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Parental Rights and Public Schools in North Carolina (School Choice in NC Part 5)

Family Policy Matters / NC Family Policy
The Truth Network Radio
September 11, 2023 8:40 am

Parental Rights and Public Schools in North Carolina (School Choice in NC Part 5)

Family Policy Matters / NC Family Policy

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September 11, 2023 8:40 am

This week on Family Policy Matters, host Traci DeVette Griggs welcomes Michael Ramey, President of the Parental Rights Foundation, to discuss North Carolina's Parents' Bill of Rights and how it will benefit families in the public school system.

This episode is a part of a series highlighting the school choice movement across North Carolina. Tune in each week to learn more!

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Welcome to Family Policy Matters, an engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, this is John Rustin, president of NC Family, and we're grateful to have you with us for this week's program.

It's our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged, and inspired by what you hear on Family Policy Matters, and that you will feel better about your work. You are equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state, and nation. And now here is our host of Family Policy Matters, Tracey Devitt-Griggs. Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. As we wrap up our education series, we're going to take a look today at North Carolina's newly passed Parents' Bill of Rights, which includes several provisions related to parents' roles in their children's education. Michael Ramey, president of Parental Rights Foundation, to discuss the growing movement to strengthen protections for parental rights across the country and, of course, here in North Carolina. Michael Ramey, welcome to Family Policy Matters. Thank you.

It's good to be here. What, in your opinion, is the current status of parental rights protections in the U.S. today? Literally and metaphorically, it's all over the map. Some states are doing more to protect parental rights, and in other states, the usual aspects, California, New Jersey, and some others, are really passing new legislation to undermine parental rights. Do you see what you would call the greatest threats to parental rights these days as you're seeing all of these different states? Well, there are so many because there are literally millions of parents all over the country, all dealing with the government in various ways. Of course, in public education, one of the biggest threats is keeping secrets from parents when a child is thinking of transgender or sexual orientation thoughts.

Keeping secrets from parents about minor children is just not a good idea. And then for other folks, especially folks in poverty and minorities, they might be dealing with child welfare issues that don't respect their parental rights. So it really kind of depends on where that point of contact is between the parents and the government. The common thread is that we are seeing, I would imagine, a lot of these parental rights being eroded or the attempt to erode them.

We are. There's sort of this other mindset that says that we can't trust parents. We recognize that foundational to our whole concept of law is that parents can be trusted as the general rule, that natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interest of their child.

And what we're seeing today is a new wave of public servants, of government officials, and so forth, who apparently just don't believe that, don't believe that parents can be trusted. The Parental Rights Bill was passed over the objections and veto of our governor. What were his objections?

Do you know them? What are the common objections of those who opposed the bill here in North Carolina? Bills like the one in North Carolina tend to get the same kind of protest from those people who do have a different worldview.

And according to press release that Roy Cooper made when he vetoed the bill on July 5th, he seems to fall right in there with that. He cited concerns over the provisions that require public schools to notify parents if their children are thinking transgender and want to socially transition at school. And he's not comfortable with the part of the bill that prevents, quote, instruction on gender identity, sexual activity or sexuality from being included in the curriculum provided in grades kindergarten through fourth grade, end quote. So unlike a lot of parents in North Carolina and across the country, he apparently is not concerned with letting kids be kids and not have to deal with these more grown up activities for the first few years that they're in school. So you mentioned this group of policymakers and just others who feel like we can't trust parents.

What kind of worldview is that? Where does that stem from, do you think, that distrust of parents? Part of it may be that, you know, now as we're interconnected more and more through the Internet and through just, you know, we can see things going on everywhere. And so the horror stories that pop up, even though they're just as rare as they've ever been, and in many cases are rarer, they make the news cycles.

And they grab the attention. And so some folks just think that because some parents abuse their children, that therefore we can't trust any parents, which ironically, you know, there are considerable rates of abuse and mistreatment of children, even in public schools. But nobody's saying, well, we can't trust public schools with that.

Certainly not the folks with that worldview. They're saying, well, we need the teachers to keep an eye on the parents. And really, the opposite is more true.

