On this episode of The Bespoke Parenting Podcast, Independent Women’s Forum Visiting Fellow Heather Hunter sat in for Julie Gunlock and talked to an amazing mama bear in the parent movement: April Montgomery. April is a fearless Frederick County, Maryland mom with experience in teaching special education. She recently ran for school board and has been a leading voice in calling out the woke agenda in Maryland schools. Heather spoke with April about her journey of balancing her new life as both a working mom and a homeschool mom to three children of varying ages. She discussed how she and her husband alternate work hours in order to help teach their kids. You can find her latest reports on “The Truth and Transparency with April” Facebook group.
TRANSCRIPT
Julie Gunlock:
Hey everyone. I’m Julie Gunlock, host of The Bespoke Parenting Hour. Today you’re going to be listening to a special pop-up version of Bespoke with IWF visiting fellow Heather Hunter. Enjoy.
Heather Hunter:
Hi, on this episode of Bespoke Parenting Podcast, Heather Hunter, I’m visiting fellow at Independent Women’s Forum, sitting in for Julie Gunlock. Thank you for Julie for letting me in at this wonderful podcast. And this podcast is about and for parents who are tired of being told how to do it and what to do and there’s no one way to parent, and there are many ways to parent. And today, I have an amazing mama bear in the parent movement, her name’s April Montgomery. I’ve been following her for a while and I just absolutely adore her. Thanks for joining us, April.
April Montgomery:
Thank you so much for having me, that was a very kind intro.
Heather Hunter:
Well, April is April Montgomery, thank you for making time. And April Montgomery, she’s a fearless Frederick County mom in Maryland, and I’ve been following her for a while, I see what she’s done. She’s formerly worked in kindergarten. She’s been calling out the woke agenda in Frederick County. She recently made a go at running for school board, and she is just one of those moms that just stays on it and just makes people aware of what’s going on. And she’s hugely helpful for moms like me who are trying to track what’s going on in Maryland. And so, April, thank you for joining the podcast today. And I just want to talk to you about how you got in involved in education. I know you have a bit of an education background, and also now that you’re a mom, I mean, what got you into following the education issue for a while?
April Montgomery:
Well, being a mom is actually what got me into education. I’ve been working with kids since I was 14. I always felt a calling. I have a younger sibling with special needs, and I worked with her and her physical therapy and vocational therapy. And from there, I just kept on working with kids. And then when I had my own, I wanted to stay home with them. So when they started school, I looked for a job in the education field, which a lot of parents do, just so I could work the same hours and have the summers off with them. When everything started going wonky, if you will, with education, I took notice of it mainly during the pandemic. My daughter was doing virtual learning and got a lesson that was highly inappropriate about condom use. But this was seventh grade and she just was not there yet.
And I think that the main issue that a lot of parents have is that we know our kids and when they’re ready, and if we’re not made aware of what’s being taught, then we don’t have a say in whether or not it’s appropriate for them at that time.
Heather Hunter:
Yeah. Well, I even saw you do a discussion, I think it was with Armstrong Williams, and you were talking about how sometimes my youngest daughter feels like she might be a dog one day, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go get her hair transplants and try to change her as a person. Sometimes they’re just using their imagination sometimes, they’re finding themselves. And how have you felt about all this very aggressive social push on our kids in trying to get them involved in issues they’re not ready for?
April Montgomery:
Well, the biggest issue that I think is, is that these children are being told, especially at a very pivotal age, between the ages of 10 and 16, that if they don’t like their bodies or if they’re uncomfortable in their bodies that they might be transgender. I mean, show me a 10 to, I don’t know, I’m 41, a woman that’s comfortable in her own body, especially during puberty. Your body’s going through so many changes, and this is for boys too, that no woman is comfortable in her own skin, they’re very confused. So it’s a very easy time to be manipulated and be like, “Well, maybe if I get puberty blockers then I won’t grow breasts and I won’t have to hide them.” I mean, I have a daughter who developed early, and for her it was very confusing and upsetting. And to tell her, “Well, it might be easier if you’re a boy,” do you know how confusing that is? And I mean, especially for our little ones.
Heather Hunter:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, just even my girls have both names that are Quinn and Bailey. And so they’re names that they could be a boy or girl name, but they embrace the color pink and all sorts of things. But also, one of mine is kind of a tomboy and just everyone develops differently, everyone, they look at things differently. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re ready to just change. Everyone comes at things differently, and it almost feels like kids are being forced to make an identity call right away and to change right away on everything. And some of it’s pretty detrimental stuff in changing with surgery and all sorts of things that kids just are not ready to make the decision for.
