Parent Alert: Back-to-School Checklist for Protecting Kids

Students are back in class already. Yes, but parents, have you checked off your back-to-school list yet? I've got some serious to-dos today for setting clear expectations with teachers and school administrators about what your family will accept and what they'll reject in your child's classroom. Let's go right now on Parent Alert. All right. Welcome to Parent Alert, everybody. I'm Jill Simonian from Prager U Kids. Drop me a comment. Tell me where you're watching from. Tell me if your kids are back in school. As you know, Parent Alert streams every Wednesday, 10 30 a.m. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube X. And of course, this episode will later be on our website at PragerU.com. I cannot believe we are back to school already. I'm in denial, even though I know that I need to live in reality. But we are back to school officially. Here in California, most public schools have started. And, you know, the last few years I've been saying that the notion of schools starting in mid-August is further proof that our public schools are accepting communist ideals more than folks want to admit because they're pulling kids away from parents earlier than they ought to. And I make a motion here and now to go back to starting schools after Labor Day. Do you agree or disagree? Tell me in the comments. God bless the good schools who still thank you. There is applause from the booth. Absolutely. That's what I'm talking about. God bless the good schools who still start after Labor Day. OK, I digress. In honor of back to school, I thought to play some games today. Stick with me. We're going to play some games to help get your school to be more transparent with what they are serving our students, minors inside the classroom. We're going to be talking about opt outs, school library audits, tech guardrails to help protect your children because newsflash, reminder, parental rights are protected in our U.S. Constitution. Say it back to me. Repeat it daily and often. So before I share with you my top four tips for education transparency, remember to subscribe to PragerUKids.com for free. We have got all the resources you need. Wholesome values, educational knowledge, American cultural literacy for kindergarten through 12th grade. That said, let's get into my first tip here. This is how... OK, when I say we're going to play a game, it's like a kind of sort of game. So you be the judge if I'm a good game show host or not. OK, I'm going to drop... This is how it's going to work. I'm going to drop a hint for you via a video or a picture or something. And you're going to guess what my recommendation is that I think all parents should be doing the first two weeks of school if your child happens to be at a public school. So let's roll the first hint. It's actually more simple than people realize. So I think that's where, you know, there's a little bit of a misunderstanding that this is so hard to do. How do you handle this? What can you do about it? Well, it can be as simple as writing a very simple paragraph to the school and saying, I am essentially invoking my right as a parent. Oh, invoking. There's the word. Yes. To review the curriculum. And you can cite a law. I think this is probably a good place to even mention this. Go for it. You can cite this law, which is called the PPRA. So Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment. This is a federal law. And what you can do with that is you can state that it is your legal right to review curriculum under this law. And it's also your right as a parent to opt out of curriculum and certain activities that are not within your consent as a parent. And what you can do is literally in the category of the social emotional learning, you can request that the school provide to you and give you access to the curriculum that's being taught to your child. So you invoke this law, you write a letter to the school, very simple paragraph stating the law, stating you're requesting this information. And what the law states is that every school is required to allow you as a parent to give consent prior to them actually subjecting your child to these different forms and curriculum that you don't don't approve of or wouldn't support. Okay, thank you, Amy Bond from PERC Group. And the PERC Group stands for Protection of the Educational Rights of Kids. Great advice, great resources for parents. It's a little awkward for me to watch myself on video. That was an interview that Amy and I did a few years ago. But she is just a deep well of information, smart information. So did anyone guess it? First to do this new school year is opt out. Opt out, opt out, opt out. It's not as dramatic as everyone makes it seem. And the key to what Amy was saying there that I really want to double down on right now, opt out before you think anything's going to happen. So opt out of social emotional learning, which is frequently referred to as SEL, surveys. We're going to get to that in a minute. Comprehensive sex education featuring gender ideology. Opt out of culturally responsive and restorative diversity, equity, and inclusion programs or curriculum. These, and I'm going to say the surveys especially, the surveys that are done in the name of social emotional learning. We're doing a wellness check. We want to make sure, you know, this is what the school and school board will tell you. We want to make sure that our children are thriving and that our children are mentally well. And, you know, these surveys, don't buy it. Don't be deceived. We live in the age of deception. Don't be deceived. These surveys continue to mine sensitive information from minors and reinforce victim versus oppressor mentalities without any parental consent needed, okay? So the good news here that Amy tipped us off to is that parents in most states can opt out of these surveys that do, in fact, more likely than not prove to be severely inappropriate. I'm going to share with you a sample. We can opt out of instructional