Aly Legge’s story is an inspiring example of empowerment. Her journey of motherhood has looked vastly different depending on the seasons in her life, yet she persevered to give her kids the best. She’s also been a school board member, advocate, and mentor. Join us today as Aly talks about why parents must look to themselves to create change, pushing through challenges and criticisms, and becoming your child’s greatest advocate.
Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
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– WHAT IS THE NOAH WEBSTER EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION? –
Noah Webster Educational Foundation collaborates with individuals and organizations to tell the story of America’s education and culture; discover foundational principles that improve it; and advance practice and policy to change it.
Website: https://www.nwef.org
Reach out: info@nwef.org
Aly Legge’s story is an inspiring example of empowerment. Her journey of motherhood has looked vastly different depending on the seasons in her life, yet she persevered to give her kids the best. She’s also been a school board member, advocate, and mentor. Join us today as Aly talks about why parents must look to themselves to create change, pushing through challenges and criticisms, and becoming your child’s greatest advocate.
Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
GET CONNECTED WITH NWEF
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nwef.org/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NWEF_org
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nwef_org/
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtdHayyOqPftVoiGEqxYdsg
To hear more from NWEF, subscribe to our other podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1898310
– WHAT IS THE NOAH WEBSTER EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION? –
Noah Webster Educational Foundation collaborates with individuals and organizations to tell the story of America’s education and culture; discover foundational principles that improve it; and advance practice and policy to change it.
Website: https://www.nwef.org
Reach out: info@nwef.org
ADAMS: Well, thank you for joining us again today for The State of Education With Melvin Adams.
I am so pleased to have a mother of five with us today. Aly Legge is in Florida and joining us remotely. Very excited to hear her story, hear some of the things she's learning and some of the things she is involved in. Hopefully many of you who are listening [00:30] will be inspired and encouraged just to get in there and engage for your own children, grandchildren, community, and schools.
Ali, so glad to have you today.
LEGGE: Thank you so much, Melvin, for having me. I am so appreciative for this opportunity to share my story with you and all of your listeners and viewers. Thank you all so much for joining us today. I appreciate it. Thank you.
ADAMS: All right. Absolutely.
Well, let's just start out [01:00] with this. You were in the Army?
LEGGE: Yes, sir. I was.
ADAMS: Not every mom was in the Army! So tell us a little bit there and let's get started. What do you pick up from there?
LEGGE: Sure, of course. I love sharing this story.
I was a mom of one at the time. When I joined the Army. I was kind of in between jobs and I wasn't getting what I felt like I needed to be a good single mother. I was divorced [01:30] and I was living at home with my parents, and I just couldn't find work that I felt fulfilled and that I could provide my son with the proper opportunities.
My stepfather was in the army, my biological dad was in the army. My mom worked as a family readiness accountant. She was like a supervisor, She helped soldiers with their finances. I was around military. I had a lot of female friends that were a little bit older than me that had joined [02:00] and that were in for ten years. And I was like, “Well, if they can do it, I can do it.”
And it provided a way for me to make a difference in my life and in my child's life. It was not an easy decision leaving my three year old. I was very nervous, but I did learn a lot of things. It's that…going out into the fear, being uncomfortable, leaning into that fear a little bit to figure out what you can do for yourself. And I learned a lot. I made some [02:30] really great friends.
I've been out for about eleven years and I still have friends that I talk with on a daily basis or a weekly basis or we'll get together and it's like we've never been apart. It's really amazing. I learned a lot about myself, about overcoming adversity and that I am, really, a strong person. So it did provide a little bit. And while I wasn't able to finish my complete tour because I ended up fracturing both feet and my hip, [03:00] I did learn a lot about myself.
But that story is a very interesting story. I thought I was just rolling my ankle because you run everywhere when you join the military. You have to hurry up and go somewhere. We did a five and a half mile ruck march and I was about 99 pounds with a 30 pound ruck sack on my back, filled with all these things that we were going to need for our exercise for the rest of the day.
