The Daily Signal - It's Time for Parents to Lead on Education Because They 'Know Their Children Best'

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

When it comes to children’s education, parents know best, Laura Zorc says.  As the mother of four kids herself, Zorc has been fighting for education reform since 2013, when her home state of Florida began adopting Common Core education goals. She successfully rallied a group of parents to stand against the federally funded learning standards. Now, she is training parents across the nation to be advocates for their own children in the classroom. “Just because we send our kids to these government public schools, that does not mean the moment they walk through those front doors that we hand over our rights as parents,” Zorc says.  Zorc is the founder of Building Education for Students Together (BEST), an organization that equips parents to run for school board and stand against the far-left policies infiltrating classrooms across America.  She joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the importance of parental involvement in the field of education and how parents can begin utilizing the resources offer by BEST, a project of FreedomWorks.  We also cover these stories: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announces he plans on forcing a vote to change rules regarding the filibuster. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, calls on the Biden administration to distribute monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of COVID-19. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., announces he will no longer be posting videos to YouTube, accusing the platform of repeatedly censoring his content.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, January 4th. I'm Doug Blair. And I'm Virginia Allen. Education will be one of the most important issues of 2022. There is nothing more important than protecting our kids and teaching them how to think, not what to think, in the classroom. Laura Zork is the founder of the organization Building Education for Students Together, also known as Best. Laura joins me on the show today to discuss. us how her education group is training parents to get involved in their local school district

and be ambassadors of positive change in the classroom. But before we get to Virginia's conversation with Laura Zork, let's hit our top news stories of the day. In a dear colleague letter released on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced he planned on forcing a vote to change rules regarding the filibuster by January 17th if Senate Republicans block a voting rights bill. The filibuster means that legislation requires at least 60 votes to pass through the Senate, which means Democrats can't pass bills without GOP support.

In the letter, Schumer wrote, We must adapt. The Senate must evolve, like it has many times before. He continued, as former Senator Robert Byrd famously said, Senate rules must be changed to reflect changed circumstances. Put more plainly by Senator Byrd, Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past. The announcement comes as Senate Democrats attempt to link the first anniversary of the January 6th attack on the Capitol to his perceived need for federal control of the electoral process. Schumer is likely to face opposition to any changes to the filibuster from both Senate Republicans and from Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kristen Sinema of Arizona.

The pair have both stated that they are in favor of maintaining the filibuster. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is calling on the Biden administration to distribute monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of COVID-19. What are monoclonal antibodies? Well, they have shown to be an effective treatment against COVID-19. According to the FDA, the antibodies may treat COVID by blocking the virus from attaching to human cells, which makes it more difficult for the virus to reproduce. Monoclonal antibodies also may be effective in neutralizing the virus completely. Initially, the federal government said it was going to stop distributing monoclonal antibodies to the states because they didn't appear to be effective against Omicron. But the Biden administration reversed course on Sunday,

saying they would use the antibodies to fight the new variant. During a press conference on Monday, Governor DeSantis asked the Biden administration to release antibody treatments to Florida as Omicron cases rise, and the federal government has now cornered the market on the treatments. We're past the point now where we're able to get it directly from any of these companies. Federal government has cornered the entire market. They basically took control of the supply in September. We had done a deal with Glaxo-SmithKline on the Citrova Mab, which a lot of people think is the most effective against Omicron. And that is no longer a possibility because the feds have an exclusive arrangement.

The governor added that the state will immediately open new treatment sites once they received the antibodies from the Biden administration. Senator Rand Paul, Republican from Kentucky, announced on Monday that he would no longer be posting videos to YouTube, accusing the platform of repeatedly censoring his content. In a press release, the senator said, today I begin my exodus from big tech, starting with the worst censor of all, YouTube. As a libertarian-leaning senator, I think private companies have the right to ban me if they want to. However, those of us who believe that truth comes from disputation and that the marketplace of ideas is a prerequisite for innovation should shun the closed-minded sensors and take our ideas elsewhere, which is exactly what I'm doing. The announcement comes on the heels of two strikes Paul received on his YouTube channel. The streaming giant removed videos they claimed violated its COVID-19 misinformation policy and suspended Paul's account for a week for each strike. YouTube's policy says if an account receives three strikes within 90 days, the account is terminated.

