Given the inflammatory language used and number of columns written by certain candidates for Sparta Board of Education, one would think “parental rights” is the burning issue of this election.
Indeed, one current BOE member running for re-election says parental rights is a “hill she’s willing to die on” and if her advocacy “burns a bridge, I have matches and we ride at dawn.”
Having presided over a BOE term that brought a staggering 5.8 percent tax increase, I’m surprised this candidate has any matches left after torching taxpayer money.
Advocates of the “parental rights” movement even use warlike images of a mother on a battlefield shielding her child from burning arrows.
The casualties of the “parental rights” movement aren’t the rights of parents to raise and direct their children as they see fit but the rights of taxpayers to have cost-effective government that focuses on policies and spending that educate and improve opportunities for our children.
While the current BOE and certain “parental rights” candidates focus on rewriting legally vetted and statewide adopted policies on objections to books and transgender rights, Sparta schoolchildren are crammed into 30-year-old trailers or taught in buildings in dire need of improvement.
High school students lack adequate and available medical resources with one nurse responsible for attending to the medical needs of 1,000 high school students.
Teachers are without classrooms and face burgeoning class sizes due to staff cuts and departures due in part to fear they’ll be targeted for teaching subjects that don’t comport with the political whims of certain BOE members.
The ammunition for this “parental rights” war are taxpayer dollars used to pay the BOE lawyer to research and rewrite previously legally sound policies that will likely lead to costly and legally dubious battles. For example, districts that have repealed or rewritten the state transgender policy as Sparta BOE decided to do on Sept. 28 are being sued by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office.
The current board is spending six times more each month on their attorney than the previous board did on the former attorney.
Considering Sparta’s declining district ranking, the bridge “parental rights” advocates are burning is the one our schoolchildren need and use for better opportunities.
It’s bad enough that the “parental rights” movement distracts school officials from focusing on important educational issues, but the whole movement is fraught with hypocrisy and contradiction. While decrying government overreach, the parental rights movement asks the government (teachers and school administrators) to be responsible for alerting parents if a child expresses a gender identity at school other than the one assigned at birth.
Aren’t parents in the best position to know and understand if their child is experiencing gender identity issues? Why should we cede this responsibility to the government? Why do parents need the government to step in and do their job for them?
If you’re worried about the government inculcating values that you disagree with, the solution isn’t to give government more power over monitoring your child’s freedom of expression as that will likely lead to the government curtailing it.
Thankfully, there are a slate of BOE candidates that aren’t mired in this political morass but are prioritizing fiscal responsibility and policies that educate and expand opportunities for Sparta’s schoolchildren.
Chad Wood, Jennifer Grana and Kaitlin Gagnon have released a series of policy proposals aimed at curbing reckless spending and redirecting our BOE’s focus. These policies and priorities include curbing legal overspending and taking the board attorney contract out for competitive bidding, ending hiring and firing issues, collaborating with teachers and departments when policies must be revised, ending attorney oversight of the Open Public Records Act and addressing overload stipends, to name a few.
These proposals are consistent with a taxpayer’s right to have government officials focus on cost-effective policies that prioritize improving children’s educational experience and expanding their opportunities.
Stop involuntarily enlisting Sparta schoolchildren as pawns in a political battle that pit parents against teachers and school administrators. “Parental rights” advocates should stop burning taxpayer money and save their matches for lighting a fire under their candidates to focus on policies that educate rather than politicize our children.
Shawn Carroll
Sparta