Support Parental Rights in Education!
After a House Education k-12 subcommittee meeting this morning, we are happy to report that several important bills that seek to protect the innocence of children, keep parents informed, and give homeschool families access to more extra-curricular opportunities were approved and sent to the full education committee.
HB 1379 (Anderson, R-Virginia Beach) - requires school libraries to create a catalog and make available to parents a list of all books that have sexually explicit material, and creates a process that allows a parent to keep their child from checking out certain books.
HB 1448 (Orrock, R-Thornburg) - requires the Department of Education, with the consultation of school boards, parents and librarians, to draft policies for the process of selecting and removing books from the school libraries.
HB 1475 (March, R-Floyd) - famously known as the “Tebow Bill,” this allows homeschool students to participate in public school sports team and have equal access to athletic opportunities.
HB 1903 (Durant, R-Fredericksburg) – a bill initiated by The Family Foundation and the Virginia Catholic Conference, this requires school boards to develop and maintain an online portal where a parent may access a detailed description of the books in the school library and implement a system that notifies parents when their child checks a book out of the school library.
There was also a tremendous showcase of supporters for Delegate Glen Davis’s HB 1508, “Virginia Education Success Accounts,” sponsored by Glen Davis (R-Virginia Beach) and also championed by the Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears. HB 1508 creates education savings accounts (ESAs), which will allow parents of students to use the state funds appropriated for their child to pay for tuition or after-school tutoring at a private elementary or secondary school that better meets their child’s needs.
On the issue of school content and library books, during a floor debate last year Delegate Lopez (D-Arlington) offered these remarks:
“Educators and librarians go through extensive training. They understand age appropriateness. The lowest common denominator or the loudest voices, shouldn’t be the ones dictating what’s acceptable. The selection of books for classrooms should be left to education experts, not a vocal minority group of parents.”
This statement absurdly assumes that educators and librarians at government run schools (funded by the taxes of every parent) are somehow more equipped than a child’s own parents to know what’s appropriate for their eyes and ears.
In response to that statement, Delegate Nick Freitas (R-30, Culpeper) defended parental rights with this retort:
“It’s amazing, because I keep hearing all these arguments about local option, local options. You want to know the most localized option you can get to is: the individual. The parent.”
When it comes to making important decisions about what materials a student reads and sees, or the best school environment our school system must always respect the primacy of parents over their child's education!
