Are Parents Rights Political? Should Public Schools Prevent Parental Rights Notification?

Recently, a teacher friend of mine took it upon herself to create a booklet out of the Parents Bill of Rights (posted here on the United Opt Out website - thank you Nikki Jones, Oklahoma Coordinator) passed last year into law due in large part to ParentalRights.org Oklahoma Coordinator Tracey Montgomery. 

So excited was she to impart this information to fellow teachers, staff and parents, she took them to school and began to pass them out. Not long afterward, her principal pulled her out of class, told her it was illegal to pass out the booklets and that she was to stop. 

My teacher friend knew this to be an incorrect interpretation of statute, so she asked her principal to cite the law and provide it to her in writing. That evening she received the following email: 

It has come to my attention that you are distributing political information to other teachers.  A complaint was made.  Please stop distributing the material immediately.  The OKCPS AFT Collective Bargaining Agreement states:

Article XII – Political Activity

Section 1:  Teachers’ political activities shall be individual and personal, and the involvement of teachers in any political activities shall be at the sole discretion of the individual teachers.

Section 2:  Teachers’ political activities shall in no way interfere with their obligations or assigned duties during their workday and shall not in any manner be injected into the educational programs of the District.

Section 3:  No action shall be taken with respect to a teacher’s political activities except in the case of a violation of this article.

Refrain from involving other staff members in any political activity that you are personally involved.

Is there anything in this email that refers to handing out a booklet of LAW covering the rights of parents? No. In fact, this email doesn't say that handing out information regarding a state law is illegal. A state law is NOT political. Political activities refer to such things as campaigning, lobbying and/or voting. The Parents Bill of Rights is a law - my teacher friend wasn't lobbying for the bill - it passed last year - nor was she trying to build a campaign for public office or get anyone to vote for the bill - again, it's a LAW.

I had another friend of mine search Oklahoma Statutes to see if this teacher was in violation of any school code (210:20-29-3. Principle I: Commitment to the students and 210:20-29-4. Principle II: Commitment to the profession). We were unable to find anything that would pertain to passing out a law detailing parents rights to parents, teachers and staff at a public school - where, incidentally, many of these rights exist. 

Looking for further information on the topic of "free speech and public schools" I found a document from the Center for Public Education. It says,

Over the years the courts have ruled that school employees are not always free to express their opinions and beliefs. Employees cannot be disciplined or suffer negative consequences for speaking out on matters of “public concern.” Schools can take action, however, when employees go public with strictly personal concerns.

The main U.S. Supreme Court case is Pickering v. Board of Education, which held that freedom of speech—while not absolute—gives employees Constitutional protection if they are speaking about issues of a public nature, rather than those things about which they have a personal stake. Pickering overturned a school district’s decision to fire a teacher for commenting on school expenditures through letters in a local newspaper.

Certainly, providing parents with a law concerning their rights would be considered a matter of "public concern". 

This certainly is a head-scratcher. Why would a public school administration not want parents and staff to have access to information that could only help parents understand their rights and responsibilities!? 

Sadly, we've found over the years as parents have sent us their concerns/complaints about their school/teacher/principal, that school administrators often either don't know the rights of parents, or misrepresent the rights of parents to the point that parents come away with the idea that school officials have more control over the student (child) than the parent. 

It seems a no-brainer that school officials would WANT parents to know their rights - including the rights they have over their child's education within the confines of the school community - but to be fair, schools are more often attuned to the rights of the student than the parent, so maybe there simply isn't enough training in this area and the principal's ignorance on the topic caused confusion.

In the end, I would hope all Oklahomans could agree that a booklet created to enlighten parents, school officials and others about the rights of parents would be a supported activity, not one deserving of formal reprimand. 

Common Core Is NOT OK Rally Summary

And so it was that Wednesday, March 27, somewhere between 150 and 200 people came to the Oklahoma State Capitol to rally against the Common Core State Standards!  We were so grateful to look out and see such a fabulous crowd!  We know the time and energy it takes to leave your home and put aside your day to do something like this and we truly appreciate your willingness to work with us to stop the de-humanization and de-localization of public education.

I'm not going to take the time today to rehash all the reasons why we object to the Common Core in this post, but I will make sure that those of you who wish to have ammunition to give your friends, family members and neighbors, can get that here - in a one stop shop of sorts!

A brief list of Common Core educational materials

Here is a link to our one page information sheet called, "What Oklahomans Need To Know About Common Core State Standards".  If you're not in Oklahoma and wish to have something more generic, please use this handout from our friends at the Truth in American Education website.

Here is the paper that really helped to spread the word about CCSS, "Common Core State Standards, An Introduction To Marxism 101"  This should help you put the background together on where the Common Core came from - it's political background and who's behind the push.

For those of you interested also in the data collection aspect, our paper, "How Much Data Is Enough Data? What happens to privacy when bureaucracies exceed their scope?" might be of interest.  We also have another one page information sheet called, "What Oklahomans Need To Know About The P20 Council" that you can hand out to those seeking information.

A number of media outlets were represented at the Rally.  Below, are posted the links to the stories the rally generated.


Educators Protest New Guidelines At State House (added 4/1) - I totally forgot to post this video/story from NewsChannel 4.  I thought their reporting was absolutely great!  Both sides, no spin.  Two thumbs up!

