New Jersey’s Department of Education (NJDOE) is reminding school districts they will face “disciplinary action” if they do not implement the controversial health and sex education standards this year.
New Jersey Student Learning Standards are mandatory “and failure to comply can result in disciplinary action. For any children to be excused from any part of instruction in health, family life, or sex education, their parent or guardian must inform the school principal in writing that the instruction conflicts with their conscience or sincerely held moral or religious beliefs,” according to a published statement from the NJDOE.
Additionally, the NJDOE specified that parents who do not want their children to participate in these classes must write a letter to the principal explaining that the lessons contradict their personal values and beliefs.
Sex Education
At issue are health and sex education standards that the NJDOE adopted in June 2020. Republican lawmakers, under a parental rights initiative, contend that the standards delve into a range of sex and sexuality-related topics before children reach appropriate ages for learning about them.
GOP lawmakers last month held a virtual hearing with school board members, experts, and concerned parents for over two hours, whose objections focused on parental rights they feel is being ignored when it comes to objection around the appropriate grades to discuss such topics and, as gender expression and identity, sexual activity and masturbation, especially for kindergarten through sixth grade.
Fight with NJEA
“Parents are angry. They feel ignored, helpless, and frustrated,” said State Sen. Kristin Corrado (R-40) earlier this year. “With parenting comes responsibilities, and Trenton bureaucrats are usurping that authority and relegating Moms and Dads to spectators in the raising of their children. The role of parents is sacrosanct, and they should have a say in every aspect of the education of their children.”
Republicans and activists anger on the subject increased further when the New Jersey Education Association ran ads in the run up to the start of school that attached what they called “extremists” for their aggressive tactics at school board meetings in the last year for issues such as COVID protocols, parental rights and concerns about how young to teach about sex in New Jersey schools.
State Sen. Joe Pennacchio (R-26) said that the parents raising the issue were not “nefarious actors” but “just concerned moms raising their children.”
Adopting Standards
From the NJDOE point of view, the standards are minimum expectations that permit school districts to implement them very broadly. The department reiterated that state law allows parents to opt their children out of health classes. Critics have argued this is unworkable due to lessons being incorporated in other subjects.
Some schools have developed alternative plans to adhere to the state standards—one North Jersey school is holding a one day class at the end of the year to adhere to the standards while other school boards across the state are having parents “opt in” to the lessons.
How Schools Are Tracked
NJDOE uses the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum (NJQSAC) to track how well school districts are complying with the educational requirements—with the state verifying each district self evaluation. If a district falls below 80% in any one of five NJQSAC areas (instruction and program; fiscal management; governance; operations; and personnel), a plan for performance improvement is required.
“Following the assessment, the district is placed on a performance continuum that will determine the level of oversight, and technical assistance and support it receives,” the state said of non-compliant districts. The state will have the final authority on if additional monitoring or intervention is warranted.
” **controversial** health and sex education standards”? Seriously? Can anyone manufacture outrage over anything and make it “controversial” now? There’s literally nothing concrete that anyone can even point to that’s so offensive about it. This is almost as bad as saying the concept of anthropogenic climate change (or evolution for that matter) are “controversial”.
If Tucker Carlson started saying that liking the color blue was wrong, a third of the country would swallow it without question. They’d get up in arms over it and the MSM would start reporting that liking blue is now “controversial”.
It’s very simple. If you don’t agree with the standards, write a short, one-sentence letter to the principal explaining that the curriculum conflicts with your values or religious beliefs. That’s all it takes to have your child excused from the curriculum. But you’ll be sorry if you do, because then your kid will learn about sex and sexuality from uninformed and unprofessional sources, which is going to lead to problems down the road. Cause if you’re opposed to the curriculum, chances are, you’re also too uncomfortable with the subject to teach your children adequately yourself in accordance with your values and beliefs. And that, folks, is why the subject should be taught in our classrooms by trained professionals.
It’s not sex ed they want—their focus is on sexual indoctrination (grooming!).
Please get help for your obsession with perversion. Seems like you might be projecting.
Violence is a crime. Physically assaulting an innocent person is an act of hate and violence. There are others ways to commit crimes again people. LYING to people is an act of moral violence.
Lying to children is a particularly heinous moral crime. Everytime a teacher in a school posts a chart detailing so called transgender pronouns or facilitates the erroneous and lunatic belief that boys can become girls and vice -versa, they are humiliating themselves, debasing their profession and committing acts or moral violence against innocent children. Government school systems have nothing to say about sex or sexuality beyond facts about reproduction.
You may not like reality, Dirk, but you cannot deny it. The reality is that people can undergo gender reassignment surgery and other medical measures designed to conform bodies with manifested gender identity. Once someone begins to identify with a particular gender (or identifies as non-binary), whether or not they have been medically altered to conform, they tend to want to be addressed by others using pronouns that recognize that identity. Whether or not you choose to accept that desire to be addressed using a particular pronoun, that does not change the fact that many such people exist. Children deserve to know about these realities. Parents can help children to decide how they feel about such gender identities, whether or not they should accept them as morally or otherwise “right” in accordance with parental values, but denying the reality that such people exist and educating children about the nature of such people, and the issues surrounding them, is abusive to the children as well as to the individuals undergoing gender identity transitions. So yes, government and schools are teaching students about facts, the fact of the existence of transgender and non-binary individuals. Why does teaching about what actually exists in reality strike you as so dangerous? How does acknowledging reality threaten your values or the values of anyone, for that matter? Does acknowledging reality mean you’re encouraging children to become transgender? Of course not! Your posts epitomize the very meaning of transphobia at its most basic level — you are simply afraid.
LORD!! What is this Country Coming To;!!//