Every August brings a familiar feeling for those of us with kids. Getting back into a routine, packing lunches, buying new clothes because our kids grew out of the ones we bought last year, and pulling up to the drop-off line to send them off for a new year of learning.
Most parents are so consumed with busy schedules, their work, and other responsibilities that it’s easy to blindly trust that their children are spending the day learning the knowledge and skills they need to succeed. But what if that trust is grossly misplaced?
Parents have never been expected to surrender their role as provider and protector of their children just because they walked through the school doors. For more than a century, the Supreme Court has recognized that parents, not the government, have the primary responsibility and constitutional right to direct the upbringing and education of their children.
New Mexico, however, seems to think it can opt out of that precedent.
As mothers, we have become painfully aware of an alarming culture of hidden objectives and unthinkable policies in New Mexico public schools that are exposing children to toxic ideologies. We’re here to sound the alarm for parents across our state, as we have found that very few know what’s been happening behind closed doors.
Like countless other New Mexico parents, we believed our local schools would partner with families, respect parents, and prioritize academic excellence. Instead, New Mexico ranks worst nationally in education, and our tax dollars seem to be going to anything other than arithmetic and phonics. When our children came home and began to tell us the appalling things they were learning, we quickly realized that there was no interest in any partnership with parents, nor in reworking how our state can rise above our academic challenges.
For Kristy, it was when her young daughter came home from school visibly distressed about interactions occurring in her classroom after using the restroom with a 6-year-old boy.
For Laura, it was when she heard from her twin daughters that in their fourth-grade sex-education class — which she had opted them out of — the teacher played a video of a man in a dress called the “puberty fairy.”
While our experiences differed, they led us to the same conclusion: New Mexico parents are being shut out of the classroom and blatantly ignored.
In recent years, New Mexico has enacted policies that have steadily diminished parents’ role in some of the most significant decisions affecting their children. House Bill 7, signed into law in 2023, prohibits public bodies from interfering with access to “reproductive healthcare” and “gender-affirming health care.” To put it starkly: This bill undermines parental consent and transparency in our children’s lives.
We also realize that many teachers throughout the state have been alarmed by the steady uptick of secrecy and deception happening within the school system statewide. Most are scared to speak out, fearing retaliation or even worse, the loss of their job and income. These types of policies are clearly trickling from the highest levels of New Mexico’s education system down.
We realize that there are differing opinions on contentious topics like sexuality and gender, which is why we, as mothers, want to be able to teach our children our morals and personal convictions surrounding those topics first. We want our children to feel equipped to enter a world where not everyone shares what we believe at home.
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The bottom line is that, when there are topics surrounding sexuality, abortion, or gender care in any sort of curriculum or policies, parents should not have to wonder whether they are receiving the full picture of their child’s day-to-day lessons, or their child’s identity, for that matter.
Parents should not have to become investigators to understand what is happening in our children’s classrooms. Public schools work best when educators partner with parents, not function as children’s guardians.
Kristy Borrego Ojinaga and Laura Girdner are New Mexico mothers and members of Independent Women’s Network.