Paul said that users would be able to find his content on YouTube competitor, Rumble. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Laura Zork, as we discuss the ways parents can be a force of positive change in school districts across the country. We're all guilty of it, spending too much time on the internet watching silly videos. But it's the 21st century, and maybe it's time for a change. At the Heritage Foundation YouTube channel, you'll find videos that both entertain and educate, including virtual events featuring the biggest names in American politics, original explainers and documentaries, and heritage experts diving deep on topics like election integrity, China, and other threats to our democracy, all brought to you by the nation's most broadly supported

Public Policy Research Institute. Start watching now at heritage.org slash YouTube, and don't forget to subscribe and share. share. I am so pleased to welcome to the show, Laura Zork. She is the executive director of a parent grassroots organization called Building Education for Students Together, also known as Best. Laura, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Virginia. Now, your organization is so unique. It's meeting such a critical need at this moment in history. Explain what it is that building education for students together best does? Our mission is to educate, mobilize, and activate our parents to be the voice for their children.

And also, in doing that, we want to inspire our parents to run for school board, and then we want to take their energy, and we want to change legislation because we feel that every parent knows their child best, and no pun intended there. But they do. Parents know their children best, and we feel that we want to see policy that mirrors that. Well, and I think right now we're at this moment in time in America where all of a sudden parents have become aware of what is happening in their children's schools. They're aware of what they're learning. They're aware of a lot of this very, very far left-leaning ideology like critical race theory and gender identity that is really infiltrated the school system. We just released a documentary at the Daily Signal talking about what happened.

in Louding County, Virginia, as we saw parents just become more and more outraged by what they found out that their kids were learning. So as you all talk with parents, as you're interacting, what are the tools that you're giving parents to say, hey, you have a voice. As a parent, you can actually stand up and you can push back on some of the things that maybe you're not liking that you're seeing in your child's classroom. Well, definitely COVID has been. been the great awakening for parents because they were able to see what their children are being taught in the Zoom conversations and online. But parents had also realized they don't have a say really of when their kids go to school. Are they going to go to school with the mandates of

the mass vaccination? So what we try to do is we just try to meet each family and each in the communities. Every community is different. Some have mandates. Some don't. But we try to to empower them to get to these school board meetings and speaking and use their voice, utilize the three minutes that they're given, and express their self because what I try to tell parents is, even if you are the only parent at the time that's going to those school or meetings and speaking out, more than likely there's other parents that feel the same way, and they might think that they are the only ones feeling or thinking this way. And it's really empowering for parents to get to these school board meetings and speak out and express their self because we know.

We know these school board members are not listening. They're not responding to emails. So we've really notched it up. And we've designed a toolkit called Parent Empowerment Toolkit. And that's on our website. And it really walks parents through steps to take to empower them to take back their local school boards. because all these decisions, radical decisions that are being made, we can blame our governors, we can blame our legislators. But as a former school board member in Florida, I know personally that the decisions that are being made are more than likely being made by these school board members.

So we encourage our parents to also run for school board. If I can do it, I know these other parents can do it. So we just have to get outside that comfort zone that we're in. And we just have to dive in and do it because these are our kids. And just because, and I tell parents this, just because we send our kids to these government public schools, that does not mean the moment they walk through those front doors that we hand over our rights as parents, we should still be the final decision maker in our kids' education. Why is this issue so important to you? You mentioned that you ran for a school board. That's a hefty undertaking. And I know that you've been working on the education issue for so long. What was your driving force to say, you know what? I really need to be involved here.

