"Parental rights" is one of the last phrases which you would expect to be controversial. Who wouldn't support a parent's right to be engaged in their child's education, or in any other aspect of their child's upbringing? Aside from being common sense, we know that when we're talking about education, outcomes are better for students with involved and supportive parents.

But parental rights is no longer an innocent term. It's yet another phrase which has been co-opted by political groups to have an alternate meaning.

This is by design, though; it's the same reason that political groups like to use the words "freedom", "liberty", "justice", "patriot", and others in the names of their organizations. In doing so, these groups do two things: One, they position their opposition to appear as the unreasonable party, regardless of what the political group is actually involved in. A "patriotic" group can push anti-science propaganda, make racist statements, or engage in any other type of unsavory activities, and anyone opposed to them is now also in opposition of "patriotism". Who would hate a patriotic group, consisting of true patriots!? Two, they identify themselves to others who also understand this labeling scheme. They can attach partisan connotations and affiliations to the group without outright saying they are, say, right-wing or conservative groups.

So what's happened to the phrase "parental rights"? When someone is really pushing on that phrase, what do they usually mean?

The push for parental rights in schools isn't anything new. Prior to COVID, parental rights were brought up in response to any curriculum, materials, or even books simply existing in school or city libraries which some parents found objectionable. This was usually done in response to sex-ed materials, and in most cases, asserting a parent's right to opt their child out of such material would be considered reasonable. Today, though, this has come to include any material a parent finds objectionable for any reason. It also includes frustrations over COVID responses and affiliated policies, particularly by parents which think that masks are child abuse, or that COVID isn't that big of a deal - assuming that they believe COVID is real in the first place. Thus, if anything is occurring within the public school system today which a parent doesn't agree with, it is now labeled as a direct violation of their parental rights to choose everything their child gets involved with or exposed to.

This designation is from the same playbook as the use of the other un-opposable keywords in group names. Candidates which run on a platform of "parental rights first" are setting their opposition up to be the bad guys. After all, how could you be against someone who puts the rights of parents first!? Sounds familiar.

If these candidates were actually for all parents' rights, it would be a reasonable position to adopt. But the problem is that they usually don't mean all parents' rights; they mean their own rights. If you are another parent, whether or not they are for your parental rights too depends entirely upon whether or not your political and other beliefs align with theirs.

This was evident with the COVID response in 2020-2021. The majority of Missoula County residents and parents supported continuing mask mandates throughout the worst of the pandemic, and they made this tangibly clear through public comments. MCPS trustees actually took the time to tally the comments, and tried to sort out duplicate comments or comments from the same household. Close to 80% of respondents were in favor of maintaining mandates, leaving the other 20% in the minority - with many of those left to feel ignored, and to complain about their lack of parental rights. Unfortunately, policies which require binary decisions usually mean that one group isn't going to get what they want. MCPS trustees were absolutely listening to all parents and attempting to respect their parental rights, and the reality is that many parents wanted one thing while a few wanted another. Reasonable people would understand the concepts of majority rule, compromise and it's limitations, and our best scientific understanding of a situation also having an influence on the response chosen.

The other component to the parental rights playbook is that parental rights should mean that every parent and family can decide what's best for them, and operate accordingly without restrictions. After all, if 80% want masks and 20% don't, let each do what they want in the name of parental rights. Of course, when talking about a full-blown pandemic, this would not result in an effective COVID mitigation strategy, and so such a suggestion was rightly considered unreasonable. However, this demand for parental micromanagement has extended into overreaching suggestions that every parent be able to examine every piece of curriculum (or any other material) a student sees, prior to the fact. Some parents have gone as far as to suggest that cameras or parental volunteers are installed in classrooms, in order to ensure that educators aren't teaching anything undesirable. What's undesirable? That's up to each parent. This would clearly be an unreasonable way to operate a classroom, let alone an entire school district.

If parents desire a level of micromanagement such that they have the time to approve every piece of curriculum and monitor students and teachers all day, they're essentially in the territory of homeschooling their children. And many of the MCPS candidates this year have done just that: pulled their kids out of the public school system, and either homeschooled them or placed them in a private school. Their right to do so is a reasonable parental right. Having curriculum and surveillance controls which negatively affect all students is not reasonable, nor is imposing such unreasonable measures on the entire school district when they stem from the political motivations of the minority. When speaking of trustee candidates, it is especially unreasonable to think that candidates which have removed their children from public school should have decision-making authority over everyone else's children still in public school.

To say that any trustee (or probably even any trustee candidate) does not care about parental rights - or does not respect the importance of parental rights and parental involvement - is ridiculous. However, please do not be fooled by the "parental rights" rallying call, particularly when it is used in the context that anything which a parent doesn't agree with in the school system and can't directly override is a violation of their parental rights. Recognize it for what it has become: a way to keep parents angry, to keep them feeling like they are not being listened to when they do not get their way, and a way to paint the opposition as unsupportive of "parental rights" if they question anything about a "parental rights" candidate's platform. Instead, look for the candidates who vow to be non-partisan and non-political, and who will actually listen to all parents in order make the best decisions possible for everyone.