It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Republican candidates running for president in 2024 are making improving public schools a major campaign issue, according to a Saturday report.

Specifically, GOP candidates are focusing on the ‘wokeness’ that has gripped public schools involving left-wing curricula like divisive critical race theory, transgenderism, and LGBTQ+ ideology.

“Former President Donald Trump has called for parents to elect and fire school principals. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has banned instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. And Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador who is expected to announce her White House candidacy this coming week, is among the Republicans taking aim at critical race theory,” The Associated Press reported, via Newsmax.

The report noted that a growing “parental rights” movement is taking shape as well as what kids are actually being taught in schools.

“What we’re seeing now, at least in this period, is much more focus on so-called ‘culture war’ issues,” Jeffrey Henig, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University’s Teachers’ College, told the AP.

While the push is very visible in Florida, where DeSantis and the GOP-controlled legislature have recently enacted several measures empowering parents and banning some of the most divisive and age-inappropriate materials from being presented to students, the movement actually began with now-Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who is making no apologies for adopting “parental rights” education policies. In fact, he recently doubled down on them.

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” in October, the Republican governor voiced his support for new rules regarding transgender students — regulations aimed at empowering parents to make decisions about their own children regarding gender identity. He went on to point out that parents are the ultimate arbiters regarding what they think is best for their children, adding that the regulations empower them.

“[P]arents have a fundamental right to be engaged in their children’s lives,” Youngkin said. “And, oh, by the way, children have a right to have parents engaged in their life. And we needed to fix a wrong…children don’t belong to the state. They belong to families.

“And so, in these most important decisions, step one has to be to engage parents, not to the exclusion of a trusted teacher or an adviser, but to make sure that parents are involved in their children’s lives,” Youngkin continued.

He went on to say that his policies also make room for students if parents decide that allowing their child to identify as a trans identity is best for him or her.

“What we’re not saying is that there is no accommodation,” Youngkin said. “What we’re saying is, parents have to be engaged in that decision. And if a child and their parent, along with administrators and teachers, choose to have accommodations for that child, they will be granted.”

“If parents actually want their child to be able to change a pronoun or their name or use a bathroom, if parents choose that, then, legally, that’s what the schools will do,” he added.

He did say, however, that biological males will be kept out of girls’ sporting competition.

“I do believe that it’s unfair for girls to have biological boys play sports with biological girls. There are sports with segregated — with segregated sexes for those sports. And those — those sports should be honored that way… Again, there’s a commonsense approach here to this. And I do think we have to respect girls as well here,” he told CNN.

In July, more American parents let it be known they are not at all on board with far-left curriculum being pushed on their children primarily by Democrat-aligned teacher’s unions and members. They noted resoundingly that they preferred “parents first” policies and curriculum that concentrates primarily on legacy subjects like math, reading, English, geography, and history — just the sort of curriculum enacted by Youngkin and DeSantis.

BizPac Review notes:

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second largest teachers’ union in the United States, has exercised a lot of influence in public policy as witnessed by the way school systems responded to the COVID pandemic. However, efforts to control the curriculum and indoctrinate the next generation of voters in their favor appeared to have hit an impasse according to findings of the Democratic polling firm Hart Research Associates.

NBC News obtained the results of the poll that asked voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to react to preferences in the curriculum and voting, and the momentum was clearly behind DeSantis’ message of putting “children first” and protecting “parental rights.”

“While other states lock parents out of their children’s lives, here in Florida we value parental rights. I am proud to receive the endorsement from @Moms4Libertyin their fight to put children first and to protect parents’ rights,” DeSantis noted in a tweet last week as he accepted the group’s endorsement.

“Our school system is for educating kids not indoctrinating kids,” the GOP governor said at the first annual Moms for Liberty summit held in Tampa Bay on Friday.

NBC News noted: “One poll question found that voters, by a 32 percentage-point margin, said they were more likely to vote for candidates who believe public schools should focus less on teaching race and more on core subjects. By 27 points, they said schools should be banned from teaching sexual orientation and gender identity to kids in kindergarten through third grade. By 28 points, they said transgender athletes should be banned from competing in girls’ sports.”