A Parent’s Rights Don’t End at the Parking Lot!
Welcome to #ProtectEveryKid—a movement to stand behind parents speaking up for the physical safety, hearts, and minds of their children. Parents are encountering an onslaught of attempts to subvert parental authority through explicit content, promotion of gender ideology, Marxist-themed lessons and training materials, etc., all of which is combined with a lack of transparency. But there is something you can do about it — scroll down to learn more.
Win for Parents in Virginia!
In a major win for parents, Gov. Youngkin’s education department has released official revisions to the state model policies for transgender issues in schools. The revisions take key steps toward putting parents back in the driver’s seat and protecting the safety and privacy rights of every kid.
Make sure your school is aligning with these revised policies!
Get started with the action steps below:
Watch Newport News & Tidewater Parents Rally for Protecting Every Kid!
Your Voice is Needed at School Board Meetings!
It’s been hard to miss the news headlines about parents battling in their local school districts—it seems like almost every other day—to at least be notified or give permission before their kindergartners are given lessons about things like a boy dressing like a girl. Or when their middle school or high school age kids are given counseling at school about life altering decisions to change their gender identity—that will impact them for years to come and maybe even lead to medical procedures. It seems like it would be no-brainer, right?, to include parents. But instead we saw many schools actually doing the opposite—trying to hide these things from parents or refusing to let parents know about it in advance.
Why? Because they were following holdover policies created under the Northam administration that put a wedge between parents and their kids, especially when it comes to how transgender issues are handled at school. That’s why we’ve been coming alongside parents at school board meeting after school board meeting through our Protect Every Kid initiative to help restore those cherished rights. And that gets to the good news:
Governor Youngkin and his administration have heard your voices.
They have revamped this policy in a way that now emphasizes parental rights and puts parents back in the process. Just to highlight a few of the most drastic improvements included in the newly updated model policies from Youngkin’s education department:
No more hiding information from parents: First, instead of instructing educators how to deceive parents, the revised guidance now makes it clear that no policy, guidance, or other written materials issued by the school may encourage or instruct teachers to conceal relevant information about a student from the student's parent, including information about gender.
Parents must be notified before gender-identity counseling: It also emphasizes that parents must be informed and given an opportunity to object before counseling regarding gender is given to their kids.
Local schools empowered to protect kids: When it comes to areas like locker rooms or overnight sleeping quarters for field trips—where students are vulnerable and sometimes in a state of undress—the revised policies empower schools with more flexibility to make their own decisions on how to best protect kids—instead of high pressuring them to adopt a blanket, one-size-fits-all policy allowing any male for any reason to enter these female spaces. For instance, schools must now at least have a letter on record from a parent before minors can use bathrooms that do not align with their biological sex. They must also allow opt-out options for other parents and students concerned about privacy and safety in school bathrooms.
No more compelled speech: The revised policies also address the fact that schools can’t constitutionally compel employees or students to speak words that violate their faith or conscience.
Click here to view the rest of Gov. Youngkin’s revised policies.
For a PDF compare-and-contrast chart providing more detail on the top 7 improvements to these policies, click here.
How can you take action?
Contact your school board members and ask them to align their policies with the revised “2023 Model Policies on the Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students and Parents in Virginia’s Public Schools.”
Sign up to speak—either in person or via video—at your local school board meetings. Ask board members to take a vote as soon as possible to align with the parent-friendly, revised policies.
Share Chloe Cole’s testimony with your school board members (see below).
Join your voice with others by downloading the Protect Every Kid “speak up” tools below.
Download the Tools!
Printable Sticker Designs
Flyer
Legal Guidance-SB Members
Wondering what to say? Check out these speaking tips below!
Schools can and should protect every single child equally and fairly. It is possible to do this without trampling on parents' constitutional rights and the privacy and safety rights of our kids.
We need a balanced approach to this issue that respects all families in the district.
Too many school board members are only recognizing a one-sided narrative. We urge you to consider the equally important perspective of teens and families who've experienced real harm caused by policies that cut parents out of the process. (Watch Chloe Cole’s and Michele Blair’s stories below.)
It’s time to clean up harmful policies that disrespect parents' rights to be involved in life-changing decisions in their children's lives and leave parents in the dark when sexual and gender-identity experimentation are promoted by school officials to kids at school.
We’re asking you to take action now to align your district policies with the revised transgender-issue policies released by Gov. Youngkin's education department.
For more of what you can say, check out these conversation tips on the transgender policies!
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Other Resources
Conversation Tips: “Parental Rights: Why They’re Worth Protecting”
School board policy and meeting tracker (posted by LGBT groups to show which localities have not adopted the 2021 model policies created under the Northam administration)
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Document Your Story!
We can hold Virginia public schools accountable by documenting our stories! Take a moment to complete or share our School Incident Report form if you or someone you know has had their safety or core rights threatened at school.
Want more tips and information on how to add your voice to the movement? Check out Speak Up! Virginia here.
