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Dear Friend:
If there is one thing I feel like I am constantly doing as a parent, it’s repeating myself to my children. Apparently I also have to keep repeating myself to ultra-extremist Republicans who keep wanting to mess with our schools.
Across the country parents have consistently told extremist Republicans that we do not support their extremist so-called “parental rights” agenda of banning books, discriminating against students and teachers, and making life harder for our kids at school. Yet they keep coming up with ways to do just that. This time by trying to slip some of this nonsense into an important piece of must-pass legislation, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
What’s happening? Every year Congress has to pass a bill called the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This is the legislation that funds our national defense, including training and equipment for our troops, support for service members and their families, as well as funding for Department of Defense (DoD) K-12 schools that operate on military bases both domestically and abroad.
This spring, U.S. House Republicans passed a national extremist “parental rights” bill, but luckily, the more moderate Senate did not act on it. Instead of taking “no” for an answer, they are now trying to pass this unwanted, unnecessary, and unpopular garbage by slipping it into must-pass legislation — the NDAA. [1]
In doing this, Republican leaders are laying the foundations to pass a suite of anti-public education and pro-censorship laws that will impact all our schools. And they are doing this despite the fact that poll after poll, and election after election, keep showing that parents reject an extremist education agenda, which censors our history, bans books, harms our students, stigmatizes trans students, LGBTQIA+ students and educators, and students with LGBTQIA+ parents. If signed into law, this NDAA would impose an extremist agenda on DoD public schools that opens the door to book banning and puts far too many administrative burdens on our teachers. [2,3,4,5]
It’s frustrating to keep repeating myself to my kids, but I know their brains are still developing and they’re learning. It’s INFURIATING to have to keep repeating ourselves to Republican leaders, but here we are so let’s get into it.
Moms and teachers know the current attacks on schools are not okay. In fact, Moms ARE horrified right now about the attacks we’ve been seeing on public education and on our kids across the country.
Polls show that these attacks are deeply unpopular with moms and grandmothers from all backgrounds. In fact, moms are so horrified that we came out and voted in a big way earlier this month – and reports show that 70% of the extremist school board candidates lost.
To be clear, we deeply appreciate and value our military service members and their families, and the educators who serve them, and Section 651 in the NDAA doesn’t honor our service members. It does the opposite. Instead it would damage the parent-teacher relationship with hostile reporting and commenting requirements—something we have already seen increase teacher shortages in states like Florida. [6] It could also facilitate the banning of books, particularly those that provide the much-needed viewpoints of our Black, Brown, AAPI, religious-minority, and LGBTQ+ communities.
This language also undercuts efforts to create safe environments for all children by undermining crucial public health data.
Finally, this section is an unnecessary burden that would only serve to distract educators from the most crucial work of teaching and supporting our country’s children.
We WANT schools to be safe and inclusive and to value diversity; for parents to be a partner in their children’s success; and for educators to be valued and respected. Teachers must be allowed to teach our country’s truths, good and bad, and the values that got us to where we are today. We want parents to be involved and engaged in their children’s education, not be forced to participate in burdensome reporting requirements. We want our children to learn about the history and obstacles faced, and overcome, by members of Black, Brown, AAPI, Native American, immigrant, religious-minority, LGBTQ+, and other communities. We want our students to be able to access unbiased health information. We want all our youth, regardless of income, disability, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity, to be safe and included in schools that prepare them to contribute to and succeed in our society.
America's moms want a society that rejects “us vs. them” divisiveness misrepresented as “family values,” and instead advances programs that unite and uplift all families. That’s what makes our country stronger.
Thank you,
Ruth, Jenny, Kristin, Donna, Monifa, Elyssa, Nina, Tina, Beatriz and the whole MomsRising.org & MamásConPoder Team
P.S. As a dedicated signer of our petitions, we wanted to say THANK YOU and also share another high-impact way that you can take action with MomsRising.
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References:
[1] NBC News: House passes the GOP's Parents Bill of Rights measure opposed by Biden
[3] AP: Liberal and moderate candidates take control of school boards in contentious races across US
[4] Kansas Reflector: In Kansas school board races, voters reject candidates pushing culture war issues
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