Parental Rights and New Hanover Board of Education

Reuel Sample:
Reuel Sample here for the GOP podcast along with my host Patti. Good evening, Patti.

Patti O’Neill:
Good evening Reuel. It’s good to be with you tonight. I’m looking forward to discussing our parental rights in school topics today. But before we start that, let’s talk a little bit about the New Hanover County GOP 10 for Ten.

Reuel Sample:
The 10 for Ten – Patti – is a small donor program that we have put together just surrounding ten separate issues. So you don’t have to be a big fat cat donor to help support the GOP. Just $10 a month for ten months for ten issues. And real quickly, the ten issues that we’re focusing on are parental rights. Those are the ones we’re going to talk about tonight. Core curriculum. We want to go back to reading, writing, history, math, science, civics, the stuff that made our country great. Public safety. Transparency and spending. We want to make sure that everything that we spend, we can justify. Judicial responsibility. We don’t want activist judges. We want judges that adhere to the laws of the state and to the laws of the nation – the Constitutions. Energy independence. Constitutional adherence. Stop the passage of red flag laws and any other laws that restrict due process. Border security and immigration reform. And Patti, border security affects us here in New Hanover County. It’s not just the southern states. And school safety.

Patti O’Neill:
All right. And these ten issues, people can find more information on those and a NewHanoverGOP.org page. And it will break it down for you and give you a little bit more detail in regards to what Reuel has just mentioned today. But you’re absolutely right as it relates to these ten issues being basically the top ten that people want us to focus on and want to see the New Hanover County GOP affect the change. And so when we ask for those small donors for $10 for ten months, it allows us to support candidates and put information forward to the general public that is going to support these ten issues that you just went through.

Reuel Sample:
At the top of that list, parental rights. And we think that this is an issue that appeals to parents no matter what political party they belong to, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent or somewhere else, I think every parent wants the best for their children and wants to know that the education that they’re getting in schools is consistent with that family’s values. And Patty, you and I were talking about all this before the show and sort of our prepping. Is that the big thing that blew all of this open was COVID.

Patti O’Neill:
That’s exactly right. When when politicians like to say kitchen table issues, there’s not a more kitchen table issue than education, our schools and parental rights as it relates to what their children are learning. When you grew up, when your children grew up mine myself, you did your homework at the kitchen table. You sat there and your mom was in the room or dad, in any case, but making dinner, preparing for the rest of the evening. And you and your siblings sat there at the table with your books and your paper spread out and you did your homework at your kitchen table. Things have changed, and a lot of times children have the opportunity to be online. They’re in a separate space so they can have some quiet and do some school work. But during COVID, parents were in the room as well. So while they were not in the classroom pre-COVID because they were in their offices and out in the workforce during COVID, they were in the virtual classroom. And what they saw in the virtual classroom was a shock to them. And that has started an entire wave of activism and involvement as it relates to parents. All parents, as you said, want the best for their children. Education leads to opportunity, but it needs to be quality education. And so parents have seen that what has been focused on in the schools and here in New Hanover County is not quality, but some specific agenda that they really were not made aware of until they saw that virtually as they were monitoring their time, their children’s time in the virtual classroom. And so it’s that’s kind of the silver lining. It’s awakened a lot of people and gotten a lot of people more involved in the decisions that are being made by our school board, by our elected officials, and what rights they have in order to affect change.

Reuel Sample:
It got so bad. Now, we don’t know that this happened here in New Hanover County, but it got so bad that in other places around the country, parents were told not to be in the room when their kids were attending class because they didn’t want the parents to hear what was being talked about. That’s amazing.

Patti O’Neill:
If that’s not a red flag, so to speak, I don’t know what is right. When they say, you know, there’s nothing to see here, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. You know, something is funny is going on. You know, something is wrong.

