Brian Mittge: Bad education bills move forward; time to stand up for sanity in schools

Of all the fights in our modern society, all the polarization and division, our schools and classrooms should not be battlegrounds or places where politics permeate.

Unfortunately, a slate of bills continue to move forward that push the ideology of gender flexibility and confusion deeper into Washington classrooms.

These bills take focus away from truly important academic goals, areas like math, reading and science, where our students are struggling and falling short. 

They discourage many teachers, driving them from the profession as they are forced to validate ideologies that go against their conscience and lead children astray. 

They hide medical information about their children from parents, who increasingly feel they have no choice but to pull their kids from public schools in concern and disgust. 

And worst of all, they confuse children by setting down in state law ideas that are simply not true. 

Unfortunately, the majority Democratic party in the state Legislature is pushing hard on a number of bad bills as the last day of session on April 27 looms. 

There is still time to oppose these bills, especially if you live in an area represented by Democratic members of the House or Senate. (All Republicans representing the 20th and 19th districts in Lewis County oppose these bills already.)

A few of the bills that would push classrooms and schools in the wrong direction: 

• Senate Bill 5181 would weaken the parental rights measure, I-2081, which had so much public support last year that lawmakers passed it into law 49-0 in the Senate and 82-15 in the House without even sending it to voters. Lawmakers want to kill off I-2081’s right for parents to inspect their children’s health records, including mental health counseling. The bill also removes the initiative’s requirement that parents receive prior notification when medical services (except for emergency care) are being offered to their child. Would any parent ever want that information to be hidden from them?  Of course not. And yet lawmakers are trying to take away these crucial rights from parents — and with such urgency that there is an emergency clause on that bill that causes it to take effect immediately, with no ability for a citizen referendum.
•  House Bill 1296 continues the removal of parental rights, taking away access for parents to critical education/health records for their public school students. The bill has a focus on “transgender students and gender-expansive students.” Legislators are getting out the beating stick for districts that stand up for local control and parental rights: the bill would give the Superintendent of Public Instruction the ability to withhold money from the “offending school district,” to directly terminate “flagrant” programs, to institute “corrective action” and to place the district on probation “with appropriate sanctions until compliance is achieved.” 
• Senate Bill 5123 adds a laundry list of protected categories to anti-discrimination laws in public schools, setting up special protections for a wide swath of potentially ambiguous categories such as ethnicity, gender expression, gender identity, homelessness, immigration status and neurodivergence. (“Gender identity,” by the way, is defined as “internal sense of being male, female, both, neither or in-between.” Parents and educators who don’t agree with this way of seeing the world are out of luck or subject to the beating stick of HB 1296.)

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To all our local educators whose lives are made more difficult by these laws, whose spirits are weighed down when our Legislature pushes them to accept concepts or advocate for ideologies that are against their conscience and common sense: we see you and support you.

In a state where lawmakers are trying to say that up is down and day is night, please know that many of us still want our teachers to stay pointed toward what’s real and stand up for what’s right. We appreciate you loving our kids enough to tell them the truth, even if our state lawmakers try to mandate ideologies and mindsets that claim gender is a fluid spectrum.

We owe our kids the truth. The most loving thing we can do for children is to tell them that being born a boy or a girl is reality and it’s a gift. Instead of suggesting that physical reality can be changed by hormones or surgery, pretending away nature and using preferred pronouns, let’s support our children in recognizing, celebrating and growing within the bodies they were given.

In a time of confusion, let’s make schools a place of reason and reality. That’s something everyone can — or should — agree on.

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Brian Mittge is a community enthusiast who has written for The Chronicle since 2000 as a reporter, editor and columnist. He can be reached at brianmittge@hotmail.com.