The Daily Signal - Jill Simonian on Practical Tools to Protect Your Kids From Woke Agenda at School

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

It’s back to school time! But preparing for school no longer only means buying pencils and binders and other supplies, it also requires being prepared to stand against the woke ideology that has penetrated classrooms across the country.  Parents sending their kids to public school, and even some private schools, need practical tools to equip them to protect their children from gender ideology, inappropriate sexual content, and critical race theory.   Jill Simonian, a school mom, says she was shocked when she realized “how corrupt the system was and the age-inappropriate lessons and ideologies and lies that our children were being taught in their classrooms.”  Simonian, director of outreach for PragerU Kids, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" today to discuss what classes parents should consider opting their children out of, how to file freedom of information requests with a school district, and the best ways to build relationships with school administrators to learn what's being taught in class.  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 Thursday, August 25th. I'm Virginia Allen, and it is that time of year. Once again, back to school time. But unfortunately, we are living in a day and age where parents need to be equipped to fight the woke policies that have seeped into public school curriculum. Today, I am sitting down with the Director of Outreach for Prager You Kids, Jill Simonian. Jill details some practical ways parents. of public school children can make sure their kids are receiving a strong education while not being

indoctrinated by the far left's agenda. But before we get to my conversation with Jill Simonian, from all of us here at the Daily Signal, we want to say thank you for sharing your feedback with us about podcast headlines. The response has indeed been overwhelming, and we want you to know that we have heard you and headlines are returning. Headlines will be back on the Daily Signal podcast come September, and we're currently strategizing about how we can make our daily news headlines even better. So stay tuned. And if you would still like to send us your feedback and thoughts about podcast news headlines,

you can send us an email at Letters at DailySignal.com. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Jill Simonian. As conservatives, sometimes it feels like we're constantly on defense against bad ideas. bad philosophy, revisionist history, junk science, and divisive politics. But here's something I've come to understand. When faced with bad ideas, it's not enough to just defend. If we want to save this country, then it's time to go on offense. Conservative principles are ideas that work, individual responsibility, strong local communities,

and belief in the American dream. As a former college professor and current president of the Heritage Foundation, my life's mission is to learn, educate, and take action. My podcast, The Kevin Roberts Show, is my opportunity to share that journey with you. I'll be diving into the critical issues that plague our nation, having deep conversations with high-profile guests, some of whom may surprise you. And I want to ensure freedom for the next generation. Find the Kevin Roberts Show wherever you get your podcast.

I am so pleased to be joined today by the Director of Outreach for Prager You Kids, Jill Simonian. Jill, welcome back to the podcast. Hi, it's so nice to be here. Well, go ahead and share with us just a little bit about what Prager You Kids is and what is your mission? So, Preger You Kids now is about a year and a half old. And it feels like, you know, honestly, it feels like it's been a lot longer than a year and a half in the best way possible, in the best way. because we've produced almost 200 pieces of content for kindergartners through 12th graders,

educational content that honors American history, that teaches our American values, responsibility, hard work, equality of opportunity, under God, freedom, all of these things that we value in our country that we want our children to learn. But unfortunately, many schools and teacher unions are no longer teaching inside. of our classrooms. So yeah, Prager You Kids is essentially a free digital video network. And we do produce books and magazines too so that we can educate our kids about our American values to save the future of this country. That's what we like to say. Absolutely. Well, and I know that that mission is so important to you. It's so dear to your heart, not just because you work at Prager You,

but also because you're a mom yourself and you understand the importance of ensuring that our kids are getting a strong education, that they're learning American values, that they're learning about our founding. And right now, we're in that season once again of kids returning back to school. And while some families have the privilege of deciding, you know what, I'm going to homeschool my child, I'm going to send them to a private school. many families don't have that option and they need to send their kids to public school. So it's so important to talk about what are the tools that parents do have in order to protect their kids within the public school system. So for parents thinking, I want to make sure that my child is not being indoctrinated with woke ideology at school. Where should they start? Where's the starting block. So the starting point for me, and I speak as a mom of two elementary school daughters,

