NC Values Coalition Reviews Legal Options to Halt Social Justice Curriculum Adopted by Wake County Schools

“The North Carolina Values Coalition has begun an immediate review of legal options to help traumatized students and parents at Heritage High School (Wake County) after our investigation discovered the High School's Principal told parents earlier in the year that the lessons used by the 10th grade English teacher were approved by the district's Curriculum Department. The diversity inventory exercise intentionally disregards U.S. Code § 1232h – The Protection of Pupil Rights - which explicitly prohibits students from requiring to submit a survey, analysis, or evaluation that reveals private sexual identity, religious and privileged information without the prior consent of a parent or guardian.”

The repeated failure of Wake County Schools to protect the rights of students on multiple occasions is alarming and parents are outraged. Wake County School Board heard feedback from concerned parents at last night's board meeting. Earlier in the day parents met with school officials at Heritage High to demand the teacher be placed on leave for violating the Protection of Pupil Rights, inflicting emotional harm, and for invading the privacy of the students.

According to our investigation and reports from parents with children at the school we learned:

This is the second time this year that the Heritage teacher used the Diversity Inventory worksheet in her classroom.

A second teacher at Heritage has also used the diversity curriculum in the last year.

Wake County Curriculum Department has approved the lesson plan and it is being used by high schools throughout the district while inferring this was a lesson used only once and created solely by a teacher.

The Diversity Inventory exercise is almost identical to the sample modules being rolled out across the district by Wake County Schools as part of their new Social Justice Standards curriculum.

Yesterday NC Values Coalition kicked off a digital campaign to ask parents of students who have participated in diversity or social identities as part of the district’s Social Justice Standards program to visit www.NCValues.org to tell us about your experience. We will evaluate these responses as we consider our legal options to help protect the privacy of students in Wake County Schools.

Students should never be forced to divulge personal and private information in order to respect diversity, but leadership at the school thinks otherwise. The school's Principal wrote to parents, "this lesson should continue to be used but the lesson as a whole may have been best served if it was used further into the semester when students and teachers are 'more comfortable with each other' - At NC Values we are never comfortable with violating federal laws.

- Tami Fitzgerald, NC Values Coalition Executive Director

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