Well, it was back in 2013. I was a mom busy raising my four kids. And Common Core came out. And I did not like what I was seeing. And so I went to my legislators. I went to anyone that would hear me. And the response I would get back is it's too late. We've already accepted the grant. And as a parent with four kids, that answer was not good enough. It wasn't voted on. It just came in.

Parents really didn't know what it was. So myself and three other moms, we decided to take on the challenge. And we did. and we were very successful in Florida. And it's because we were able to be empowered by each other. So us for our moms, we grew that group from 4 to over 22,000. And I know we always talk about education reform. We want education reform.

And really as a parent and someone that has been a parent representative, I feel like I'm a parent mentor, what's lacking and had been lacking in education? reform has been the voice and the involvement of parents. So it's really important to me to be able to change the education system that we're not happy with. It has to be parents who change that. We can have the best policy experts, the best intentions from all these groups. But until the parents get involved, nothing was going to change. And look what has happened this year.

And that is, it's so inspiring and I'm so thrilled to see all these parents just coming out and taking ownership. These are our kids and we're going to make a change. And I'm so proud of them. Now, it has been incredible to see that, to see parents standing up, speaking out and really using their voice to say, wait a second, I want to have a say in my child's education. But I know that there are people listening who are thinking, well, yes, I know this is so important, but I have a little. a full-time job and there's soccer practice and, you know, we have our church groups and there's so many different things in our lives. And it can feel really, really overwhelming to think of adding something else like, you know, being involved in your school board. Gosh, running for school

board, that's so much to bite off. So what is really your encouragement both for, you know, for parents who say, okay, well, you know, maybe I could pull it off to try and run for school board and to parents who say, no, I definitely couldn't do that, but okay, you know, maybe I can give an hour a week towards this. Well, I think we all know what our capabilities are and capacity level, but like I said, I'm a mom of four. So when you talk about busy, everybody has their own schedule. But it really boils down to this, Virginia.

These are our kids. And if we don't make the time, we're going to get what we get. And that's where we are right now. I know we're busy. I know that our kids are involved in all these activities. But what's more important than protecting their minds and preserving this nation that we were given? And it's up to us parents to make sure that we hand over all these freedoms that we have that we see being stripped away. It's our job as parents to stand up for that.

And I know we're busy, but we can't use that as our excuse anymore. We just have to make it happen. And parents can do that. We're good at juggling things. It's just the matter of getting it in your schedule. But we do. We need more parents studying on these school boards because we see a lot of retired educators, administrators, people that don't always have the best interests of our

kids that might have more of an interest of protecting the institution or a system versus really trying to protect parental rights and education. And so we definitely need to see more parents run for school board because we need more voices of parents sitting on these school boards. So what are the practical steps for the moms or dads listening who think, okay, I would like to try this, but where on earth do you start to run for school board? Are there forms to fill out? if you have to get a certain number of signatures to get on a ballot. How do you even start that process? Well, that is a good question.

And the way that if you are considering and you feel inspired to run for school board, the first thing that you need to do is you need to reach out to your supervisor of elections, board of elections. Every state is different in what they call these individuals. And really find out when is your election? What district do you live in? And they are the experts at helping you file. So the paperwork is once you make the decision to file, that's the easy part.

But we are offering a training. It's free to parents. And I encourage every parent that is considering thinking about it might want to help someone else run. Jump on our trainings. It's every Tuesday night, 7 p.m. And it's on Zoom. And if they sign up for these trainings, then they can also, if they're not available on that 7 p.m. time, we record them and they can go into the library and they can watch these trainings at their leisure. I'm really excited about our school board trainings. We started on back in March. We weren't really for sure how is this going to go.

but we've had nearly 900 individuals that signed up on it to take these trainings, and we've had about 300 that have identified to either run or have already filed. So we know it's making a difference, and we need all organizations working on this training because there's, I believe there's 90,000 school board members across the nation and 14,000 school boards. So there's a lot of work to be done in trying to turn these school boards over. And it's going to take all of us working together. So we have a great partnership with the Leadership Institute. And I'm excited about our training coming up in January because we have revamped it. And we're taking the best that we've learned through up to now. We've had six, six week trainings.

