Parents Allege Arizona School Disregarded Opt-Out From ‘Gruesome’ Curriculum

The parents of a seventh-grade student in an Arizona school district claimed that a teacher disregarded an “opt-out” request from an assignment while speaking before a school board Thursday.

“After being made aware of inappropriate racial and political content being taught in our daughter’s seventh-grade social studies class, we reached out to the teacher, then the principal, then the curriculum department, and finally the superintendent to obtain curriculum for us to review ahead of time,” Amy Souza told the Peoria Unified School District Governing Board in a video posted to Twitter by Free to Learn.

After relating how she and her husband finally obtained the curriculum following “exhaustive efforts to get it,” they determined an upcoming lesson would be “gruesome, violent, and inappropriate” for their daughter.

They emailed their concerns to the teacher, announcing they would “opt out” of that lesson. They stated in the video that the teacher emailed back, agreeing to an alternate assignment.

“We hear all the time at these meetings and from district employees that ‘If you don’t like it, opt them out,’” Souza said. They alleged that the teacher made their daughter complete the assignment they objected to.

“We were forced to make the difficult decision to pull our kids from this public school system,” Souza told the school board, while also announcing they had filed a Statement of Allegations with the Arizona Board of Education.

Free to Learn had previously criticized the Peoria Unified School District in an ad for being “focused on politics, not teaching.”

Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly revealed in September that she pulled her kids from their private school after they were repeatedly quizzed about their gender identity without her knowledge.

In July, controversy broke out when teachers in the Frances Howell School District in Missouri were given tips on how to sneak “social justice” teaching past “Trump country” parents.

Neither Free to Learn nor the Peoria Unified School District responded to requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.