Rantz: Unvaccinated parents barred from their kid’s schools as teachers push CRT
Sep 8, 2021, 6:30 PM | Updated: Sep 9, 2021, 5:15 am
(Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Thanks to Governor Jay Inslee’s burdensome and authoritarian vaccine mandate, some parents are barred from their kid’s schools. This coincides with teachers pushing subjects through a critical race theory lens in the classroom.
According to Inslee’s proclamation, all school staff must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18 or be fired. The bulk of the conversations over this government overreach focuses on paid staff. But it misses a significant portion of people impacted on school campuses.
Covered in the proclamation? On-campus volunteers. In many circumstances, the edict applies to parents.
Parents barred from schools
If a parent volunteers in the school, like helping to chaperone dances, plays, or field trips, they must be fully vaccinated. If not, they are not allowed entry onto campus for volunteering purposes. But what about parents who play more substantial roles?
This rule impacts some 200+ cooperative preschools. Co-op schools are run by parents who hire the teachers, take turns to work in the classroom, and share other roles in business operations.
Puyallup South Cooperative Preschool (PSCP) emailed parents late last week to alert them of the mandate. The school is an affiliate of Bates Technical College, which set the rule via a Sept. 3 email.
Will kids be unenrolled, too?
The email promises Bates “will be a fully vaccinated institution beginning fall quarter, 2021.”
“All adults working in the preschool classroom are required to be vaccinated or have a religious or medical exemption as mandated by current state requirements,” the email reads.
It offers the timeline for getting the vaccine to meet Inslee’s Oct. 18 deadline.
Unvaccinated parents would have had just the weekend and Labor Day to get the first Moderna vaccine to comply with the timeline. The latest they can get the Pfizer vaccine is Sept. 13, and the latest for the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is Oct. 4.
It’s unclear if a child would be unenrolled from PSCP if neither parent is vaccinated. Their participation in the school is a requirement of enrollment, but the mandate bars them from participating on campus if unvaccinated.
Requests for comment from PSCP went unanswered.
The vaccination rule doesn’t make much sense
The mandate itself doesn’t make much sense in this context.
A COVID-vaccinated adult can still get the virus. They can also transmit it to their unvaccinated child, so the vaccination status of adults around the kids doesn’t really matter.
That kid can get COVID from the vaccinated parent then bring it into the classroom. It would likely lead to the entire class getting infected if COVID mitigation policies aren’t strictly adhered to. Given these are preschoolers, kids are unlikely follow strict rules. It’s worth noting that children remain the demographic least impacted by COVID unless they suffer from a serious underlying health condition.
It’s not just unvaccinated parent-volunteers kept from the classroom, either.
Schools across the state have demanded that parents drop off their kids without leaving the car. Using COVID concerns for cover, schools tell parents not to enter as they keep visitors down to a minimum to keep COVID out.
Timing is unfortunate
Banning parents from the classroom comes as schools continue a push toward CRT-inspired lesson plans.
Teachers and/or parents in a co-op may bring their politics into the classroom. With classroom instruction offline and back into the classroom, a lack of parental access to a school comes with implications.
Many children won’t be able to identify in-classroom posters and flyers as left-wing indoctrination. It’s the very reason why so many activist teachers push the toxic CRT-inspired lesson plans on kids: They’re vulnerable to political programming at a young age.
Adults visiting the classroom can help keep political indoctrination in check. Teachers are less likely to post far-left propaganda on classroom walls if they expect to visit parents of all ideological backgrounds.
Teachers now know parents are hyperaware of political indoctrination. Some may take advantage of a campus they know are free from certain parents. It’s time for parents to start thinking of ways to navigate this issue. It should include more specific questions they ask their kids after a day at school. Unfortunately, it can’t just be a generic question about their day anymore.
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