On this week’s episode, we discuss the nationwide debate over the direction of public education. There has been a sea change due to lockdowns, mask mandates, and curricula like Critical Race Theory, and parents have flocked to school board meetings to express their concerns. Many want to do more but just don’t know how. Laura Zorc joins today to explain how she’s working to empower parents to take back their school districts.

Laura Zorc is Director of Education Reform at FreedomWorks and executive director at Building Education for Students Together. She brings years of experience and expertise in the subject of education reform and an unparalleled devotion for putting power back in the hands of parents and families. Laura’s focus shifted to education when her children began public school in Florida. Desiring a quality education for her four children, Laura served in multiple positions on the parent-teacher board of her children’s schools, was elected twice as president of her county’s parent-teacher association, and co-founded Florida Parents Against Common Core (FPACC), one of the largest parent-led advocacy groups in the state. Additionally, she served on former Florida Governor Rick Scott’s Education Committee as the parent representative before being elected to the Indian River County School Board.


TRANSCRIPT

Beverly Hallberg:

Welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg. On today’s episode, we discuss the nationwide debate over the direction of public schools. There has been a sea change due to lock downs, mask mandates, and curriculum like critical race theory. The result has been parents flocking to school board meetings to express their concerns. Many want to do more. We have a guest on today who is working to empower those parents—and helping them take back their school districts. Laura Zorc joins us. Laura Zorc is Director of Education Reform at FreedomWorks, and Executive Director at Building Education for Students Together. She brings years of experience and expertise in the subject of education reform. Her focus shifted to education when her children began public school in Florida. She served in multiple positions on the parent-teacher board, was elected twice as president of her county’s parent-teacher association, and co-founded Florida Parents Against Common Core. Additionally, she served on former Florida Governor Rick Scott’s education committee as the parent representative before being elected to the Indian River County School Board. Laura, a pleasure to have you on She Thinks today.

Laura Zorc:

Thank you for having me, Beverly.

Beverly Hallberg:

Your bio is impressive. What you do day to day at FreedomWorks is something that you have practiced for years. I just thought it would be good to start by you explaining how you got into all of this. I know your focus shifted to education when your children began public school, but what was it about them entering public school where you really felt, “I need to be more involved. I need to know what’s going on”?

Laura Zorc:

I appreciate that question, because I do get asked that quite a bit. At the end of the day, my passion, my motivation, is the fact that I am the mom of four. I have three school-aged children now, and I do have three grandchildren that are now in the school age, public schools. Back in 2013, as a parent, I started hearing about the common core state standards that were coming into the school districts, and something that really puzzled me and bothered me was the fact that these came through a federal grant where our legislators in our state didn’t even have the ability to take a look at what these new standards were going to be, and all the implementation process. Myself and three other moms, we decided to take on the state, because we have legislators that told us there’s nothing we can do about it; it’s too late. That wasn’t acceptable because we’re talking about our kids’ future.

As an ordinary mom, with three school-aged children, I knew private school was not going to be an option for our family. As a parent, I really took on the challenge of challenging the status quo, asking those questions, and myself and the three other moms, we did the research on common core state standards. We’ve presented it to the state board of education, we presented it to our governor, and we had movement on that. That really motivates me. When I’m out speaking with parents, the first thing I want them to know is parent movements can start with one. It just really takes confidence in knowing the issue, doing your research, and not taking no as an answer, or there’s nothing we can do about it.

Beverly Hallberg:

That’s why I think it’s so wonderful the work that you are doing at FreedomWorks, when it comes to what is known as BEST, and BEST stands for Building Education for Students Together. Tell us a little bit about this program. What is it that you all do, and how do you help empower parents?