Reuel Sample:
We did some research before this this show, as always, and we looked at some key areas where parents probably don’t know or didn’t know what’s being taught to their kids. Things like gender identity issues, social issues that lean towards Marxism. I found this out today, Patti, and I was surprised to find this, but did you know that Turning Point USA, that is a conservative organization that talks to talks to college age kids, they actually put New Hanover County on a watch list for teaching Socialist-Marxist policies to our kids. That’s a national watch list. That should be a wake up call to to everyone that are that not only are our kids getting bad information, but the nation is looking at us because our kids are getting bad information.

Patti O’Neill:
I think that it’s amazing that turning point, who has got a very wide reaching States, has taken our small little New Hanover County of all of the places and and noticed that what was going on in our school system was exactly as they described it. That’s a big eye opener for people. But if you’re if you’re not dialed in like you are, if you’re not paying attention, you wouldn’t really know that because the national media and the media at large is not really reporting on that sort of stuff.

Reuel Sample:
For those who want a fact check on me, this is from a Star News online article 2022. So we’re not talking ancient history. This is going on right now. And ladies and gentlemen, one of the things that all of our candidates for the public school board want to do is to not make parents a voice in their kids education. But the voice.

Patti O’Neill:
You know, there are three ways that you can rethink education in America. Number one, get your kids out of government schools if you can. Well, not everybody can. Right. But being involved in what is going on in your local school is very important. We also believe that school choice is very important and that that is something that parents should be involved in, is being proactive as it relates to holding their individual schools and the school board accountable for the quality of education and then being able to move forward a platform that says we need to have other choices in our community where our children can go. That is not all about indoctrination, that is about education. And that reading, writing, arithmetic, civics history is what should be taught. Not a lot of these alphabet words for CRT and SEL and all of these other things that they disguise under these acronyms that we really don’t think too much about.

Reuel Sample:
Well, we’re told that CRT, which is critical race theory, is not taught in New But we know that’s a lie. It happens all the time. The social emotional learning SEL, we’re told. Well, that’s been going on for years and years and years and years. When we talk about anti-bullying, well, teaching kids how to stand up to bullies is one thing. Teaching kids that they can identify as one gender one day and another gender another day. And they don’t have to tell their parents what kind of gender they are at school on particular day. That’s a whole different ball of yarn.

Patti O’Neill:
When the school board and the teachers are dictating exactly what is supposed to without any input from the parents. Right. We’ve seen parents stand up at school boards. And we’ve also seen in some communities where the local police and the sheriff have been called to remove them when all they’re trying to do is as to have a voice. And so the New Hanover County GOP really wants to support parents and the right of parents to have a voice in what goes on in our school systems. And that is going to take the election of some conservative school board members to let us get these topics out for discussion, get some feedback from the general public, and move away from some of these policies that have been hidden in darkness and once exposed. Now people are just mortified about it. So our 10 for Ten campaign is going to support those candidates who are going to move towards parental rights in school and allow parents to have a voice and effect the change. If you’re completely happy with education in New Hanover County, then I guess listen no further. But I think that there are a lot of folks that really think we could be doing a better job. And parental involvement is, in my opinion, the way that we’re going to do it.

Reuel Sample:
Well, we’re at the point where we can’t even we can’t even discuss this. One of the Democrats in the race was basically yelling at one of our candidates because because Melissa was just basically raising the questions about about transgenderism in our schools and the focus, obsessive focus on sexuality of of our kids in schools. And the reaction of that Democrat is basically saying, well, that we can’t even ask questions, that parents can’t ask questions because they’re just parents. They’re not educators. They’re they’re not the elite, they’re parents. And so how can they possibly know what’s best for their children?

Patti O’Neill:
Well, we’ve we’ve seen political figures say exactly that. When somebody says, do you think that? You know, the school board or the parent should determine what the what the education of the children is. And they’re like the school board. You know, they’re they’re many of the school boards throughout the nation are very happy to take these children and, in my view, indoctrinate them into a particular belief system. And they have those children 8 hours a day, five days a week for 12 years of their life. It’s very difficult to combat that right. What they learn at school is what they tend to believe because they’re put into a position where you have figures of authority that you are supposed to trust and believe and rely upon as a young person, what they say is considered to be the gospel truth. And if what they’re pushing is anti what the parent is looking for and total opposite of what the parent is interested in, then we have a challenge between the child and the parent because the child is going to say, No, you’re not right. My teacher said. My teacher said, and so we have a lot of kids coming out of the school system with a lot of this information about sexuality, about race, about right and wrong and drug use and transgenderism .

