Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and fellow Republicans talk a lot about parents.

“I believe parents belong at the head of the table, making sure they understand who’s in charge of their kids,” Youngkin said at a packed “Parents Matter” discussion with supporters in Leesburg in September.

These discussions, along with his bus tour pushing Republicans to vote early, have been a staple on Youngkin’s campaign schedule this fall as he crisscrosses Virginia hoping to help deliver control of the General Assembly to his party.

For conservatives, “parents’ rights” centers on the idea that parents should be the main decision makers in their children’s education, counteracting what they see as public schools undermining that role. A focus on parents’ rights is by many accounts the key reason Youngkin narrowly won election in 2021.

Youngkin refers to the concept of “parents’ rights” especially often in reference to school culture-war issues. He uses it as a catchall for conservative frustrations over schools’ approaches to talking about race and racism and accommodations for transgender students in public schools — and a belief that those focuses detract from students’ academic success.

Youngkin has delivered on some of his campaign promises on education more generally as governor. His administration has pushed for more school choice options, called for a greater emphasis on student proficiency in test scores (compared to improvement over time), and rolled out a high-intensity tutoring program meant to help students catch up after pandemic learning loss.

Youngkin spoke in Leesburg alongside Juan Pablo Segura, the Republican candidate in the closely-watched race for Senate District 31, which covers much of the western and central part of Loudoun County. Segura, an entrepreneur, has also emerged as a conservative education activist, suing the embattled Loudoun school board for access to an internal investigation into two sexual assaults. At the event, he called parental rights “the issue” in the campaign.

“Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. This is the issue,” Segura said in Leesburg, noting his lawsuit and criticisms of the Loudoun school board. “And so we’re going to go to work and we’re going to help the governor pass common-sense, parents-first legislation.”

In comments on Fox News, Segura again referred to “parents-first legislation,” and cited Sage’s Law, a defeated bill in the General Assembly that would require school personnel to immediately notify parents if their child tells school staff that they are experiencing “gender incongruence.”

But whether “parents’ rights” carries Segura and other Republicans to victory next week remains to be seen. That includes down-ballot races in Loudoun County, where all the seats on the school board are up for grabs.

“If it works for Republicans this time, that term becomes part of our political lexicon for a much longer time,” says David Ramadan, a former Republican member of the House of Delegates and a professor of practice at George Mason University’s Schar School of Public Policy. “If Republicans don’t win the majorities in this election, then that was a one-time issue.”

Education a top issue in the election

In the closing weeks of the 2021 campaign, Youngkin capitalized on a gaffe from his opponent, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who said in a debate that he didn’t believe parents should be making decisions regarding their child’s schooling.

“When he said that, then we could say, ‘Parents matter. Terry wants the government in between you and your child’s life.’ And then it spoke to everybody,” said Youngkin strategist Jeff Roe in an interview with Politico after the election “We didn’t have to explain it to anyone, because they heard what they wanted to hear in that message.”

That dynamic makes the phrase a useful political tool — but an area of frustration if you’re trying to get to the bottom of what actual policies it encompasses.

“These terms are all such buzzwords,” said Saarah Baig, a George Mason University student who moderated a Loudoun school board candidate forum at the ADAMS Center in Ashburn, part of a series of nonpartisan political engagement events the mosque is hosting this year. “Oftentimes we’re kind of like, ‘What does that even mean?’”

The forum moderators, Baig said, tried to focus that question by talking with parents in the local community about where specifically they felt their role as parents had been compromised — and where it had been recognized.

With Republicans pushing “parents’ rights” on the campaign trail, Virginia Democrats’ education rhetoric mostly focuses on the state legislature’s role in funding schools and addressing concerns about school shootings.

“Our party has emphasized putting more money in public education,” said retiring Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw at a press conference in Manassas on the first day of early voting. “The governor wanted to do tax cuts.”

“When you have folks on the other side right now who don’t trust teachers with the books that they’re assigning to students, but they’re telling teachers, ‘We want you armed in the classroom,’ what does that say about misplaced priorities?” said Del. Danica Roem, the party’s nominee for state senate District 30, in Prince William County.

Ramadan notes that education has historically been an area of strength for Democrats, and recent polling backs that up. About 70% of Democratic, Republican, and independent voters feel education is “very important” in the election, with a six-point lean towards Democrats in terms of which party voters trust to handle education policy, according to an October 20 Post/Schar School poll.

The same poll found that 50% of voters approved of Youngkin’s approach to education. A minority approved of Youngkin’s approach to transgender students, though majorities agreed with the governor that parents should be notified if their child chooses to go by a different name and pronouns.

“We’ll see on November 7th, did the Republicans really take that issue away from Democrats? Or was that an outlier during the Youngkin era?” Ramadan said.

An ongoing battle in Loudoun County 

Few places in Virginia have been more fractured by the political arguments over “parents’ rights” than Loudoun County, a fast-growing suburb. The conflagration in Loudoun started over school pandemic learning policies and parent criticisms of the schools’ focus on racial equity, and morphed into anger over the schools’ decision to follow former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s lead on transgender student accommodations in bathrooms and school facilities.

Loudoun schools have also been the subject of extensive scrutiny and criticism over school officials’ handling of a pair of sexual assaults in 2021. The assaults were committed by the same student, and officials did not open a Title IX investigation into the first one until months later. Some conservatives connected the assaults to the schools’ transgender student policy, suggesting that it could allow male students access to girls’ restrooms; the student’s mother has said her child is not transgender.