programs. We can opt out of initiatives that class with religious beliefs or family values because, reminder, we have the United States Constitution. And all we're doing is following the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of religious freedom in the First Amendment and parents' fundamental rights to guide the care, upbringing, and education of our children. And that is the 14th Amendment, okay? So if you've been paying attention, you know that school surveys are no longer about, oh, what's your favorite lunch meal? Would you like to have ice cream Fridays? And you are going to know that sex education in these surveys, or as they are, you know, delivered and required as the school districts will, you know, bully you into believing, oh, you can't get out of that. No, no, you can get out of it. You know, they're delivered through a health class or through a PE class. But sex education is no longer about biological reproduction. If it was about biological reproduction, I would have absolutely no problem with it because guess what? Our children need to learn how we reproduce as human beings, okay? I want to share with you a tiny sampling of a survey, of a mental health wellness survey, that's how it was pegged, that went to middle schoolers, some of them ages 10, 11, and 12, obviously middle school. This survey went to a middle school in Burlington, Massachusetts. This was all over the news. This is not fake news. This is on mainstream news. This was done by citizen reporters. The mom, one of the moms who was actually involved in this reckoning of the school district, I would say, reached out to me personally talking about her family's personal experience. This is very graphic, some of these questions that I'm going to show you. So, fair warning if you're watching, fair warning if you're listening, I would not have children in the room. I wouldn't even have teenagers in the room. So, let's bring up some of the survey questions here. And I'm going to go through them with you. This survey was...I'm not kidding, I think it was like 14 pages long. Or was it...oh, no, it was 18 pages long, okay? So, this is a real survey. And if you're watching, as you go through, I'm going to say, periodically, maybe press pause. I mean, you can't do that on the live, I guess, but if you are watching this after the fact, when the episode's on our website, you can press pause, read these questions. It's going to take you a minute to realize what you're actually reading. And once you realize, oh, my gosh, 10 and 11-year-olds reportedly saw these questions, you're just going to feel ill. So, if you're a regular, reasonable person, you're going to feel ill. So, survey questions. These particular questions here that I've pulled up are just a small, very small sampling of the, like I said, 18-page long survey. And these questions begin about sexual behaviors. I don't even want to read these out loud. Pause and read them. Have you ever had sexual contact with another person? Have you ever had intercourse? And then it describes what intercourse is in many different ways. Go to the next slide, please. Again, these were delivered in class, during class time, to middle schoolers in Burlington Public Schools last year. More questions about sexual behaviors. How old were you when you had intercourse for the first time? The first option is 8-years-old or younger, 9-years-old, 10-years-old, 11-years-old, 12-years-old, 13-years-old. The last time you had intercourse, it talks about... You can read it there. I'm going to let you read it. Have you ever... And then the next question, have you ever sent or received sexual messages to someone? I mean, are these questions... Any reasonable people, any reasonable person will read... I mean, what are these? Five questions? Out of hundreds of questions, by the way, on this survey. Any reasonable person... I don't care how you vote. I don't care how you live your life. I don't care if you believe in God or don't believe in God. Any reasonable person will see questions like this and think how on earth were these delivered in a taxpayer school during class time to 10, 11, and 12-year-olds. These are the kinds of surveys we are dealing with. And that is why I say opt out of all surveys beforehand, period. At the beginning of the school year, no child in any classroom across America, kindergarten through 12th grade, should be subjected to participating in a survey that includes questions like this. Hard stop. And as parents, it's up to us. So again, that survey... And that was just one of hundreds that have gone to... I'm going to guess hundreds, maybe thousands of schools across the country without parents realizing it. This was an 18-page long survey. It asked... I went through the whole thing. You can find the survey in its entirety at BurlingtonPublicSchools.org. Click around. You'll find it. That's how I found it. Full transparency. This survey asked invasive questions about family home life, sexual abuse, alcohol and drug consumption, feelings of despair, social media use, ethnicity, and feeling less than because of ethnicity or race. This was absolutely unacceptable. And parents, we are not informed when the schools plan on delivering these kinds of surveys to our children. Memorize these four words. We do not consent. We do not consent. During the first few weeks of school, opt out. Tip number one, send a brief and respectful email to your children's teachers, principals, and superintendents to preemptively opt out of practices with potential to devise, confuse, or breach your family's privacy and beliefs. Here is a quick sample. I wrote it based on the information that Amy Bond of the PERC group gave me. I mean, I will say this, you know, obviously, children who are encountering terrible abusive situations need professional help. And that should definitely never go... You know, that should never slip through the cracks, okay? I am going to say this. What I am talking about here when I'm talking about these surveys and these types of