I remember how it was -- JR
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Parental Rights Group Delays Vote on Colorado School District’s Transgender Policy
A parental rights group has successfully delayed a Colorado school board’s vote on what parents call a radical transgender policy for students.
The Colorado Parent Advocacy Network gathered 335 signatures in only six hours on its petition to delay the Douglas County Board of Education’s vote on the proposal to classify female-only spaces as discriminatory. Now, the group has until August to convince the school board that public opinion is against the policy, even if President Joe Biden isn’t.
“If they had voted ‘yes’ on it yesterday, it would have cemented that biological males could be in girl spaces by policy as opposed to practice,” Lori Grimesheltyn, the network’s executive director, told The Daily Signal. “What this policy would have done, and will do if they end up voting on it, is basically submitting the Title IX changes that President Biden’s administration has pushed forward.”
Title IX is a federal law prohibiting sexual discrimination by schools or education programs that receive federal funds.
The Colorado public school district’s proposed policy prohibits discrimination by “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” at any school activity, event, or activity. This would allow boys to share restrooms and locker rooms with females and participate in girls’ and women’s sports.
Any student or parent opposed to boys’ sharing private spaces with girls and competing in girls’ sports could be accused of harassment under Title IX, the law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in schools.
The Douglas County School District prioritizes “making all kids feel safe and welcome,” spokeswoman Anna Hriso told The Daily Signal
“This, of course, includes our girls and our transgender students,” Hriso said. “We work through each situation individually in collaboration with families to ensure that each and every one of our students feels safe and welcome at school.”
When asked whether a girl who is uncomfortable sharing a restroom with a biological male could be found guilty of harassment, Hriso replied that such situations are rare.
“The situations you describe very rarely arise in our school district, but when they do we collaborate with the students and families to ensure comfort and safety for all involved,” Hriso said. “As for harassment, we always consider the totality of the circumstances—simply being or avoiding being uncomfortable without other circumstances does not constitute harassment.”
In April, the Biden administration finalized a reinterpretation of Title IX that adds prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.” Several states have challenged the rule, saying it is discriminatory to allow males in female-only spaces.
The Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, a parental rights group, organized a petition to pause the school board’s votes on the policy until changes to Title IX are finalized, to give the school district more time to review the proposal and engage parents and others in the discussion.
“Recent court decisions against the Title IX actions taken by the Biden administration suggest that the rules governing these actions are likely to be revised or even revoked,” the network’s petition says. “This evolving situation necessitates a careful and thoughtful approach to implementing new policies.”
The parent group’s stated goal is “to protect the safety and well-being of all students.”
The proposed policy prioritizes the comfort of transgender students over the safety of girls, the group’s executive director, Grimesheltyn, said.
“We’re just putting kids in uncomfortable situations for a special population,” she said. “We’re giving special rights to a special group. And it’s superseding the rights and safety of other children.”
The Colorado Parent Advocacy Network says it is monitoring gender ideology and related actions in each of Colorado’s school districts.
“We’re going to see this creep into all 178 school districts, and CPAN is going to be keeping a very watchful eye on the boards that do side in favor of allowing transgender students into female spaces,” Grimelshetyn said.
However, Grimelshetyn said, she is encouraged that parents on both sides of the political aisle are starting to stand up for their rights and the safety of their children.
“This is a matter of right versus wrong,” she said. “And the majority of people strongly believe that we need to get back to academic rigor, secure and safe schools, [and] parents being the experts in directing their child’s upbringing and education.”
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San Francisco Schools Let Students Change Name, Pronouns Minus Parents’ Knowledge or Consent
The San Francisco public schools allow students to change their preferred name and pronouns at school without the knowledge or consent of their parents.
San Francisco United School District’s LGBTQ Student Services department offers guidance on “Changing Your Name and/or Gender” in the district’s systems. The document offers a note “for students to think about,” recommending they wait to change their in the school records if they are not ready for their parents to find out their gender identity.
