Put Parents On School Boards -- Or Else

The new movement for parent power in our schools is sweeping the land, engulfing staid education bureaucrats and demanding that parents be heard on issues of vaccination mandates, pornography, sex education, school standards, and the teaching of Critical Race Theory.

The strength of this movement was amply demonstrated in the victory of Republican Glenn Youngkin for governor of Virginia last month.

The solution is to put parents on the school boards. Every board should be required to seat parents of children actually attending the schools they govern on the school boards, giving them a majority of the seats.

Elections for the school board should be bifurcated with separate balloting for the parent members and for the general members. Voting for the parent representatives should be exclusively for parents of children then in the schools under the board's aegis When the students graduate, or drop out, they parental members should be replaced with parents of active students.

Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

School board elections are a stacked deck these days. They are not held on regular election days and parents and other citizens generally don't know they are happening and rarely have a voice in who runs.

But by earmarking a majority of the seats for parents — with members chosen by parents — we can give them the power they need to reform our schools

Government of schools of the parents, by the parents, and for the children must be the new motto of public-school governance in America.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Dick Morris, who served as adviser to former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former President Clinton, is the author of 16 books, including his latest, Screwed and Here Come the Black Helicopters.