The Republican Party has announced it intends to pass a Parents’ Bill of Rights if its members win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives this November.
House Republicans declared their commitment to re-empowering parents to make decisions for their children, OANN reports.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) outlined on his website classroom activities he finds concerning, which he says are encouraged and supported by elected officials currently in power.
“Over the past nearly two years, we have seen a troubling trend take root in the Democrat Party,” McCarthy writes. “Their elected officials want to take power away from parents and hand over more control to politicians and teachers unions to dictate what our children should be taught in classrooms.”
The Parents’ Bill of Rights mandates that parents be allowed to review curriculum used in the classrooms their children attend. It guarantees a voice for parents so they can be heard and their opinions considered. The bill also requires that parents be notified of violent incidents in their children’s schools.
House Republican leaders are contrasting themselves with the Biden administration’s approach to education and parents’l rights.
“When schools shut down, the teachers union still got paid but our kids bore the cost,” Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) said during a video message posted on Twitter.
Johnson notes the Biden administration went so far as to label concerned parent s domestic terrorists.
The FBI acknowledged the use of a “threat tag” for parents protesting at school board meetings, Heartland Daily News reported at the time.
“We know that parents matter,” Johnson said. “When Republicans earn back the House this November, we’ll pass our Parent’s Bill of Rights, recover lost earnings caused by extended school closures, expand parental choice so more students can receive the best education, and ensure that only women can compete in women’s sports. This is our commitment to America.”
The largest unified political group in the country is parents, write Kevin Roberts and Jessica Anderson for The Heritage Foundation.
“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, moms and dads have gotten a clearer view than ever of what goes on with their kids’ schooling,” Roberts and Anderson write. “What they have seen is one scandalous abuse of power after another.
“Barely a week goes by without new and outrageous revelations of critical race theory, grooming, the sexualizing of young children, anti-family corruption, and outright crimes committed in the name of woke extremism,” the Heritage authors write.
Several states have already initiated or are in the process of passing state-level bills of rights for parents.
Pennsylvania is currently considering a Parents’ Bill of Rights to combat the focus on race and gender in schools instead of the education necessary to succeed in the world, The Center Square reports.
A public hearing was held recently to discuss the possibility of adopting such a list of rights. There was debate on both sides, with many parents expressing concerns about radical Leftist ideology taught in their children’s schools.
“Through Zoom classes, we parents heard with our own ears our children being indoctrinated with racial division,” Pennsylvania mother Maria Ault told The Center Square. “We saw the incorporation of gender ideologies that do not align with scientific facts and were against absolute truth by lying to the students that a boy can be a girl and a girl can be a boy.”
Indiana passed a Parents Bill of Rights in June of this year. The rights are outlined in a booklet provided on the website of Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita.
The preamble to the document begins by drawing a clear line between parental responsibility and government overreach.
“‘We the Parents’ are primarily responsible for what and how our children learn. It is not the government’s job to raise our children, even if it wants to do so,” the document reads.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has pledged to support parental rights if he is reelected. Abbott proposes to ban some LGBT content and remove pornographic books from school libraries. His plan would also allow parents to take their children’s taxpayer education funding and apply it toward tuition at private schools.
Texas already has a Parents’ Bill of Rights banning Critical Race Theory (CRT). Abbott’s proposal would add to the existing document, The New York Post reports.
Missouri passed a Bill of Rights for parents in April of this year. Parents are now allowed to review curriculum, check for signed permission slips, and generally direct the education of their children.
The Missouri bill’s sponsor, Rep. Ben Baker (R-Neosho), said, “This bill is for every parent who might have been ignored at a school board meeting, and not listened to, and purposefully relegated to sit in silence as business was done. This is about those who have concerns about the content of the classroom and classroom materials, what is being put in front of their child.”
Recognizing the multitude of problems in government-run schools, state lawmakers around the country are stepping in to give parents more say in what goes on in their local schools, reports.
“State policymakers around the country are considering parental bills of rights with similar provisions,” Heritage Foundation analysts Jonathan Butcher and Lindsey M. Burke write.
“State officials must respond to the radical ideologies that are introducing racial discrimination into K-12 schools while also inserting gender ideology as a replacement for biological sex into K-12 health instruction,” the Heritage scholars write. “Policymakers can reject these ideas without engaging in censorship and instead reaffirm parents’ rights over their children’s education and health care—essential components of any child’s upbringing.”
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