questions, I am talking about these types of surveys just being, you know, blank, you know, distributed across every single classroom without any care for the students that are receiving it. Okay, so here is the sample email that you can write. I've written it out for you. Feel free to screenshot this and cut and paste it into your own email to your own school administrators. And I'll read it aloud for you right now. Dear Mr. Mrs. Blank, thank you for a great start to our school year. With this email, I respectfully opt my child out of participating in surveys for the full school year, list the year, including but not limited to social-emotional learning, health and wellness, and or any information gathering materials that might be created by a third party to be administered in the classroom. Additionally, I request that school district administration inform me about forthcoming surveys at least one week in advance so that I may reconsider participation for my child throughout the year. Thank you for understanding. We look forward to an exciting year. And I should add that we can include what Amy cited at the beginning of the, you know, at the clue that I gave you. I invoke my right as a parent for the pupil protection of rights amendment. And that is the federal law that can be cited to invoke your right as a parent to opt out of these things that quite frankly do cause harm. My recommendation is to send that at the very beginning of the year. You have to do it every year, by the way. It's not just like a one and done. You got to do it every year. I recommend doing it every semester. Continue to communicate and follow up accordingly, ideally in a public forum at a school board meeting to insist on accountability. Because what happens in public schools more often than not is that an administrator or a teacher or a school board member or maybe even the superintendent or assistant superintendent will send you an email saying, thank you so much for your concern. We believe in parent-teacher partnerships. Let's meet in my office or on campus so that you and I can have a discussion. Totally fine. But what they're doing then is taking this terrible circumstance and making it private so that no one else hears about it, making you feel like you are heard, making you feel like your opinion as a parent matters. And then most often what happens is that the whole thing disappears and you have no traction. You have no recourse. There is no accountability for these administrators to have to answer to the public. So I recommend taking it to a public forum. If you do go to a private meeting, send an email follow-up afterwards. Excuse me, my throat's a little scratchy. I'm getting all worked up about this. If you do go to a private meeting, send an email summary afterwards. Thank you for meeting with me. Here's what we discussed. Here's what I understood. I look forward to bringing this to the next school board meeting in a public forum. You take your report. You go to the school board meeting. You simply read it out loud. That way, it is on the record in public for your fellow neighbors and teachers and parents and adversaries for that matter to understand that you're not afraid to face this severe problem that assaults families and abuses children head on. So there. Okay. So my next must do to check off your parent list, this back to school, roll the clip. Public schools belong to all of the public, not just the progressives in the public. And so we want to empower parents to reclaim their parental rights, to take back the classroom, that their voice is just as important and should be heard just like everyone else. And that there's been such a push to progressivism. And there's this idea that if you're more conservative, that for some reason your voice doesn't get to be heard. And that's totally false. We are part of the public school and we need to take back the classroom. Thank you, Karen England of take back the classroom. That's right. We have a right to be included. My favorite word, including it included. We have a right to be treated with kindness as all of these schools. So many of these schools are obsessed with inclusion and kindness. We deserve to be included. So my second tip is get in. You see it right there on the lower third, get in. Karen England, by the way, that was also from a previous parent alert on our website. Karen England finds the age inappropriate books in school libraries and exposes them across the country. So get in, volunteer wherever and whenever you can. And I know that there's not many opportunities to volunteer in high school, but it's on us to find them. Get creative, get resourceful. The PTA, the library helper, campus cleanup. If you have a special skill or profession, offer to speak at a school club event. Because volunteering, even though it takes time and it's hard for working parents, especially, and, you know, maybe you just can't stand what's going on at the school and you don't even want to be there and you feel ill every time you walk into campus, we have to be the adults and we have to set our feelings aside for the accomplishment of a greater good. So volunteering is the most direct way to forge partnerships with teachers. Since 2020, we know that parental involvement has really been discouraged by taxpayer funded schools, especially, but it is our fundamental right to be informed about new activities that are being ushered in. And books that have been recently included, or books that have been purged also, statewide or district policies involving bathrooms and locker rooms are changing here in California. It is now required that every single school, kindergarten through 12th grade, have gender neutral restrooms on their campus. It is on us parents to understand how those California public schools will be implementing that. Will they be gender neutral bathrooms in addition to the boys' and girls' rooms? We need to find that out. And the way to find that out is by volunteering and getting ourselves on campus. We're also