And it's really been successful. And we're going to just, 2020. a parents aren't going away. We're just, we are just getting started and we have been empowering each other. And this is one way that we can empower each other, support someone that is running for school board. Yeah, I think that's so important to be building one another up and saying, okay, you know, this mom has the time. So we're going to back her as the other moms in our community. That's so, so critical. So if folks want to sign up for the trainings, if they want to be pulling on the resources you all offer,

What are the practicals of that? How do they do that? Well, they can go to parents know best.com. On the homepage, there's a button in the top right corner that they can click on to join our candidate trainings, but also the resource links. They can go into there. And we have some great resources in there on critical race theory and we have other resources. But these parent empowerment toolkits, they have been so useful and helpful. Even to these little small groups of parents that are trying to do more, it's really been able to take their initial group and take it to the next level because not only are we trying to motivate them to get to school board meetings, but what happens when they do get to these school board meetings? And these school board members are still making these poor decisions based, let's say with critical race theory or trying to say they're not teaching critical race theory.

But as parents, we know they're teaching the ideologies. So we're teaching them how to write press releases, hold press conferences, right, ethics complaints, state ethics complaints against individuals that insist on teaching critical race theory when they're in a state like Florida, Texas, that has ban it. And so there are a lot of resources on our website. That's so excellent. That's a long answer, isn't it? No, but that's perfect. Well, and you all have, you all have. trained over 4,000 people, right, how to be these kind of grassroots activists, how to be

individuals that know, okay, this is how we actually effectively can be pushing back. I think that's so critical. Yes, we have. And I think that number probably was from our spring tour. We had a fall tour. So the numbers have went up. What I've really tried to do is meet all the leaders I possibly meet on Facebook groups, these little groups here and there, and really work with these group leaders. So when we're talking about training, I'm going to say probably 6,000, we're talking about group leaders. And then they, it's like training the trainers. So we're training the leaders and then they can go back and they can also share that information with parents. We just had a fantastic fly-in here in D.C.

We brought in over 92 leaders from around the country. And we had a fantastic training. And they were just so empowered. And I know what happened in Virginia with that race. It has even empowered them more. So we need that. We need to be coming together because this is hard work. It's tiring work.

and you're worn out and we have to stay motivated and we have to stay engaged with each other because they're going to wear us out if we don't. And we got to stay, we got to stay fired up because these are our kids. Yeah, yeah. Well, you mentioned that, you know, we're seeing as some parents, you know, say, I'm not comfortable with the teaching of critical race theory in school. Sometimes what we're hearing back is this rhetoric of that's not what we're teaching. And it'll be under some other name.

or terminology, what are some of kind of those hot button words or phrases? It's always changing, but that parents need to be aware of right now as they attend school board meetings, as they're maybe looking over announcements that their school would be sending out about, you know, we're introducing this concept. What is some of that language we all need to have our eyes out for? Well, that is a really good question. And what we have found, just like with Common Core, as soon as we come out against Common Core, they changed it to like the Florida State Standards. So they renamed it. And that's what's happening right now with critical race theory. When most of these districts, there is not a curriculum that says critical race theory. But what they are doing, they're teaching the fundamentals and the foundation of critical race theory. theory, which are the ideologies. So part of our toolkit, we have about three pages of what those words are to look out for is from equity, diversity, inclusion. We have, like, some of the programs that we've seen come through as social and emotional learning. And also, we see these

districts who are hiring these chief equity officers, what these chief equity officers are doing. is they're being hired to bring these ideologies into our districts through teacher training and developing and embedding these concepts into every subject. So like you said, they are constantly changing the name, but there are so many words, and I would really encourage individuals to go to our website just to see the list. It's really overwhelming. But when I tell parents, the first thing you want to look at, if you want to know, is it being taught in your school district, you want to start FOIA requesting the most recent teacher trainings. You want to look at teacher trainings because your district might not be there yet, but they're in the process of training our teachers to bring it into the classroom.