Reuel Sample:
It’s socialism versus capitalism. Yes. Wrong versus right. Yeah. I’m a product of public education. And there’s always been this lean to the left. There always has been in education. You use the word indoctrination. And I think that’s a fantastic word. It’s no longer education. It’s no longer stretching kids minds. It’s indoctrination. It is, as Rush Limbaugh used to say, filling up the young head’s full of mush. And and that’s exactly what’s going on more and more. And it’s not being hidden anymore. They are out, out saying this is what we’re going to teach our kids no matter what the parents say.

Patti O’Neill:
Yes. And and that’s why we really need to get parents involved. And we need to get candidates involved and elected to our school board who are going to work diligently to change the direction that the school board and the schools are headed in.

Reuel Sample:
Let’s talk about the candidates. We’ve got Peter Wildeboer, who is our lone incumbent. He’s been fighting the good fight for the last four years.

Patti O’Neill:
Pete has done a great job of kind of holding down the fort, so to speak. But we really want to get those other candidates that we have out there on the ballot onto the school board so that we can have a conservative majority and be able to really affect the change.

Reuel Sample:
Yeah, so that’s Peter Wildeboer, Melissa Mason. She’s a teacher of the deaf. She’s a mom, a military wife, really, really into parental choice and parental rights at school. And we’ve got Josie Barnhart. Josie is a teacher herself. I don’t think she will mind me calling her a sparkplug. She is she is on every single issue. And the depth of knowledge that she brings to these issues is amazing. Both Josie and Melissa are parents themselves as well. And so they’ve got skin in the game for this. And then we’ve got Pat Bradford. Pat is a business owner out of Wrightsville Beach. She has been involved in the education system and with kids. She’s she’s been a court appointed speaker for children for over ten years. Those are the four people that we’re talking about, Peter Wildeboer, Melissa Mason, Josie Barnhart and Pat Bradford.

Patti O’Neill:
That is a great roster of conservative candidates and as and and we’d love to because he’s been kind of fighting this battle on his own. Pat Bradford has extremely impressive background with her volunteer work in the past, the things that she has done to advocate for children. She was a guardian ad litem for the state of North Carolina. And those are that is a really tough thing to do to be a child advocate and to be in those difficult situations. So she has been, you know, boots on the ground since 2006. So the qualifications are there as it relates to all of our candidates, and we could go into detail with each one of them. Like you said, Josie has been involved. You know, she sees that there is a blatant disregard for parents to have input to the teachers. And she wants to address the inconsistencies in some of the programs and the protocols. That have been put out there. And she’s got skin in the game. She’s got three young kids that are in the school system. And she wants to make sure that they’re going to get a quality education.

Reuel Sample:
We have probably the best candidates lined up for this. We’ve got some heavy lifting to do, Patti, because we need to get all four of these folks elected. And why is that?

Patti O’Neill:
Well, we have to have a majority on the board in order to get to in order to Right. Anybody who’s listening to politics know that when you have an even number on each side or a similar number on each side, then it’s really hard to effect a change. You end up with a split decision. So we really need all four of these people Pete Wildeboer, Melissa Mason, Josie Barnhart and Pat Bradford. We need all four of those to represent parents of a conservative mindset on our school board in order so we can affect the change because otherwise the Democrat majority is just going to continue to do things status quo the way that they’re doing it right now.

Reuel Sample:
And let’s be clear, we’re not electing these folks to teach a a Republican What we want our kids to do is we want them to get a good education and we want parents to be involved with that education from the get go.

Patti O’Neill:
I would be hard pressed to find somebody who would say, we we don’t want schools. That is basic education that is going to be utilized every day of your life moving forward. And that’s where the focus needs to be, not on the social issues. You know, let’s educate them and give them a thirst for learning and thinking and not indoctrination.