What to know about the House and Senate parental rights bills

Yahoo

3 days ago

House Speaker Sherman Packard (center) is expected to bring forward a floor amendment to SB 72 on Thursday. (Photo by William Skipworth/New Hampshire Bulletin)
Thursday brings a major deadline: the final day in which the House and Senate can pass remaining legislation. And Republicans in both chambers will be pushing to achieve a long-sought priority and finally approve a 'parental bill of rights.'
In past years, those votes have failed, often defeated by a handful of votes in the House. This week, the House and the Senate are considering two separate bills: House Bill 10 and Senate Bill 72. Each looks slightly different from past versions.
Here's what to know.
What are the bills intended to do?
Supporters of the bills say they are meant to give parents a toolkit to assert control over their child's education in public schools. The laws outline a number of rights the parents have over that education.
Many of those rights already exist in law, such as the right for a parent to choose whether to send their child to a charter school, private school, or to home school them; to learn about school disciplinary procedures and class curriculum; to opt their child out of sex education courses by providing alternative instruction; to receive a report card; to review medical records; and to exempt their child from immunization with a doctor's note or because of religious beliefs.
Other provisions of the bills would be new. School boards would be required to develop policies to promote parental involvement in school around homework, attendance, and discipline. They would also be required to pass policies making it easy for parents to examine instructional materials and to withdraw their child from any lesson or material being taught.
And the bills would clarify in law that 'no school may infringe on the fundamental rights of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of his or her minor child.'
But the legislation has inspired fierce pushback from teachers and LGBTQ groups, who say it puts too many burdens on teachers and staff, and that it could force them to divulge to parents details about students' sexual orientation or gender identity against the students' will.
Do this year's bills require teachers to tell parents about a student's sexual orientation or gender identity?
Unlike past attempts at a parental bill of rights, this year's bills do not explicitly require school staff and teachers to divulge to inquiring parents details about their child's sexual orientation or gender identity. Some bills in the past have included that explicit language, sparking opposition from LGBTQ rights groups and driving some Republicans to vote against them on the House floor.
But this year's versions of the legislation do include a catch-all phrase that opponents argue achieves a similar result.
Language in a floor amendment to SB 72 expected to be brought forward by House Speaker Sherman Packard Thursday provides parents the right to 'inquire of the school or school personnel and promptly receive accurate, truthful, and complete disclosure regarding any and all matters related to their minor child, unless an immediate answer cannot be provided when the initial request is made.' If an immediate answer is not available, the school employee must provide one within 10 business days.
The bill provides an exception to providing the information if there is a 'compelling state interest' against doing so, and it defines that interest as 'an actual and objectively reasonable belief, supported by clear and convincing evidence, that the infringement upon parental rights is necessary to prevent the child from being abused,' under the state's abuse laws.
HB 10 includes similar language.
Republicans say the requirement is necessary to prevent teachers from withholding information from parents and to allow parents full information about their children. Democrats and LGBTQ advocates say the requirement that the disclosure 'complete' could be difficult to follow, and that the standard that must be met to constitute a fear of abuse, 'clear and convincing,' is too high to meet in most situations.
How would the bills affect health care services for students?
While Republicans broadly support the parental bill of rights, they have disagreed over one key area: medical care for students.
A version of SB 72 recommended by the House Children and Family Law Committee would have included language requiring parents to consent in writing before any biometric scans are conducted by a medical provider on a child, or before any DNA or blood is drawn. That version would also give parents the right 'to make health care decisions unless otherwise provided by law' and 'to be physically present at any health care facility providing care.'
However, Democrats and advocates had raised concerns that the medical provisions would violate teenagers' health care and reproductive rights by impeding their ability to receive birth control and pre- and post-natal care without getting parental permission. And House Republican leadership appears aware: The floor amendment from Packard expected to be introduced on Thursday would strike those parental medical rights from the final bill.
Meanwhile, both of this year's House and Senate versions of the bills include language to protect confidential conversations between children and counselors. Both bills protect school counselors, psychologists, nurses, or other health care providers from being required to disclose information about children to parents that 'was reasonably expected to be privileged.'
What could be the consequences of noncompliance for schools or teachers?
Past parental bill of rights legislation has made teachers personally accountable for failing to follow the law, in some cases opening teachers up to litigation or potential disciplinary action by the State Board of Education against their license. But this year, the House and Senate bills do not include direct consequences for teachers.
The bills do provide that a parent who claims a violation may sue the school district for injunctive relief or for damages.
What should be expected on Thursday?
In their current versions, the two bills up for a vote Thursday — HB 10 in the Senate and SB 72 in the House — are largely identical. Both bills include parental rights over medical care that have attracted debate.
But Packard's floor amendment, which removes those medical rights, would make SB 72 more moderate, and potentially more palatable for Gov. Kelly Ayotte to sign.
Should the House Republican caucus vote to pass that floor amendment, as well as the underlying bill, SB 72 would return to the Senate, which would decide next week whether to accept the moderating changes and send the bill to Ayotte.
But if conservative-leaning House Republicans join with Democrats to reject the floor amendment, SB 72 and HB 10 could head to the governor's office in their most robust form yet.