Parents Challenge ‘Radical’ LGBT Curriculum in New Jersey Schools

TRENTON, N.J.—Parents are plenty angry about a New Jersey law that requires LGBT material to be incorporated into public school classroom instruction.

The parents say they are concerned the new law will “teach lifestyles and life choices that stand 100% against our family values.” They object to their tax dollars being used for what they call an “assault on religious liberty.”

And they say a special interest group helping develop curriculum for the new requirements has a “radical agenda” that could jeopardize the health and safety of children.

One parent warned about how the “gender ideology” already prevalent in public schools can “brainwash” a child into believing he is a girl rather than a boy and vice-versa.

As parents found out Jan. 4  at a “parental rights” conference in Flemington, New Jersey, elected officials and religious leaders share their concerns. But the effort to reverse these laws or prevent their implementation will be an uphill battle.

At the meeting, Victoria Jakelsky, state director of a grassroots group called Protect Your Children, or Team PYC, estimated that about 60 parental rights activists from Team PYC would be in Trenton Wednesday to testify against the new law.

But Kathy Goldenberg, president of the New Jersey State Board of Education, told parents Wednesday that the board was not empowered to make any policy changes with regard to the curriculum focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues.

“The law was enacted by the state Legislature, and it did not grant the board a policymaking role with this law,” Goldenberg said. “But we are glad to listen to your comments.”

At issue is LGBT education legislation that New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed into law Jan. 31, 2019.

New Jersey became the second state in the nation, following California, to pass a law requiring public schools to teach about LGBT history.

The New Jersey measure says the state board of education “shall include instruction on the political, economic and social contribution of persons with disabilities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in an appropriate place in the curriculum of middle school and high school students as part of the district’s implementation of the New Jersey Student Learning Standards.”

A pilot program designed to accommodate the new curriculum began in 12 public schools as of Jan. 7.

All New Jersey middle and high schools are supposed to be equipped to begin meeting the new requirements this coming fall.

The immediate aim in speaking at the school board hearing Wednesday and in meeting with public officials is to find a way to postpone full implementation of the program, Jakelsky said.

“We want to be clear. We care about each and every child, and we support and defend equality,” Jakelsky told The Daily Signal. “We are highly concerned that the LGBT history will teach lifestyles and life choices that stand 100% against our family values, our deeply held religious views, and the way we practice our faith.”

Some parents said they could support an opt-out provision, but Jakelsky said she does not think that would be sufficient.

All the groups taking part in the Jan. 4 conference were united in opposition to the new law. Those included “teachers, school board members, Orthodox Jews, Muslims, and Coptic Christians,” said Jakelsky, who lives in Hunterdon County.

Protect Your Children, she said, has grown to about 1,000 active members since being formed at a rally last June. It is affiliated with ParentalRights.org, and includes evangelical Protestants, Roman Catholics, Coptic Christians, and other concerned citizens, she said.

Jakelsky said Team PYC also is aligned with Muslim and Jewish groups that share concerns about the potential dangers the LGBT curriculum presents to students. Team PYC is on Facebook.

But some were there Jan. 4 to bring to light similar laws enacted by Murphy and New Jersey’s Democrat-controlled Legislature.

Crystal Lopez, who lives in Sussex County, attended on behalf of NewJerseyMama.net, which advocates repeal of a state law that she says prevents licensed therapists from providing individuals afflicted with gender dysphoria from obtaining a “fair and balanced medical assessment.”

Lopez, who also is active with the Kelsey Coalition, a nationwide group that works to “promote policies and laws to protect young people who identify as transgender,” recounted a two-hour phone conversation she had with her son when he “came out” and said he was transgender. She tells the full story on her website.

Her son was 19 and attending Rutgers University at the time, and Lopez asked counselors at Rutgers to help him identify his male biology. But a New Jersey law against “conversion therapy” prevented counselors from giving her son the help he needed, Lopez said during her presentation.

