Over the last few years, the conservative parental rights movement has thrust public schools into the center of debates over hot-button issues like censorship, gender and race.
Laws like North Carolina’s Parents Bill of Rights illustrate how the movement has made inroads in driving education policy. But the North Carolina Values Coalition’s “Mama Bear Workshops” show how some involved in the movement believe that work isn’t done.
What is a “Mama Bear Workshop?”
The latest Mama Bear Workshop was held in late March in Arden, but these events, hosted by the NC Values Coalition, are not open to the press.
Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the NC Values Coalition, told WFAE after the event that the Mama Bear Workshops started about four years ago. She said they were created to inform parents about books that might be found in schools or included in curriculum that the group believes are obscene, inappropriate or that indoctrinate students to a particular viewpoint.
The events also aim to teach parents how to push back on instructional materials they find concerning.
What kind of strategies do they teach parents?
Fitzgerald said they encourage families to start small — to voice concerns with a teacher — and then work up the ladder to principal, superintendent and ultimately the school board.
But a big part of it, she said, is teaching parents how to identify concerning content.
"We’re also talking to them about how to find the bad books in the libraries — and what titles to look for, what things to look for in the books," Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald argues that many parents aren’t aware of the kinds of books their kids are reading in schools.
"We're just teaching parents how to protect their rights, how to protect their children and how to be more involved in their children's school because we believe that schools should be about learning, not about destroying the innocence of children," she said.
She told me they also encourage parents to use public records requests to review student
curricula.
What kind of "bad books," “obscenities” and “indoctrination” does the group oppose?
This is at the heart of what make the parental rights movement divisive. We’ve seen this manifest in laws like North Carolina’s Parents Bill of Rights.
The law requires districts to set up processes for parents to review whether books are appropriate for schools.
But critics say those policies lead to “book banning” or “censorship.”
Fitzgerald said NC Values opposes overly sexual content in books at schools, but they also oppose teaching about things like gender identity or sexuality, claiming many parents don’t want their children learning about this, and that schools are doing it against parental wishes. The group accuses schools of "indoctrinating" students and teaching them this content instead of focusing on math and reading.
Many in the LGBTQ community have said the focus on treating gender identity or sexuality as something “obscene” ends up ostracizing LGBTQ youth.
How have the parental rights movement and the Mama Bear Workshops changed since the Parents Bill of Rights and the Trump administration?
I asked Fitzgerald about that, specifically whether she felt the Parents Bill of Rights was doing what they’d hoped it would accomplish.
“If all those schools would implement the law, it would be working. But we only have less than half of the schools in the state that have actually implemented everything in the law," Fitzgerald said.
She said there’s been more of a focus on enforcement lately.
One of the topics discussed at this latest Mama Bear Workshop was legislation that the group supports — including a new state House bill that would allow parents to sue school districts they feel are skirting the law and that sets new rules for what’s allowed in school libraries.
What else can you tell us about this latest Mama Bear Workshop?
A write-up of the event on the NC Values website shows school board members from Catawba and Henderson County schools were in attendance, along with Republican State Rep. Jennifer Balkcom.
There were several speakers, including a representative from the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Fitzgerald told me there was a group that set up a table with examples of so-called bad books that they said were commonly found in North Carolina schools.