“Remember that your caregivers have the right to check out some of your school files, Google Classroom, or may end up on a Zoom call or meeting with you and staff at your school, and may see/hear that you are using a different name or pronoun,” the note reads. “If you are concerned about your caregiver’s response, you may not be ready to complete any of the above processes.”
It’s unclear why the district refers to parents as “caregivers.”
The San Francisco district says students have the right for peers and staff to use their preferred name and pronouns at school “without having to sign any forms or get your caregivers permission.”
Policies like San Francisco’s could be mandated statewide in California, as a bill that would prohibit school districts from telling parents about a child’s gender expression without the child’s permission is moving forward in the state Legislature.
Students in San Francisco also are entitled to ask school staff to use their preferred name and pronouns only in certain places or around certain people, including or excluding their “caregivers.”
That falls under the “right to be safe and respected at school,” the school district maintains.
San Francisco grants students the “right” to come out and transition at their own pace and in their own way, as well to file a report if someone purposely refers to them by pronouns they don’t prefer.
The district encourages students to tell school staff if they want to hide their gender identity from their parents so that a staff member doesn’t accidentally reveal it.
“We cannot guarantee that people will always remember which name and pronoun to use for you or when,” the document says. “There is always a risk that someone might slip up.”
“If you are not planning to change the name or pronouns you go by at home, make sure to let your teacher and school administrator know so that they can support you,” the district advises.
The San Francisco United School District did not respond to The Daily Signal’s question about whether its policy violates parental rights.
A nonbinary-identifying biology teacher named River Suh has his own method of determining whether his students’ parents support their gender identity.
Suh passes out a form for his eyes only determining the student’s name in the school record, what the student wants to be called in class, and what name and pronouns he should use when contacting the student’s parents.
The teacher posted the confidential “Name and Pronoun Onboarding Form” on his blog so other teachers can use it.
“Sometimes our students use different names and pronouns at home, in our classroom, and at school,” Suh wrote in 2020. “Welcome a student with this form and make them feel safe about their self-expression.”
Suh teaches at Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco and is a writer for “Gender-Inclusive Biology,” a website with biology lesson plans that aim to “embed” so-called gender inclusion as a “recurring part of the curriculum, not a one-time lesson, an extension, or a reaction to an interaction.”
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Scientific American: Homeschooling Parents Need to Undergo Background Checks
There’s a growing list of states adopting universal school choice, and Louisiana is the most recent addition.
“The LA Gator Program puts parents in the driver’s seat and gives every child the opportunity for a great education,” said Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican. “When parents are committed to the value of their child’s education, government should never get in the way.”
And it seems many of these parents are moving to homeschooling to ensure their children are getting a well-rounded, trustworthy education. This, however, has received pushback.
The editors of Scientific American magazine published an article last month claiming “children deserve uniform standards in homeschooling.” And what does this look like? The idea the editors had in mind is that “homeschool parents could be required to pass an initial background check, as every state requires for all K-12 teachers.”
Scientific American is concerned that the growth of homeschooling is a “problem” since it’s hard to keep track of how many children are being homeschooled these days. “Some children may not be receiving any instruction at all,” the editors wrote. “In the worst cases, homeschooling hides abuse.”
But for education experts like Molly Macek of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the article is a false alarm. The “venerable magazine’s call for restrictions isn’t based on science,” she wrote. Macek continued, “Most would find it hard to argue with the editors’ opening argument that ‘children deserve a safe and robust education.’ But they go on to use this as the reason that homeschooling should be tracked and regulated in the U.S. This conclusion just doesn’t hold water based on the evidence from studies they cite.”
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins considered Scientific American’s push against homeschooling on Thursday’s episode of “Washington Watch” with Mike Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association.
Perkins asked, “[W]hy is the Left so threatened by parents leading their children’s education?” And more specifically, how should we respond to it all? Farris replied, the “editors of the Scientific American need a basic course in constitutional law.”
