Schools can’t replace parents, Dennis
By MICHAEL BENJAMIN
Last Updated: 12:23 AM, September 26, 2012
Posted: 10:28 PM, September 25, 2012
Michael Benjamin
Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott has had a pretty rotten 12 months on the parent front.
The latest, of course, was The Post’s scoop on how sexually active city high school students are getting emergency contraceptives and injectable birth control in school, along with their Cheerios and cheese sticks.
Yet about this time last year, Walcott was taking heat for implementing Mayor Bloomberg’s controversial, one-size-fits-all sex-education program without consultingparentsor fully informingthem about what would be taught in their local schools.
Walcott even refused (still refuses) to give parents the ability to “opt in” to an abstinence-centered sex-ed curriculum. (Full disclosure: For six months through February, I was executive director of NYC Parents Choice, a group formed in response to the sex-ed curriculum.)
Dan Brinzac
Wolcott: Chancellor running afoul on multiple fronts with NYC parents.
Plus, last week, The Wall Street Journal broke the news that the level of parental engagement by the city Department of Education fell last year — despite Walcott’s pledge to improve it.
A year ago, just as DoE was rolling out its sexed-up sex-ed curriculum citywide, it laid off 63 parent coordinators and made the position optional at high schools. Parents’ main points of contact were being eliminated when they were needed most.
Social scientists call that “cognitive dissonance” — implementing contradictory ideas at the same time.
In New York, cognitive dissonance passes for governance. That is, until the contradiction hits the front page.
Parents have a right to know what programs are taking place in their children’s school, but Chancellor Walcott and DoE don’t seem to care.
They’d apparently prefer parents to stay passive, uninvolved and on the sidelines when it comes to the most intimate aspects of their children’s sexual health.
When it comes to health-care decisions involving minors, parents should have to opt in, rather have to notice a letter the city sends home and fill out a form to opt out. That default lets the government substitute its judgment for theirs.
Parents aren't asked to opt-out their children from field trips. If a parent doesn't return a signed consent form, the child doesn't get to go on the class trip. But don’t return a signed opt-out form, and your kid is eligible for a hormonal cocktail whenever she wants.
Walcott is creating Parent Academies, but it looks like he’s the one who needs schooling in how to engage parents.
Parental consent implies accountability — which Walcott and Bloomberg have berated indolent parents for shirking.
By the way, what happens when a teen has an adverse reaction to these birth-control and “Plan B” chemicals? Does anyone think the courts will rule the city’s not liable because the parent didn’t return a signed opt-out form that he or she may never have received?
I think a number of personal injury lawyers will love testing that premise.
We need to reduce, if not eliminate, teen pregnancy in our city — but we won’t do it by further undermining the parent-child relationship.
There was a time when Americans spoke out against foreign totalitarian regimes that treated children as if they were property of the state. We need to tell Chancellor Walcott that our children don't belong to the city.
Real parent engagement goes beyond discussing a child’s academic progress. If the city is to intervene, it needs a whole family-approach that brings parents and their adolescent kids together to address sexual and mental-health issues.
If he’s truly committed to real parental engagement, Walcott will replace birth-control distribution with something that connects teens and parents.