Lawmakers Urged To Reject Proposed Nationwide Academic Standards - this was a video from our Daily Oklahoman.  We thought this video - and the news story - very fair.

Protestors Rally Against New School Curriculum - this was from our FOX affiliate.  Not bad, but didn't really get to the meat of the matter, just more about 'federal takeover'.  Also, in this story, I lost 3 of my children!  My husband, who watched the story with me said, "Do we get to pick which ones we lose?" (David and I have 5 children, not the 2 depicted in the story!)

Opponents of 'Common Core Standards' Education Rally At State Capitol.  This was from the AP and instead of doing their own reporting, LOCALLY OWNED KWTV-Channel 9 picked up the AP report.  So did Glenn Beck!  The reporting in this 'article' (if you can call it that) was SO atrocious that Glenn Beck picked it up off the wire and skewered it on the radio!  This was HORRIBLE.  I imagine News9 will lose a number of viewers over this - they lost me!  It was so bad in fact, that I penned this reply:

Hunter (a very liberal hate-speak blogger), you might get some sleep...that might help your disposition a bit. This 'loon' would like to ask you a question, "Would you buy a car sight unseen?" These standards were put into Oklahoma law before they were even available to read. So, you're all for making school kids Guinea Pigs in an education experiment that could affect them for the rest of their lives? You must not like kids very much! Here's another question for you, "Would you show up to buy a car without knowing how much it cost?" I wouldn't. I research that kind of stuff pretty thoroughly. We had no idea how much the Common Core would cost before they were enacted into law and two years later, our superintendent simply said she anticipated low costs. Since that time schools have had to apply for eRate grants and raise school bonds to pay for the technology costs to give the tests tied to the Standards. You must not care about your property taxes much, or the fact that the superintendent just asked for about 140 MILLION dollars more for education spending. Will that go to teachers? No. Will that go to kids? NO. It will go to buying computer and testing software and wiring. You must not be for more money in the classroom are you? I do hope you don't call yourself an advocate for Public Schools or education or children. We at ROPE care about teachers and students - that's why we say COMMON CORE IS NOT OK!

Here are the videos from the rally in order of speaker appearance, if you would like to watch and/or pass around:

Jenni White and Representative Gus Blackwell 

Representative David Brumbaugh

Reverend Paul Blair 

Tracey Montgomery (Oklahoma Coordinator - ParentalRights.org) 

Linda Murphy (longtime educator and owner of Education and Training Services)

Rally effects:

All Rally attendees were asked to write their name, address and phone number on three red postcards with our anti-Common Core logo on the other side.  They were then, at the rally, asked to take those postcards and deliver them to the offices of their Senator and Representative and the office of Governor Mary Fallin.  At the end of the rally, Lynn, Danna and Julia and I went to the Governor's office to drop off our cards.  We were met by the very unhappy office assistant who gruffly took the cards, timestamped them and plopped them onto a stack about 1 1/2 to 2 inches high.

In the event people don't remember, our bill (HB1907), run by Representative Gus Blackwell, to create a task force simply to study the cost of the Common Core, passed its committee hearing unanimously.  It was blocked from a hearing on the floor by Speaker T.W. Shannon at the behest of our Governor who is the Vice-Chair of the NGA.  After all, it wouldn't look good for the Vice Chair of the National Governor's Association to start trying to kill the Common Core when the NGA was one of two private, non-governmental trade organizations developing and pushing out the standards?  Oh, Representative Shannon offered Representative Blackwell an interim study to study all aspects of the Common Core in return, so we should have been happy with that and moved on to 'more important' topics, apparently, but of course, we don't quit that easily.  We immediately began setting up the rally and taking to Twitter and Facebook, calling the politics of our Governor and Speaker out into the open.

Representative Blackwell began authoring a House Joint Resolution against the Common Core - HJR1011 - which is a truly excellent piece of legislation.  As soon as it is written onto the Oklahoma State Legislature webpage, we'll provide the link.  Currently, we are attempting to get as many House authors on the bill as possible.  We are even attempting to get an SJR.  We have an author, my State Senator Ron Sharp and even a few Senators to sign on with him, but our Oklahoma Senate seems to be the toughest place to get good, conservative, liberty-minded legislation passed - ever.

Yesterday, Representative Blackwell called me to tell me he had heard from "a number" of legislators who stopped by to the rally to listen.  They expressed their concerns over Common Core and asked him for more information on the topic.  Not only that, but Rep. Blackwell visited with T.W. Shannon (who, we found out, will be a GUEST on the GLENN BECK program in the near future!) who told him he would make sure our HJR got to the floor.  This is great because our SJR says that implementation of Common Core will STOP until we have satisfied at least 6 different categories of inquiry on the topic!  

In closing, we are extraordinarily happy about the rally and expect that God will multiply our efforts toward restoring local public education!  We are grateful for all speakers and participants and suggest that, as many of us know, legislators will only see the light when they feel the heat.  We MUST continue to push this issue out there as often as possible - into the media and with our elected representatives bypassed by the initial legislation!  Let's not rest until Common Core is gone because COMMON CORE IS NOT OK!