who were in public school up until literally last year this time, I was, I always had great affection for our public schools. I was a believer in public education. My sister, mother, grandmother, all public school teachers who really honored and continued to honor our country. in their own classrooms and schools and school districts, but I woke up and the first step is really coming to the conclusion that our education system is broken. And it's heartbreaking for me to say that. It was terrifying and, you know, dare I say devastating last year this time when my husband and I finally made the call, look, we have to pull our children out of the

this public school district that we moved to the area specifically for to attend because we thought it was so great. It was a wake-up call and it was something that once we saw how corrupt the system was and the age inappropriate lessons and ideologies and lies that our children were being taught in their classrooms, that was the first step. And as a parent, when you see something like that, you realize that you cannot unsee it. And the first step was knowing that something was wrong and that we had to make a change. And thankfully, we were able to pull our kids out and find a classical education school that really honored our family values because that is our fundamental right as parents to be able to guide the education of our children that align with our values.

So that is the first step in actually realizing and acknowledging and saying, yes, Yes, there was a problem here. Oh, there is a big problem in our education system. Really, you know, in public schools across the board, I think, you know, we sort of started hearing several years ago about large cities where public school systems like in New York City or something we're turning woke. But now you're finding this ideology, you know, in small towns and just all across the country, it feels like nowhere is quite safe.

So I want to talk about tools for those parents that think, you know, I wish I could pull my child out, but, you know, I can't, I don't have the resources, I need to have them in public school, just kind of how they can actually go about protecting their child. And, you know, we hear stories of public school districts that have policies to affirm a child's gender identity without actually telling parents that they're doing this. So a school could, in theory, be calling a child by a different name, by different pronouns, and the parents would never know. So how can parents find this kind of information out of is my child school, is my school district using policies like this? Have they set policies in place to withhold information about gender identity or things of this nature from me as a parent?

Where can parents find this information? So I think the first thing that everyone needs to get informed about, and this is a personal journey for me as well. I'm in California and there's a lot going on in California. Sure is. But the first thing that parents should do is, in fact, look at your state laws. I know in California, tweens have the authority for medical guide, to, you know, to obtain medical guidance and medical information and possibly medical procedures without requiring parental consent. and that is extremely disturbing to me as a parent. I know how disturbing it is to many of my friends and other parents who simply did not realize,

you know, it can start at age 12 with a child not requiring parental consent to, you know, to obtain some kind of a medical guidance. And we've seen it in different headlines all last year, different high schools, inserting gender-affirming transition closets, as they like to call them, where children can arrive to school at middle schools and high schools and change their clothes into whatever gender they feel as though they are, you know, that they need affirmation for, and the parents will not be informed. And we've seen it with different rules about restrooms, children's restrooms,

gender neutral, boys versus girl, you know, all of these things. I think when it comes to the medical guidance that parents need to be aware of, parents need to look at the emergency forms that are distributed at the beginning of the year. You know, distributed by the schools, I should say. A lot of times as parents, we go to those parent-teacher meetings, and they distribute all the forms that are required to be signed before the start of school. Rightfully so. you know, do we as a school have permission to administer treatment to your child in the case of a

medical emergency? All of those forms I would always take for granted and just sign because I would think, of course, if my child falls off the monkey bars and breaks her arms, of course I want medical attention. Of course, of course, of course. If something happens, of course we want medical attention. They get a cut. They get a bruise. We need to bandages up. That's where my mind goes, and that's where most reasonable people's minds go into that kind of medical intervention. But now we are dealing with something larger, gender affirming pronouns. These are psychologically and physically damaging ideologies that are being endorsed by teacher unions, that are being endorsed by the state to be able to give to children.

