Parents Turn Out In Force To Oppose State Regulations

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

Parents from all over the state gathered last week to speak out against proposed regulations regarding two key, hot-button issues related to public education.

The Legislative Commission which handles regulatory changes between regular legislative sessions, met on Thursday, Aug. 30 in Las Vegas and, by live video stream, in Carson City. More than 150 parents showed up to the meeting to speak against two of the regulations being discussed. Many of these were parents from the Moapa Valley communities.

Transgender Issue Returns
The first item that brought the parents had been a proposed regulation on the treatment of transgender students in the state’s public schools.

Similar to the recent policy passed by the Clark County School District trustees, the regulation mandated the opening of restrooms and locker rooms to allow transgender students to use the facility of their choice while at school. It also required the schools’ use of preferred names and gender pronouns for transgender students.

In the days leading up to the meeting, parent advocacy groups had encouraged parents across the state to write letters to Commission members and express displeasure with the regulation. As a result of this campaign, the item was pulled from the meeting agenda at the last minute. It is unclear when, or if, the item will be brought back before the Commission.

But parents showed up in force to comment on the item all the same.
“It is clear that the reason that it was pulled was not some legislative or legal reason; but it was for political reasons,” said Logandale resident Lindsey Dalley in a comment before the Commission. “A lot of good people from your districts have taken time off work, got babysitters, disrupted their lives to come and speak on this issue today. And because it was clear that you didn’t have enough votes, it was pulled. That’s not fair to the people who have showed up here.”

Parents expressed concerns that the regulation considered only the rights of a small segment of students, while violating the rights of the majority.
“This is not a neutral policy,” said Overton parent Mindy Davies. “It doesn’t address the constitutional rights of all students. It violates privacy and freedom of speech; and it has been pushed through in the most unethical way without consulting parents in the least.”

Many parents expressed exhaustion at the process of having to show up at numerous meeting, during odd hours of the day, to speak out again and again against these matters.
“I want you to realize how difficult it is as a parent to attend these meetings,” said Moapa mom Amy Dalley. “We have sacrificed a lot of time and resources and gone to multiple meetings and don’t feel like we are being heard. There is a better solution to this. Parents want all children to be safe, both transgender and non-transgender. We can come up with a better solution if you will involve the parents.”

Moapa parent Lisa Wolfley echoed the feeling that parents had been marginalized in the discussion.
“The process of developing this regulation by the Nevada Department of Education is unethical at best,” Wolfley said. “There was no consideration given to parents, community, or medical professionals for consulations.”

Some parents pledged that if the regulation was brought before the Commission again and passed, there would be no other option but to pull their kids from public schools.
“As for me and other parents, we will be pulling our kids out of the public schools and doing home schooling with them,” said Logandale parent Melaina Bradshaw. “Please listen to the parents. There will be repercussions if these policies are passed.”

Moapa parent, Tim Watkins, explained that he has five children who have been part of the public school system for 20 years now.
“What you are doing will cause parents to seek other educational sources,” Watkins said. “These are the parents with economic resources to do so. Meanwhile there are thousands of people who may not be able to do it and may not have any options. Are you going to discriminate against those families?”

Many parents insisted that they would continue the fight in showing up in force every time the item was brought up for a vote.
“I am a parent, I have a voice,” said Logandale parent Erin Francom. “I will continue to fight for the rights of my children. These are topics that belong to the parents to teach in the home. I will fight for that!”

Changes To Social Studies
The other regulation item which drew parents to the meeting stayed on the agenda for discussion and action. It updated and revised the state standards for instruction in Social Studies. The update was needed to fulfill basic requirements of a law, passed in 2017, requiring that multiculturalism be inserted into the Social Studies curriculum in the state.

But Republican lawmakers on the Commission claimed that the regulation went far beyond what was mandated by the law.
“This is not just adding multiculturalism,” said Assemblyman Keith Pickard, R-Henderson. “It appears to go well beyond that in deleting a lot of the Social Studies curriculum.”

Steve Canavero, the state’s superintendent for public instruction, responded that in addition to the requirement to include multiculturalism, the department had found that the standards were in need of a full update. The last time they were updated was in 2008, he said.
“So this was kind of a two-for,” Canavero said. “We did both at the same time.”

Republicans on the Commission were concerned that the new standards removed requirements to teach traditional subjects such as the Pledge of Allegiance; reasons behind U.S. holidays, traditional patriotic activities and cultural events; foundational principles in U.S. history; and instruction on positive civic involvement.
“If you are a teacher working under these standards, you could go the whole year without talking about important symbols of the U.S. like the pledge or the flag and you’d be alright,” said State Sen. Scott Hammond R-Las Vegas. “You don’t actually have to go over it and there is nothing going to hold you accountable for it.”

