RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — A group of parents met with lawmakers at the State Capitol on Thursday, urging lawmakers to pass bills to strengthen parental rights in Virginia.
It was all part of the Family Foundation’s “Mama Bear” Parental Rights Day at the State Capitol.
“As parents, we should be included in our children’s lives, not excluded,” Newport News Mom Rhonda Williams told reporters.
One priority for the group was to ensure the House of Delegates passes a bill already approved by the Senate to require school districts to notify parents of a school-related drug overdose within 24 hours.
“Give the parents the opportunity to have the conversation with their own children and warn them of the dangers of drugs and the opportunity to help their children with any trauma associated with those school overdoses,” Williams said.
The group also wants lawmakers to reject bills designed to further clarify the state’s parental notification law on sexually explicit materials.
The proposed bills, one in the House, and one in the Senate, would still require schools to notify parents if instructional materials include sexually explicit content. However, the bill would clarify that it doesn’t permit the censorship of books in schools.
“So they are trying to put the word censorship into our code to have a chilling effect on these school boards so the school boards can look at parents and go we can’t do anything. That is exactly what the intention is,” explained Family Foundation President Victoria Cobb.
Supporters of the bill say the new language wouldn’t prevent parents from challenging books, but rather prevent districts from using the state’s parental notification law to broadly ban books without a rigorous process.
“This does not prevent school boards that have current policies when parents have a concern about a book, and they have developed a school board policy to review books for whatever content reasons from going through that process,” said Delegate Carrie Coyner (R-Chesterfield) in a recent committee meeting.
Both the Senate and House have already passed bills to clarify the state’s parental notification law along mostly party lines with all Democrats voting in favor of the measure. If one of those bills passes the other chamber, it will head to Governor Glenn Youngkin’s desk for his consideration.
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