The battle being fought over Sex Education in WA Public Schools

Ultimately, it is about the erosion of the privileges and responsibilities historically, not to mention biologically, we believe – or used to – are, or were, rightfully the purview of parents.

It is apparent, however, that public schools would now parent, having been mandated that authority.

Gov. Jay Inslee signed into law this past Friday, March 27, a requirement that sex education be taught in all Washington public schools, starting in kindergarten.

“Senate Bill 5395 requires every public school in the state to provide ‘comprehensive sexual health education’ to each student by the 2022-23 school year,” according to KING 5 Staff.

Despite protests that generated hundreds in attendance at rallies at the State Capitol; irrespective of the thousands of emails and calls to the legislative hotline lighting up switchboards; never mind the letters in opposition from school boards representing districts from across the state – like that of the board of Clover Park School District (CPSD) whose members unanimously opposed the bill, urging Gov. Inslee to veto the strictly partisan measure, the CPSD calling it “unfunded and volatile curriculum” - Gov. Inslee signed it anyway.

And now Referendum 90 will soon seek to gather 130,000 signatures – petitions available here – in an attempt to repeal this legislation.

In the KING 5 piece, “State Superintendent Chris Reykdal said fears over lessons about the ‘birds and bees’ being taught to kindergartners under the new state law are not true.”

Reykdal also said, "The message of healthy relationships and healthy sexual activity is not getting heard because we think it's not getting taught."

And Reykdal says it’s the school’s job to teach it.

“As Washington state’s superintendent of public instruction, my first priority is to make sure our kids are safe and ready to learn,” Reykdal said in a March 1, Tacoma News Tribune Op-ed.

Let alone be safe, how about just learn?

The Report Card for Washington State Schools shows less than half of the 1,147,573 students meet math standards.

And less than half of those students - for each of whom is spent $12,811 – meet science standards.

Such statistics do not bode well for students successfully meeting safe sex standards.

Speaking of flunking, in his new book “Flunking Democracy” Michael Rebell cites author Robin West (“The Case of Homeschooling”) with these reasons for the growing exodus from ‘education’: “gender equality, sex education, and acceptance of gay and lesbian sexual orientations.”

With the shift from educating to indoctrinating “many fled the public schools during the 1970s and 1980s.”

To homeschool.

And now that is under attack.

“This Article describes the rapidly growing homeschooling phenomenon and the threat it poses to children and society,” writes Elizabeth Bartholet in an 80-page 2019 publication she issued from her office where she is the Morris Wasserstein Public Interest Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

With no pretense, no attempt at subtility and supposedly guileless, Bartholet writes, “A very large proportion of homeschooling parents are ideologically committed to isolating their children from the majority culture and indoctrinating them in views and values that are in serious conflict with that culture.”

So?

So, that needs to change, implies Bartholet.

And to hear her tell it, it is the state’s job to legislate it and the school’s job to change it.

Bartholet cites Rob Reich (“Testing the Boundaries”) and seems to agree with his conclusion that “at a bare minimum one function of any school environment must be to expose children to and engage students with values and beliefs other than those of their parents.”

No. It is not.

It is not the job of the public-school system to pit the children against their parents.

But that’s what Sex Education is.

And that’s what Sex Education does.

And that’s what this battle is about.

If you are willing to relinquish control, yet again, to what is clearly, unabashedly an agendized curriculum that Reykdal admits will include “LGBTQ issues, contraception, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and sexual consent” then never mind.

If, however, as a parent, grandparent, parent-to-be, or non-parent, you are not willing to relinquish that control, then get your petitions here.

If every one of those who clicked ‘like’ at this link (291) in support of the position taken by the Clover Park School Board, would recruit just 10 friends and each would complete just one petition, there would be 60,000 signatures.

We’d be half done.