“Gender ideology has brainwashed my son and erased his childhood,” Lopez said. “My son now thinks he is really a girl. The curriculum that is being implemented is really harmful and is meant to confuse our children.”

Others focused on Garden State Equality, a group headquartered in Asbury Park that describes itself as a “statewide advocacy and education organization for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community,” and helped establish the curriculum and initiate the pilot program.

Garden State Equality, which claims 150,000 members and presents details of the LGBT curriculum on its website, is working to advance a “radical agenda” that “undermines the constitutional rights of parents,” Jakelsky said.

The Daily Signal sought comment from Garden State Equality for this report, but the group did not respond before publication.

Thomas Sobol, of Flemington, took issue with what he called an assault on personal freedom.

The LGBT agenda is “wrong, wrong, wrong for public schools,” Sobol told The Daily Signal. “This agenda should not be forced on people and I don’t think that it’s age appropriate to have this in public schools. Public education should be neutral, and it’s unfair to exclude people with religious values. This agenda did not come out of nowhere.”

Mayor Ed McKelvey, a Republican from Alloway Township in Salem County and an ordained pastor who has attracted media attention for speaking out against the LGBT curriculum, said it is a matter of right and wrong.

“God never calls you to do something that does not line up with his word, even if what he calls you to do doesn’t always make natural sense,” McKelvey told audience members.

Pat Stanley, a member of the Franklin Township School Board in Somerset County, warned Team PYC members that too many government officials “have a mindset that says your kids are theirs.”

She said the law firm Strauss Esmay Associates, based in Toms River, “greases the skids” for the LGBT curriculum to be implemented in the state. Stanley estimates that it costs schools about $13,000 a year to work with Strauss Esmay and that the firm has about 500 clients.

“You are the teachers of your children, not the government,” Stanley said. “This is an assault on the rights of parents. We should not have to protect our children against this nonsense. We already have kids who can’t read or do math, and now they are being burdened with this undue influence.”

The Daily Signal sought comment from Strauss Esmay, but the law firm did not respond after acknowledging the inquiry.

Mayor Alfonso Cirulli of Barnegat Township in Ocean County called on Christians from across denominations to unite in an effort to reform New Jersey laws that undermine biblical teachings.

Cirulli, a Republican, has been widely quoted for saying that the LGBT curriculum mandates could “indoctrinate” students.

 “This is a spiritual battle,” he said. “We have the Lord behind us.”

Cirulli, a former assistant school principal, told the audience Jan. 4 that the letter “P” for pedophilia could be added to the LGBT acronym.

Cirulli said he sees a “full-scale assault” against Christian values at work in television commercials, public libraries, the toy industry, and other venues.

Pastor Steve Nash from LOFT Wesleyan Church in Hillsborough suggested parents may need to start pulling children out of public schools.

“There is a battle for the souls of our children and our nation,” Nash said in his talk, adding:

They are trying to propagate their views onto innocent children. As Christians, we see homosexuality as a matter of rebellion against God because it undermines the creation of God. This is being done to undermine the institution of the family. As parents, we have an awesome responsibility to raise kids because they are a gift from God.

A dozen members of Team PYC are scheduled to meet Jan. 30 with Lamont Repollet, New Jersey’s commissioner of education.

Group members also plan to testify at school boards across the state in February and March, and to hold “prayer and policy meetings” in some counties.

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UK: Middle-class high achievers will miss out on Oxbridge places as colleges are under pressure to meet diversity targets, whistleblowers warn

Middle class high achievers will miss out on Oxbridge places as colleges are under pressure to meet diversity targets, whistleblowers have told The Sunday Telegraph.

The university's radical pledge to boost the number of undergraduates from deprived backgrounds will inevitably result in bright pupils from well-off families getting "squeezed out", according to two senior Oxford dons.

Oxford has told the higher education watchdog, the Office for Students, that it will increase its intake of disadvantaged students from 15 to 25 per cent by 2023.

