While many school board meetings around the state have become the epicenter of culture wars lately.

Last week we saw the State Board of Education make changes to the equity standards that govern all school districts.

And no surprise, it's been met with resistance from parents rights groups and some Democratic leaders who say the state board of Ed may have gone too far in its language.

Now, two Republican lawmakers say they'll introduce legislation to repeal the ruling.

I'm joined now by our education and child welfare reporter Hannah Gross, who was at the board of that meeting.

So, Hannah, the state board of Ed just narrowly approved these changes to the state's equity code and we've seen pushback from it.

What can you tell us just first about the changes that were made?

Yeah.

So one of the biggest changes is moving the language to from equality to focusing on equity.

And so that means instead of providing students across the board the same thing, they're going to get exactly what they need based on their gender, their race or other aspects of their identity.

And yet, at the same time, we're seeing some of the language being removed.

Right.

Some of the gender specific language being removed.

Explain that.

Yes.

So in certain instances, the code used to refer to male or female students or instead of saying the commissioner, they used his or her.

So gendered pronouns.

And in the new version of the code that was just adopted, it's gender neutral.

So it would say the commissioner or instead of discussing sex and two sexes, it might say all sexes or on the basis of gender as opposed to for male and female.

We are seeing parent pushback on parental rights groups that have been very active and vocal in local school district board meetings were pretty equally vocal here, pushing back against these changes.

What now are we seeing from them and what are some of the threats that they've made?

Yeah.

So the room was packed at the state board of Ed.

There was more than 40 advocates, a lot of them members of a group called Teen Pricey or Protect Your Children, which is a parental rights group across New Jersey.

And so they were particularly taking issue with the switch to the gender neutral language and what that might mean for health classes or classes that deal with human sexuality, where students might be separated on the basis of gender as opposed to how it used to say in the code on the basis of sex and that's not a requirement and says that schools may choose to do that.

And so as soon as the code was adopted, people were very angry.

They were shouting at the board and they were also threatening a lawsuit.

So they're threatening to sue the state here.

Yes.

Again, we should reiterate these this equity change applies to all school districts across the state.

Some of those parent groups have pushed for local control, right?

Yes.

And so in many instances, especially with the human sexuality classes, that would be up to the district to decide what they want to do.

It's up to them if they're going to keep students all together, regardless of their gender or if they're going to separate on the basis of gender.

And just help us understand the timeline.

We know that some Democratic leaders, including Senators Lagana and Gopal, pushed back on some language that came out of the meeting, including potential sanctions for school districts that don't adopt these rules and time to let the legislators saying that is not the role of the state board of Ed, but just explain the timing and the changes that schools have to adhere to.

Yes.

So the code goes up for adoption every seven years and now that it's been re-approved, the changes should take effect within a month once it's posted to the New Jersey Register.

And so one of the things mentioned in the code is that there's a comprehensive equity plan that districts need to implement to ensure there's equitable opportunities for students in their schools.

They have to come up with that every three years.

Once they come up with it, according to the old code, they had 180 days to implement it.

Once approved, the new code shortens that timeline to 60 days, which some of the members on the board were saying is too short.

Thank you so much.

Really informative.

We're going to be watching to see what happens as a result of of what came out of this vote.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

Great to talk with you.