Tuesday’s non-partisan spring general election provided one big lesson for Wisconsin: parents are catching on to what is happening in public schools. Conservative school board candidates had a banner night on Tuesday, winning all the available seats in Wausau, Manitowoc, Waukesha, Menomonee falls, Elm Brook New Berlin, Mukwonago, Kewaskum, West Bend, and Germantown, just to name a few. Conservatives made gains in many more school districts across the state by displacing incumbent liberals and flipping county boards, city councils, and school boards.
In Brown County, three of the seven candidates WFA PAC endorsed won, and in Kenosha County, conservatives flipped the county board and also won three seats on the School Board. Cedarburg School District and Wausau also favored conservatives, as three of four conservative candidates that WFA, Inc.,encouraged people to vote for won in both areas.
Education has been the major issue in elections since last year when Terry McAuliffe, Democrat candidate for governor of Virginia said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” He lost the Virginia governor’s race because of that rare moment of honesty. Shortly after that, President Biden’s education secretary, Miguel Cardona, was asked if he thought parents are the primary stakeholder in their children’s education. He responded that they were “a stakeholder,” but refused to say that they were the primary stakeholder.
Then earlier this year, right here in Wisconsin, we had Representative Lee Snodgrass, a Democrat from Appleton, tweet, “If parents want to ‘have a say’ in their child’s education, they should home school or pay for private school tuition out of their family budget.” Well, it turns out that on Tuesday, parents got to have a say after all.
The tone deafness coming from the left about our children’s education continues, however. Right now, many public school districts in Wisconsin are, as a policy, trying to put parents in the back seat of their children’s education. One of the worst examples comes out of Eau Claire, where the school district held a training event that told school staff, “Facilitators, guide this discussion [about sexual and gender identity]. Remember, parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities. That knowledge must be earned.” As if this was not shocking and inappropriate enough, the same school-sponsored event went on to characterize a parent’s objection to a child transitioning their gender away from God’s design as weaponizing religion.”
It is important to remember that God entrusts children to their parents, not to the government. Parents are responsible for raising up a child in the way he/she should go, which includes being responsible for and making decisions about, the child’s schooling. Hopefully, this Tuesday’s election results are taking us a few steps closer to putting parents back in control of their children’s education.
