CALIFORNIA ALLIANCE FOR EDUCATION
Dhillon Law demands the NMUSD follow the law and obtain parental consent before implementing RULER Approach
"Its a SHAME that the district is using a mental health crisis among our youth to push an ideological agenda" - NMUSD parent
NEWPORT BEACH, CA - Dhillon Law sent a letter to the Newport Mesa Unified School District to stop the implementation of its Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs without prior parental notice and consent in compliance with federal and state laws.
Dhillon Law is representing California Policy Center and California Alliance for Education, who represent a group of NMUSD parents and taxpayers concerned about the District’s exploitation of public school children to elicit information about their beliefs and feelings with the goal of changing their emotions and behaviors in accordance with the cultural bias of the day and without regard to family beliefs or values.
Developed by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, RULER is described as “a systemic approach to social and emotional learning (SEL)” that “aims to infuse the principles of emotional intelligence into the immune system of PreK to 12 schools.”
The RULER curriculum deputizes untrained educators as mental health professionals to evaluate—including by surveys and other personal data collection—the “emotional health” of students. It pushes educators to assess students’ personal family relationships, religion, political affiliation, and other sensitive topics to help steer students to “what characteristics compose a person’s best self ” as determined by the educator, the students’ peers, and cultural norms.
The RULER curriculum uses public-school classrooms and tax dollars to indoctrinate impressionable students to parrot “cultural norms” which may be anathema to parents’ values and beliefs, or even poses the children against their parents.
The District engaged in all of this behind closed doors and without parental input or consent. The District only showed parents this curriculum after threatened with public records request litigation they would lose, and even then, the District refused to provide parents with copies of the curriculum as required by federal law.
The “Protection of Pupil Rights” (“PPRA”) amendment, 20 U.S.C §1232h, states that “[n]o student shall be required…to submit to a survey, analysis, or evaluation that reveals information concerning…political affiliations or belief of the student or the student’s parent,” “mental or psychological problems of the student or the student’s family,” “sex behavior or attitudes,” “critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships,” and, among other things, “ religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or student’s parent….”