Laura Zorc:

FreedomWorks is one of the largest grassroots organizations in the nation. We have over six million activists that have partnered with us, and we partner with them to really change the landscape on the local level. When I came onto FreedomWorks as the Director of Education Reform, they asked me to take a look at what are we not doing within this sphere. As a parent, as a former school board member—and that’s someone that represents parents at the state level on various committees—what really was missing, even back in December when I started taking a look at this, is our parental involvement, the respect for the parent voice. What I wanted to do, and I partnered with FreedomWorks, and they were very supportive, and I love this organization because they have recognized that it’s going to take a parent movement to really change the status quo of what’s going in our public school systems. Everything that we’re seeing—from critical race theory, to the adoption of common core state standards, to what we’re seeing now with parental rights, what we’re seeing across the country with the mask mandates, the vaccination mandates—if we can empower parents and give them the voice, at the end of the day we wouldn’t be where we are if we were already in that place.

Beverly Hallberg:

It’s been interesting since COVID because we have seen this sea change where parents learn, just through virtual learning being done in their homes, they learn more about what their kids were being taught. Then, of course, there are the shutdowns, the masks mandate. There’s been a lot for parents to be involved in, and we’ve seen so many parents show up at different school board meetings across the country. First of all, were you surprised to see as many parents as you have seen them out there really challenging the school districts?

Laura Zorc:

I am not surprised because once the parents realize they don’t have that final decision making, and when their rights as a parent are being stripped away, I have seen it over and over where parents will come to those meetings. They will speak out for their children, and they really should be the final voice for their children. We elect these school board members to represent our community. We represent them to represent our children. What happens is they get into these positions, and they start representing the system, the teachers’ unions, what their superintendent, and all that staff and administration went. They forget, at the end of the day, they’re there for the children. These children belong to these parents. Parents do not send their children to school, to these government schools, to co-parent with them. When we send our kids through those front doors, that doesn’t mean we give our rights to the government.

Beverly Hallberg:

With what is known as the BEST Academy, how are you helping equip these parents? I think a lot of parents, some have spoken up and gone to board meetings, some are watching and seeing what’s going on, and they’re saying, “I want to do more, but I don’t know what those steps are.” How is it that you work side-by-side with parents?

Laura Zorc:

We just finished up a national tour, where we’re actually getting out into communities and we are meeting the parents right where their needs are. If there is a parent group that’s already formed, and they need to elevate it to the next level, we will help them with that. Part of our academy is just giving our parents the basics of how to write a press release, how to hold a press conference, because these parents need to have a voice. We want to be able to use our national platform to train these parents. If a parent is just starting off, and they really don’t know how to even take that first step, we walk them through what it means to sign up to speak at public input. There’s so many rules and regulations around this, so we take that fear away from that because if we can get that parent—who wants to speak out but is afraid—through the front door of that school district, into that school board room to speak, that’s the first step.

A lot of parents are just afraid to take those first steps. We want to empower them. We give them those steps and those tools that they’ll need. Then we will help them along the line, guide them to that next level because if they start going to these school board meetings, and these school board members are just ignoring them, we want to empower these parents to run for school board because we need more parents that are sitting on the dais, making decisions for our children, who understand what parents and children are going through right now in that the days that we have experienced, especially over the last year, Beverley.

Beverly Hallberg:

Two-part question: how many parents are you working with—and I’m assuming that number has increased dramatically in the past few months—and second of all, do you find that a lot of the parents that you work with, they didn’t expect to be doing this, but they felt that they had no choice, that they needed to speak up on behalf of their children? In many ways, not only are you providing them the tools to be able to send out a press release, or to speak up at a school board meeting, or even maybe run for school board itself, it’s also sometimes coming alongside them and helping them in emotional support as they brave this new world of speaking up, even though they were going to have some pushback from other people.

Laura Zorc:

You are exactly right. What we are finding as the quiet moms and dads, we work with moms and dads across the country, and when we launched our parent academy back in, I believe, it was March and we ran it for a few months, we were able to train and speak to over 2200 parents during that time. Coming this fall, we’re hoping to expand that to not only… What we were hearing at the time, is just highlighting, but now, we’re going to go back into these communities, and all over the country, and we’re going to actually put on individual conferences so that more moms and dads can come to this training and learn how to write a FOIA request, how to formally make a complaint if an educator goes ahead and defies the law and teaches CRT. We’re going to really empower parents through these steps. We have seen a lot of parents, that never thought that they would be speaking at a school board meeting. Trust me, the last thing that we as parents have time to do, is go sit down at the district office, wait for your name to be called, so you can be called up there, speak three minutes, be dismissed, and the next person called.