We need parents keeping an eye on our public schools. Right. And we talked a lot about how America is very individualistic. Could it be a kind of a hyper individualistic attitude?

You think so. But there are, for instance, vaccination laws that I think really display the lie of that. Some states have tried to pass laws saying that a child as young as 12 or even younger can can get a vaccine over their parents objection, but none of them says that the child can be free from the vaccine if the parent wants to give it to them. So in other words, they're not really wanting the child to have the right to decide. They're wanting the child to have the right to decide what the state wants if the parents disagree. All right. That's a pretty important distinction. All right. Well, let's talk about this bill in North Carolina, the parental rights bill.

Give us some details on that. The bill protects certain rights of the parents specifically. It includes the right to direct the education and care of his or her child, to direct the upbringing and moral or religious training of his or her child, to enroll the child in public or non-public school or any other school choice options, to make health care decisions and to access all their education records and so on. And I'm actually kind of reading through Section 114A-10 of the bill there. These are some rights that the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld to be fundamental parental rights. And so it's refreshing and encouraging to see them spelled out in North Carolina law right there in black and white.

Okay. What kind of influence do you think? Are you seeing very specific changes coming? The parts that are folks I think are anticipating changes. There is a part that says that parents have the right to make health care decisions and to access and review all medical records of the child and so on. And there's a part that does direct schools that if the child considers themselves to be transgender and wants to socially transition at school, that the schools need to let the parents know about that, which is a big deal.

It's a hot button issue right now. But the fact is that parents need to be a part of those decisions that can really affect a child for the rest of their life. And allowing schools to keep those things secret from parents and begin what is essentially a board-recognized treatment of the child is something that we want to see stopped. So that's one thing that hopefully will change.

Schools will stop keeping those secrets from parents about their minor children. You're listening to Family Policy Matters, a weekly radio show and podcast of the North Carolina Family Policy Council. This is just one of the many ways NC Family works to educate and inform citizens across North Carolina about policy issues that impact North Carolina families.

Our vision is to create a state and nation where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive, and life is cherished. For more information about NC Family and how you can help us to achieve this incredible vision for our state and nation, visit our website at ncfamily.org. Again, that's ncfamily.org. And be sure to sign up to receive our email updates, action alerts, and of course, our flagship publication, Family North Carolina Magazine.

We'd also love for you to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. How does North Carolina's new Parents Bill of Rights compare to the ones you've seen in other states? It's funny, we call them Parents Bill of Rights, but there really are several different kinds. And there are some, like Oklahoma passed one almost a decade ago, that really spells out parents' rights in a number of areas not just focused on public schools like North Carolina's is.

And that's not a problem. North Carolina's is answering the immediate need to stop those dangerous secrets. So some states, the Parents Bill of Rights is more inclusive than in other states, it's less so. In some states, it's just a very general thing.

thing. Like this year, three states, North Dakota and Iowa and Alabama, passed not a parent's Bill of Rights per se, but a law that states just plainly in the text that parental rights are fundamental, that they can only be overcome or limited for a compelling governmental interest that's met by the least restrictive means. So that really matches the standard that the Supreme Court has set for parental rights in our country.

And North Carolina didn't go quite as far as that. They didn't go quite as far as saying they're fundamental or demanding that sort of compelling state interest. But in the areas that this bill covers, it's really solid and it's great that it spells out in detail that the parents have these specific rights. So do you have some things that you would appreciate being in this law? You mentioned the other states that had more inclusive laws. Are there some things that you might like to see added later on? Yeah, for a full parent's Bill of Rights, I think considering, for instance, child welfare cases as well and some of the reforms that are needed there would be good to flesh out a full parent's Bill of Rights.

Now again, North Carolina's wasn't intended to cover everything. It's really, really focused on tackling the problems in the public schools and I appreciate what it did. But in terms of when you look at child welfare, then you have to consider, you know, the termination of parental rights should be a very much a last resort and it's not. Parents should have rights from the outset of an investigation. They should know what their rights are and the state should be working to keep families together as much as possible. So, you know, avoiding foster care and that kind of thing whenever possible and only remove children from their parents when the parents are demonstrably unfit to take care of their children. And we don't really see that happening especially in some of the poorer neighborhoods. So not just in North Carolina but all over the country.

