Including: Executive Orders By Booth Gardner and Mike Lowry, Government Agency Activism (OSPI, DSHS and DOH), 1988 Omnibus AIDS Bill, Education Associations, Pro-homosexual Organizations, National Involvement, Outcome Based Education, Values-Free Sex Education, Advocacy Through "Peer Education" Programs And Unsupervised Student Publications.

SUMMARY:

The 1980's and 90's have witnessed unprecedented changes in the words, images, topics, attitudes, philosophies and role models children are exposed to in Washington's public school system. These changes have not only detracted from a proper focus on academic subjects, they have flagrantly violated the standards and values parents seek to impart to their children.

Parents who object to various questionable educational activities often find that, through front-loaded training and indoctrination (often at taxpayer-funded "seminars"), educators have been conditioned to resist attempts by school district patrons to regain control of the education system their tax dollars support.

Special interest organizations such as education associations, so-called civil liberties groups and even organizations whose sole distinguishing characteristic is claimed sexual behavior, having assumed undue credibility and influence in the public school system, successfully push their narrow ideological agenda into public education.

Particularly disturbing to many parents is a recurring pattern of cooperation between government entities in efforts - not to enhance the basic academic education all parents desire for their children - but to persuade students to adopt new attitudes, values and beliefs in controversial areas previously respected as the distinct domain of parents and families.

Washington for Traditional Values in no way suggests that parents should leap aboard the victim status bandwagon and clamor for their "rights." Parents and taxpayers should be aware that they already occupy the uppermost position in the educational hierarchy (which proceeds from school district patrons, to school board members elected by those patrons, to administrators hired by the school board, to staff and teachers approved by administrators.) The public school system exists to serve parents by providing appropriate academic instruction to their children.

Washington for Traditional Values therefore endorses reasonable parents' rights legislation which will have the effect of protecting parents and students from intrusion into, or attempts at coercion from, their values and firmly held beliefs. Such legislation should also ensure that education is academically oriented, should prevent school personnel and guests of school districts from pursuing political or social agenda, should specifically provide for prior notification of parents regarding any experimental, pilot, or special class or program and should require prior review and approval by adult school personnel for student publications such as newsletters, pamphlets or flyers.

Washington for Traditional Values
Education Foundation
PO Box 6189
Vancouver, WA 98668
(360) 693-2603 Office
(360) 693-2784 FAX

E-Mail: Bob Larimer

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