The Youngkin campaign — and after his victory, the administration — frequently pops up in the county’s education debates. One of Youngkin’s first executive orders directed Attorney General Jason Miyares to conduct an investigation into the sexual assaults. Just this week, the Youngkin administration issued an executive order requiring schools to notify parents within 24 hours of drug overdoses on school grounds — after Loudoun’s Republican sheriff spoke publicly about a cluster of overdoses at a local high school.

Ramadan said overdoses are “important subject matter,” but noted that the order comes in the final week of the election campaign.

Loudoun’s school board contest

One indicator for how Loudoun residents feel about “parents’ rights” and Youngkin’s frequent pushback against the local school systems will be the at-large school board contest, which pits Michael Rivera, a sheriff’s deputy, against Anne Donohue, a lawyer.

School board races are officially nonpartisan, but candidates often receive support and endorsements from local political parties. Rivera is supported by local Republicans, including getting a financial boost from Segura’s PAC.

Donohue has backing from Democrats, including endorsements from incumbent legislators, and she is the Loudoun Democrats’ recommended candidate in the race. Republicans have raised questions about her candidacy possibly violating the Hatch Act, which limits the partisan activities of federal employees. Donohue says she resigned her position at the Department of Justice on October 10.

“When I first decided to run for this seat, I worked closely with my employer to make sure there were no concerns about my candidacy,” she said in a statement. “Once I learned that there was even the slightest concern, I decided to resign from my position to be able to dedicate myself 100% to Loudoun students, educators, and families.”

For Rivera, “parents’ rights” is a lens for interpreting the power relationship between schools and families.

“We’re in a battle between parents and taxpayers and the school systems telling you that they know what’s better for your child,” said  Rivera, the conservative candidate, in an interview with DCist/WAMU. “You get a lot of parents that say, ‘No, they’re my children. I raised them, I fed them, I clothed them, and they’re mine for the rest of my life.’”

Rivera elaborated on a number of policy ideas that fall under the “parents’ rights” rubric for him, including content warnings on books that deal with sexual content and a push for more transparency from the schools in terms of how taxpayer dollars are spent. There’s also a request to turn the livestream camera at school board meetings to show parents who are speaking during public comments as a mark of respect. Rivera agrees with Youngkin’s stance on transgender students in school — and goes further, suggesting that “transgender ideology” is counter to science.

He’d like non-academic instruction, like social-emotional learning lessons, to be opt-in instead of the current opt-out system. Rivera noted he’d gone through the process to opt his son out of a social-emotional curriculum called “No Place For Hate” in high school after he visited the website of the organization behind the curriculum, the Anti-Defamation League, and found language in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and other social justice causes.

“You have to be aggressive at these things, because the school system, the administration, will bully you and say you can’t do that,” he said.

Rivera pushed back on the idea that “parents’ rights” rhetoric sidelines teachers and their expertise in child development and education, calling it “a political talking point” from detractors.

“It’s not just angry parents looking to usurp teachers’ authority and go into the classroom,” he said. “Trust me, teachers do a very hard job. We all appreciate it.” Rivera says his quarrel is more with school administrators than rank-and-file teachers.

Rivera’s opponent, Anne Donohue, says she got into the at-large race precisely because of the “heated and divisive” discussion around education in the county, and what she perceived as “people saying very critical things about our teachers.”

“There’s a lot of very loud voices saying that Loudoun County parents want this and that and the schools are so bad,” she told DCist/WAMU in an interview. “I don’t agree with that. And I’m tired of hearing that narrative so loudly.”

That doesn’t mean Donohue thinks the schools are above reproach. She’d like to see better support for educators — she is in favor of collective bargaining — and a more thoughtful conversation on school safety, which she defines as the physical safety of the buildings as well as student and staff emotional and mental health. She wants to see schools teach things like mental health first aid and how to spot the signs of substance use.

Regarding “parents’ rights,” Donohue, the parent of two young children enrolled in Loudoun schools, has a similar definition to Virginia Republicans and Rivera (“the absolute right to make decisions for how to raise that child,” provided there is no harm or abuse). But she disagrees heartily with the subtext of the phrase, particularly what she says are attacks on LGBTQ students and public school libraries.

“If you look at the specifics of what the people who are saying ‘Parents’ rights, parents rights’ … what they’re really asking for is to impose their views on other students, which then also imposes those views on other parents and families. And to me that’s where the problem lies,” she said.

Loudoun County has trended blue in recent years, making the calculus increasingly difficult for Republicans on Election Day. John Smith, with the Loudoun County Republican Committee, said local conservatives hope the “parents’ rights” message can engage disengaged voters from immigrant communities and parents of faith.

“Their values align with what Republicans talk about with respect to ‘parents matter,’” Smith said. “So I think it will play a factor in the election. I think it is resonating.”

Rivera, who is bilingual and says he hopes to be a voice for Latinx voters in the county, also received an endorsement from MOVE Chamber, a local association of Muslim-owned businesses. But a representative of the group said the endorsement came in part because Rivera was the only one of the two candidates to submit answers to a questionnaire.

Ramadan, who is also a Loudoun resident, said some in immigrant communities do identify with the conservative position on schools.

“The ‘parents matter,’ school issue, sexual material — that definitely resonates,” he said. “The question, however, remains: is that enough to carry over? Is that enough to bring some of these candidates over the finish line?”