We were headed to a team building exercise and I just completely refused to quit. I had my drill sergeants and my [03:30] instructors and my supervisors telling me, Legge, you’ve got to quit. Legge, you got to sit out. Legge, this is not the proper time for you. And I drove on and kept going because I was like—I made a commitment to myself and I thought about my child.
If I can't do it for him and I won't do it for me, who am I going to do it for? So I made sure that I went ahead headfirst and still did it. I completed the exercises, but I came out of it very broken! [04:00] So don't be silly when you do those things, but always—never let anyone take away your dreams and your aspirations. So, yeah, that's what I learned doing that.
ADAMS: Allie, I love that story because that story so sets us up for what a lot of parents, especially moms out there—they're tenacious, they're fighting, they [04:30] feel like they're under attack and they're carrying the weight of the world on their back, in their personal lives, their family lives with their children and their children's education, all the issues that they're carrying.
The reality is, it takes tenacity to be effective. And—if you’ve got some kids there in the background, it’s okay!
LEGGE: I do. I’m sorry!
ADAMS: That's alright! [05:00] No problem. That will just add to our interview today. And so, not a problem at all.
LEGGE: She’s five.
ADAMS: Oh, okay!
LEGGE: She's out of school so it makes interviews very interesting. But I'm a real person and I do really do have children! So, it is what it is.
ADAMS: So, transitioning just a little bit in our conversation. You are now [05:30] involved as the Empower Moms director for Moms for America. It's a nationwide organization. You are also the founder of Moms for Freedom.
I'd like to hear a little bit more about that, but there are some very specific things that you have expressed and have really figured out that are your passions. [06:00] Among those, of course, are special needs children, parental rights, school choice advocacy, and so forth.
Let's dig into that just a little bit. What in your own experience—you have five children.
LEGGE: Yes, sir.
ADAMS: From your own experience with your own family, tell us a story or two that happened that really got your attention and [06:30] made you decide, I have to do this for my kids. I have to get involved. Then we'll talk about some of the things that you've gotten involved in for that reason.
LEGGE: Yeah, so out of the Army, I ended up being just a stay at home mom for a long time.The military kind of breaks you down and then they build you up, but I didn't really get that “build up” part.
I kind of came out feeling like, “Well, what else am I supposed to offer the world? What can I do?” [07:00] So, I just was a mom. But then we moved, my husband retired out of the service, and we moved to Florida, which is home for him.
We tried to get our kids back into, I guess, the regular world. Because when you're military, you're a little secluded and it's a little different. You have a different worldview. So coming back and being civilians was definitely a transition. But we put our kids into sports. My oldest was into football so we were around a lot of football parents and moms and other kids. [07:30]
At that time there was some legislation going on in California and I overheard some moms talking about it and we got to talking about what religious freedom looked like with the medical establishment and why they were trying to strip it away for Californians. And I got to listen to that process happen in California and I was very intrigued by it.
There were parents that were stepping up for their children and a lot of their children were special needs. I was seeing certain signs in my own child, [08:00] he was starting to show signs of being on the spectrum. Just making sure we had that community relationship was really important for us.
There was a senator here in Florida that decided to put forward legislation that mimicked what was going on in California: stripping away religious exemptions from medical procedures. We got together as a group of moms across the state and we ended up killing that bill. That legislation never got to pass. It was never voted on. [08:30]
It kind of was dead in the water actually because of our advocacy as parents, advocating for our families and making sure that our religious freedom was not infringed upon. Then, 2020 happened and our government was telling us who was “essential” and who wasn't “essential.” They were closing down parks and they were taking away a lot of our liberties and our freedoms that many of us, prior to us being here now, have sacrificed and died for.
Being that we're [09:00] military and we come from military backgrounds in our families, that just didn't sit well with us. A lot of our moms, we got together and we held a Reopen Tampa rally. We had about four or five hundred people show up to that. We made international news that day. We all looked at each other when it was over and we said, oh my gosh, elections are coming up. Who are we going to vote for?
We took it upon ourselves to host what was called a meet and greet. We were new, very nuanced, and didn't know [09:30] anything about any of that. But we brought all of the candidates that were running for office into my friend's home. Those that we liked and felt that they would champion for us, we went out and campaigned for, wearing babies and pushing strollers and door knocking. Everybody won their primary and only two lost their general.
