Not Just a School Volunteer

by Karen Loritts

Getting ready to send your children back to school? I remember those days! I became an absolute worker bee at our four children’s schools. In fact I spent so many hours at the various schools that many, even the school staff, thought I was an employee!

Room mom, cafeteria monitor, clinic worker, field trip chaperone were some of my duties.  I held every office in the PTA.  Committees? I served on every district and school committee you can imagine! I was the everywhere, everything mom! However, a change was in the making for this meek, dutiful volunteer.

One mid-semester evening I read in the newspaper that the decision was made by the local school district administrators to allow contraceptives in all the schools. Also, the health classes would offer demonstrations on how condoms were to be applied. Well, I sat up in my bed, alone, and shouted “No!” I was incensed.

What was I to do with our rising high school freshman son, 4^th grade daughter, and two small children following? Leave the school system that I had come to appreciate? Just write off the relationship equity I had built among the administrators, staff, and faculty? What could I do as a humble volunteer, a nonprofessional educator? I wasn’t quite sure but I knew that God had stirred my heart concerning the responsibility to nurture, care, and instruct these precious children according to His will. I knew then that I needed to become a voice for righteousness in this secular, public education system for the welfare of my children and others.

So with consultation and prayer support from my husband, I wrote to the superintendent describing my concerns about the proposed new health curriculum and enlisted an audience with the proper system officials.  I knew that for years I was regarded as a rational ally for the education system. I prayed that would serve me well. I did not rally a mob of people or incite discord among other parents. They viewed me as a friend of education.

Prayerfully, I did my homework by reading the proper documents about the proposal and was ready to propose alternatives. 

Well, I had a favorable meeting with system and local school officials. There was an agreement to omit contraceptives in the school clinics. Also, students were given the option, with parental consent, to opt out of portions of the health class they deemed inappropriate.

The decision for greater school involvement in some areas was beyond my competency zone. However, God granted me favor throughout the remaining years where tremendous changes in many board and system policies still remain.