Revenge of the Parents

T his year began with teachers’ unions flexing their political muscles in a successful effort to delay school-reopening plans. But it is ending with parents’ striking back.

The starkest example currently is in Virginia. Over the summer, few political observers gave Republican Glenn Youngkin much of a chance against the seasoned Terry McAuliffe in a state that Joe Biden carried by double digits. Yet less than a week out from Election Day, the race is a tossup, and Democrats are so panicked that Biden, Kamala Harris, and Barack Obama had to plan late rallies in an effort to save the governor’s mansion. While it is unclear whether Youngkin will be able to overcome the substantial Democratic advantage and emerge victorious, it’s become clear that parents are a huge reason why polls are so close.

The race has tightened considerably since McAuliffe commented in the final debate, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Contrary to a prevailing view, this was not a gaffe, but a reflection of the fact that the Democratic Party is captured by teachers’ unions and those who believe that parents should butt out of curriculum debates. A USA Today/Suffolk poll showing a tied race found that overall — by 50 percent to 39 percent — people think that parents should have more influence than school boards over the curriculum. But in that same poll, Democrats — by 70 percent to 16 percent — chose school boards. A poll by Republican firm Cygnal gave Youngkin a 17-point edge among parents of K–12 children. Win or lose, this is a bad sign for Democrats whose plans to retain Congress hinge on being able to win in places much less hospitable than Virginia.

The Virginia race is happening against the backdrop of a national backlash among parents that has been brewing over school closures, masking requirements, and critical race theory in the classroom.

School closures are likely to go down as one of the most destructive public policies in decades. Schools remained shut down months after the science was clear that children faced little risk of getting seriously ill from COVID-19 and that they were not major spreaders. In many districts, teachers’ unions dug in on closures even as their members skipped the line to get vaccinated before more vulnerable populations. Virtual learning was no substitute for in-person learning, and this led to unnecessary social isolation and increased depression among children. And for all the talk about equity, liberal closure policies disproportionately affected low-income, black, and Hispanic students. The harm done during the year-plus of closures will likely be irreparable.

Throughout the pandemic, teachers railed against parents on social media and frequently spoke about children merely as “vectors” of disease. When they didn’t know they were being recorded, school-board trustees from a San Francisco Bay Area school district attacked parents for complaining about prolonged school closures, claiming that “they want their babysitters back” and that they needed schools to reopen so that they could smoke pot.

What teachers were not banking on when they dragged their feet in returning to work is how it would affect parents’ attitudes toward public schools.

Due to the nature of distance learning, parents by necessity had to become much more aware of what their children were being taught in schools. They also had to do their own ad hoc homeschooling to make up for the wide gaps created by virtual learning. This triggered several reactions.

For one thing, parents started fleeing school districts in record numbers — either to move from city schools to suburban schools, or to exit the public system altogether in favor of private options or homeschooling. In Los Angeles, public-school enrollment shrank by 27,000 students, or 6 percent. In Chicago, the decline was 11,000, or 3 percent. In New York City, the nation’s largest school district, the decline is believed to be so catastrophic that the city still has refused to publicly release the numbers. In many districts, school funding is tied to the number of students enrolled, meaning a huge and sustained exodus would bleed public schools of money.

Those parents who have kept their children in the public-school system have become much more involved and eager to fight back against inane policies such as masking as well as left-wing teaching initiatives.

The problem this presents to Democrats politically is that the nature of their constituency makes it difficult for them to side with parents in education fights.

This explains why Attorney General Merrick Garland ended up issuing his letter warning that the FBI would start monitoring parental activity at school-board meetings. For all the effort by the Biden administration and the media to downplay the letter as narrowly focused on violence, the text vaguely referred not just to physical violence but to “intimidation and harassment.” In a culture where jokes are treated as acts of violence, the Department of Justice letter is a clear attempt to chill the involvement of parents.

Obama, campaigning against McAuliffe in Virginia, lamented, “We don’t have time to be wasted on these phony trumped-up culture wars, this fake outrage the right-wing media peddles to juice their ratings.” That’s quite tone-deaf given that the latest hot-button issue involves the cover-up of rape in Loudoun County public schools.

In his rally with Biden Tuesday night, McAuliffe claimed that Virginia teachers were “the true heroes of this COVID crisis.” In this twisted narrative, the teachers who stayed home were the heroes, and not the doctors and nurses who risked their lives caring for COVID-19 patients. Not the children who sacrificed their friends, their educations, their sports, and every other form of social interaction for a disease that represents virtually no risk to them. And not the parents who suddenly had to scramble to homeschool their children while trying to hold down full-time jobs.

Parental backlash may not be sufficient to sink McAuliffe in a state that has become deeply blue. But Democrats are playing with fire by underestimating the power of parents who are fired up and ready to assert control over their children’s educations.