So those are some things I would love to see tackled. And then too, like I already mentioned, you know, just that parental rights are fundamental rights and require the highest level of judicial scrutiny when they are challenged by a law or by a state. That it must be to fulfill a compelling governmental interest that can't be met by any less restrictive means. Well let's talk just a bit more in depth about aspects of the North Carolina law. I guess the most controversial portion is on the topics of gender and sexuality, whether it is included in the curriculum.

Talk about that. Why is that so controversial especially for children in elementary school? The content of the curriculum is actually one part of this that doesn't fall into the area of parental rights exactly because parents have a right to opt their child out of particular offensive curriculum materials in certain courses. That involves parental rights. But as to what goes into the curriculum in the first place, that's a policy matter that's going to be decided by the school board or in this case it's going to be decided by state law. So a lot of parents rose up and made their voices heard and their concerns known and the legislature responded to that.

And that's exactly what should happen and that's a policy decision. And again it's not exactly parental rights per se, but certainly those parents exercise their rights to be heard and make that change. So basically parents in North Carolina through their lawmakers said we want our children to be able to be children for a while and maintain their innocence and not have to deal with these more grown up topics until they're ready. Our local news station used the word targeted a lot when they talked about these potential laws and now law. One is new North Carolina laws will target transgender youth, making it seem like it was going to be less safe for transgender youth in our schools.

Do they have a point? I think it's rather the opposite way around. The Supreme Court has held that children even in adolescence, they lack the maturity and the capability of analysis and so forth to make these permanent lifetime decisions regarding their health, their mental health and so on and that parents need to be the ones to help them make those decisions. And the Supreme Court has also said that parents and children have a shared interest in their natural parent-child relationship that the court shouldn't be interfering with. So really what we're seeing is the schools are saying and the folks who oppose bills like this are really saying parents have these rights, children have these rights to have their parents involved unless they are gender or sexually minority children, in which case then the parental rights and the child's right to their parents' counsel go away. So really they're the ones who are targeting these vulnerable youth by trying to take their parents who traditionally fulfill a protective and defensive role for the child and take them out of the way.

So they're really the ones targeting the youth. Well what should parents do if they are concerned that their rights regarding the education and care of their own children are being either impeded or ignored? Well the first step you do is in as much as you can, you talk to the school administrator or the school teacher and it may be sufficient especially with this law now on the book to point to the law and remind them you know that you're concerned about your child and you want to know what's going on.

And a lot of times just having a good discussion can head off any misconceptions, any distrust and you can work together with them. Now if that doesn't work then you may need to talk to a lawyer who's there in North Carolina who knows North Carolina law and is licensed in North Carolina and they can give you some more direction there if it's dealing with your children. And again there's that policy level like I mentioned before where if it's not just your child but you're concerned about the direction of the whole school or you're concerned about the curriculum and so on, then that's a third thing where you might group together with other parents, go to the school board meetings or talk to your lawmakers and see where that can be changed at the policy level.

Well we're just about out of time for this week. Before we go Michael Ramey, where can our listeners go to learn more about North Carolina's new Parents Bill of Rights and the good work that you all are doing over there at Parental Rights Foundation? So the website is parentalrightsfoundation.org.

Parentalrightsfoundation.org and if they'll click on the news tab at the top and then click again on news in the pull-down menu then the very first article there the newest one is on the veto override there in North Carolina and that has our article about that. Okay Michael Ramey, President of Parental Rights Foundation. Thanks so much for being with us today on Family Policy Matters.

Thank you for having me. You've been listening to Family Policy Matters. We hope you enjoyed the program and plan to tune in again next week to listen to this show online and to learn more about NC Families work to inform, encourage and inspire families across North Carolina, go to our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org. Thanks again for listening and may God bless you and your family.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-10-27 13:40:27 / 2023-10-27 13:47:34 / 7

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