Who’s raising the alarm over ‘regulations’ for failing public schools? (Part 2)

Editor’s note: This is part two of a two-part examination of calls for more regulation of homeschooling while so many public schools are failing students.

Previously we explored how the U.S. public-school system is failing at an alarming rate to educate students despite countless regulations – bureaucratic burdens that homeschool critics argue should be added to homeschooling to “protect” children from their parents.

But just what is the track record of public schools when it comes to protecting children already within their system? 

Now let’s look at three particular areas – crime, sexual misconduct and radical ideologies – presenting a clear and present danger to students’ health and well-being, though no one is proposing any effective solutions. 

Violence, drugs, and bullying 

Parents and other community advocates have long expressed concerns over crime in schools, which often takes the form of physical violence. In one example reported last month by The Lion, several educators at Massachusetts’ Revere High School were “banged up and bloodied” trying to disperse student brawls. 

“I was kind of like not even shocked about it because of how many fights have been happening lately,” senior Ava Yelmokas said. 

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the school’s ability to provide “a high quality education in a safe and supportive learning environment,” as trumpeted in its 2024-25 student guidebook on Page 2. 

Such incidents also highlight the hollow nature of so-called “regulations” on disciplinary behavior and consequences. 

The school dedicates a lengthy section of its website to an “RHS Restorative Framework for Accountability and Support,” filled with imposing terms such as “Interventions for Support & Consequences for Accountability,” “Compass of Shame,” and “Social Discipline Window.” 

Did any of this prevent all these melees? Hardly. 

In fact, the nonprofit Parents Defending Education (PDE) has blasted “restorative justice” practices for exacerbating violence, not curbing it. 

“In restorative justice, reconciliation, not punishment, is the goal,” the group explains on its website. “The ‘Western’ view of crime and punishment is thought to be a byproduct of colonialism.” 

With such supposedly lofty yet unworkable ideals, it’s no wonder these policies “erode school culture, teacher morale, and a sense of safety in schools,” according to Erika Sanzi, PDE’s director of outreach: 

“We need to move away from prioritizing the perpetrator of the bad behavior over the classrooms full of kids who are ready to learn. Teachers feel unsupported, and too many students are trapped in chronically disruptive classrooms.” 

Another recent example involved Virginia, where a student with a history of gun violence and MS-13 gang connections was inexplicably allowed to attend Loudoun Valley High School. To make matters worse, he’d previously been arrested in 2023 for taking a firearm to school and threatening to kill another student while attending Blue Ridge Middle School. 

When parents expressed their concerns to the school board, they were cut off, on the pretext of citing “personally identifiable information,” which parent and former school board member Tiffany Polifko took serious issue with. 

“Everything that was brought up in this public comment is already public knowledge,” she told the board. 

Other criminal activities in schools involve fentanyl overdoses. One tragic report reveals that four of nine students who overdosed on fentanyl at one Loudoun County school did so while on school property – and the school actually took active steps to withhold that information from their parents. 

That leads inescapably to this next point: 

Rampant sexual abuse and misconduct in schools 

The increasingly hostile relationship between public schools and parents means all the regulations in the world cannot prevent crimes against children – especially when parents are not present. 

Consider these recent examples: 

• Seattle Public Schools paying a record $16 million in a sexual abuse settlement. 

• A lawsuit against Chicago Public Schools alleging coerced abortions after years of abuse from a high-ranking administrator, asserting he posed as the victim’s stepfather to sign parental consent forms using a false name. 

• A longtime California teacher accused of sexually abusing two former underage students. “While you saw him as a beacon of guidance and faith, I knew him as the predator who stole my innocence, impregnated me as a teenager and left scars that run deeper than time,” wrote one of the victims in an Instagram post. 

Everyone would love to believe these atrocities are anomalies, but data unfortunately proves otherwise. As previously reported by The Lion, an estimated 95% of educator sexual misconduct cases are never reported to law enforcement – but are instead handled by schools and districts quietly in-house. 

The resulting figures – at least 10% of all students estimated to be targeted sexually by educators “sometime during their school career” – should concern everyone, including public-school advocates. 

“Every school district that is receiving funding from the Every Student Succeeds Act is mandated to enact policy, regulation or legislation that prohibits all forms of concealment, and yet there are only about a dozen states that are complying with that mandate,” said Terri Miller, president of the organization S.E.S.A.M.E.

Did you catch that? All existing policies, regulations and legislations are powerless to create actual “compliance” with the law.

If this is happening under the heavily regulated public-education system, why do homeschool critics think adding yet more regulatory burdens on educational alternatives will help? 

Ideologies including antisemitism, gender fluidity 

Even if students avoid the violence and sexual crimes happening daily on school property, they can fall victim to less obvious but equally deadly perils – radical ideologies affecting their physical, emotional and mental health. 

Take one example: the eruption of antisemitism across schools such as the Berkeley Unified School District in California. 

“Non-Jewish students are led by their teachers’ example to believe that they can freely denigrate their Jewish and Israeli classmates, telling them, e.g., that ‘it is excellent what Hamas did to Israel’ and ‘you have a big nose because you are a stupid Jew,’” notes a complaint by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League. 

Jewish students now report concerns over mob violence and “being ‘jumped’ at school for being Jewish.” This is eerily reminiscent of Germany just before World War II. 

Additionally, parents are raising the alarm over transgenderism being promoted to children as young as 4 years old. 

“Gender identity is not a part of the TK [transitional kindergarten] curriculum,” said Crystal Hamilton, a mother and employee at the California school where this happened. “Staff have been informed that our personal and political beliefs are not allowed in the classroom, and that political activism is to take place outside of our work hours.” 

Again, myriad regulations – yet zero accountability for violations. 

Allowing such “gender fluidity” material in schools has well-documented repercussions. Emelie Schmidt, one of numerous victims, gave testimony about how this encourages “a path of suicidal ideation and anxiety” in children. 

“Why do you want to teach children that self-hatred is normal?” she asked a school board in Texas. “Why do you want to teach children that they have to chop off healthy body parts in order to be happy? And why do people like you tell me that I needed to self-harm in order to be happy?” 

Public schools cannot have it both ways. Either they must try to keep all personal and political beliefs outside classrooms, or they must allow for beliefs other than their own – even (gasp!) parental ones they disagree with. 

Until they take steps to protect children from the dangers already within their system, families will continue to move to homeschooling and other educational alternatives. 

For the children’s sake, no amount of regulations – existing or additional – should hold them back.