I am a parent of children in the Maine School Administrative District 75 school system. Recently, I have become concerned that certain rights of mine are not being respected. Here are some of the rights I’m talking about.
As a parent, I have a right to send my kids into classrooms that are filled with books and materials chosen by educational professionals – not by people with political agendas who are looking to exclude points of view with which they disagree. I would never try to ban a book, because then I’d be making a decision on behalf of other people’s kids, and I’d be infringing on their parents’ rights.
As a parent, I have a right for my kids to be educated by teachers who don’t have to operate in a climate of fear and mistrust, afraid they will be targeted and bullied by activists – and even some school board members – just for seeking to create a learning environment that welcomes all different types of students. Teachers have enough to worry about in the classroom as it is. They don’t need this manufactured drama.
As a parent, I have a right to a public education that prepares my children to navigate the world as it actually is, not as a small group of folks would prefer it to be. I love this country and I want my kids to learn to love it, too. That means they have to learn to see it with clear eyes. To love something, you can’t pretend it doesn’t have faults, and you need to learn about those faults so you can be part of fixing them. Classroom censorship that hides from our true past and present hurts my kids’ ability to learn to love and improve their country.
Unfortunately, the “parents’ rights” groups that have sprung up around the nation – including right here in MSAD 75 – aren’t interested in my rights. They’re focused on bringing the political culture wars into our schools. They publicly attack teachers, administrators, and school board members, rail against pronouns and anything with a rainbow on it and run up administrative costs with an endless stream of records requests.
Now, as MSAD 75 finds itself searching for yet another superintendent, it begs the question: Is the turmoil the point? For those who have been disrupting the operations of our school district, following the national “parents’ rights” playbook, maybe this is exactly the outcome they want. These groups actively encourage parents to pull their kids out of public school, and many of the folks leading these efforts have done so. If your real objective is to undermine public education, wouldn’t making your school district ungovernable be a winning strategy?
So far, it has been. Public education has never been such a target for organized political attacks as it is right now. Those attacks do not reflect the views of most parents and taxpayers, but they are the loudest voices in the room, they are full of vitriol, and they are wielding disproportionate power. They will be exactly as effective as the majority of people who value education and common sense allow them to be through our silence.
It can be tempting to see this conflict through the traditional political lens of right versus left. In fact, it’s more like arsonists versus firefighters. And I’m sorry to report that the arsonists are winning. Our institutions of public education are on fire, with a steady stream of experienced, competent teachers and administrators forced to run for safety. We are seeing it all around the country, and we are living it right here at home.
If we want our young people to have a high-quality public education and a bright future, we need to stand up for our school district and demand better for our community. If we’re going to extinguish this madness, we each need to grab a water bucket and join the fire brigade – before it’s too late.
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