“Well I plain just don’t like you,” whined woke songster Tyler Childers in an audio clip as West Virginia Delegate Kayla Young shook her head disapprovingly in the background of a November 1, 2025 TicToc video. The foreground contained a text mentioning me by name and paraphrasing questions I had asked a few days prior at a legislative round table to which I was invited at the Wayne County Board of Education. The questions? We will get to that.

The meeting was called to discuss declining enrollment and its effect on school funding and the future of two local community schools in Wayne County: Genoa Elementary and Dunlow Elementary. Superintendent Alexander began by explaining the trendlines and projections of steadily dropping birthrates in Wayne County over the past decade. This, he explained, led to a decline in the available funding for schools and the personnel to keep them open. It was a factual, but incomplete, explanation of the factors which have contributed to our present financial crisis and threat of school closures in the county.

As I listened to the presentation leading up to the school board’s requests to the legislators in attendance, I could not prevent certain questions from looping through my mind. Since women collectively hold the power of determining the number of births in a population, how are we presenting family life and motherhood to adolescent females who will soon enter their peak years of fertility? Are we only presenting certain paths, such as college and career readiness, that powerful “stakeholders” want to emphasize? What impression of motherhood are young women forming through their experiences in school, and what are we doing to prepare young women with the practical and emotional preparedness for motherhood?

Numerous articles have been written in recent years about the fear young women have of starting families, despite sources such as the General Social Survey consistently placing married women with children at a higher level of happiness than other segments of society. Because curricular choices come with consequences, I asked if Wayne County offered home economics or any other class that would help young women feel comfortable and confident with future motherhood. This was met with an insistence from the superintendent that Wayne County Schools leaves such decisions to families. 

But does it really? The Wayne County Schools mission statement reads that “Wayne County Schools will provide all students, Pre-K-12, with personalized support needed to ensure graduates are college and/or career ready for the 21st Century global society.” Our school leaders have no problem preparing students for specific, pre-determind life paths and certain institutions, but the most critical institution and life path for the sustainability of our communities and culture–motherhood–is ignored completely in this “global society” model of education.

In addition, the Wayne County Board of Education requested increased testing and regulation of homeschooling and private schools, with the same standards as public schools being forced on private institutions. My questions? Why would those who specifically opted out of public education want public education leaders making their educational decisions? Are Genesis and Exodus history? Why is evolution being presented as fact? Would a Christian school want to be forced to adopt secular standards? These caused a great deal of discomfort among most of the board members, most of whom poorly attempted to dodge the substance of the questions. The superintendent even tried to claim that evolution is not presented as fact in schools. Right.

Public school leadership in West Virginia clearly exhibits a bias against the inherent value of the family and traditional values. This leads to population and enrollment loss through multiple avenues. Not only are potential mothers delaying marriage and families beyond their years of peak fertility to pursue college and career interests, which leads to population loss, but families are choosing to avoid a system in which standards and textbooks push atheistic, materialistic, Marxist, Deweyist, Darwinist dogma to the exclusion of Biblical truth and traditional values. 

School leaders need to reevaluate their mission and vision statements to align with the values of the communities they serve. Lawmakers need to address this with closer scrutiny of standards and adopt measures to ensure that schools reflect the values of our people. Motherhood within the construct of a family should not be a taboo topic of discussion. Instead, it should be properly presented as a noble and necessary station for adolescent girls to aspire to in the future as part of the fulfillment of their lives. These are necessary conditions if our communities, state, and nation are to thrive going into the future.