But that is the power of moms, right? That's the power of moms and community when you get together and you're able to focus on one mission and go mission forward and [10:00] don’t let anyone get in the way.
Then again, I believe in 2021, when our schools are being forced to close and there are still things going on, our kids were told—well, my child was told—that the Constitution could be suspended under emergency rule. I just about lost my mind. Because as a history teacher, that’s not something a history teacher should be explaining to children while the whole world is shut down. That’s [10:30] just how that’s supposed to happen.
That’s false information and that history teacher should know better. So I got together with some friends—because that’s what moms do. We call and say, “This is happening.” We all found out it was pretty much the same. We had an open view into our classrooms where we thought everything was fine and it turned out that it wasn’t.
It turned out that there were moms whose children were being called to tell who was the most oppressed in their classrooms. There were children who were being asked what their pronouns [11:00] were. There was a lot that was going on. I looked around at the 2022 election and decided to put my hat in the ring because nobody could do it the way I felt it should be done.
I kept getting this thought in my mind: if not me, then who? If not now, then when? So I threw my hat in the ring and I decided to run for school board here. I did county-wide. Hillsborough County has about 2 million people, we’re like a small state. [11:30] I was the first non-partisan candidate to be endorsed by a sitting governor, which is a really great accomplishment, and I earned 80,000 votes, which is really, really big here in Hillsborough County.
The only people who get that many votes is if you run for Congress. So I was really proud of myself and my team, of what we were able to accomplish. And now I’m director of Empower Moms at Moms For America, a national [12:00] organization where we empower moms and promote liberty.
We want to just raise patriots and change the trajectory of how our country is going at the moment. We do that by giving them the resources that they need. We do training, we do webinars, we do all kinds of things. We care about everything, from the kitchen table all the way to Congress. We’re doing things and I’m really excited.
ADAMS: Yes, and I’m excited and so grateful [12:30] for your story and what’s been happening with you, what Moms For America and other mom’s groups are doing across this country.
The reality is, there are a lot of people who are frustrated. They know their problems, their own families and kids and what’s going on in their schools. A lot of people don’t know what to do. They don't know where to start. They know something needs to be done, but they don’t know what to do. [13:00]
What you shared in your story so far is, look, you’ve got to figure out that something isn’t right. Then you get on the phone and you connect with other people, right? You connect with other people and say Let’s do something about this. That’s really how all these groups have sprung up.
Now, there are these networks available out there that moms, dads, grandparents, and community leaders [13:30] can all plug into and be resources. Noah Webster Educational Foundation—this organization—is very much a part of that. Our focus is to create resources that help people identify the issues and problems where they are and then get involved to bring change where they are.
Our focus is, of course, particularly around educational issues, and specifically around school boards—leadership and oversight. [14:00] We’re all partners together to try to bring things to the American people that help them take ownership. When they take ownership, big things happen.
LEGGE: Yes, sir.
ADAMS: That’s really been your story. That’s what you're advocating for now. So tell us a little bit more. You’re involved with Moms For America—what are some of the [14:30] big things that you are advocating for? Give us a story or two about what difference does it make?
LEGGE: I love that you asked that question. The fact that your organization is doing the same thing and we have a lot of organizations around the country that are aiming to empower families to make the best decisions that they possibly can.
At the end of the day, it’s really all about action. No one is coming to save us. We need to stop looking at government, [15:00] or someone else outside of us, outside of our family, to come and save our families. If you're not willing to sacrifice for your own children, you cannot expect someone else to sacrifice the same way for your children. That is not their mission. That is not what they've been ordained to do.
You, as your child's parent, have been given dominion over your children and the empowerment over your children to make the best decisions for them. It's not up to someone else, and it's definitely not up to our government. [15:30] The first thing I would say is: I like to educate families all about American history.
We actually have a couple of courses. At Moms For America we have Cottage Meetings for adults where we talk about the foundations of America. We go through the foundations of faith, family, and freedom, and how that can relate to you and what you can do to empower yourself, to take action.
