The session is winding down, albeit very slowly. We have been at an “On-Call” status for two weeks now as differences between House and Senate bills are ironed out. On Tuesday of this week, we did gavel in and pass several bills, most notably passing the Senate amendments to the E-15 Bio-Fuels bill. This bill will help increase the use of ethanol in Iowa, and thus help support our agricultural economy.
One of the issues yet to be resolved is the governor’s Students First Scholarship Program. The governor has been pushing for greater choice in education since the 2021 session. The Senate has passed Senate File 2369, a bill that would offer scholarships of $5,500 to a maximum of 10,000 students in Iowa to attend a private or religious school, half for students with an Individual Education Plan, and the other half for lower-income families. The House has yet to act on this bill. 10,000 students represent roughly 2% of Iowa’s students.
I’ve heard from many folks that are in support of the idea, and many that oppose it. I firmly support the idea based on the idea that it will bring competition and freedom to education and give more options to lower-income families. Furthermore, I support them because of the disturbing trend I see in public education of using our public schools to indoctrinate students with highly biased political views and sexually inappropriate material. Our public education system has a fundamental responsibility to teach our children the life skills they need to live a good life.
Here are a few examples of that trend, right here in Iowa.
This past week the school board at the Linn-Mar school district passed a Transgender policy that green-lights students that self -identify as the opposite sex to use the bathrooms, showers, and other facilities per their “Gender Identity” instead of as their actual biological sex. In other words, boys posing as girls are free to use the girl’s restrooms, showers, and to share hotel rooms with girls on class trips. The school board insisted that state law requires this, but that is false, this is specifically addressed in the Iowa Civil Rights Code, it is not required. Parents at the school board meeting spoke out against the measure, far more than spoke in favor, yet the school board ignored the opposition and passed the policy anyway.
A video of public school administrators in different Des Moines area schools was released last week. It featured these administrators bragging about how they are ignoring and skirting around the law passed in 2021 that bars schools from teaching “Divisive Concepts” such as Critical Race Theory, the 1619 Project, and other racially and culturally divisive agendas.
In an Iowa City at the Tate Alternative High school there was a presentation to students during a “UAY Pride conference” that contained a slide that said: “We owe pride to black and transgender women who threw bricks at cops.”
In the Mount Vernon, Iowa, school district will be providing “Guidance Lessons” to pre-K through fourth grades that include children’s books such as “Princess Boy” and “Jacob’s New Dress”, books that will introduce Gender Identity and encourage gender confusion in impressionable young students. In fourth grade the lessons will include an introduction to “Gender Stereotypes”.
The Ames school district during their “Black Lives Matter Week of Action” in February of 2021 distributed an eight page list of “LGBTQ+ Related Vocabulary Definitions” to fourth graders. This list included terms such as androgyny, bi-curious, bi-gender, drag queen, top surgery, and dozens of other terms and concepts related to homosexuality and gender identity.
And of course I have seen examples of grossly inappropriate books that are in many of our public school libraries that have pictures and text that are not suitable for children. Books such as “Gender Queer” that includes cartoon pictures of an underage boy engaging in a sex act with an adult male, Tricks” with explicit descriptions of sex acts, and “Push” with explicit descriptions of the incest rape of a child.
These are just a few recent examples of grossly inappropriate, and possibly illegal, behavior in our public schools. I am confident this is just the tip of the iceberg. As more parents and students become aware and frustrated with just how widespread this sexual and political indoctrination has become we will hear more in the months to come. This is one of the reasons why we need more choices for our parents and children in education. Far too many children in many of our public schools are being subjected to what is in reality a sexual grooming type of agenda and being subjected to political indoctrination. The public schools engaging in this activity are violating the public trust. I will continue to fight this insanity legislatively, and by helping to bring this behavior to light. We can not count on state government alone to fight this. Parents and all others in the community must be diligent in monitoring what their children are being taught, and they must speak out and demand corrective action when they find things that are inappropriate.
I agree, thank you for saying Yes to freedom of choice Dean. All parties should watch the documentary Whose Children Are They? !!