And that's what parents need to realize when we look at these emergency forms that we are just blindly signing medical permissions for for our kids. So look at the forms, read all of them. What I would personally do is write notes on that, you know how in a contract, sometimes people cross things off and put in their own notes and then sign it and say this is contingent, you know, all of my signature is contingent that all of these things will be met. I would put notes on the medical forms that you hand into each of your schools and ask the school administrators, ask the Board of Education in your local area. Ask the principal, ask the teachers. What are your policies should a child come to you? What are the guidelines that you have that you, this school will be abiding by when it comes to

all of these issues that are very long-term damaging? So keep that in mind when you look at emergency forms and write the notes on the side saying, my child is, you are able to administer medical care for these following things. Make sure that I am called first and foremost, should any of these emergencies happen, you just have to get really detailed and involved on those emergency forms. Got it. Now, what about language? Words are a big deal, and especially in this day and age, there's a lot of keywords that are being thrown around kind of on the left and have found their way into our education system. So are there any specific phrases or even names of classes that should raise red flags for parents when they hear their students' teacher use them or a school administrator use them?

The red flags for me that I learned last year that was quite alarming were SEL, Social Emotional Learning, and DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. And social emotional learning has been around for a few decades now. and it is social emotional learning has made its way nationally into our public schools and it sounds great it sounds as though you want children to be emotionally well

to enter the classroom to be of sound mind, open mind, ready to learn no matter what kind of atmosphere they're coming from, you know, from home and SEL is created by an organization called Castle, C-A-S-E-L.org. And if you're able to look that up, for your listeners, look up, castle.org. It's a national organization that creates S-E-L programs, distribute into classrooms,

and they create different surveys, and they say that these surveys that they want to deliver to children directly for children to fill out, parental reading or consent or, you know, any of those things, is for the well-being of the child so that they can assess how open that child is for learning, how ready that child is for learning, how emotionally healthy they are. But in these SEL surveys, and a mom by the name of Lisa Logan actually alerted me to this last year, in these SEL surveys, they ask very invasive questions at times about family values, about, I mean, my daughter a couple years ago got an SEL survey in class without my knowledge. I found out after the fact, but she was asked on the very first questions if she considered

herself non-binary. And at the time, my third grader didn't even know what that meant. And I found out about it. And, you know, in so many words, kind of hit the roof. to my local school board meeting and said, what is this you're giving to my child? So SEL is one of those language, language tricks that we've fallen for because it seems as though these surveys and lessons are meant to enrich the child, but what they're really doing is asking invasive questions that might be age inappropriate, that might pit students against each other in a victim.

versus oppressor way. Some of these SEL surveys, my daughters, asked a question to the effect of when you do well on your homework, do you feel bad that you did better than your neighbor sitting next to you? And how does that make you feel? Well, no child should, that's confusing. You understand? Like, these are all confusing things that children should not be answering, especially without the consent of their parent or their knowledge of their parent. E.I. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is pretty much at every single school district now. Again, the words sound great. Diversity. Great. Everyone wants to live in a diverse world celebrating our differences. Equity is a trick on words because the, you know, we usually, the word that we value is equality. We are created equal. We are equal under God. But the word equity does not mean equality. Equality of opportunity means that everyone has a chance to rise up and do hard work.

Equity means that everyone essentially ends up in the same place, meaning the children who, for example, in a local school district here in Southern California, equity, implementing equity ideologies in the school district essentially meant that the high school limited their merit-based math program. So the accelerated math programs so that the accelerated math programs became more limited than in years past because they didn't want students to, quote, unquote, feel bad if they did not accelerate at the same pace of their peers. So equity is a dangerous concept that really just moves away from anything merit based in the education system. And inclusion, DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion, inclusion sounds great because everyone should be, we should treat everyone by the golden rule, right? Everyone deserves to be included. Everyone deserves dignity and respect human to human, student to student. But inclusion also means in this new language that if you change your pronouns and I don't agree with it, then I must affirm what you.

you deem appropriate no matter what. And inclusion does not mean inclusion of everyone. It really means exclusion if you are not on the side that we believe. So those are the types of things that I think parents really need to go to their school websites, go to the school meetings, and really see what kinds of initiatives are coming down the pike. When it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion, SEL, social emotional learning, we need to ask questions and say, how is this affecting our academic? How is this affecting the curriculum that's being delivered in the classroom?

