were also echoed by her Democratic colleagues on the bill who feared that if passed, the bill could see librarians getting in trouble for recommending books that conflict with a parent’s worldview.��

Kaiser, the bill’s sponsor, said in committee that the aim is to have parents involved with the child in that process.��

The bill passed 16-12. Because it was amended in the Senate, it returns to the House of Representatives for a final vote, after which it would go to Ducey for final action.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on and .