going to learn how teachers approach subjects with equity or gender inclusivity when we get ourselves on campus one way or the other. It is our fundamental right. Don't let anyone bully you or deceive you into thinking, oh, well, you know, parents don't really volunteer at high school. That's, you know, really bad. But you're going to learn. You're going to learn. Here's the thing. Not only are you going to learn more about how your school functions and you're going to get to know the but you may also connect with the like-minded parents in the process of you getting involved. So get in. Don't be shy to check the box to be a helper, to check the box to be a library volunteer or an extracurricular activity chair. Join the PTA, even though it has been identified now as a corrupt organization. Join the leadership committees for parents. And it is hard in high school for those of us who have high school kids because our kids want independence and they don't necessarily want to see mom or dad lurking on campus all the time. But find a way to get yourself on campus. You're going to earn information that you might need if you have to amplify an issue at some point. Do not relinquish our right to be included. Do not be bullied or intimidated by admin or staff that want to trick you into thinking that you're doing something wrong. I know I'm repeating myself, but I'm repeating myself by design because I want everyone to understand and get on board. And remember, always remember how schools wanted those parent and teacher partnerships. You're offering it. Okay, so getting involved brings me to my next back-to-school recommendation for parents. Give us our next hint, please. Hint number three. Oh, we have a picture. We have a picture of what is that, ladies and gentlemen. You've seen it before. Next picture, please. Our next hint. Oh, yes, there we go. What is that? That is our PragerU kids book fair. There we go. Here's the thing. But my third tip, my third tip is put the good back. Put the good back into your own school. And the way that we can do that, particularly at the elementary school level, is through books, okay? You just saw the pictures of our PragerU kids book fair. You can get one, by the way, PragerUkids.com book fair. And I have, you know, before I elaborate on this tip number three, put the good back, I'm going to show you some of our books. We have the tip-off, a chapter book for middle readers, you know, fifth graders, sixth graders. This celebrates themes of resilience, working on a team, finding your place, respect for parents. These are all included. These are the books, some of the books included in our PragerU kids book fair. This is our street smarts workbook. It's a companion workbook for our street smarts series, teaching civics for tweens. Fun stuff. More books that we can use to put the good back in our Otto's Tales series, Let's Visit Mount Rushmore, talking about Mount Rushmore and how it is an important place, meaningful place in America. We also have our around the world books in our book fair, discussing tough global issues for teens, framing them in a way that makes it easy for us parents to broach these complicated world issues like communism and freedom of speech. If like, you know, if like you're a parent or a teacher and say, I don't even know where to start teaching my kids about these topics, these are a great place to start. And of course, our book fair also has our Shining Star Trailblazers of America book, Heroes of the Frontier, telling stories of courageous frontiersmen like Bass Reeves, John C. Fremont, Davy Crockett, wonderful, wonderful stories of grit and resilience, Daniel Boone, all in our PragerU Kids book fair. So here's the reality. If you are new, and when I say put the good back, the easiest way is to do it through books, right? To volunteer, to be a reader, to read these books, to offer, you know, a book fair for your school if you're a teacher. Because here's the reality, if you are new to discovering the corruption in our education system, I'm going to break it down for you right now. Here's what's happened in recent years. And many of you who tune into Paranormal regularly, you already know this. But in recent years, education leaders have actively removed the classic and challenging literature that developed our brains when we were students in school. They have actively removed classic and challenging literature that promotes critical thinking from curriculum nationwide. And they cite that these traditional works that are time-tested and, frankly, difficult to read, but it requires the brain to develop, right, in a good way. They cite that these traditional works are rooted in white supremacy, or they traumatize marginalized groups. So instead of learning vocabulary and virtue through stories like C.S. Lewis's, The Chronicles of Narnia, which I remember reading in the third grade when I was a young student, or instead of assigning Jack London's Call of the Wild, students are now often encouraged and sometimes required to explore visually and descriptively explicit books like, and I'm going to give an example here, a book titled Identical. This is by author Ellen Hopkins. Karen England of Take Back the Classroom actually introduced this book to me, and I read some of the book. I've had it in my hands. I have flipped through the chapters. I have read varied portions of this book, and the things it describes involve abuse and incest, which is traumatizing for any teen to read. And this book, Identical by Ellen Hopkins, is virtually in every school library. I found it at my own local public high school's library, along with all the other books in Hopkins' series. Graphic illustrations, traumatizing descriptions of sexual encounters, sexually charged topics, these are not uncommon in middle and high school books found in most school libraries now. I wish I were making this up. I wish this were fake news. I wish I was exaggerating. I am not. I've seen it with my own in schools. Yet, these books are classified