Youngkin’s Rhetoric of 'Parental Rights' Abandons Students Like Us
Throughout his campaign for Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin embraced the rhetoric of “parental rights,” allowing it to guide his campaign’s position on key issues, including mask mandates and diversity efforts in our K-12 system.To be clear, there is a dire need to ensure that parents have a voice in our education.
The disregarded mental health concerns, failure to appropriately implement accommodations for disabled students, and lackluster equity responses during the COVID-19 pandemic made clear the school systems were largely ill-equipped to handle community concerns.
As students, we are acutely aware of the difficulty in engaging with education leaders: We constantly raise concerns that fall onto deaf ears.
We can only imagine the similar frustrations of parents and teachers. Nonetheless, the failure of education leaders to address the needs of community members is not partisan but institutional.
