To the editor:

If you’re a parent in Alexandria, you must wonder what rights you have left to guide your children’s education. You also must have great concern over the further encroachment that could happen if certain candidates are elected at the state and local level on Nov. 2. You must wonder, in disbelief, if the boundaries of respecting your role as a parent no longer matter to some candidates who are currently elected officials.

The Democrat nominee for governor, Terry McAuliffe, said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” That is a direct quote from the last gubernatorial debate with GOP nominee Glenn Youngkin. Youngkin fully supports parents informing what’s taught.

Alexandria Vice Mayor Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, who is running against J.D. Maddox for the House of Delegates 45th District, supported the removal of school resource officers, also called SROs. Check the data – violence in Alexandria City Public Schools is up. Parents, understandably, are alarmed. GOP Mayoral candidate Annetta Catchings reports that parents and police officers routinely pull her aside and express their concerns for the future of Alexandria’s youth, both their education and their safety.

There are many parents in Alexandria. Whether those parents are two moms or two dads, whether they are mixed marriages or mixed faiths, they are parents. And their voices should be heard, respected and honored.

Before you go to the polls, study the candidates. Discern who tramples the boundaries of parents. Pay attention to candidates who respect them – like ACPS School Board candidate Ish Boyle – and take note of the ACPS School Board chair and the ACPS superintendent and where their children go to school. You’ll learn that it’s not ACPS schools.

Can you imagine anyone in business not supporting or purchasing their own business’s products? That’s what you have with the ACPS School Board chair and ACPS superintendent.

They’re saying that what’s good enough for your children is not good enough for theirs.

As someone who has supported Alexandria nonprofit organizations focused on children for more than two decades, I encourage parents to stand up for your role in your children’s lives and education this Nov. 2.

-Lindsay Hutter, Alexandria