Protect Our Kids (POK) is a California-based right-leaning coalition focusing on K-12 public education that includes parents, community leaders, attorneys, doctors, pastors and teachers. ^{1 2}

Among the problems that POK identifies include comprehensive sexuality education, the promotion of critical race theory in schools, and historical revisionism. ³

Background

Protect Our Kids is a California-based conservative-leaning coalition that focuses on K-12 public education and contends that children are being indoctrinated with a worldview antithetical to America’s founding. Among the problems that POK identifies include comprehensive sexuality education, the promotion of critical race theory in schools and historical revisionism in the curriculum. ⁴

POK says its coalition includes parents, community leaders, attorneys, doctors, pastors and teachers that contend comprehensive sexuality education violates the sacred relationship between parent and child. ⁵

Protect Our Kids does not provide legal services. But it says it has relationships with public-interest law firms that specialize in handling student and parental rights issues. It asks parents to carefully document the violation. It then asks parents to fill out an incident report and the organization will review the individual claims and identify the appropriate legal resource to help. ⁶

POK says that parents with children in public schools can do seven things to protect their kids: get informed; demand to see curriculum; opt-out of comprehensive sexuality education; vote in every election; track legislation; lobby their local school district; and make their voices heard. ⁷

Sexuality Education

The group argues schools have a role in educating students about biology, anatomy, and reproduction. However, the group opposes school teaching about sexual intimacy, sexual orientation, and gender identity. ⁸ The organization argues that parents must hold the ultimate authority to educate their children on matters of sexual identity and intimacy. ⁹

Protect Our Kids highlights that California kindergarten students are exposed to books like Who Are You?: The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity. In later grades, the books include My Princess Boy and Jacob’s New Dress, and graphical tools like The Gender Unicorn. ¹⁰

POK says the California state legislature has pushed a Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity (SOGI) worldview. It notes that in 2007, the legislature passed a bill making it state policy to teach that someone’s gender is a matter of choice and in 2011 passed a law to teach public school students about the LGBT community. In 2013, the state passed a law to allow biological male students to have access to female sports teams, female clubs, female restrooms and female showers. ¹¹ The organization points to the 2015 California Healthy Youth Act that requires K-12 public schools implement a teaching curriculum that denies fixed gender identities, affirms same-sex intimacy and teaches about forms of sexual experimentation. ¹²

Protect Our Kids also opposed 2022 legislation to make California a “trans sanctuary” for minors, arguing the bill would pit state against state and parents against children. ¹³

Critical Race Theory and Historical Revisionism

Protect Our Kids leadership notes that “light-skinned” elementary school kids were taught to “deconstruct their racial identities, then rank themselves according to power and privilege.” ¹⁴

The organization says it shows parents shocking curriculum examples and supplemental materials recommended by the state, proof of the serious threats of exposing this content to young children, dangerous medical inaccuracies in the curriculum, evidence of skyrocketing sexual transmitted diseases according to health department data, harmful critical race theory that divides students, and destructive historical revisionism. ¹⁵

POK contends the point of education was to promote good character, convey an understanding of America’s underpinnings, and teach practical competencies such as reading, writing, and math. However, now the group says public education is about promoting a progressive worldview. ¹⁶

Leadership

Mark R. Schneider is the founder and president of Protect Our Kids. Schneider spent a career as a corporate counsel in Silicon Valley and in executive positions at several technology companies before going into private practice as a patent litigator. He founded a Salt and Light Ministry to support Proposition 8, a ballot initiative to limit state recognition to opposite-sex marriages in California. ¹⁷

Gheorghe Rosca, Jr., is a founding board member and the director of ambassador outreach for Protect Our Kids. Rosca is the pastor of New Hope church in Placentia, Calif. He was born in Romania, came to the United States legally in 1991, and grew up in Southern California. ¹⁸

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