April Montgomery:
Well, agreed. And the false narrative that these puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are reversible is absolutely false. So you start halting a natural process within your body, it’s going to have repercussions, it has repercussions like osteoporosis and heart issues. And these poor children aren’t growing. I mean, there are brain developments that happen during puberty that they’re also halting. You have to go through this process of growing and becoming an adult. And part of that is maturing mind, body and soul. And it has to be a natural process. When you interrupt that process, you cause so many different issues. And not to mention, I mean, my daughter, my four-year-old, when people are walking down the street, she can tell me even if, I can’t tell, if someone’s a boy or a girl like, biologically. “Why is that boy wearing a dress?” “Why does that girl have a mustache?” She knows, it’s innately in us and she’s not being led.
Heather Hunter:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, how many kids do you have, April? How many, you have three?
April Montgomery:
I have three.
Heather Hunter:
Okay.
April Montgomery:
I have a 16-year-old son, a 14-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old daughter.
Heather Hunter:
Okay. So you went through the pandemic, and I think you had to make a lot of decisions like a lot of parents. And you have a hybrid situation in that I think you still have children in public school, but then you also recently made the big jump to be also a homeschool mom as well. How’s that working?
April Montgomery:
Well, okay, so actually all three of my kids now, since we’ve spoken, are homeschooled.
Heather Hunter:
Oh, okay.
April Montgomery:
We chose to pull the older two as well at the end of September. And that was due to a very controversial language arts assignment that was given to my daughter. And my son was accused of some things that he did not do, and the school didn’t handle it very well. And I was like, you know what? This is just not a safe environment in any way for our kids, and we could do a better job of leading them the way we feel is correct with our faith, with our beliefs, and just keeping them safe. The five-year-old never entered school. We chose very early on that she was going to be homeschooled at least until we could figure this out. My two teenagers, we just pulled the end of September, and they were reluctant, but they kind of like sleeping until 9:00 AM, and school work only takes them four hours, and my son has been helping with some other things around town and doing his economic research through experience.
So it’s been a wonderful thing. And I got to be honest with you, I think they’ve learned more in the last month than they had during the entire pandemic.
Heather Hunter:
Yeah, I just started homeschooling my five-year-old in kindergarten, and I find they talk about socialization, they talk about are they not getting everything they need to learn? My daughter’s so well-advanced than other kids. And also I’ve heard homeschool parents say that they also are taught, when you’re in school, you have set friends that you meet just because you’ve met them in the classroom. With homeschooling, you actually learn the skill to proactively meet people and get to know them. And so that’s a huge skill to have as an adult, as in your life, whether at church or at work, to actually proactively make relationships. And so I’ve never found a homeschool kid to be introverted. They tend to be actually very social and they have these multi-generational relationships where they know how to interact with people, because very rarely are you ever in a situation in the real world where you just have one set of people who are the same age around you all the time.
April Montgomery:
Correct, yeah. I mean, honestly, my five-year-old is probably the most socially-balanced child we know, and that’s due to actual social interactions, real ones. She’ll talk to people at the grocery store, she’ll talk to people at the playground, she has to initiate those relationships. It’s not like, “Oh, I’m sitting next to this person, I’m going to talk to them.” “Oh I’m with these 5 or 25, or now our school classrooms are so overpopulated, some classes are upwards of 35 children, “I’m with these 35 children all day, these are my friends.” No, you actually get to make friends based on interests and common goals, and even in an educational setting that’s more fun. So these kids are more free to be themselves. My five-year-old is already doing addition, subtraction, knows all of her numbers, letters. She can spell her own name, write her own name, and she just started kindergarten. I worked in kindergarten, they’re not there yet in public school.
Heather Hunter:
Oh yeah.
April Montgomery:
I mean, some, select few, but not all.
Heather Hunter:
They’re dealing with also 20 other kids. So when you have a one-on-one experience with your kid, you’re flying through stuff instead of having to try to teach 20 other, 19 other kids. Just it’s amazing how much faster.
