Religious group aims to push for more parents’ rights in state public schools
Table of Contents
Susan Roberson has always loved the Chesterfield County School District, she said at a press conference Wednesday morning. She also recalled as a child how her own mother was given the right to opt her out of sex education. Now, sex related topics are in books at the library and other classroom subjects — and parents never know the difference.
Roberson, a resident of Chesterfield County, is a mother and grandmother of 10 grandchildren. While one attends a school in Fairfax County, the others all attend public schools in Chesterfield. Roberson and a group of parents were speaking at the Virginia General Assembly with the Family Foundation, which was hosting Mama Bear Day.
“It’s difficult for me to understand how schools have moved so far from the focus on academics and are spending more time emphasizing social and sexual issues in the classroom,” Roberson told the crowd.
Roberson and a group of parents were speaking at the Virginia General Assembly with the Family Foundation, which was hosting what it called Mama Bear Day. Through the rest of the conference, legislators and parents discussed a number of bills that they said, if passed, would give parents more of a say in schools where their children attend.
This session, the Family Foundation, a conservative religious group, has continued to push the role of parental involvement in public school following a nationwide trend from similar organizations.
Specifically, they advocate for bolstering section §1-240.1. of the Code of Virginia, which states, “A parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent’s child.”
A number of Republican House bills pushing for rights for parents were sent to the Democratic Senate on Tuesday following crossover day.
A bill requiring the Department of Education to include parents in the adoption of model policies for the selection and removal of books passed through the House last week after a 51-47 vote. Following crossover day Tuesday, HB 1448, introduced by Del. Robert Orrock, R-Thornburg, now sits with the Democratic-controlled Senate on the committee for Education and Health.
After the party line vote in the House, Democrats pushed back against the bill, saying it would shut down free speech, Orrock said.
“I thought to myself, ‘If that’s the only argument you’d [House Democrats] have — it’s an open process that would establish recommendations that then at the local level would still still have to be embraced if they wanted to’ — I thought, ‘What are you afraid of?’” Orrock asked.
HB 1448 is not the first piece of legislation strengthening parents rights within public school libraries. Just last year, SB 656 was enacted, requiring schools to alert parents of instructional material and books that may include sexually explicit content.
By summer of last year, more than 20 Virginia school districts had taken books off their shelves, with the most challenged being “Gender Queer,” an autobiographical graphic novel by Maia Kobab. That same year, a Virginia court ruled the book’s sale could not be restricted in the state following increased pushback.
Aside from books, legislators are also pushing for parental involvement regarding their students’ gender expression. HB 2432, also known as “Sage’s Law,” would require educators to notify parents if their student is, “self-identifying as a gender different from the student’s biological sex,” according to the bill. It passed through the House Tuesday with a 50-48 vote.
The bill is named after a teenager named Sage from Appomattox County. Sage’s parents say the teenager would not have been bullied, assaulted and sex-trafficked had the teachers and counselors involved not withheld Sage’s gender expression.
“This law is for parents who are being kept in the dark, and that’s not right,” Candi Cushman, vice president of grassroots and communications strategies at The Family Foundation, said.
“Now, when we’re talking about specific cases of parental physical abuse, to the point a child is afraid to even have a conversation, that should definitely be reported to Child Protective Services and there are already existing laws in place for that to happen,” Cushman said. “But to use that or to say that there should be an automatic default that all loving parents should be cut out of their kids’ lives on these issues under the guise of what amounts to preventable abuse situations — it’s ridiculous and it’s even offensive to parents.”
Some legislators, however, say that this kind of legislation puts children in harm’s way. Del. Danica Roem, D-Prince William, told NBC12 News that the bill does not consider each student’s home life, and could create larger issues.
“If you don’t include the very community that you’re trying to legislate, you know about in this case, then you’re going to have blind spots,” Roem told NBC12.