Parents recognize that they do not have a say right now in their children’s education. These school board members, and these district administrators, they’re not even replying, or calling these parents back. This is the only way that they can get their voice heard. If they’re going to school board meetings, writing these press releases, holding these press conferences, it really is beneficial for other parents to come together through these conferences, and these events that we host, to know they’re not alone. When they come to these, they really go back and they recruit other parents. That’s why we’re seeing this parent movement, because parents are tired of being ignored.

Beverly Hallberg:

I know one aspect of this is that you also deal with the issue of critical race theory, and combating curriculum that aligns with that. How have you gone about that? That’s a hard one. What has been your mode of operation to help parents try to reverse the critical race theory that’s infiltrated most of the curriculum we see in schools these days?

Laura Zorc:

There’s several parts to this that we are tackling because every state is at a different level. We have states, in Florida and Texas, that are saying they’re not teaching critical race theory. We have to educate our parents on what are the different programs, and different terminologies, that they are utilizing to avoid calling it critical race theory. Then, also, going into states that really haven’t even heard of critical race theory, and educating them on what that is. We’re hearing, now, because we are out there educating parents on what it is, we’re hearing back, that it is being taught in these various communities and school districts. Every school district is at a different level, but it’s really trying to educate them on what it is, and how to identify it, and how are they bringing it into the school district. It’s not coming in… Most of the time, this is not coming in under the title critical race theory. This is coming in under various programs like courageous conversation and other programs like that, that just seem warm and fuzzy. You wouldn’t even have a radar on this. We are just really trying to help our parents know what it is.

Beverly Hallberg:

Do you find that, in your work, in the public school systems—and, of course, it’s different from district to district and state to state—but do you feel that the public school system is almost gone too far that it can’t come back? That charter schools and private schools are the only option, or have you seen—I know you’ve seen it personally in Florida and your work there—but have you seen that even in current day, that when you get the right people into school boards, or when you have parents fighting against school boards, the changes can be made?

Laura Zorc:

I think that it’s not too late. I think when I was on the school board… I was on the school board from 2016 to 2020. During that time, we were not seeing a lot of this. Around January is really when the flood gates opened. I think definitely it’s when you have the right school board members in place, but you also have to have that right governor that is going to stand behind parents, and stand behind the school board members that are wanting to do the right thing. The other layer to that is having the right leadership in the White House because—I’m going to say since this new administration has taken their office—it’s a change in the mindset that we are seeing in these Departments of Education across the country.

Beverly Hallberg:

Final question for you, Laura, is for those who are listening, especially parents who think it sounds like a great thing to get involved with FreedomWorks and BEST, where can they go for more information, and are there any specific conferences coming up that people should be aware of that are happening in their region?

Laura Zorc:

They can go to parentsknowbest.com, and they can check out our website. They can sign up for our school board candidate academy if they’re interested in running for school board; that is a free six week academy that we offer. Then we are going to be in Phoenix, Arizona, and New Hampshire, Georgia. Beverly, if they go to our website, they will be able to see what our upcoming events are. We have a packed agenda coming this fall. If you would like us to come to your area, and host a Parents Know Best conference, that is something that you can put in our remarks on our website. We would love to join you in your community.

Beverly Hallberg:

Laura, we so appreciate you joining us today, and all the work that you’re doing with parents across the country. We appreciate it. Thank you for joining She Thinks.

Laura Zorc:

Thank you so much.

Beverly Hallberg:

Thank you for joining us. Before you go, Independent Women’s Forum does want you to know that we rely on the generosity of supporters like you, and investment in IWF fuels our efforts to enhance freedom, opportunity, and wellbeing for all Americans. Please consider making a small donation to IWF by visiting iwf.org/donate. That is iwf.org/donate. Last, if you enjoyed this episode of She Thinks, do leave us a rating or review on iTunes; it does help. Also, we’d love it if you shared this episode and let your friends know where they can find more She Thinks episodes. From all of us here at Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for listening.