Imagine a rule requiring every vegetarian restaurant to be ready to serve meat dishes, but not because anyone currently goes there looking for meat dishes, or plans to. Meat eaters would obviously be better off at other restaurants, of which there is no shortage.
The sole purpose of such a rule would be to make it harder for vegetarian restaurants to stay in business, by forcing them to increase their costs without benefitting anyone.
That’s basically what’s going on with HB 721, but instead of requiring vegetarian restaurants to be ready to serve meat to customers who don’t want it, the bill requires private schools with town tuitioning contracts to be ready to provide special education services to students who don’t need them.
(By law, when such services are needed, they’re already provided by the districts, at the private schools. Currently Croydon is the only town doing this, and no problems have arisen from this arrangement.)
The sole purpose of the bill is to make it harder for private schools to stay in business, by forcing them to increase their costs without benefitting anyone, unless they turn away tuitioned students entirely.
You know how sometimes we end up with a law named after someone to whom something terrible happened, as a reminder that we don’t want the same kind of thing to happen to anyone else? That’s what’s needed here. The sponsors of HB721 should find someone who was actually harmed by the absence of this bill — or who will be harmed if it doesn’t pass — and name it after that person.
But of course, they won’t be able to. Which tells you all you need to know about HB 721.