The same thing we have for children. [16:00] We have Cottage Meetings for kids. Under our Liberty Kids Club, it's thirteen weeks of fabulous content and educational information. We've had several parents use it for homeschool curriculum, which is something that we encourage. Whatever that looks like for you as a family, we encourage you to do that.
Just getting to know your foundations, having a foundation on why America was built the way it is, why it functions the way it does, or how it's supposed to function—not necessarily how it does [16:30] now—but making sure that people are actually getting involved. You can't be involved if you don't know what you're doing, and you can't hold people accountable if you don't know what they're doing. So it is very important that we educate first before we give you the solutions.
Home school is one of our things. Educational freedom is something that we advocate for at Moms for America. I've worked closely with our legislature here in Florida, but we're also working with legislatures across the nation trying to promote what Florida has [17:00] led the way in as far as ESA, Educational Savings Accounts, where all children have the same access to school regardless of what their income looks like. Regardless of whether or not they are zoned for their school, you're able to use this for tutoring and for extracurriculars and things of that nature to help your children succeed.
ADAMS: Let me just throw in here real quick. Some of us have been working on these issues for [17:30] years, but one of the positive downsides—or upsides maybe is the way to say it—of COVID, was that suddenly parents got a first hand view of what's really going on in our schools. Some of the craziness and some of the indoctrination, some of the absolutely damaging things that are happening.
Not trying to paint everything with a paintbrush because there are a lot of [18:00] great people in our school systems. But there's just so much brokenness, and people are not being held accountable for those things. Many times the radical policies that are being pushed through various agencies are being forced into our kids. [18:30]
But here's what we are seeing, because parents are organizing and organizations like ours are helping to facilitate that organization and that motivation, we are seeing phenomenal things take place, especially around school choice in state after state after state. I mean, in the last year we saw West Virginia—who had absolutely nothing [19:00] like that—suddenly had a major…I mean they were leading all the states in educational choice for a short time.
Obviously there were other states like Florida and Arizona and others that had been doing this for a while. And Pennsylvania, different ones. But now all of a sudden West Virginia and then Arizona steps up and goes a step farther. One of the latest states is Nebraska that has come out with [19:30] a full blown opportunity for every family to choose what is best for their children.
This is the greatest thing since sliced bread—
LEGGE: Absolutely.
ADAMS: —for the American public and the American family. There is much to celebrate. But there is also very, very much yet to be done. Let's talk a little bit more about that. Talk about what are some of the things you see [20:00] that we really need to see accomplished and what you guys are doing.
LEGGE: So some of the things that we feel that really need to be accomplished is we need to make sure that we're training up new school board members to actually do the job they are hired to do. That they are able to push back against these agencies that are requiring them to do things that do not align with their constituents, that do not align with their proper role of government in which they sit.
The way we do that is we assist our families and our [20:30] members to build relationships with their elected representatives, whether their school board, whether it's their assistance, whether it's the administration that's downtown in their school board area where they meet, whether it's your congressional candidates or your congressmen and congresswoman, or if it's in your legislature. You want to build lasting relationships because we outnumber them.
The American people are the biggest lobbyists that we have in America and we [21:30] need to be listened to. If we're not actively engaging our legislature or our elected representatives, then they don't feel like they have to listen to us because they are getting praised and they're getting met with by other people that have different interests than we do. It is very important that we educate everyone on the proper roles of government, how to properly build relationships.
And we do that with school district ambassadors—which is something new that we're doing with Moms For America—and family [21:30] lobby. Essentially, it's a citizen lobby, but we teach you how to do that. We teach you the roles and responsibilities and how to build those relationships so that you can hold them accountable for what they do.
We would love to teach anybody that's willing to listen. So please join us at MomsForAmerica.us and you can figure it out. We'll help you. We'll help you figure it out for sure.
ADAMS: That's awesome. That's an awesome resource.
LEGGE: Another issue that we see are the schools, the curriculums in the school. We have some history books [22:00]—I know that our governor has been in the news lately for banning black history, which is not the truth. He decided to remove several of our history curriculum because it had false history in there.