April Montgomery:
I was blessed because I had what was called a kindergarten enrichment class. I’m not a certified teacher, I worked in the before and after-care program, but I did have a half-day kindergarten class with 10 children, 10. And that was the perfect group of kindergartners. Those kids did so well. I had three children that came in not speaking English, and left their year of kindergartens speaking English, due to just that interaction and through play and having the freedom in that kindergarten enrichment class to not run on a full curriculum. I didn’t have lesson plans per se. I wrote plans out, we had activities where they were learning, however it was, we could go by how they were feeling that day. And that’s very much how homeschooling works. My five-year-old’s not feeling it in the morning and she’s got her sassy pants on, we do school work in the afternoon when she’s got herself together. [inaudible 00:11:46].
Heather Hunter:
And you’re also a working mom too, so you’re kind of balancing this. And so your husband’s also helping with the homeschooling as well? How’s that going?
April Montgomery:
Yeah, my husband works at night, so he’s actually doing most of the homeschooling. I work really long hours right now, campaign season, I’m doing what I can to help everyone. And my campaign may have ended, but my advocacy for our children, and Frederick County as a whole, did not, nor will it ever. I mean, I got into running because I wanted to make a difference, and I found I could still do that by helping others and staying active with the board of education meetings, with the county council meetings, with all of it. Just being informed is hugely helpful. I went to vote and I knew every name on that ballot, and I’ve never been that much of an informed voter. And I highly, highly suggest people getting involved because you can meet these people, they’re just people. They’re people just like you. And they feel that call and they’re acting on it.
And it has just been a wonderful experience, I mean, all of it wrapped up. Yeah, there’s a lot of injustices going on, and yeah, I’m having to learn how to parent in this ‘new world’ with all this insane curriculum that’s being pushed on our kids. But when you start really uncovering where it’s coming from, parents do have the control and you can make the sacrifices to do what’s right for your children.
Heather Hunter:
Well, I love what you’ve been doing. I highly recommend everyone who’s watching and listening to this podcast as well to check out your Facebook group. April’s got a Facebook group called Our Children, Our Voice. Check that out. She’s constantly updating and sharing what she’s finding going on in the Frederick County schools, and really, I mean, it’s the same, what she’s doing is such incredible mom citizen journalism in many ways that you do see with other moms. But she’s just so wonderful in covering it by detail. And you really get a feel of what is going on in schools everywhere really when you see what she’s doing. And so I highly recommend “Our Children, Our Voice” Facebook group. One of the things that I discovered following April is that, she referenced it earlier, but a language arts lesson, and I don’t know if you can see this, but she had a picture of her son’s… Was it your son or daughter?
April Montgomery:
My daughter.
Heather Hunter:
Daughter, okay. So there was a lesson, and it was a lesson showing all the different new pronouns that they were teaching in English class. And I showed it to a mom who, no, grandmother actually, and she had taught in the Frederick County schools, she had been administrator in the Frederick County schools. And I showed it to her and she said, “Oh, are they trying to teach another language? I don’t understand what ze, and zir and zirs, and I mean, I showed it to her, the new pronouns they’re teaching in English class. And I mean, who recognizes that? It’s a new invention of pronouns. I mean, what did you think when you saw this and what happened with that when your daughter called it out and made it public?
April Montgomery:
Well, I was aware that this was going to start coming up. I mean, I’ve got a lot of contacts within FCPS and none of them will ever be named. So if anybody wants to talk to me about anything that’s going on, everything’s anonymous. And I state that with conviction because I was an educator and I know how difficult it is to be conservative or not really approve of what’s going on around you, and feel trapped like you can’t speak up. But when I saw it actually in writing, and the fact that there’s a line in there that states instructing children that they are to call everyone they/them in order to not offend, now they’re changing the language. Now what they’re doing is changing the society within the buildings that everyone is just the same. And until they tell you what you can call them, even though they may biologically be a girl, you may have known them to be a biological girl in the same schools with them for 10 years. Now, nope, you have to call them they/them until they give you permission or tell you what to call them.
And it’s just this level of control and confusion. And those other pronouns, I mean, come on. The funniest thing about this, I think, is when I started reporting on it and I had evidence, I had people coming at me like, “Well, yeah, it’s language arts. They’re supposed to teach pronouns.” They’re not supposed to teach those pronouns. They use this as an opportunity to push the gender ideology, and the falsity that parents were given that we were going to be able to opt out of this. But you can only opt out if it’s happening where it’s supposed to happen, and that is in family life. And that is one section of one class, and it is not English class. So they start sneaking this in other places, then they can educate your kids even if you are opting them out of the family life. It’s sneaky and it’s icky, and I had to get it out there. And no matter what comes up, I’m going to continue to do that.
