Let me be very clear from the beginning that I am in full support of parents being deeply involved in the education of their child. Parents, being the best caretakers of their children, have my support and respect for their individual rights to make significant decisions about their children’s upbringing, which include reasonable choices about their child’s education. Parents can and should utilize their individual parental rights to play a vital role in working collaboratively with the school to create the best educational experience for their children.
I do not support individuals, minority groups, or majority groups, trying to utilize the case of individual parental rights to create policies and procedures that result in these same individual parent rights being diminished or eliminated for those who may prefer a different option for their child. Stated differently, in some cases, the important and protected rights of individual parents become a strategy to reshape an entire system to oppress or eliminate the rights of others. There are outside organizations with an openly stated priority to overtake school boards in order to have the power to reshape schools based on their belief system. They aim to use individual parental rights to create schools tightly aligned with their belief system. This has happened all over the county and is now happening in Cheyenne. To me it is not primarily about what beliefs they are pushing, but the method for doing it. Again, I support all parents being able to exercise their individual rights to make the best decision for their child. When an outside organization seeks to overtake a school board, often with a one issue platform, to pursue policies that don’t respect the rights of all parents, and don’t represent the established viewpoints of the entire community, this is deeply problematic and concerning to me.
So, when you hear language around parental rights, please think about whether these parental rights support our schools and children, respect the individual parental rights of all parents and not just the few, and do not diminish school effectiveness.
Some perspectives to consider on how problems can occur are:
• Educators and administrators are trained professionals with expertise in pedagogy, child development, and curriculum design. We should avoid undermining the role of these professionals that could potentially leading to less effective educational outcomes.
• We could end up with policies that represent the preferences of a minority rather than the diverse needs of the entire student population.
• The intellectual autonomy, curiosity, and freedom of our young adults may be reduced or stripped way altogether during an important time of self-discovery and independence building.
Again, I am an advocate for parental involvement in our schools and the education of their child. I support and respect parental rights. Parents need to pursue what they believe is in the best interest of their own children. At the same time, we need to ensure that the use of “parental rights” is not political cover for creating policy that ignores or overrides the rights of all parents