They talk about the 1619 project that we know is based in falsehood. It's not accurate history at all. It should not be included in our American history curriculum for our children. It must meet Florida standards [22:30] and teaching all of American history is a part of Florida standards. When you have media that does a disservice to the American population by giving names to things that aren't what they are, they're essentially suiting the public to think that Florida is just this racist country.
And then when you have people like me that come out and defend it, then you're called all kinds of names and derogatory terms. It doesn't bother me because I grew up like that. It is what it is. [23:00] And I know where my truth lies. I know what I'm doing is for the best of my children and for the best of our community. I push forward, regardless of what anyone says and I encourage others to do the same because they're just names. It's just words. You know the truth and just keep driving on and moving forward. Do what you've been called to do.
But yes, we also have books that we've been speaking on for over two years here in Hillsborough County, but it's happening across the country. I get moms [23:30] that get on phone calls with me all the time discussing books that are available for their children that are explicit, that are pornographic and frankly, illegal to be in our public school system.
I encourage those that have found those curriculums to file lawsuits. Nobody likes lawsuits, but it is very effective to file some lawsuits against your school district, against your teachers that are behaving badly.
And like you said earlier, Melvin, there are some [24:00] great people in education. The only problem that we see is that they are not encouraged to speak up. We have a lot of people here in America that are too crippled by fear and not carrying themselves by faith. And that is the problem.
We need to make sure that they feel comfortable, they feel safe to speak up and talk, and that is what our organization does. We will wrap you up and bring you into the fold and support you if you decide to speak up against what you see in your area, regardless of what your title is, [24:30] whether you're a principal, a school board member, a teacher or a parent.
ADAMS: That is so important because, you know, a lot of people, they know it's wrong. I mean, let's just be honest with you. Right now, one of the biggest problems our school systems have are retirements of teachers, early retirements, where people are just fleeing the school system. And it's because they don't agree. Many, many, many, many of the [25:00] teachers don't agree with this ideology that they're being forced to throw out into our kids.
But they're afraid to speak up. So many of them are saying, “I can't afford to quit. Where am I going to go?” What they need is just to understand. What our citizens need to understand is that, look: we are all in this together. We are not enemy combatants. We are all American citizens. We are all trying [25:30] to do what we know is best for our children and our country.
When we can understand and align in that way—even if we have these fundamental disagreements—we can have civil conversation. Let's let that conversation lead us to truth. Let's let it lead us to solutions that actually work. And we actually get all of these [26:00] politics out of our school.
LEGGE: One hundred percent.
ADAMS: We let our schools go back to the business of educating our children and raising up good citizens that lead healthy families and that lead good, strong businesses and all of the things that are so important.
That’s why our school systems are important. That’s a big part of what they’re there for. But, yes. Mobilizing citizens to make [26:30] sure we keep things on track.
One of the things we do here at One of the things that we do here at Noah Webster—and I know Moms for America does it because I'm connected with one of the organizations they're connected with as well—is school board candidate training. School board member training, particularly. That is so important. A lot of people don't realize how much influence and authority school boards have.
Again, you ran for school board, you're [27:00] encouraging your citizens to get involved at that level and hold school board members accountable. But what do we elect these people to do? We elect them to give good leadership and good oversight.
There are so many issues that many of these folk—many of them are well meaning. They have all the best intentions, but they don't understand all the issues. [27:30] That's where organizations like ours come alongside and help them understand what these issues are all about. Help them be able to set up solid policy for their local system that really makes sure that our teachers are empowered to actually teach what they need to teach, that the curriculum that we are using is actually a good curriculum, not full of junk. [28:00] That the superintendents and all of the administrators—that oversight to make sure that the processes are done properly, that the reporting is done properly, and that we're actually getting the results that we need and, frankly, pay for.
LEGGE: Yes, one hundred percent. Parents are the main consumers of public education, but everybody in a county or in a state provides resources [28:30] through our tax money, our tax tax dollars, because that's what public schools are: they are tax funded.
