In Essex County’s Cedar Grove Schools District, a petition is circulating asking for a recall vote of school board member Christine Dye. It currently has more than 3,000 signatures. Why the uproar? Earlier this year when Dye was president of the board, the district administered a survey to all 3d-12th grade students–without parental permission–asking them to describe their gender identity. According to the NJ Globe, Gov. Murphy’s Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan, who actually lives in Cedar Grove, later ruled that the survey violated two state laws. Oops.
Meanwhile,the Sussex-Wantage Regional Board of Education passed a resolution last week pushing back on the Education Department’s new sex ed course content. The resolution, according to the Herald, specifically claims the district’s authority to “approve curriculum and instructional materials that are current, medically accurate, developmentally and age-appropriate, and developed and selected through meaningful and ongoing consultation with the school community, including parents.” In order to “minimize school interference in the personal and private decisions of parents/guardians related to the upbringing of their children,” the school board decrees, it will not comply with the new student learning standards.
School Board President Nick D’Agostino said in an email that the resolution was created as a result of “frustrations” from board members, employees and parents in the district.”Our Sussex-Wantage community at large is baffled and, quite frankly, disgusted with the state’s insistence on perverting our prepubescent students’ minds with topics such as gender identity and masturbation,” D’Agostino said. “The vast majority of us believe in the rights of parents/guardians to broach sensitive topics with their children and vehemently despise government sexualizing the most innocent years of their lives.”
In Chester School District, a teacher will work over the summer to rewrite some of the State Department of Education’s course content. “We adopted a balanced, child-centered approach to the new standards and did not add any new objectives regarding sex education to the Health Curriculum in grades K-5,” Superintendent Dr. Christina Van Woert told the Patch. “As previously noted, there will be an opt-out policy and procedure for the Health Curriculum in grades K-8 that we will outline in the fall prior to the start of the school year,” she said.
Meanwhile, a bill proposed by Senate Education Chair Vin Gopal that would require school districts to be transparent about their curricula in every subject has stalled on the Statehouse floor. From the Jersey Monitor:
Critics, riled up by conservatives who regard the new standards as pornographic and obscene, urged committee members to reject the bills and repeal the new standards. The committee does not have the authority to do so: The state Board of Education sets standards and local schools create and pass curricula based on them. Curricula based on the standards, which the board adopted in June 2020, will be implemented in schools statewide this fall.
“We will not allow our children to be force-fed content we oppose! We will not co-parent with the government!” said Eric Simkin, a parent and school board candidate from Voorhees.
Renata Brand of Monmouth County complained the new standards go “against our Judeo-Christian values,” adding: “The vast majority of parents in New Jersey are Judeo-Christian.”
“Family values are being undermined by the 2020 standards. Parental rights are being subverted by the very schools that were entrusted by the parents to teach our children. The children are being corrupted and confused,” Brand said.