Canavero said that the change reflects a trend in education that moves away from specific language and towards standards built more on “broad, conceptual critical thinking.”

Pickard asked how the state would measure progress and achievement under the new, less-specific guidelines. “We were looking for concrete expectations that we could measure,” he said. “But we seem to be going backward here. How do we measure success under these guidelines?”

The more conceptual skills required in the new standards would require a different type of assessment to measure success, acknowledged Sarah Brown with the Northwest Regional Professional Development Program who helped develop the standards.
“We will have to develop assessment tools that assess students deeper understanding, critical thinking and reasoning, rather than rote memory of specific minute details,” Brown said.

But this did not satisfy Pickard. “What alarms me is that we don’t know how we are going to measure this,” he said. “We are waiting for someone else to develop those assessments.”

Assemblyman Chris Edwards, whose district includes Overton, said that these broader, less specific standards are not the right direction for a state that is performing near the bottom of the nation in public education.

“I think that this is just more churn, and changing things that don’t need to be changed,” Edwards said. “The regulations we have actually help by specifying what the expectations are. This would cloud the water and diminish (teachers’) ability to get the job done. If we were ranked 5 or 10 or even 25, they could be given more flexibility. But right now I don’t trust the school system to give this flexibility.”

Parent concerns
An overwhelming majority of parents in attendance agreed with the Republican lawmakers.
Logandale parent Bryan Mortensen was concerned that the standards removed the material that all Americans have in common, while replacing it with concepts that tend to divide.

“I am struck by the anger and divisiveness in the language,” Mortensen said. “The pages of this regulation are littered with words like discrimination, oppression, scarcity, conflict, genocide and human rights violation.”

As an example, Mortensen worried about the removal of requirements to explain important symbols like the American flag and the Pledge of Allegiance.
The flag “…represents the progress that has been made collectively as a nation from our founding until now,” Mortensen said. “It represents freedom, liberty and justice for all. Those are principles and values that are shared by all cultures, all races, all ethnicities. It is one of the few things that define us as a nation. Yet the only regulation that ensures the teaching and reinforcement of that concept here in Nevada is about to be gutted.”

Logandale mom Keshia Phillipenas agreed in her comments. “Our standard should be an American standard,” she said. “Key historical events, figures facts and patriotic topics should not be reserved for a single course in high school. Instilling patriotism and national identity should be a K-12 standard.”

Many attendees identified themselves as first generation immigrants to the U.S. and said that they were stunned by the removal of so many important subjects from the Social Studies curriculum.
“The proudest moment of my life is when I took the oath of citizenship,” said one hispanic mom who said she had come to this country with her parents in 1977 fleeing the Castro regime in Cuba.
“You were born in this country,” she added addressing the legislators. “What are you doing? How could you trample on the blood of the people who have died for this country? Please! I’m afraid that we are adopting another Cuba, where our kids don’t understanding anything about where we have come from.”

“I am proud to be an American with a huge accent,” said Rudy Hernandez. “But when I came here I took on the culture with pride. It hurts me to see what you are doing here, stripping those values away.”

Approved on partisan lines
Democratic lawmakers on the Commission downplayed the reduction in specific subjects outlined in the new regulation, stating that these subjects were implied in the document for teachers to continue teaching.

Commission chair, Assemblyman Jason Frierson, D-Las Vegas, claimed that most of the subject matter that had been taken out of the standards from one section had been put back in somewhere else. In addition, some subjects, like the Pledge of Allegiance, are required to be taught in other sections of the state law, he said.
“What this does is to give teachers with 50 kids in a classroom now, the ability to be flexible in how they teach these subjects,” Frierson said.

Assemblywoman Maggie Carlson, D-Las Vegas, said that the fact that Nevada’s historically poor education rankings indicated it might be time for a shake up in its academic standards. But she echoed the idea that the standards should not be too specific on exactly how educators present the curriculum.
“I don’t think we should be micromanaging every single teacher in every classroom in the state,” she said.

Senator Patricia Farley, the lone independent on the commission, said that she was in favor of requiring a more multicultural approach to the curriculum.
“When I was growing up, we were not really taught multiculturalism,” she said. “Now I pay for private schools so that my kids are taught this way. I think that this is now bringing that level into the public school system.”

The commission voted 7-5 to approve the regulations. All five Republicans voted against them. The six Democrats and Farley voted in favor of them