A lot of states have the amount of funding that they need to properly, fully fund public education. It's just whether or not—what are their priorities, right? Florida has always been really bad with schools because it's a retirement state. A lot of people from other states move to Florida to retire so education really hasn't been [29:00] the forefront like it has been in recent years.
We are very blessed to have the governor that we have, very fortunate. I believe he's a father with two or three young children that are in grade school and he just really wants what's best for them. When he saw what was going on across the nation with education, he put his foot down and said, “I don't want my children to learn this and I don't think it's good for any child to learn this, especially in the state of Florida where I personally, right [29:30] now, have the control over or the power to control.”
He is leading the way. He's getting a lot of the shots, he's taking a lot of the arrows, but when you hear him speak at press conferences and interviews he always says that he doesn't mind because he's doing what he feels is best for the betterment of our students. You can't get any better than opening education, having education opportunities for families to select the best educational [30:00] system for their children.
And we do have problems with our local school boards not allocating money properly. Our teachers aren't paid well, and this is something that's going on across the entire nation, like you said. There are teachers that are leaving and they're leaving for various reasons. There's no discipline. They're not allowed to discipline the students in the schools.
We have schools that have called the sheriff's office instead of the school resource officer. When you do that, the school doesn't have to report the incident to the school board, [30:30] which doesn't provide a lot of transparency. That goes against what their roles and responsibilities are, which is why it's so important we have organizations like yours and mine and several others across the country that are willing to look at that and bring that to a school board meeting and have a public comment about it, petition their school board members, go and have meetings with them, explain to the: “This is supposed to be your role and responsibility. This is how you are operating outside of it, and this is the solution.” [31:00]
With Moms for America, what we like to do is we don't only like to discuss what the issues are. We like to provide resources, but we also would like to help you find the solutions. We're not always going to be right. There will be times where we fail and the solutions that we do come up with don't work, but as long as we're allowed to have those open civic conversations, civil conversations about what is really going on and making sure that this is not [31:30] partisan, this is not about left, this is not about right, this is about our families. This is about our children being able to be taught their core curriculum.
When they leave school, are they leaving with the ability to read, to write, to calculate math, to understand science, to be productive adults in society? Or are they graduating just to graduate? Right now, across the country, we have high schoolers that are graduating—we have 85% [32:00] graduation rate and only 20% of them can read proficiently.
But they can name all of the letters of the LGBTQIA and they understand how to protest and they know how to fight emotionally. But they can't properly critically think for themselves and when you put them into a high stress environment, when they're working, they just completely melt down and don't know how to function as adults. That is not the purpose of school, that is not the purpose of public education.
We need to get back to the days where [32:30] we're teaching them the core curriculum and leaving everything else to the parents. We are where we are because parents have taken a back seat to their children's education. 2020, like you said, was very eye opening.
Hindsight is 2020 and when we had that open window to see what was going on in our schools and the more of us paid attention to what the school board meetings were about and they were doing proclamations and like, what is this, 1700? Why are we doing proclamations? [33:00] What is a proclamation actually doing for the betterment of our students?
You have written—especially downtown on our school board, in our county—they go by educating children, setting children up for life after school. Well, what does that look like? They're coming out of school and they're being sexually harassed while they're in school. We have teachers that are abusing students. We have fights happening on school buses. We have sexual activity happening on school buses in elementary school, [33:30] but they can't write, but they're graduating. They can't understand or calculate math, but they're graduating. What is happening?
And nobody wants to give answers. They all just want to kick the can down the road or blame somebody else. But then they come around and they're like, “Oh, but elect me.” It's so weird.
ADAMS: And like in Virginia where we are, you've got school boards like Loudoun County, which the whole world has learned about. Fairfax County where [34:00] there's just massive failures in the system. But the board literally spends months and months trying to develop gender policy.
What in the world? I mean, we have lost our collective minds—or they have. And the reality is, that's not their role. That is not the role of the school board. The role of the school board is supposed [34:30] to be around the educating of these children, not on social issues, but on the issues that relate to the curriculum content that is essential and necessary for them to flourish as citizens.