But two sources, both of whom are senior figures in Oxford admissions, have revealed their concern that this will lead to a degradation in academic standards. "The vice-Chancellor is on the hook now, she is really out on one with this pledge. It is pretty stark," one source told The Sunday Telegraph.

"The dial has got to move quite a long way. We are not like Bristol or Exeter who can hit their numbers [of disadvantaged students] simply by expanding by about 500 places a year and worrying about beds later.

"That's not going to happen at Oxbridge, our system doesn't work like that with the constraints on college size. It's got to be done at the expense of the middle class kids."

The source said that independent school heads "can see the writing on the wall" and are growing increasingly concerned about the direction of travel.

"My biggest fear is we will end up polarised," they added. "We will still take them in heaps from the Etons and the Westminsters. And what gets squeezed out in the middle, the heads who used to send us two or three a year get squeezed out."

Thousands of pupils learned this week whether they were offered a place at Oxbridge. This year Oxford made the highest proportion of state school offers in its 900 year history, and the first time it has been more than double that of private schools.

From 2020, 250 state school students will receive free tuition and accommodation at Oxford as part of its latest multi-million-pound recruitment bid for disadvantaged students.

However, 50 students in the new intake - which will include refugees and young  carers - will be eligible to receive offers “made on the basis of lower contextual A-level grades, rather than the university’s standard offers”.

Another Oxford source said that admissions tutors were "strongly urged" to interview candidates from deprived backgrounds. "The instructions we received were that we had to interview them as long as they met very basic standards – and some failed even those," he said. "My experience is that those candidates just don’t do very well. We call them to interview because we have to.

"They just do really badly and we reject them and it’s a waste of everyone's time. But if this target of 25 per cent  is going to met, we will have to start admitting some of these people.

"This almost certainly will mean they will be let in at the expense of middle class students, who will have to make way for candidates who are not as acacmidecally talented as they are."

The source said that if the 25 per cent quota is enforced, students will be "unjustly discriminated against on the basis of their social class".

The source admitted that most of their colleagues "see no problem" with the new regime, adding:  "Almost everyone is willing to go along with it quite enthusiastically".

An Oxford University spokesman said that rising numbers of applications in recent years "inevitably means more students will be disappointed".

 “Our admissions process is designed to identify academic potential and passion for a subject," they said.

"A highly academically talented student with enthusiasm for their chosen subject has every chance of getting into Oxford, regardless of background, and will continue to do so.

“The Opportunity Oxford scheme we have introduced this year is for candidates who will meet or exceed the A-level grades for the University’s standard offer and then receive tailored academic support to prepare them for entry to Oxford."

The spokesman said that there are "more than enough" talented pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to fill places, adding that efforts to diversity their intake have enjoyed "widespread support" among academics.

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Students Avoid High Campus Prices, Buy Books Online

As college textbook prices have increased 88 percent since 2006, education reformers wonder how universities can make books more affordable. One simple thing they could do is to stop selling textbooks with absurdly high mark-ups, the difference between the cost incurred by the bookstore for textbooks and the price at which they’re sold. While some progress has been made within the UNC system, much room for improvement remains.

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, for example, signed a contract with Barnes and Noble in 2009 to merge its university bookstore with Barnes and Noble. That conjunction promised students lower book prices, bringing down the mark-up from 23 percent to 18 percent. However, merging the bookstore has meant that students still pay higher prices than they would if they bought books from an online competitor or the book publisher. The rationale for the merger may have been affordability, but textbooks remain expensive for students who trust UNC-Charlotte’s bookstore to offer the best price.

When students feel they’ve been overcharged, they take to social media to let the bookstore know. On the Barnes and Noble UNCC Facebook page, one student left a review describing how the bookstore charged him $115 to rent a used textbook—which he found on Amazon for $15. “Barnes and Noble needs to be boycotted for exploiting college students for insane profits. I will never spend a dime there again,” he wrote. Another student left a review stating that the bookstore sold an access code for his textbook for $96, but he discovered that the code was available through the publisher for $55. Yet another student left a negative review, writing that bookstore employees told him that he could return books on a certain day, and then refused to accept his books when he came back.