You know, inclusion could mean showing junior high students about, you know, quote, unquote, the benefits of abortion because they are including all sorts of thoughts. Well, is that appropriate to show? So those are the things that we need to just really stay on top of and be active and engaged. Yeah. No, thank you for sharing that because those are. are words that you're so right. They sound so nice on the surface. And you hear them and you think, well, how could I not be for that? But you dig a little deeper and you realize there's, there's a lot more behind these words than is just what's on the surface level. And what we have seen is that some

parents, when they go to their schools and they start asking those questions and they say, hey, what does this mean or what is my, you know, third grader actually learning about that schools put up walls right away and they stonewall and they don't want to answer those questions. So there's actually though a tool that we as American citizens all have called FOIA requests, the Freedom of Information Act. Talk a little bit about FOIAs, what they are and how parents can use this tool that we have in our tool belt to be able to get information about what our kids are actually learning. Right. Well, you know, it's funny because I did not know about FOIA when my kids were in the public school system. And I remember a fellow parent who was asking questions

alongside myself. And actually also, I do want to back up and I should, before I go into FOIA, I do want to recommend to parents opt your children out in writing when it comes to S-E-L-D-I activities, certain sex ed that will be delivered. That is our right to opt our children out of receiving those certain activities if they do not align with our values. It is the right protected by law. Opt your children out. Send an email to the school. Send an email to the district to formally opt your child out of those things. But back to FOIA. I did not know what a FOIA request was. And FOIA stands for Freedom of Information Act. And a fellow parent actually filed one of these in our school district, former school district at the time. And it,

is essentially, we have a right to know what's going on in our kids' classes, right? And with that right comes our ability to know what type of communication, public information is being exchanged between teachers, administrators. And we can find out all of these things, emails, curriculum details, paper trails, by submitting what's called a FOIA request. and at prager youkids.com, we do have a section under a resources tab that has a parent action guide that sort of guides us through this for how to file a FOIA request. And in fact, I'm actually on my computer right now.

If you look up FOIA, you will find that you can submit a official request to your school district that that asks for communications, curriculum, things that are going on in the district that are technically public information, but that your school might not be communicating with you. And you can find out, you can find out what is happening and then present it to your school. Now, you know, you got to be specific with your request. First of all, you have to check and see. that the information is already publicly accessible. You have to submit your request in writing.

But the things you can find out about are online educational materials, what types of, because a lot of these schools now, yes, they teach in the classroom, but a lot of these schools employ outside agencies that provide school districts with videos to show in their classrooms as part of. the educational curriculum. And a lot of these outside agencies are in fact politicized. So you can find out what kinds of curriculums are being used in the classroom that you might not be aware of. What type of professional development the school district is doing with their teachers? You know, a couple weeks ago, news broke that San Diego Unified School District was having teacher trainings that

were very, I want to say, strong in gender affirming narratives. And they were training teachers how to supersede parental authority when it came to affirming genders and gender inclusivity at schools. And it was really disturbing. If you go online, you can find it. But these are the types of things that you can request. through a FOIA to find out what's really happening in your district behind the scenes. You can also request emails or texts between employees, teachers, board members, administrators

in office. Remember that, you know, teachers and public school teachers and administrators are employees of the state. And so what they do is public information. So these are all the types of things that you can request through a FOIA. And once you get the information, you know, the information, you then, I, you know, we've talked about this a lot of Prager Kids, but you have to take the information to a public forum, to a school board meeting, to a PTA meeting, and say, you know, I really want to discuss what I found. It is disturbing. It is inappropriate in the following ways. It does not serve educational purposes for, you know, when it comes to academics. Why is this going on. And as a parent, I have a right to say that this is not appropriate for my child in school.