That's where we have to hold these school boards accountable. When they are performing poorly, we organize and get them out. Put somebody there who will take the [35:00] job seriously and work that job with conviction and passion and accountability in order to fix the problems.
LEGGE: Absolutely.
ADAMS: We've had all of this learning loss from post COVID, right? All this learning loss and way too many school boards are not even focused on that at all.
LEGGE: Well, the other issue, the other side of that is that they've received extra funding to fill that gap. [35:30]
ADAMS: Exactly.
LEGGE: And what have they done with that extra funding? They have done nothing that they are supposed to do to fill that gap. Instead, we've noticed that administrative fees or payments or salaries have increased over 400% over the entire country. But we still have a learning gap that is very detrimental for the children trying to excel in life after school. It's very disheartening.
The roles and responsibilities of school board members, as you said, in education, is to make sure that they're properly educating [36:00] children. But school board members are actually not, they're not instructional. What they are is essentially they're a board of CEOs. They're running a business and the business is the public education sector. They are bound by the board of education of that state. If you have an education commissioner in your board of education that is not curriculum focused on making sure that our children learn the core values, then you have an issue.
It is important for you to be involved with the board of education [36:30] as well as your local school board in order to hold them accountable. Because if you're not reading the policies and procedures that are coming down from the board of education and you're only going to the school board who don't communicate with the board of education, there's a gap.
And that's what we try to do, here at Moms for America, is fill that gap, and educate you on what that line of authority looks like. School board members are in charge of making sure that their [37:00] budget is run properly, that it's fully funded, right? That they're not in the red, that they're actually operating in the black. That the superintendent is fully functioning the way he or she is supposed to function by creating policy passed by the board of education and making sure that the rules and responsibilities and the policies that they agreed on as a school board are actually implemented properly through the schools.
But then you have the teachers unions that are kind of bullying [37:30] their way through and making certain certain things happen, whether it's a push or pull with the board of education and the school board. It’s multifaceted, for sure.
ADAMS: And I might add, there's the teachers union, there's the superintendent's associations and there's the school board associations, all of them collaborating together to drive their agenda.
LEGGE: Then you throw in the CDC and the FDA and then you throw in Planned [38:00] Parenthood…It’s a lot!
ADAMS: Yeah, and that's why that's why there are organizations that are being formed to create alternatives to some of these—not only the teachers unions, but more recently, the school board associations. We recently had one start here in Virginia and they're starting across the country.
That's a very exciting thing because that way—monopoly is not a healthy thing [38:30] when the government holds monopoly. And government education is government. When there's choice and when people have options….that's what we need more of in this country. That's what all of us are advocating for for our parents and our students.
Aly, this has been just a phenomenal conversation. We need to have another one sometime. [39:00]
LEGGE: Absolutely.
ADAMS: I think we're going to have to put a ribbon on this one here. Why don't you just close us out with some final comments that you may want to make to our listeners.
LEGGE: My final thoughts would be a call to action. If you are noticing things that are happening in your area, please get involved any way that you can. Children thrive better when parents are involved in their education and in all aspects of their lives.
You don't have to have [39:30] children to be an advocate. Join Moms for America. Start a group. Join any of our webinars. Come onto our podcast. We have so many resources for you and you can find us at MomsForAmerica.us. My personal email is aly@momsforamerica.net. And my phone number is 813-699-0695.
I would love to hear from you. How can I help you? Help your situation, help your state, help your children, [40:00] help your legislators? Let me help you.
That’s just my call to action! If not you, then who is it? If it’s now, when is it? What are you willing to sacrifice for the betterment of your children, for the betterment of the future of America?
ADAMS: Well said, Aly. Thank you for joining us, for taking your time and sharing with our audience today.
For all of you listening, thank you for tuning in. [40:30] Keep listening, lots more engaging conversations coming up on all kinds of important topics.
But what was just shared with you: get involved. Get involved. Educate yourself and get involved. That’s what you’re doing, even by listening to this podcast, so share it with others. Share the resources that we bring to you. And let’s make a difference.