Although the bookstore’s contract with Barnes and Noble states that students have a price match guarantee, it is only valid for the first week of the semester. Many students, however, do not finish book shopping until the second week of school. Students who have less time to shop or less skill in finding bargains can’t always compare prices and default to the university bookstore, which will have the right editions of textbooks in stock.

If UNC-Charlotte wants to change its practices, it could look to another UNC system school: North Carolina State University. NC State is experimenting with providing free materials to substitute for traditional textbooks. As of 2019, NC State partnered with Rice University’s OpenStax, the largest provider of free Open Educational Resources (OERs), to drive down textbook costs for students. OERs are “teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium—digital or otherwise—that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation, and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.”

NC State was one of nine institutions to try the OpenStax program during the 2019-2020 academic year. The partnership was an attempt to help professors use free materials rather than textbooks. Will Cross, director of the Copyright & Digital Scholarship Center at NC State, said that students who prefer hard-copy books can pay a small fee to print out text. “There should be an open resource that supports the best version of every faculty member teaching and every student’s experience,” Cross told the Technician, NC State’s student newspaper.

By experimenting with free materials and looking for ways to save students money, students have less, financially, to worry about when pursuing a degree. They also might rely on the university bookstore more when they have to buy a traditional textbook.

Unfortunately, NC State undercuts its free textbook experiment by running its campus bookstore like UNC-Charlotte. The Technician looked into bookstore prices compared to its competitors and found high mark-ups. “If a student were to buy a two-inch binder, five notebooks, a package of mechanical pencils, five plastic folders, a utility box and 100 sheets of college-ruled notebook paper from Wolfpack Outfitters, the total cost would be approximately $65.03. If the same supplies were bought at Target, their total would be approximately $33.36,” Destry Adams wrote.

“I will never spend a dime there again,” one student wrote.
Although Wolfpack Outfitters offers students the convenience of buying school supplies within walking distance of their dorms, doubling the price they would otherwise pay adds financial stress for low-income students. Doing so makes earning a degree harder for students. Students already pay tens of thousands in tuition and fees. That overcharging for textbooks and supplies creates an adversarial relationship between the university and some students.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that students are highly motivated to find alternatives to new editions of textbooks because they are so expensive. A survey published by the National Association of College Stores (NACS) found that students spent an average of $484 on required course materials in 2017-2018. That figure is lower than the $701 students spent in 2007-2008, but the decline isn’t from textbooks getting cheaper. Instead, the internet has fundamentally altered how students buy their books.

After comparing prices online, students don’t trust the campus bookstore as much. Even renting books has moved online: Many students do so through a far-off company rather than the campus bookstore. Renting instead of buying textbooks is popular with a large swath of students: About 44 percent of students rent at least one required book, according to NACS. And 56 percent of students reported that they had bought a used textbook for class. Students, when they can, jump at the chance to save some money. It’s no surprise, either, when the average class has 4.3 required course materials, NACS noted.

If the university bookstore can’t keep prices affordable or offer better customer service, they’ll struggle to keep students coming back after the first semester.

Like many problems in higher education, the incentives are misaligned for the university bookstore. The bookstore’s mission focuses on revenue-generation, not keeping books affordable for students. The revenue from the Barnes & Noble store at UNC-Charlotte, for example, funds scholarships, facility construction and maintenance (including the Popp Martin Student Union and sports complexes), and supports other programs such as student orientation and homecoming events. While those programs and scholarships can benefit students, they’re also the ones paying the price.

The UNC system has taken some steps to rein in textbooks costs, but students have been the creative ones trying to cut costs. If North Carolina wants to offer an affordable education for its students, the UNC system could think twice about how it runs its university bookstores.

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