Clancy: Dangerous Schools Mandate a Parents Bill of Rights

Schools have been corrupted as they deviate dramatically from their core educational mission, and contemptuously ignore parents.

The results have been devastating for children, parents, and the nation.

Federal legislation enshrining a Parents Bill of Rights is imperative to protect children, reaffirm the primacy of parents’ rights to educate and care for their children, and to refocus schools on an academic curriculum that will prepare our children for the hyper-competitive global economy.

Today, schools are dangerous, almost unimaginable places for our children. Radical progressive extremists are wielding the pernicious tenets of wokeism, racist identity politics, and equity ideology as educational precepts.

Nationally, schools have been adopting Black Lives Matter toolkits and Southern Poverty Law Center (which identifies Christians as a hate group) lesson plans, and incorporating Critical Race Theory, false narratives of systemic racism and white supremacy, and gender/transgender ideology into our children’s classes.

To achieve misguided equity-based equal outcomes, schools are abolishing advanced academic programs, downgrading academic standards, and concealing National Merit awards from high-achieving students.

Sexual assaults have been covered up.

Additionally, schools are sponsoring drag queen shows, school libraries have added pornographic books, and schools are accommodating children’s gender transitions; doing so without parental consent and concealing this information from parents.

Then, when parents have the temerity to ask questions, request information, and speak out at school board meetings in opposition to this politically motivated ideological indoctrination, they are vilified, arrested, sued, and even targeted by our Department of Justice (DOJ) as domestic terrorists.

This all seems inconceivable especially given that the Supreme Court has held in a long line of cases over the past 100 years that parents have the fundamental constitutional right to direct the education, upbringing, and care of their children.

Make no mistake, this is the current state of our schools governed by extreme progressive idealogues and the reason House Republicans have responded to pleas from parents with the recently introduced "Parents Bill of Rights" legislation (H.R. 5).

At the press conference announcing the legislation, U.S. House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., emphasized the "five pillars" of this Parents Bill of Rights:

• The right to know what is being taught in the school, including the curriculum, teaching materials, academic standards, and what books are in the school library.
• The right for parents to be heard, including the right to address their school boards and for meaningful engagement on school policies.
• The right to review school budgets, including all revenues and expenditures.
• The right to protect their children's privacy; and . . .
• The right to timely information on violent activity at their schools.

In short, this Parents Bill of Rights is focused on transparency by ensuring parents have access to school information. It codifies parents’ First Amendment free speech right.

Passage would mark a critical first step forward for parents and children.

Even more, however, is needed to protect children and parents’ rights, and provide meaningful education.

Congress, which sends over $100 billion a year in funding to states for elementary and high schools, should leverage that funding to reinvigorate the educational mission of our schools by mandating that schools focus on core academic subjects, provide advanced academic programs for high achieving students, and establish remedial programs to address COVID-19 learning loss.

Taxpayer funds should not be wasted on divisive ideologies, political indoctrination, and pornography.

Further, schools must be required to establish a consistent mechanism for promptly notifying parents of information related to the mental and physical well-being of their children, including requiring schools who learn that a student is expressing gender dysphoria to notify the student's parents, and to obtain parental consent for any medical treatment and before implementing any plan to accommodate a child’s gender transition in school.

Finally, Congress must provide parents legal recourse to enforce these rights including a federal administrative process that will expeditiously review parents’ complaints, provide judicial review, and entitle parents to recover monetary damages in appropriate cases.

Congress through this legislation can re-affirm parents':

• Fundamental right to direct the education and care of their children.
• Their right to robust academic programs for their children.
• Their right to full academic and budget transparency.
• Their right to be heard and engage in the formulation of school polices, and . . .
• Their right to legal recourse.

Given the appalling state of schools today, this legislation is urgently needed.

It is not an option.

It's now imperative for the good of our children and the future of our nation.

Michael Clancy is a former candidate, for Virginia's 10th Congressional District. He is a lawyer and political and legal commentator. He has been a long-time education advocate before state and local governments.