as inclusive by misguided school teachers and politicized teachers unions. Auditing and calling for the removal or parental permission for unfit books in schools has to continue, but we should also proactively be supplying developmentally appropriate books to our children's libraries and classrooms. So put the good back. That's what this tip means. If I were you, I would find out your district's policy for accepting donations. This can be done by calling or emailing school administration. I would consider being a volunteer reader for different days that include a holiday, if you will. You got a lot of holidays, American holidays during the school year. Volunteer to be a reader in your child's classroom and read a book, one of our Otto's Tales books. I will grab the Mount Rushmore one right now just to illustrate my point on President's Day. Read about Mount Rushmore. Consider gifting appropriate academic materials for your school. Put the good back. Tip number four. Last to do for this new school year. This is kind of more of a keep this in your back pocket for if and when you need it type of a thing. Show us the graphic. See if we can guess. Oh, what is that? FOIA.gov. Who knows what this is? Drop a comment. This is a reminder that you have the agency to file a Freedom of Information Act request, and that is called FOIA. So tip number four. Do not hesitate, if needed, to file a FOIA request. So should your school year yield unfortunate events that seriously compromise academic integrity or education transparency, or if your teachers are hiding things from the parents and behaving in a very deceptive and subversive manner, do not hesitate to file a FOIA request. It requires disclosure of public records upon request and is valid in all 50 states. This is part of our rights, okay? Parents have a right, protected by law, to know what is happening in our children's classroom and what is communicated between teachers and administrators via email, via text, all sorts of things, should there be a suspected compromised situation that warrants deeper insight, information, and transparency. So to submit a FOIA request is free. It allows anyone to review emails, curriculum details, paper trails, hiring practices, initiatives and directives, and more thorough keyword searches. Filing a FOIA request communicates with the school in particular that you are actively engaged and you're unafraid to ask questions and that you're serious about requiring accountability when warranted. I've learned that FOIA requests are not perfect. They are not end-all solutions. It often takes months and months to get information from FOIA requests. Schools will drag their feet. You will be villainized, but you'll survive it. The fact that schools drag their feet also to get this information when a FOIA request is activated tells you everything you need to know. So if and when you receive the facts and information that you're seeking from the FOIA request, take them again to a public forum, a school board meeting, a city council meeting, a town hall, a local committee meeting. Respectfully recommend consequences. If you don't get that info from a FOIA request, take that information to a public forum too and let your fellow taxpayers know that your district is trying to hide something. Get informed about the United States Freedom of Information Act at foia.gov. So my four tips again just to recap for you. Opt out. These are things that every parent of reasonable mind should be doing the first few weeks of school. Preemptively opt your child out of surveys, curriculum, initiatives, programs that violate your religious freedom or family values. Opt out preemptively. Write the email and joyfully opt out. Second tip, get in. Volunteer. Volunteer to get yourself on campus, right? Third tip, put the good back. Start including and introducing ways to offer books that are wholesome, educational to your elementary school library. Like I said, we have our PragerU Kids Book Fair that you can request to be delivered to your school. It comes in a box. It comes with I believe it is 36 books. I might be wrong about that, but there are a few dozen books from our PragerU library that have been especially curated that align with national standards. It's a book fair where kids can look at the books and it's the same format as scholastic book fairs. You can look at the hard copy books and then you order them from a QR code. So put the good back in your school. And the tip number four is to file a four-year request. Not to be afraid to file a four-year request throughout the school year should you see fit. So those are my four recommendations to set a clear understanding and communicate with your own school if your kids are at a public school that you are very unapologetic about what your family will accept during the school year and what your family will reject inside the classroom. And I think it is a very proactive. Again, do everything with a smile on your face and a joyful heart, but it's important to set clear expectations and communication with teachers and administrators. And with that, we are out of time. So thank you for being here with Parent Alert. Always drop me a comment. Tell me if you have had experiences with any of these tips that I have mentioned. Tell me what you're doing ahead of this, at the very start of this brand new school year. I read all the comments. I want to know what you're doing. I want to know what's worked, what hasn't worked. I may not always agree with what you have to say, but I'll always defend your ability to say it here in the United States of America. So drop me your comments. Tell me what you think. And as always, friendly reminder to subscribe for free to PragerUKids.com for new episodes, lesson plans, parent resources for teaching knowledge, fostering cultural literacy, and appreciating America. So we wish you a peaceful and productive back-to-school season rooted in courage and conviction. Always, always, always. God bless you all. See you next time on Parent Alert.