Poll Shows Nationwide Support for Parental Notification Policies in Schools

A new poll is showing that a majority of Americans support school policies requiring teachers to inform parents of students’ social gender transition efforts. According to a recent Center Square Voter’s Voice Poll conducted in conjunction with Noble Predictive Insights, 66% of Americans from across the political spectrum — including Republicans, Democrats, and independent voters — responded that teachers should “be obligated to inform parents if their child changes their gender identification or preferred pronouns at school.” Surprisingly, nearly half of Democrats (49%) signaled support for such policies, while less than a third (30%) opposed them.

Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Education Studies, told The Washington Stand, “Honestly, the polling results are too low. I would have thought more people would expect to be informed about mental health interventions for children at school.” She continued, “Social transition at school is a mental health treatment, and it is only reasonable and decent to include parents in that process or stop the treatments if the parents disagree. It would be even better if schools stopped delivering health care services to children without parents present.”

Republicans (83%) and independent voters (62%) were the political demographics most likely to support parental notification policies. The poll also found that support for such policies was highest among older voters, with 71% of voters aged 55-64 and 70% of voters over the age of 65 supporting parental notification, although 56% of voters aged 18-34 also backed such policies. A similar survey conducted in August in deep-blue New Jersey found that 77% of Garden State adults support parental notification policies in schools, including 61% of Democrats. Again, Republicans were the most likely (at 92%) to endorse parental notification mandates.

Also this past summer, a report from Parents Defending Education found that nearly 1,100 school districts — encompassing over 18,000 schools responsible for almost 11 million children — required teachers to keep students’ social gender transition procedures a secret from parents. The majority of those school districts (593) are in California, where parental notification policies and parental rights have become controversial issues. For example, California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) sued the Chino Valley Unified School District for enacting a parental notification policy, alleging that the mandate is a civil rights violation. After parents gathered on the state capitol steps in Sacramento to protest a spate of anti-parent bills, the Protect Kids California coalition launched a series of ballot initiatives which included statewide parental notification mandates.

Kilgannon commented, “It’s incredible that we are living in a time when it takes national polling to confirm what most people know by instinct: parents want to know what happens in their children’s lives, especially while they are at school. It’s just common sense.” She added, “Parents expect to be partners in their children’s education, whether it’s in a public school or a private school.”