That’s according to forms sent to parents of Chandler public school students, which were shared on social media Wednesday by Save Our Schools Executive Director Beth Lewis. Parents are asked to sign off on the subjects their kids will be taught this school year, and critical race theory is nowhere on the list. Instead, the schools are seeking approval to teach things such as basic math and social studies.
“It’s unreal for a district to have to do that,” Lewis told Phoenix New Times.
Lewis has two kids in Chandler schools, which serves 44,000 students throughout parts of Chandler, Gilbert and Queen Creek. She first learned of the forms this week when her middle school-aged daughter brought one home for her to sign. Lewis was asked to “acknowledge” approval for 11 study units in math — including integers, rational numbers and probability.
Arizona, we have completely jumped the shark. The Republican-led #AZLeg has so forcibly chilled the teaching profession with content bans that we’ve come to this. I shouldn’t have to give permission for my 6th grader to learn integers & stats 🤯 pic.twitter.com/pxxLxW4tqe
— Beth Lewis, SOSAZ 🆘 🏜🎓 (@AZBethLewis) August 21, 2024
Half an hour after she filled out that slip, her seventh-grade son reached into his backpack and pulled out two more for his Spanish and social studies classes. Lewis said the first form requested parental permission for students to “learn breakfast and lunch words in Spanish,” among other things. For social studies, parents were asked to approve topics such as the Enlightenment, industrialization and revolutions.
If a parent checks that they have a “parental conflict” on a certain topic, the form states that “the teacher will reach out regarding options,” though it’s unclear what those might be.
In an email, district spokesperson Stephanie Ingersoll said the district sent the forms to comply with state law. "The form in the photo does have to do with statute and we follow statute," Ingersoll said. Specifically, the form is meant to comply with A.R.S. 15-113, which gives parents "the right to review learning materials and activities in advance" and the right to withdraw their student from the activity or "request an alternative assignment" if the parent objects and finds the activity or material "is harmful."
The law defines "harmful" as having to do with "sexual content, violent content or profane or vulgar language." It's unclear how concepts like integers or ratios might qualify.
A.R.S. 15-113 was added to state law in 2011, and parental rights in public schooling have long been a hot topic in Arizona. But Lewis, who is a 12-year teaching veteran who now teaches fifth grade at a Tempe school, hasn't seen anything this extreme from other school districts. She thinks this kind of micromanagement of what educators can and can’t teach only gets in the way of learning.
“Busy work, paperwork and added scrutiny is just really unhealthy for the classroom and for teaching,” Lewis said. “Teachers really deserve the trust of parents.”
Save Our Schools Director Beth Lewis said lawmakers are capitulating to a "small but very loud, very entitled group of parents."
Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
Blame lawmakers
The increased oversight is bothersome, but Lewis doesn’t blame the district, school board, principals or teachers for that. They do “the Lord’s work,” she said. Instead, she blames the Arizona Legislature.Over the past several years, Republican legislators have passed several laws that boost the control parents have over their children’s schooling. Tom Horne, the right-wing superintendent of public instruction who runs the Department of Education, has thrown the teacher-parent balance further out of whack.
The 79-year-old Horne has pushed for providing access to the conservative online education site PragerU and eliminating bilingual and dual-language programs. Last week, he attacked Lewis in a press release for criticizing his opposition to new Title IX protections for transgender students.
“Lawmakers have been trying to mandate this kind of stuff via legislation, and they’ve bad-mouthed teachers and our schools for so long that parents are going to the board and demanding things like this,” Lewis said. “The districts feel like they have to capitulate to this small but very loud, very entitled group of parents.”
If parents are concerned about classroom content, Lewis said, they can have conversations with their children’s teachers with or without legislation. “These teachers are wonderful and happy to hear from people,” she said.
While Lewis hasn’t seen anything quite this severe in other Arizona school districts, she said many schools — including those in her own Tempe district — are granting parents more and more control over textbooks.
Lewis said many districts have opened online portals where parents can see every book their child will read each school year. If a parent objects to any book, they can submit their concerns through the portal, which is open for 30 days. Then, those complaints would be considered by each district’s school board.
“I hate that we live in this state that is so distrustful of teachers,” Lewis said. “Five people are mad because maybe at some point racism was discussed in the context of slavery, so they demanded that thousands of parents across the district now have to fill out ridiculous paperwork.”