He continued, “The federal government has no jurisdiction to implement the kind of plan that they are calling for,” which happens to be “a very draconian plan.” Ultimately, it seems “their motive and their operational plan … would be just, on its face, unconstitutional.”
Farris pointed out that one of the reasons for their argument is that parents who choose to homeschool often “teach their kids about creation as opposed to evolution,” which “is something, clearly, that people have the right to do.” And so, he added, for the editors of Scientific American to have a problem with that says a lot about their motivations.
“It’s almost laughable,” Perkins noted. He recalled the editors’ call for parents to undergo background checks. “[A] background check?” he hooted, “to teach your own children?”
Farris concurred, stating it’s “amazing” how parents can be with their children all day, “but if you want to teach them about math and reading and science in the Bible, then you have to have a background check. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Farris also drew attention to the concern Scientific American highlighted about children being abused. As he explained, there are unfortunate cases of homeschool children who are being “seriously abused.” However, “The reality is, in the vast majority of cases like this … the government officials knew about the problems with the family long before there was ever any claim to be a homeschooling family.”
And so, when a homeschooling family gets caught up in abuse accusations, it’s often the case that “the officials use that as a cover-up for the fact that they failed to do any reasonable inquiry into the family when they first found out about the problems.”
Farris went on to explain the harsh reality of how “the number of cases of sexual abuse of children by public school teachers dwarfs the number of any claim relative to homeschooling, just in sheer volume of numbers. … It’s just far, far greater.”
They also claim, Perkins added, that homeschool “kids are being educationally deprived.” But if you look at the statistics and “the test scores from the public schools in the last few years,” the scores are the lowest they’ve been in decades in both math and reading.
“The reality is,” Farris urged, “homeschooling works very, very well.” He went on, “[P]eople say that the test scores are not conclusive. [But] they’re conclusive of this: that homeschooling performs adequately. That’s absolutely conclusive. I think that the test scores also show that homeschooling is the best form of education.”
And while he acknowledged there’s “more debate that could be made about that” final claim, he reasoned that homeschooling parents “don’t have to prove that we’re the best. We just have to prove that we’re at least as good as the public schools.”
Perkins also emphasized that, “given the woke ideology that’s invaded schools,” it’s becoming less and less difficult to prove that point. “But at the bottom line of this … is [that] it’s a clash of worldviews.” And more specifically, it’s a “hatred for a biblical worldview.”
Farris agreed, noting a common reason opponents give is “they want all children in America to be indoctrinated in their worldview, not the parents’ worldview.”
Perkins raised the question: When “parents make that type of investment in their education by homeschooling them,” what are the practical benefits? According to Farris, the reason most parents choose to homeschool is because “children get their values from whoever they spend the majority of their time with.” As such, parents want their children to embrace their values.
As Farris detailed, “[O]ur kids are not cookie cutters of either [my wife] or I in any respect, but they share all of our core values about God … the Bible … America … freedom … [and] the principles of protecting human life. We’ve effectively transmitted our values to our kids, and they’ve turned out just fine academically.”
Not to mention, he added, “We have a very close family. We have consistent values. We have high academic achievement. I can’t ask for anything better. And it’s just the best thing we ever did for our family.”
Perkins emphasized, “Homeschool families are close, and when we talk about close,” it’s because “they stick together. … [T]here’s a bond that takes place through that process of learning about life together.”
Given this reality, Perkins clarified that an attack such as what’s coming from Scientific American isn’t new. But “what do we need to do to make sure we don’t lose this God-given right to teach our own children?” For Farris, it’s about staying “nimble and organized.”
He discussed how a lot of people reasonably worry about their children’s schooling, which gives homeschooling families an opportunity to show how great of a practice it is.
Homeschooling brings a “kind of assurance and affinity,” he concluded. “I think we’re in a really strong position. We just got to keep putting the pedal to the metal and not letting any lackadaisical spirit come in. We got to defend our liberty day in, day out.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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