‘Protecting’ kids or ‘assault’ on teachers? Missouri House passes parents bill of rights
The Missouri House on Tuesday became the latest legislative body across the country to approve a “parents bill of rights.”
The bill, which passed 85-59, vows to promote transparency in the classroom by outlining a set of rights parents may employ over their child’s education, including reviewing curriculum and visiting schools during school hours. It would allow parents to sue school districts that violate the bill’s rules.
The bill now heads to the Senate, where its sponsor said it would likely undergo minor changes.
“We need to teach kids how to think, not what to think,” said bill sponsor Rep. Ben Baker, a Neosho Republican. “We need to encourage parent involvement and not discourage it. This is about protecting our kids in schools.”
But the bill, which echoes similar proposals in states like Kansas, Arizona and Florida, has been criticized by Democrats and public school advocates, who say it both grants rights that already exist and puts new burdens on teachers.
Opponents say the bill, and others that deal with curriculum, seek only to exploit anger over hot-button issues like COVID-19 restrictions and teachings on race and gender issues.
Peter Merideth, a St. Louis Democrat, on Tuesday called the bill an “outright assault” on public school teachers. The bill is part of a national strategy intended to weaken the state’s public school systems, he said.
“I think we need to call it what it is,” he said. “And that’s fanning the flames of distrust and division toward our schools and our institutions. Riling people up about the idea of race being taught in schools.”
Mike Stephens, a Bolivar Republican who voted against the bill, said he was “deeply afraid” that some of its language would harm schools. He specifically pointed to a line that said parents had the right to “direct the education of their minor child.”
“Words matter and words have power,” he said. “And these words go beyond what should have been intended in this bill.”
Under the bill’s language, schools would be required to get written permission from parents before students can attend assemblies, field trips or extracurricular activities. And it allows the Missouri Department of Elementary & Secondary Education to withhold funds from schools that are found to have repeatedly violated any of the bill’s rules.
It would also allow both parents and the Missouri Attorney General to bring civil actions against school districts that violate any of the bill’s provisions.
Baker told House members last week that the bill would help parents who felt they were being ignored by their child’s school. He said he was referring to “age-inappropriate material, whether it’s books that should not be in front of students at those ages or whether it’s critical race theory.”
Critical race theory, a college and law school-level concept that examines the role of institutions in perpetuating racism, is not taught in Missouri’s K-12 system.
The term, however, has been adopted by conservatives to cover objections to a range of classroom materials touching on race, diversity or context to dark chapters in the nation’s history such as slavery and Japanese internment.
National strategy?
State legislators have promoted similar legislation across the country in response to a wide-range of complaints on pandemic mask requirements, books, classroom materials and the rarely-described critical race theory.
Heather Fleming, a former teacher who founded Missouri Equity Education Partners, previously told The Star that Missouri’s proposal was both unnecessary and impractical. It’s also a solution in search of a problem, she said.
“This is all coming from the same place,” she said. “It’s coming from a disingenuous attempt on the part of a lot of these individuals to activate their base.”
Among similar bills moving through the Missouri General Assembly is a proposal that would allow parents “to object to instructional materials and other materials used in the classroom based on such parent’s beliefs regarding morality, sexuality, religion, or other issues related to the well-being, education, and upbringing of such parent’s child.”
Another would prohibit school districts “from accepting private funding for the purposes of teaching any curriculum substantially similar to critical race theory or The 1619 Project.” The New York Times Magazine longform journalism project, launched in 2019, argues that slavery played a central role in the nation’s founding.
“There is stuff that will have an impact,” said Merideth, the St. Louis Democrat. “That impact is…to make the lives harder of the people that run our schools, the teachers, the administrators, the school boards, people whose lives are already extremely difficult. Whose jobs are hard…and this bill will make their jobs harder.”
This story was originally published April 19, 2022 at 4:49 PM.
