Browsing though SB 272, the so-called Parents’ Bill of Rights, I came across this little gem:
The right to exempt a public-school student from participating in required statewide assessments in English, language arts, mathematics, and/or science, as set forth in RSA 193-C:6.
Sorry, but no. First, note that RSA 193-H:2 requires that
schools shall ensure that all pupils are performing at the proficient level or above on the statewide assessment as established in RSA 193-C.
By definition, you can’t ensure that all pupils are performing at proficiency if some of them are exempted from the assessment.
Second, if a student is attending a school paid for by taxpayers, those taxpayers have a right to know whether their money is being wasted. If you don’t want your kid to provide that essential feedback, then you can educate him yourself, on your own dime.
There are lots of problems with this bill, but the overall problem is that it’s not helpful to express the goals of the bill in terms of rights.
First, the enumeration of rights belongs in a constitution, not in a statute. Rights are to be claimed by the people, not handed out by the legislature.
Second, the current judicial environment treats rights as little more than suggestions. Any court can ‘interpret’ any ‘right’ in the bill to ‘mean’ anything it wants. So if passed in its current form, the bill will have failed in advance.
Third, people can’t exercise rights that they don’t know about. And this bill requires parents to go to court to seek redress. Together, these ensure that the vast majority of violations will go unchecked. And even when violations are punished, it’s the taxpayers who will end up paying the judgments.
It would be much simpler, much more direct, and much more justifiable for the bill to express what schools may not do — a Schools’ Bill of Wrongs, so to speak.
After all, schools are creatures of the state. There is no need to discover new rights, or claim new powers, for the state to tell schools what they are prohibited from doing.
To take just a couple of examples, instead of saying that parents have
The right to inquire of the school or school personnel and to be truthfully and completely informed if their child is being identified by any name other than the name under which the child was enrolled in the school or any nickname that a reasonable person would understand to be commonly derived from such name, including under circumstances which a reasonable person would understand to be for the purpose of facilitating a change of gender or gender transition.
why not just prohibit schools from using any name other than the one under which a child is enrolled? If they want to use a different name, the parent would have to re-enroll the child under the new name.
Or instead of saying that parents have
The right to opt out of health or sex education and any other objectionable material, as set forth in RSA 186:11, IX-b and IX-c.
why not just prohibit schools from teaching those subjects without written permission from parents?
But this raises an interesting question: Why should only parents be able to declare that material is objectionable, when it’s taxpayers who are footing the bill? As Jefferson observed, ‘to compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical’.
That is, why not prohibit schools from teaching objectionable subjects (also known as divisive concepts) at all? If the kids can read, they can learn the subjects on their own. If they can’t read, they should be working on learning to read.
Finally, you have to wonder sometimes if the people who propose and pass bills even bother to read them. The preamble of this bill says:
The general court further finds that it is a child’s parents who have the responsibility, means, and resources to ensure that a child receives appropriate health care, …
Really? If that were actually true, it would mean that there should be no socialized or subsidized health care for children, inside schools or anywhere else. Is that really what the general court ‘finds’? Or is it just tossing words around for emotional effect, hoping that no one is actually paying attention?
Ultimately, the state should have the same relationship to schools as it does to towns: Dillon’s Rule. If a school isn’t given explicit permission to do something, it has no power to do it.
If schools aren’t given explicit permission to collect biometric scans or DNA, or to immunize a child, or give a child counseling or psychological advice, then they can’t do those things.
If schools are required to make all curriculum materials available for inspection by parents and taxpayers, then everyone will be able to see them — without having to make a separate Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights.
The state can make acceptance of a set of strictly enumerated tasks a condition of employment by any school district, and make failure to abide by them grounds for immediate termination (with no opportunity for any union to override this condition).
This would be simpler, cleaner, better aligned with the state constitution, better aligned with the goals of the bill, and easier to enforce — and therefore much more likely to actually accomplish something.