Heather Hunter:
Yeah. Well, thank you for that. And as somebody who’s been following the education system in Frederick, I have to say I’ve been following the DC area as somebody who works in the media, and I always associated the Frederick County area as a more conservative area. And I never would’ve thought the school system would go that way. People move to Frederick, they get out of Montgomery County or they get out of Howard County, there’s areas in Maryland that are woke and they’re like, “Okay, I need a better place for my kids.” But then you go to Frederick now and you’re like, “What is this pronoun?” I mean, people like April Montgomery are telling people like, “Hey, this is what’s happening, guys,” and thank you for that. And it’s important for us to signal to people what’s going on because it has to stop before it gets really bad.
And thank you for making people aware about that. And then also, when did this change start to happen? Was it during the pandemic or did the school board and schools start to get a little more woke over the past five years? I mean, what’s the timeline of what’s been going on?
April Montgomery:
So it’s been going on for a while. It actually started, they started adding gender identity and expression to seventh grade, I think, it was back in 2017, 2018. And that was when they started working on the Policy 443, which is the transgender rights policy. And that adds basically the ability for children that identify as the opposite sex to enter spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms, and that goes over the use of proper pronouns and name use. In that policy, it also states that teachers and administration are not to use preferred pronouns with the parents of those children if the children say don’t. So our kids have been asked their pronouns for years, it’s just now become K-12 in 2021. And that was when COMAR, the Code of Maryland got changed, and they adopted the new framework in March of 2021. So they’ve been pushing for it since 2017.
Heather Hunter:
Okay. So it’s actually been going on for quite a while. And then so your children, so you started to see this with your oldest, and then even your middle child, as far as how this was changing. And so then with your youngest, you’re just like, “Okay, forget this. We’re just starting the whole thing, starting homeschooling.” And then now the other ones are homeschooled. Well, kudos to you for keeping the fight. Even now your kids are homeschooled, but you still make people aware of what’s going on in the public schools, which thank you for that. Because our kids are probably going to marry somebody who was in a public school, or have friends who are in the public school, so we have to keep fighting, we have to keep making sure that those kids have a chance in having a good education. And…
April Montgomery:
Yeah, one thing I always say to people people who I speak to.
Heather Hunter:
So thank you for joining us on the… Sure.
April Montgomery:
Oh, sorry. One thing I always say to people that are speaking to me about this, and especially those that say, “I don’t have any kids in Frederick County Public Schools. I don’t have any kids, my kids are grown.” Okay, well these children are going to grow up and they’re going to lead our country. These children are going to marry your grandchildren, your children. These children are going to be a part of society. I’m a firm believer in public schools, I would love to get my five-year-old back into school at some point, but not while it’s like this. And we need to keep an eye on it. I did want to correct you on one thing. I changed the name of my Facebook page.
Heather Hunter:
Oh, okay.
April Montgomery:
Yeah, it is now “Truth and Transparency with April,” okay?
Heather Hunter:
Okay.
April Montgomery:
We had a little bit of a conflict with the name and it was just everyone was using it. So I wanted to do something a little bit different. So it’s “Truth and Transparency with April” on Facebook. Please come and follow it. I’d put up stuff not only about Frederick, but what’s going on nationwide, especially in our neighboring counties. And I’d love to have people’s feedback. And again, if any teachers, educators, administrators, or even concerned citizens would like to reach out to me, I can make you and everything you say completely… I’m stuck for the word, oh my gosh, anonymous, thank you.
Heather Hunter:
Oh, yes. Well, I love how parents like you have been making people aware of what’s going on and getting the word out. And it truly is citizen journalism. And as somebody who works in the media, I love it because it helps me also inform people too. When you actually see the visual of the picture of the English class, and you’ve even made people aware of the overcrowding in the school buses too. I mean, my gosh, kids are standing in the aisles, huge safety risk. I mean, just you go to April’s Facebook page, Truth and Transparency with April, I mean, you will see what’s going on in schools, and like I said, it’s a story that’s happening everywhere and it’s really important for you to see and be aware of. And it’s terrific that you’re taking the time to do this as a mom who’s juggling work and juggling homeschooling and three kids. And so God bless you, April. So thank you for joining us on The Bespoke Parenting Podcast. Thank you so much for making time.
April Montgomery:
God bless you too, and your family. I appreciate it.
Heather Hunter:
Thank you. Well, thank you so much and thank you for listening, Heather Hunter on The Bespoke Parenting Podcast, and thank you for listening.