So if you don't think it's there, that I always recommend start looking at what are your teachers being trained on. And then, but you just really have to be careful because white privilege, white benefit, those are some of the trigger words that you'll start hearing. And do you all train parents how to file FOIAs? We do. And I'm going to tell you that's probably one of the most powerful tools that we have right now. I know parents across the country, that's how they're identifying what's being taught within the classroom is through these FOIA requests. We saw in Loudoun County, Virginia. Those parents, they had FOIA to look up information because these school members, they're not going to talk about this on the dais. And what we're seeing across the nation through the National School Board Association, they came out with these recommendations for these state associations.

and they have suggested to these school board members, these chair and the president, if an item is not on your agenda, then you need to not allow them to speak on that item. It has to be germane to what the business meeting is. So we know they're not going to be talking about critical race theory. They're not going to be talking about the mandates or anything like that. the only way we can uncover this stuff is through these full-year requests. That's powerful. Well, I want to talk a little bit about how we've kind of arrived at this moment.

And I think one pivotal moment that really kind of pushed us parents all towards, okay, we need to be more aware of what's happening was when earlier this year, the National School Board's Association issued a letter to the Biden administration asking for assistance, essentially investigating parents who were speaking out at school board meetings and pushing back against topics like critical race theory. What effect do you think that letter had on parents all across the nation? I think the parents that they were hoping that other parents would handle what's going on on the local level. I think those parents that that was the last straw. I think what that letter did, I think in parts it helped get a governor elected in Virginia because parents are seeing that they have, they're not being supported anywhere.

And so they're craving leaders that are going to support them and work with them. So I think it really has fired up the base. I think parents, like I said, this has been long work. our kids were out of school. They didn't know when they're going to go back to school. Then they went back to school and we had the critical race theory. I think parents had been battling this stuff for about a year and a half now. And when they saw that letter being called a domestic terrorist because they're showing up to these meetings and speaking out, I don't think it was wise of them.

And for us, what it really did is it inspired our parents to keep fighting, keep moving forward. and they're not backing down. Merrick Garland can do all he wants. Parents are not backing down because the battle here, it's our kids. And we will do anything for our kids. So threatening to call the FBI on us is not going to make us go away. Ultimately, what do you think it's going to take in order to move schools, specifically public schools, back to being institutions that teach our kids how to think as opposed to what to think.

I really think the first step that we have to get toward is making sure that we have the right school board members that are making those decisions. That is one step. But our unions control a lot of decisions that are being made in our school districts. So we have to figure out how to break monopoly that they have in this decision. making, I have three school-age children, and they are in public school. So I'm not anti-public school, but I am parental rights. But I really think what we also have to do is we have to keep pushing for legislation that allows the money to follow the student and not a system. We have to stop protecting a system, and we need to start protecting our children and their future.

And so it's a couple of things. It's our school boards. It's making sure you have the right governor and then making sure that you have the school choice legislation that we need to allow parents to choose where they want to put their kids. So as a parent or a teacher, how can I engage with the work that you all are doing? And can I do it from anywhere in the country? If I'm a parent in California or Ohio or even Alaska, can I get plugged in and be a part of what best? is doing. Well, we do have a lot of trainings that we post up on our website. As issues come up, we'll have 15 and 20 minute videos and talks on those specific issues. But we're around the

country. We're everywhere. Since I think since March, I've been at about 130 different locations. And we're building our team because, like I said, parents aren't going away in 2022. And so So if individuals would like us to come to your community and host a training with you and show you the tools that you have to have in order to make a difference in your community, we'd love to come out to your community and we'd love to help them. Excellent. Laura Zork, the executive director of building education for students together, Best. Tell us the website one more time. It's parentsnobest.com. Parents knowbest.com.

Laura, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. Thank you. I enjoyed this. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. You can find The Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeart Radio.

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