So we have these frameworks that really are protective of what our parental rights are. And it's a matter of knowing that they're available for us to use. So critical. Well, and the last tool that I want to mention briefly for parents to use to really find out what is happening in their child's classroom. is just getting into the school building yourself as a parent, giving your time to volunteer and having that interaction with school administrators, with teachers. And one way to do that is by actually just volunteering in your school library, by giving the time to be present in that school library. And I think there's kind of two advantages to that.

You're getting to actually see the books that kids are reading. And then also, hopefully you're having some conversations with those who work at the school and building rapport and relationships to where they'll be open. and willing to tell you what really is going on in the classroom, right? Yes, and I mean, we were kept out of our kids' classes for about two years, and there's a lot that you can revise inside of a library for two years. And, you know, listen, I have never been, you know, I don't want to be, I don't want any of this to be misconstrued as, oh, we want to ban books.

I don't believe in, I don't believe in squelching freedom of speech. I don't believe in banning books, but the issue that most of his parents are concerned about is the actual appropriateness of those books for a school. And there's a big difference between, you know, banning a book because you don't like its content or saying this book is really not appropriate to have in a school because it is of sexualized nature, et cetera, et cetera. And that's the difference. And to get inside of our kids' libraries to volunteer to be a library volunteer at your kids class to volunteer to be in your in your kids school activities, the extracurricular activities. All of these things give us insight as parents to really see,

okay, what's going on here, what is being said. And, you know, I'm a big believer in always talking to my own kids about freedom and responsibility and the things that I always took for granted that we're being taught at our public school. I would much rather, you know, while I'm driving my kids back and forth, I would much rather talk about fun, you know, easygoing things about going to the beach or what we're going to do on the weekend rather than talk about what a Democratic Republic is. But this is where we're at. And, you know, I didn't know as a mom really how to broach these topics about our history.

or our values. I didn't know how to broach them, but what we're doing at Prager You Kids really is giving parents and teachers for that matter the resources, the videos to have a, that sort of that, you know, to set a foundation to have a conversation about what does free speech mean? What does it mean to be free? What is the price that we paid to be a free country and all of these things? so that when our kids are force-fed the radical political garbage in the classroom, they have a foundational knowledge of a moral compass and saying like, you know what this teacher just told me, I respect my teacher as an authority figure, but what this teacher just told me does not align with my family values,

and I know better because my mom and dad are talking with me about this every single day. So, you know, we have to talk to our kids and we've made it easy at pregeruKids.com. Parents can subscribe for free. You know, I always, I tell my kids, I go, you can watch a few videos of Prager You Kids and then you can play your video game. Or you can watch it. But it's true. We need to, you know, we are, there are children to raise, to educate, and we have the

fundamental right of really getting involved in their education in a really positive way to partner with schools. also to be really stern and firm and convicted when it comes to calling something out for being inappropriate in education. Director of Outreach for Prager You Kids, Jill Simonian. Jill, I want to thank you for your time. And for all of our listeners, if you want to learn more, if you want to get involved with Prager You Kids, just look up Prager You.com slash kids.

It's all there. You can find the videos, the materials, the material. resources. But Jill, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it and appreciate the work that Prager You is doing. Thank you so much. It's so great talking to you. Well, thank you all so much for listening to my conversation with Jill Simonian. I think it's just incredible to hear about the work that all of the folks over at Prager you are doing to really make sure that parents and students alike are equipped in this day and age to have the tools they need to push back against the woke agenda in our public school system.

So again, if you want to check out more, you can do so by visiting the Prager You Kids website and all of their resources and materials are there. But thank you all again for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast today. If you have never done so, please take a moment to leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcast or wherever you like to listen. It makes a huge difference to us. We read all of those reviews and we often read them on our Monday show and our letters to the editor news edition. So please take a moment to do that.

Thank you all so much again for listening. I'll be right back here with you tomorrow morning. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. The executive producers are Rob Bluey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen, Doug Blair, and Samantha Rank. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal. com.